Education & pedagogy [view: normal]

Nov. 1, 1954. Schenectady, N.Y. "Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Grout Park School, Hamburg Street. Television in library." Gottscho-Schleisner. Via Shorpy. , , September 18, 2009 [Tags: Schools] [Link] [Comment] ...

Something like this will happen as education funding disappears. Professors will have their day jobs, but they will also need to moonlight as personal tutors to those who can afford the extra fees. (As usual, the first take from professors is the one with dollar signs in their eyes, just as they were a decade ago at the prospect of selling online lesson plans and lectures, and without regard to th...

I think we are closer than ever to being able to realistically comprehend a future without textbooks. Digital textbooks offer a world of improvements: not only are they lighter and more portable, they allow instant updates, collaboration and lower costs (in theory, at least). From the Q & A with Andy Chlup of the Vail School District: "Teachers are able to focus on what is the best way to creative...

It makes you take a deep breath and set your lips and then set to work again: "The United States is a country that is increasingly defined by a civic deficit, a chronic and deadly form of civic illiteracy that points to the failure of both its educational system and the growing ability of anti-democratic forces to use the educational force of the culture to promote the new illiteracy. As a result ...

Grainne Conole presents to the Italian e-learning society conference in Salerno and from this talk produces three blog posts (one, two, three). They're worth a look. The posts, she writes, "reviewed e-learning policy to date and argued that despite the potential of technologies, the impact on practice has not been as extensive as might have been hoped. There is a gap between the rhetoric of policy...

According to an article in the Washington Business Journal, Blackboard bought a patent, used it to sue a company, settled with the company and licensed the patent to them, then tried to renegotiate the price at which they bought the patent originally, and have now launched a pre-emptive lawsuit against the people it bought the patent from. Well, like they say, be wary who you sign business deals w...

Clive Shepherd used a site called Create Debate to set up a discussion on the topic, "how relevant is the ADDIE model in 2009?" Hhe reports, "I was impressed with how quickly the debate took shape. Within a couple of days 22 different arguments had been added - in all cases well-considered and helpful – and 86 votes cast. The end result in quantitative terms was that 42 believed that ADDIE had had...

Keynote speech delivered by Professor Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, at the Education in a Changing Environment conference that took place this week at the University of Walford. Hall's theme is open access and open resources in learning. Interesting description of how copyright and patents work in rent-seeking closed systems, like pharmaceuticals, and Disney, and how h...

The core, if you will, of the challenge is this: "P21's approach to teaching those skills marginalizes knowledge and therefore will deny students the liberal education they need. Cognitive science teaches us that skills and knowledge are interdependent and that possessing a base of knowledge is necessary to the acquisition not only of more knowledge, but also of skills. Skills can neither be taugh...

Kerrie Smith: "I have lots of other posts on this topic, but have come across a couple of articles worth looking at today. 21st Century ready students: start with the teacher contains, embedded, two recent presentations by US educator Brad Flicklinger on 21st Century learning. You might find the lists of skills for students, skills for teachers, and the blockers useful. 21st Century Skills: The Ch...

Outside the domain of common core, IBM is hosting a seminar on the future of work (which appears to be 100 percent 'soft skills'). "in the context of the Smart Work Jam, here you have got her deck I think you would be able to relate to, like I said, if you are one of those folks who is trying to accelerate the adoption rate of social software within your organisation... Major key learning... you a...

What's common about the Common Core people? This article examines the question: "To relegate today's students to rows of desks, a teacher at the front of the classroom espousing content, and a textbook with paper and pencil is to guarantee that our students will be left with the lowest skills and the lowest-paying jobs." Via Edouwonk, who says people ought to pay attention. Sean Cavanagh, Educatio...

Deborah Meier lowers the boom on the content-and-test people in her Bridging Difference column today. It's worth quoting at some length:

"I discovered, in my effort to 'prep' them, that while reading tests may in part test the ability to read-comprehend (vs. re-code into sounds)-they are even better at detecting one's class and cultural sub-group....

"What you have documented, Diane, is eerily c...

Phew! Another week's work of reading. Needless to say, I haven't read it, but Gary Woodill summarizes: "The 164 page downloadable document (5.29 MB) is edited by Norbert Pachler and Judith Selpold. As well, most of the slides from presentations are available to download. I found the first section, 'learning across contexts' to be particularly valuable in understanding the new possibilities of mobi...

"It makes the extraordinary claim that caterpillars and butterflies have different evolutionary histories - that rather than being a single lineage that evolved through two different life stages, they are a hybrid that resulted from the accidental mating of a flying insect with a worm-like species." One way or another, the peer review / journal publishing process has failed here. What should have happened what that Williamson (author of the paper in dispute) should have published his thoughts and evidence on his website, to be considered by the community as a whole. Zoe Corbyn, Times Higher Education, September 16, 2009 [Tags: Books] [Link] [Comment] ...

The discussion continues. Matt Crosslin, EduGeek Journal, September 16, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

I haven't had the chance to listen to the audio, but how could you go wrong? MP3. Uploaded by Seb Schmoller, ALT Open Access Repository, September 16, 2009 [Tags: Audio] [Link] [Comment] ...

Randy Garrison examines "the foundational principles and practices of distance education in the context of recent developments in the areas of online learning." He writes "In the current culture of connectivity, the relevance of distance education may well be dependent upon developing and communicating a coherent theory that can accommodate transformational developments reflected in [online learning (OLL)] innovations."...

A sign of the times, I think. We are likely to see more of this. Kerrie Smith, You are Never Alone, September 16, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment] ...

Our online course has started and people are already creating content and writing posts, including this one. This one is a bit critical of Connectiovism. "At one level we have a highly reductionist view – its all about the neural connections, how brains work at this low level. At the other level its about how people interact and make connections with other people. And entirely removed from this is...

This is pretty neat. Garage Band is an incredible application, but you have to have a Mac to run it. But now there's an online service. "The service, called Myna, is sort of like Garage Band in your web browser. You can import audio directly into it, record a track into the application, or use clips from one of Aviary's provided clip libraries." Christina Warren, Mashable, September 16, 2009 [Tags: Audio] [...

The Hot Potatoes question and quiz generation software has been around forever, it seems - I remember when it was just starting up at Vic in the 90s. According to this post, the Moodle implementation is now free. "The purpose of the Hot Potatoes is to enable you to create interactive Web-based imageteaching exercises which can be delivered to any Internet-connected computer equipped with a browser...

Diane Ravitch states the case for (what is to me) the other side. "We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically without quite a lot of knowledge to think about. Thinking critically involves comparing and contrasting and synthesizing what one has learned. And a great deal of knowledge is necessary before one can begin to reflect on its meaning and look for alternative explanatio...

This is a really wonderful video recorded during the Open Education conference in Vancouver in August. In addition to repeated statements of "I love Vancouver" the participants discuss their favorite Open Ed projects and what they like about open educational resources. Jane Park, blip.tv, September 15, 2009 [Tags: Video, Project Based Learning] [Link] [Comment] ...

For those of you who haven't seen it, I want to recommend Ethan Zuckerman's summary of my talk in Linz. Ethan Zuckerman, My Heart's In Accra, September 15, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment] ...