Learning Online Info

LTC’s Blended Learning Wiki

University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre’s Blended Learning Wiki. ‘There is no agreement on the definition of blended learning. The term is used in a wide variety of ways, and applied to a wide range of teaching and learning approaches.

Many blended learning definitions refer to conventional face-to-face teaching and learning activities (synchronous) that are mixed or blended with technology mediated learning activities not offered in real time at a specific location (asynchronous).

It should also be noted that in most formal educational settings (credit courses) there has always been a blend of space/time learning activities. Whether in the form of homework, assignments, or studying, almost all courses require independent or group learning activities to occur beyond scheduled instructional time.’

University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre (TLC). ‘Now in its second year, the goal of the Learning Technologies Centre (TLC) is to provide faculty and graduate students the resources and collaborative support to research, develop, and create pedagogically and technologically sound teaching and learning resources.’

Visit also: LTC Wiki

Presentation: PowerPoint Clone Included on Google Docs

C|Net News: Google Presentations gets the green light. ‘Google announced the launch on Monday night of its long-awaited, Web-based competitor to PowerPoint. Google Presentations, which is free, is part of the company’s online office suite, Google Docs.

Right off the bat, you will notice that Presentations has some of the same basic functionality as Microsoft’s PowerPoint. It does enable you to create some really basic presentations, with themes, but the lack of features and slide show polish are real turn-offs for me.

Yes, there are nice collaboration features, just like the other Google Docs applications, but if the final product isn’t on par with what PowerPoint produces, those features are almost irrelevant. The omission of basic animations and transitions really take away from it.’

Official Google Blog Announcement: Our feature presentation. ‘In April we announced that we were working to bring presentations to Google Docs. (Astute readers may recall learning about this even earlier, which caused a bit of excitement around here.) And today (9/17/2007) we’re unveiling the new Google Docs presentations feature and invite you to try it at documents.google.com. Maybe more than any other type of document, presentations are created to be shared. But assembling slide decks by emailing them around is as frustrating as it is time-consuming. The new presentations feature of Google Docs helps you to easily organize, share, present, and collaborate on presentations, using only a web browser.’

Google Docs Tour

Update (following Wolf comment below): ZDNet: Nice try Google, you should have bought SlideRocket

2008 International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED)

INTED 2008 - International Technology, Education and Development Conference. ‘The general objective of conference is the promotion of international collaboration in the field of technology, engineering and science education. INTED 2008 provides an International Forum for researchers, engineers, professors, educational scientists and technologists in the areas of Education, Science and Technology. It will be an excellent opportunity to present, demonstrate and discuss research, development, applications, and the latest innovations and results in the field of Higher Education and Industry.

INTED 2008 will take place in Valencia (Spain) on the 3rd, 4th and 5th March, 2008. Abstract Submission Deadline: November 15th 2007.

Distance Learning Across the Globe: Stanford University International Outreach Program (IOP)

Stanford University International Outreach Program (IOP). ‘The Stanford University International Outreach Program (IOP), a new program under the auspices of Stanford’s International Initiative, supports the extension and adaptation of Stanford educational content and teaching programs for collaborative partnerships with tertiary institutions in developing countries.

Innovative teaching and learning approaches, multidisciplinary curriculums, appropriate uses of Information and Communication Technologies, in conjunction with building teaching capacity among partners provide the framework for directing IOP’s program activities.’

Stanford Report: Stanford expands distance learning across the globe. ‘Researchers at Stanford and at universities in Africa and Latin America are pushing the boundaries of distance learning to develop new collaborative models that will prepare students to work in an increasingly borderless world.

Under the recently launched International Outreach Program (IOP), headed by Reinhold Steinbeck, Stanford faculty are helping to redefine the way students learn whether they are in high-tech classrooms on campus, in remote wildlife parks in Tanzania, in teacher-training colleges in Chile, or at a university in Cali, Colombia.

“What’s really exciting about this is that it opens a whole new chapter in engaging students in these countries in globally distributed courses,” Steinbeck said of these and other pilot projects supported by IOP, which is based at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) under the auspices of the International Initiative. “We are very determined to make this a collaborative process”.’

Academic Scrapbooking as a Powerful Classroom Tool

Edutopia: Academic Scrapbooking: Snapshots of Learning. ‘A social studies teacher uses photo journals to make learning more personal and immediate for her students. Here’s an assignment: Grab a stack of acid-free paper, some glue sticks, and a few photographs, and set your students to work on a scrapbook.

Sounds a little like arts-and-crafts time? Perhaps, but academic scrapbooking is actually being used as a powerful classroom tool to help students better connect with the subject at hand, from lessons on ancient Greece to an exploration of themes of love in literature.

Heidi Willard, a social studies teacher and enthusiastic advocate of academic scrapbooking, describes it as “personalizing the curriculum.” Students get away from the textbook - but not the lesson - and complete a hands-on assignment that allows organized classroom movement and results in better retention of the material. “My experience as a teacher has taught me that it is the activity in the classroom they remember,” says Willard, who has used scrapbooking with both special-needs and traditional students.’

Notre Dame Opencourseware (OCW)

Notre Dame Opencourseware (OCW). ‘Notre Dame OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners throughout the world. Notre Dame OCW does not grant credits or degrees, and does not provide access to faculty. What Notre Dame OCW does give you is open access to the materials used in a variety of courses.

An “opencourseware” is a free and open digital publication of course materials. By offering free, high-quality course materials to the world, OCW strives to overcome the barriers geography, economics, age and language present to the spread of knowledge. OCW is neither a distance-education or degree-granting initiative but rather an open dissemination of educational materials, philosophy, and modes of thought.

Notre Dame Opencourseware (OCW) Pilot Project seeks to publish 30 courses focused on the human condition. This site launched with the first eight courses on September 20, 2006 and continues to grow. In creating an opencourseware, Notre Dame joins the OCW Consortium, a collaboration of more than more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world, creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The Consortium’s stated mission is “to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware”.’

OECD: Lifelong Learning and Human Capital

OECD Policy Brief: Lifelong Learning and Human Capital (PDF). Introduction: The world of work has seen enormous change over the past couple of decades. Manufacturing jobs account for an ever smaller percentage of the workforce in most developed economies. Indeed, salaries in manufacturing have generally fallen behind those of other sectors. Today, “knowledge workers” – a category covering everything from call-centre workers to architects, teachers and financial employees – are increasingly pivotal to economic success in developed countries.

The potential for individuals and countries to benefit from this emerging knowledge economy depends largely on their education, skills, talents and abilities, that is, their human capital. As a result, governments are increasingly concerned with raising levels of human capital, chiefly through education and training, which today are seen as ever more critical to fuelling economic growth.
However, formal education, which usually runs from about the age of 4 or 5 to the late teens or early 20s, is only one part of forming human capital. In many ways it is more useful to think of human capital formation as a life-long learning process rather than as education.

From an economic and employment perspective, this human potential for lifelong learning is assuming ever greater importance. Old jobs are migrating to places where labour is cheaper. Meanwhile, fast-changing technologies are creating new jobs unheard of only recently or radically altering what workers need to know to perform their existing jobs. Consequently, people now need to continue developing their skills and abilities throughout their working lives.

This Policy Brief looks at the concept of human capital, its increasing importance to economic growth, and how governments and societies can work to develop it during early childhood, the years of formal education and adulthood.

Thoughts Aside: Certain training and testing systems have been aimed at life long learning and the development of human capital (000-077). A major attribute of these courses is the ease of use and flexibility with respect to learning (000-078) and pricing options. Employers can subscribe to an employee education and training program (000-190) by simply signing up and paying per session (000-222) as and when needed.