Archive for August, 2006
August 27th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Innovate: Teaching Social Software with Social Software. ‘Ulises Mejias examines how social software—information and communications technologies that facilitate the collaboration and exchange of ideas—enables students to participate in distributed research, an approach to learning in which knowledge is collectively constructed and shared. During Fall 2005, Mejias taught a graduate seminar that provided students with hands-on experience working with blogs, wikis, Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, and distributed classification systems. The use of these social software tools allowed the class to function as a distributed research community where students were responsible for contributing something new to the study of the topic at hand. In this case social software was the topic of the seminar as well as its medium; in their course activities, students engaged in a critical analysis of the affordances of social software—what the software facilitates and what it prevents in different contexts—and were asked to apply their newly acquired skills and knowledge to promote a social cause of their choosing.’
Technorati Tags: Social Software, Innovate, ICT, Teaching, Learning, Collarobative Learning
August 24th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Lingu@net Europa. ‘Lingu@net Europa is a multilingual, on-line resource centre for foreign language learning. It provides information about, and links to good on-line resources from around the world relating to the learning and teaching of any modern foreign language.Lingu@net Europa is based on the idea that if you are learning or teaching a language you could be interested in relevant resources in any language you understand - not only the resources you can find by searching in your mother tongue. Lingu@net Europa gives multilingual access to over 3,500 catalogued on-line resources, many of them specifically for learners. It also offers support for adult learners on how to learn a language, how to assess your level and how to communicate with other learners on-line. You can access the whole site in: Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.’
Technorati Tags: Linguanet, Language Learning, Foreign Language Learning
August 24th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
The Education Arcade. ‘The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Wisconsin-Madison have joined forces to catalyze new creative, teaching, and learning innovations around the next generation of commercially available educational electronic games. The Education Arcade, a two-year-old research and educational initiative established by leading scholars of computer and video games and education at both universities, plans to focus efforts by partnering with educational publishers, media companies, and game developers to produce new educational electronic games and make them available to a larger audience of students and their teachers and parents. The Education Arcade’s mission has been to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potentials of videogames by initiating new game development projects, coordinating interdisciplinary research efforts, and informing public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education.’
Technorati Tags: Education Arcade, Educational Games
August 23rd, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Public Online Services and User Orientation. ‘How can we put the user of public eServices in the center of the designing and delivery of online public services and content? The eUSER project will prepare a state-of-the-art resource base on user needs in relation to online public services and on user-oriented methods for meeting these needs. The project will use this resource base to actively support the IST programme, projects, EU policy and the wider European Research Community to better address user needs in the design and delivery of online public services. The general focus of the project is on online “services of public interest” for which we will use the generic term “eServices”. The specific focus is on eGovernment, eHealth and eLearning services.’
Technorati Tags: eServices, eUsers, eLearning, eHealth, eGovernment, eUser Project
August 21st, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Microsoft Partners With College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College to Form Institute for Personal Robots in Education. ‘In a move designed to boost enrollment and retention in college computer science classes, Microsoft Corp. today announced the creation of the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) in partnership with the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College. The institute is designed to reinvigorate computer science curriculum by delivering robotics technology tailored for teaching purposes, scientifically evaluated for its effectiveness in live teaching situations. The resulting materials will be made available widely to the academic community. Under the alliance, Microsoft will provide the College of Computing at Georgia Tech with $1 million (U.S.) paid over three years to develop — as part of the IPRE — practical new ways to bring robotics technology into the computer science curriculum. Matching Microsoft’s support, an additional $1 million for the institute will be provided by the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College.’ [via Inside Higher Ed]
Institute for Personal Robots in Education. ‘The Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) applies and evaluates robots as a context for computer science education. IPRE is a joint effort between Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College sponsored by Microsoft Research. At Georgia Tech, IPRE is associated with Robotics and the College of Computing. At Bryn Mawr College, IPRE is associated with the Computer Science Department.’
Technorati Tags: Robts in Education, Robots, Educational Technology, Microsoft, IPRE, Computer Science
August 20th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Duke Digital Initiative (DDI). ‘The Duke Digital Initiative (DDI) is a multi-year program of experimentation, development, and implementation of new and emerging technologies to explore their effective use in support of the university’s mission. A growing number of faculty from a variety of departments, programs and schools have explored new technology-assisted approaches to instruction. Faculty and students use portable, personal multimedia technologies and digital course materials contribute to the course experience and to students’ learning.’
iPods at Duke. ‘In collaboration with Apple Computer, Inc., Duke distributed 20GB Apple’s iPod devices to each first-year student in August 2004 to stimulate creative uses of digital technology in academic and campus life. Since then, Duke has continued to incorporate portable digital listening and recording devices to faculty and students that has allowed for innovative instruction and learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom. This year, the DDI is supporting instructors who applied for iPods by providing an iPod and microphone attachment that meets proposed course uses.’
Podcasting. ‘ Duke is developing a podcasting tool called DukeCast.’
Duke on iTunes U. ‘Duke on iTunes U is a repository for a variety of multimedia materials related to the Duke educational experience.’
Technorati Tags: Duke Digital Initiative, iPod, Podcasting, Educational Technology
August 18th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Practices Evident in Good Models of Teaching with Technology (GMOTT). ‘Good models of teaching and learning with technology (GMOTT) take into consideration a set of practices that support the effective integration of technology into the curriculum. These practices do not stand alone. Rather, each must be apparent in a well-thought-out, technology-enhanced lesson, learning activity, project, or unit of instruction. Several samples are provided to illustrate this concept, along with a template that guides the creation of your own units or lessons, taking the GMOTT principles into consideration.’
Technorati Tags: Educational Technology, Teaching
August 17th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
OpenSourceCMS - Try Before You… Install . ‘This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs. The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything.’
Technorati Tags: OpensourceCMS, CMS, Open Source
August 17th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
ePortfolio 2006. ‘The ePortfolio 2006 conference organisers are pleased to invite you to the 4th International ePortfolio conference - Oxford, 11-13 October 2006. The main theme for the 2006 conference is: “eStrategies for Empowering Learners.” This year’s conference aims at exploring how the ePortfolio can contribute to the development of eStrategies for learning that result in empowered learners, providing them with greater control over their lifelong and lifewide learning journey. eStrategies can be local to an single or a group of institutions, to a region or a state, to an economic or industrial sector. ePortfolio 2006 will take place at the Kings Centre, Oxford, UK.’ (Registration with Early Bird rate until August 31st)
Technorati Tags: ePortfolio Conference, ePortfolio, e-Portfolio, eStrategies
August 15th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Getting Results - A Professional Development Course for Community College Educators. ‘Whether you’re a new or experienced teacher, you have a chance to make an impact on the future of the country. How can you be as effective as possible? This multimedia resource for community college faculty will challenge your previous thinking about teaching and learning and give you the basic tools for effective classroom practice. The key theme of the course is to encourage you to focus on what the students will do and take responsibility for their success. Teachers know their content and they know how to explain. These are valuable skills. But teachers have to become experts at tapping into their students’ knowledge base and how they learn.’
Technorati Tags: Getting Results, Teaching, Learning, Classroom Practice
August 15th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Schoolforge - Working together to unleash the power of Open Source tools in Education. ‘Schoolforge is a foundry. It is where you will find the information, the tools and materials you need to “forge” or make a school and all its parts. All free for the asking (or download), and, in the future, international in content and character, schoolforge is not a place or an organization, but a cause, and a collection of people and projects dedicated to it: bringing quality, affordable and dependable software and teaching materials to the people who need them around the world. As such, it is not a “service” so much as it is a community focal point, which, as much as anything else, represents an opportunity to get involved in one of its aspects. The job we have set for ourselves is large, too large for any one person, group or organization. Furthermore, there already exist numerous individuals, companies and organizations and schools working on it. Schoolforge and the work it does comprise all of these efforts and provides them with a common entrance, by which they can discover, meet and collaborate with those of similar goals, and through which newcomers may discover each part or all of the world of free and open source solutions for education.’
Schoolforge News Journal - Supporting the Schoolforge Coalition
Technorati Tags: Schoolforge, Open Source
August 14th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Interact Learning Community Environment. ‘Interact is an Online Learning and Collaboration platform developed by the Christchurch College of Education, New Zealand. It is an open source online community environment designed with the intention of making it easy for people to interact online, based around constructivist and vygotskian views of learning. The key advantage of Interact is the ability to structure a learning space the way you want it, rather than being stuck with a predefined separation of content and interaction. The user starts off with a blank slate and can build their site up anyway they see fit using a selection of ‘Components’ There is no preset structure that forces the user into any set pedagogy.’
SourceForge.net: interact. ‘A platform for the delivery and support of online learning. It differs from many other elearning platforms in that its aim is to concentrate on the social/interactive aspects of teaching and learning rather than the delivery of content to students.’
Download link
Technorati Tags: Interact, Online Learning, Online Collaboration, Learning Space, Educational Technology
