Learning Online Info » Educational Technologies

Free: Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning

Jorge Goncalves — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:57:11 +0000

Recently, I’ve discovered the excellent Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning from George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger, Learning Technologies Centre (LTC), University of Manitoba. This handbook is freely available in two formats: wiki and PDF. The number, diversity and quality of the bibliographic references are worth mentioning. A must read!

Conclusion excerpt: The use of technology for learning is influenced by developments in numerous fields: technology itself, global trends (market economy growth, changing immigration patterns, intellectual shifts to emerging economies), societal trends and trends within educational research.

Much of the change in education over the last several decades has been defined by discussion of content. Should we teach more math? Science? What about ethics? How should we teach? Lecture? Problem-based learning? It seems that much of educational reform has been concerned with determining the content of education, rather than the model and process of learning design and delivery in a technology infused world.

For individual faculty members and departments, greater use of emerging technology can serve as an important bridging process between the traditional role of education and the not yet clearly defined future. Active participation in the ecology of perpetual change provides organizations with the capacity to sense, recognize, and respond to emerging patterns.

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Free: Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning

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Innovate: Virtual Worlds, Simulations and Games for Education

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:48:22 +0000

The Innovate – Journal of Online Education, June/July 2009 issue is dedicated to virtual worlds, simulation and games in Education. Editors’ note excerpt: Virtual worlds and simulations are a source of both excitement and anxiety for educators. Alongside the seemingly limitless opportunities for enhancing learning, educators must also grapple with the challenges that arise with novel ways of communicating, connecting, sharing, and knowing. This special issue of Innovate presents a collection of frameworks, design experiences, research results, and informed opinions that seek to bridge this divide and advance our understanding of effective teaching and learning in these new environments.

Highlights:

Virtual Worlds, Simulations, and Games for Education: A Unifying View. Synopsis: While there is some overlap in the uses and structures of virtual worlds, games, and simulations and the three often look similar, their differences are profound. Clark Aldrich presents a taxonomy of virtual environments that recognizes both the distinctions and the similarities among virtual environments for learning. All three, he suggests, are points along a continuum, all instances of highly interactive virtual environments (HIVEs). The HIVE framework recognizes the various relationships among virtual worlds, games, and simulations that can help educators, researchers, and builders of virtual environments think more clearly about the usefulness of virtual environments.

MUVEs and Experiential Learning: Some Examples. Synopsis: Multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) like Second Life present unparalleled opportunities to help students connect knowledge by description to knowledge by experience; in a MUVE, students can experience phenomena rather than only reading about them. Baba Kofi Weusijana, Vanessa Svihla, Drue Gawel, and John Bransford describe their use of a maze constructed in Second Life to help students experience firsthand the phenomena described in their educational psychology course. Their use of Second Life is particularly notable in its use of MUVE-based movies and other strategies to leverage Second Life’s interactive powers for exploration despite restricted access to technology.

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Innovate: Virtual Worlds, Simulations and Games for Education

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Study: Good Teaching can be Enhanced with New Technology

Jorge Goncalves — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:25:30 +0000

U.S. Department of Education Study Finds that Good Teaching can be Enhanced with New Technology – Analysis of Controlled Studies Shows Online Learning Enhances Classroom Instruction.

Press Release: Providing further evidence of the tremendous opportunity to use technology to improve teaching and learning, the U.S. Department of Education today released an analysis of controlled studies comparing online and face-to-face instruction.

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified over 1,000 empirical studies of online learning. Of these, 46 met the high bar for quality that was required for the studies to be included in the analysis. The meta analysis showed that “blended” instruction – combining elements of online and face-to-face instruction – had a larger advantage relative to purely face to face instruction or instruction conducted wholly online. The analysis also showed that the instruction conducted wholly on line was more effective in improving student achievement than the purely face to face instruction. In addition, the report noted that the blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions.

“This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We must take advantage of this historic opportunity to use American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to bring broadband access and online learning to more communities.

“To avoid being caught short when stimulus money runs out, school officials should use the short-term federal funding to make immediate upgrades to technology to enhance classroom instruction and to improve the tracking of student data,” Duncan added. “Technology presents a huge opportunity that can be leveraged in rural communities and inner-city urban settings, particularly in subjects where there is a shortage of highly qualified teachers. At the same time, good teachers can utilize new technology to accelerate learning and provide extended learning opportunities for students.”

The study was conducted by the Center for Technology in Learning – SRI International, under contract to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Policy and Program Studies Service, which commissioned the study.

Download PDF version of the final report: Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies.

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Study: Good Teaching can be Enhanced with New Technology

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JISC Report: Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

Jorge Goncalves — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:41:59 +0000

Report of an independent Committee of Inquiry into the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies: Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World.

From the Conclusions: Web 2.0, the Social Web, has had a profound effect on behaviours, particularly those of young people whose medium and metier it is. They inhabit it with ease and it has led them to a strong sense of communities of interest linked in their own web spaces, and to a disposition to share and participate. It has also led them to impatience – a preference for quick answers – and to a casual approach to evaluating information and attributing it and also to copyright and legal constraints. (…)

Higher education has a key role in helping students refine, extend and articulate the diverse range of skills they have developed through their experience of Web 2.0 technologies. It not only can, but should, fulfil this role, and it should do so through a partnership with students to develop approaches to learning and teaching. This does not necessarily mean wholesale incorporation of ICT into teaching and learning. Rather it means adapting to and capitalising on evolving and intensifying behaviours that are being shaped by the experience of the newest technologies. In practice it means building on and steering the positive aspects of those behaviours such as experimentation, collaboration and teamwork, while addressing the negatives such as a casual and insufficiently critical attitude to information. The means to these ends should be the best tools for the job, whatever they may be. The role of institutions of higher education is to enable informed choice in the matter of those tools, and to support them and their effective deployment.

Download this Report (PDF, 2 MB)

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

JISC Report: Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

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2009 Horizon Report Web Edition

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:22:56 +0000

2009 Horizon Report Web Edition. From the Executive Summary: The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project, a long-running qualitative research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations. The 2009 Horizon Report is the sixth annual report in the series. The report is produced again in 2009 as a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program.

The 2009 Horizon Report is also available as PDF.

See also: 2009 NMC Summer Conference. The NMC Summer Conference is a one-of-a-kind event, attracting an audience of highly skilled professionals who are very knowledgeable about and interested in the integration of emerging technologies into teaching, learning, and creative expression.

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

2009 Horizon Report Web Edition

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Academic Earth (& YouTube EDU): Thousands of Video Lectures from the World’s Top Scholars

Jorge Goncalves — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:48:36 +0000

Academic Earth: Video Lectures from the World’s Top Scholars. ‘Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education? Academic Earth is working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.

Academic Earth is building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.’

Update: More great video lectures at YouTube EDU.

From YouTube blog: Higher Education for All. ‘Earlier this week, we announced the launch of YouTube EDU (youtube.com/edu), a hub for videos from over 100 of our leading university and college partners. Think campus tours, news about cutting-edge research, and lectures by professors and world-renowned thought leaders. There are also 200 full (and free!) courses, in a range of subjects, from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, including IIT/IISc, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Yale. There are over 20,000 videos on YouTube EDU and growing.’

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Academic Earth (& YouTube EDU): Thousands of Video Lectures from the World’s Top Scholars

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Edmodo: Twitter for Teachers and Studentes

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:23:41 +0000

Edmodo – Free Private Microblogging For Education. From the FAQs:

Edmodo is a private microblogging platform that teachers and students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other.

Teachers sign up for accounts, and then create groups. Each group has a unique code which is distributed by the teacher to the class. Students then sign up (no email address required) and join the group using the code.

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Portraits of Learning 2008: Deadline Extended

Jorge Goncalves — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:11:50 +0000

Tech & Learning invites K-12 students to participate in Portraits of Learning, the seventh annual digital photography contest. The competition challenges the K-12 students to capture – and share – their unique vision of the world. The best digitally enhanced photo wins a special prize from Adobe. Other prizes include a digital camera, Adobe Photoshop Elements and more.

The contest is open to all K-12 students who may submit digital photos taken between January 1, 2008 and October 1, 2008. Photographs must be received by midnight, October 17, 2008.

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Portraits of Learning 2008: Deadline Extended

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Learning Content Development System (LCDS) from Microsoft

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:49:55 +0000

The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a tool that enables you to create high quality, interactive, online courses. Virtually anyone can publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactivities, quizzes, games, and assessments—as well as Silverlight-based animations, demos, and other multimedia.
Note that a free registration is needed to download the LCDS.

LCDS Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Learning Content Development System (LCDS) from Microsoft

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2nd Pan-American and Francophone ePortfolio Conference: ePortfolio and Digital Identity

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:34:17 +0000

ePortfolio and Digital Identity Conference, Montreal, 5-7 May 2008. The 2nd Pan-American and Francophone ePortfolio conference is being organised by EIfEL in partnership with the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University, the Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Montréal (CRIM) and HR-XML. It will take place at Concordia University on 5-7 May 2008. This year’s special focus will be on ePortfolio and digital identity extending the concept of the ePortfolio and exploring the link between the records and services that contribute to the emergence of a digital identity.

Keynote speakers confirmed to date include Stephen Downes of the National Research Council, Canada, Helen Barrett, International ePortfolio Consultant, Fulup Ar Foll, Sun Microsystems and Serge Ravet, EIfEL.

Tracks will be run in French and English. Presenters and authors are invited to submit an abstract (500 to 750 words) of their contributions by 21st February 2008 on the following themes:

1. Lifelong learning and employability
2. Building systems of recognition and accreditation with ePortfolios
3. Exploiting the full potential of digital identity
4. ePortfolio architectures and advanced technologies
5. Designing ePortfolio strategies within regions and sectors
6. Managing knowledge with ePortfolios

Proposals for presentations and workshops are welcomed. Papers will also be published on the conference website.

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

2nd Pan-American and Francophone ePortfolio Conference: ePortfolio and Digital Identity

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How to Keep Students Motivated and Attentive

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:31:01 +0000

ICT Results: Attention please! Next-generation e-learning is here. ‘Take an e-learning platform, mix in a large dose of social networking, sprinkle liberally with intelligent software agents to stimulate users and, according to a team of European researchers, you have a recipe to keep students’ attention even during the most testing training courses.

Recent trials of two new software platforms based on this new approach show substantial promise in overcoming one of the biggest problems that has dogged e-learning: how to keep students motivated and attentive. The platforms, developed in the AtGentive project, are designed to aid students in the classroom and to help them continue learning and collaborating long after classroom sessions have ended.

“The first generation of e-learning platforms focused on replicating online the classroom model of teaching, but this approach has not been all that successful,” explains Thierry Nabeth, the coordinator of AtGentive at INSEAD’s Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies in France. “The biggest problem is that students often lack motivation both inside and outside of the classroom, and fail to dedicate their attention to the learning programme.”

In an effort to overcome that problem, the AtGentive researchers incorporated artificial agents and social networking into their approach toward e-learning, employing, in the case of one of the platforms, similar techniques to those that have made websites, such as Facebook, so popular as a means of staying in touch with friends, relatives and colleagues.’

AtGentive: Attentive Agents for Collaborative Learners. ‘ The objective of the AtGentive project is to investigate the use of artificial agents for supporting the management of the attention of young or adult learners in the context of individual and collaborative learning environments.

Practically, this project consists in the design of artificial agents that are able to coach the learners in reaching higher level of performance in managing their attention in the learning process. These agents, which appear as embedded characters, are able to profile the state of the attention of the learners (short or long term) by observing their actions, to assess, to analyse and to reason on these states of attention, and to provide some proactive coaching (assessment, guidance, stimulation, etc.).’

ICT Results. ‘ICT Results is an editorial service created for the European Commission to showcase EU-funded ICT research and activities.’

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

How to Keep Students Motivated and Attentive

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Innovation 2008: The Real and The Ideal

Jorge Goncalves — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:04:23 +0000

Focus On Education Foundation present Innovation 2008: The Real and The Ideal, April 14th and 15th in Breckenridge, Colorado.

This conference brings together world-class scholars and educators along with business and governmental leaders to formulate a vision for the future of education and the role of technology in that future. Previous attempts to integrate technology into education have met with difficulties because solutions have not taken into account the total social system around teaching and learning. With that in mind, this conference will look at what’s next not just in technology, but also in the social, cultural, and pedagogical dimensions of education to shape a realistic appraisal of the present and a forecast for the future.

List of Speakers

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Innovation 2008: The Real and The Ideal

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Multiply Your e-Portfolio

Jorge Goncalves — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:06:46 +0000

Multiply. ‘Multiply gives you an easy way to share all kinds of digital media, including photos, blogs, videos, music and more, all in one convenient place: your own personal web site. With Multiply, you can share and discuss your stuff with everyone in your “social network,” and also be alerted whenever they have something new.’

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Multiply Your e-Portfolio

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TechLearning 2007 Leaders of the Year and Awards of Excellence

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:33:50 +0000

Leaders of theYear 2007: For the 20th year, T&L is proud to honor outstanding educators. In the following pages we bring you profiles of innovation, of courage, of determination, and most important, of dedication to the future of students. You will read about: a superintendent who turned around a “failing community” through the use of technology; an e-learning specialist who restructured an entire state’s approach professional development; a technology director who, against great odds, developed a digital academy for at-risk students; and a graphic arts teacher who single-handedly trained small-town students to compete and win on a global with 21st-century technologies.’

Awards of Excellence: ‘At this quarter-century mark in our Awards of Excellence program, we are happy to recognize 54 high-quality offerings for the 21st-century education market. From 120 entries, our 32 educator-judges and editorial team had the tough job of whittling down this broad selection of practical and innovative tools and resources.’

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

TechLearning 2007 Leaders of the Year and Awards of Excellence

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Chat as an Instructional Tool

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:44:17 +0000

Campus Technology: Tips for Using Chat as an Instructional Tool by Ruth Reynard. ‘Chat software (text or media-based) provides an excellent tool in supporting academic dialog (exchange), critical thinking, and knowledge building. The immediacy of the technology provides students with a direct connection with the instructor as well as other students. While chat software is usually used for “chatting,” and, therefore, it has a relaxed and colloquial protocol, with a little thought and planning, it can also be used well to support instruction.

Many classroom instructors and online instructors use chat software to provide virtual office hours and for easy question and answer sessions. More, however, can be achieved in the instructional process using the tool to create real-time collaboration and discussion that leads to in-depth academic processing of course material.’

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Chat as an Instructional Tool