Content Migration: The Iceberg of CMS Projects

Content Migration: The Iceberg of CMS Projects.
November 2nd, 2007
It lies there just over the horizon and just below the surface of any Content Management System (CMS) implementation. It is the factor that is most often forgotten or ignored as the CMS build barrels toward launch. It is often left out of the project plan altogether but can take longer than the build itself. It is content migration. It’s easy to understand why migrating content from your old website system to a new CMS is overlooked . . ."   Content Mansgement Systems are the same types of systems as are Course Management Systems (Learning Management Systems.)  Moodle, in particular, has become a favorite Content Management System (free of course) for smaller entriprises. 

The Productivity Myth (HBR)

The Productivity Myth (HBR)
The Productivity Myth

 6:53 AM Wednesday May 5, 2010
by Tony Schwartz
"So here's the paradox: Americans are working 10 percent fewer total hours than they did before the recession, due to layoffs and shortened workdays, but we're producing nearly as many goods and services as we did back in the full employment days of 2007. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke called these gains in productivity "extraordinary" and unforeseen at a recent Senate hearing. There's a simple, visceral reason for the gains, Mr. Chairman, and it's called fear. If colleagues around us are being laid off and cut back, we can't help worrying that our jobs may be next. Our survival instincts kick in, and we push ourselves harder, so we're not the next one to go. We get more done, which sounds like good news and certainly explains higher productivity. But is it good news? Is more, bigger, faster for longer necessarily better? Americans already put in more hours than workers in any country in the world - and that doesn't include the uncounted shadow work that technology makes possible after the regular workday ends. Here's the bigger point. Just as you'll eventually go broke if you make constant withdrawals from your bank account without offsetting deposits, you will also ultimately burn yourself out if you spend too much energy too continuously at work without sufficient renewal."

Assessment Disconnect (HE)

Assessment Disconnect.
"January 27, 2010


WASHINGTON -- Last week’s annual gathering of the Association of American Colleges and Universities here may have left you with very different impressions of the state of student learning assessment in higher education, depending on which sessions you sampled. If you sat in on the many presentations by campus officials talking about their efforts to engage students, improve retention and measure their results, you’d have been left with the unmistakable impression that there are lots of individual faculty members, departments and colleges very much dedicated to measuring how successfully their students are learning and using that information to improve the quality of the education they provide. The presentations gave the lie to the arguments of critics that college administrators and professors are casually indifferent to whether their students are learning, loath to analyze their own performance, and unwilling to change."

The Faculty Role in Assessment (HE)

The Faculty Role in Assessment.
May 28, 2010


"Amid continuing debate, and sometimes disagreement, about the value and wisdom of measuring student learning outcomes in higher education, a few areas of consensus are slowly emerging. One is that faculty members are usually too little involved in setting their institutions' strategies for assessing student learning and in using the results of those efforts to change teaching and learning practices. Another is that without meaningful involvement by the faculty, efforts to assess student learning are close to meaningless."

Microsoft Mouse Mischief Released/Increased Student Participation w/PPT

Microsoft Mouse Mischief.
Mouse Mischief integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, letting you insert questions, polls, and drawing activity slides into your lessons. Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out, or draw answers on the screen.

Higher priority needed for ICT and learning - OECD

Governments around the world should endorse ICT .
Governments around the world should highlight the importance of computers and technology for education if schools are to help students bridge a second, emerging digital divide that “separates those with the competences and skills to benefit from computer use from those who do not”.

Given the correlation of these skills to economic, social and cultural success, says a new OECD report, governments should “do their best to engage teachers and schools in raising the frequency of computer use to a relevant level“. As well as bridging a digital divide that is much more than just access to technology, will would improve pupil attainment and demonstrate that schools and teachers are serious about their roles in developing learners fit for a technology-rich world.