Archive for the 'Resources' Category
April 11th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
Online Colleges, part of the huge College Scholarships, Colleges, and Online Degrees portal, main goal is helping students to choose suitable online colleges, degrees and courses.
The all site is designed like a notebook page making use of a user-friendly right navigational toolbar where we can find several links to other site’s pages.
My main purpose visiting this site was to check the Undergraduate and Graduate Online Degrees section. Here we can find a very detailed directory of institutions offering accredited online degrees and courses complemented by a Quick Degree Finder search engine. We can search choosing several options: degree level, category and subject. The results link to pages located on external sites. The same happens when you try to obtain more information using the directory links. For each institution a brief description is presented but when we click the links we go to external pages, most of them located at elearners.com, where we have to submit a form to obtain more information about the online course we have chosen. I didn’t like this. I would prefer a direct link to the institution instead of going to another site to fill a form.
Nevertheless, I recommend this site for those who are starting to look for an online degree. The many choices presented in almost every field of knowledge are a strong point in favor of Online Colleges. For beginners, I also recommend the reading of the Ten Rules for Choosing Online Colleges and Universities and the 10 Tips for College-Bound Students.
January 21st, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
Unlocking the promise of open educational resources: The Cape Town Open Education Declaration. ‘The Cape Town Open Education Declaration arises from a small but lively meeting convened in Cape Town in September 2007. The aim of this meeting was to accelerate efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education.
Convened by the Open Society Institute and the Shuttleworth Foundation, the meeting gathered participants with many points of view from many nations. This group discussed ways to broaden and deepen their open education efforts by working together.
The first concrete outcome of this meeting is the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. It is at once a statement of principle, a statement of strategy and a statement of commitment. It meant to spark dialogue, to inspire action and to help the open education movement grow.’
The Declarion (excerpt): We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go. [continue reading]
Related: Stephen Downes Criticizing the Cape Town Declaration
You can sign the Declaration here
January 20th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
Big Think. ‘bigthink.com is a new and growing website, currently in its private beta version, with a simple mission:
This is a digital age, one in which a wealth of accessible information empowers you, the citizen-consumer. But where is the information coming from? How accurate and unprocessed is it, really? Ask yourself this: how empowered do you feel debating a television screen or a newspaper?
Big Think’s task is to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you. That is Big Think’s mission. In practice, this means that information is truly interactive. When you log onto the site, you can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today’s leading thinkers, movers and shakers. You can search them by question or by topic, and, best of all, respond in kind. Upload a video in which you take on Senator Ted Kennedy’s views on immigration; post a slideshow of your trip to China that supports David Dollar’s assertion that pollution in China is a major threat; or answer with plain old fashioned text. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or heck, throw your own question or idea into the ring.’
January 17th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
The Open Research and Open Knowledge Society (ORS Acronym) is a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) based on Athens Greece and is operating all over the world. It is not depending on any government, political party, political or religious organization or entities representing financial interests.
Given the significance of the knowledge society as a new context of our era, four significant objectives formulate the justification of the Open Research and Open Knowledge Society:
- The need to provide a sustainable worldwide knowledge society vision based on collaboration, knowledge and learning for all and especially for people in need.
- The need to investigate the “soft” and “hard” aspects of the knowledge society, with the aim of providing organizational and cultural frameworks as well as infrastructures enabled by the evolution of information technologies.
- The need to anchor government policies in scientific evidence concerning the characteristics of the emerging knowledge intensive economy and social environment.
- The need to investigate the key priorities of the knowledge society in terms of critical aspects of human life (e.g. health, education, culture, science, business etc).
January 16th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
Knowing Knowledge Wiki. From the Preface: Why does so much of our society look as it did in the past? Our schools, our government, our religious organizations, our media—while more complex, have maintained their general structure and shape. Classroom structure today, with the exception of a computer or an LCD projector, looks remarkably unchanged—teacher at the front, students in rows. Our business processes are still built on theories and viewpoints that existed over a century ago (with periodic amendments from thinkers like Drucker2). In essence, we have transferred (not transformed) our physical identity to online spaces and structures.
This book seeks to tackle knowledge—not to provide a definition—but to provide a way of seeing trends developing in the world today. Due to the changed context and characteristics of knowledge, traditional definitions are no longer adequate. Language produces different meaning for different people. The meaning generated by a single definition is not sufficiently reflective of knowledge as a whole.’
Related Links: Knowing Knowledge site and blog (links to book reviews).
January 4th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
Collecting, Organizing, and Managing Resources for Teaching Educational Games the Wiki Way, Shelley Henson Johnson, Brett Shelton, and David Wiley, Innovate, Vol. 4, December 2007/January 2008. Synopsis: Recognizing the pedagogical value of gaming, academics along with game designers and educational content developers have begun producing resources to improve educational game design and make instructional games more accessible to teachers wanting to incorporate them into their classes. However, the rapid growth of such resources has made it difficult for educators and other interested parties to find what they need. As a first step towards addressing this problem, Shelley Henson Johnson, Brett Shelton, and David Wiley discuss the creation and proposed expansion of the Teaching Educational Games Resources wiki. They first created the wiki as part of a session at the Games, Learning and Society 2006 conference. Panelists and participants contributed to the wiki before, during, and after the conference session, creating an online space that incorporates syllabi and readings for educational game design, lists hundreds of online resources, and includes links to conferences and multimedia resources. After outlining the creation of the wiki, the authors suggest that its incorporation into an online self-organizing social system could facilitate its growth and the emergence of an online community of game designers, researchers, and educators interested in educational gaming.
Teaching Educational Games Resources Wiki. Current topics: Readings, Multi-media Materials, Technical Resources, Classroom Help, Additional Teaching Resources, Career Resources and Gaming and Libraries. Very good!
January 4th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
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.’
November 8th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
Exploratree & Enquiring Minds. ‘Exploratree is a free web resource where you can download, use and make your own interactive thinking guides. Thinking guides can support independent and group research projects with frameworks for thinking, planning and enquiry. We’ve provided a set of ready-made guides which you can print out or use online. All of the guides are completely customizable or you can start from scratch and make your own! You can share them and work on them in groups too.
The Exploratree web resource has been developed by Futurelab and emerged out of our work on the Enquiring Minds project. It provides a series of ready-made interactive ‘thinking guides’ or ‘frameworks’ which can support students’ projects and research. Thinking guides support the thinking or working through of an issue, topic or question and help to shape, define and focus an idea and also support the planning required to investigate it further.’
Enquiring Minds. ‘Enquiring Minds is an approach to teaching and learning, developed by Futurelab, that takes students’ ideas, interests and experiences as its starting point, and provides them with more responsibility for the direction and content of their learning.’
October 15th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
New JISC publication explores the learner’s perspective on e-learning. ‘A new publication from the JISC e-Learning Programme, In Their Own Words, has been launched at ALT-C in Nottingham. Synthesising outputs from Phase 1 of the Learners’ Experiences of e-Learning theme, it gives striking insights into learners’ motivations, beliefs and intentions about using technology in learning.
Designed as a flexible package to assist others in understanding the learner’s perspective on e-learning, In Their Own Words also provides a range of resources for internal institutional use. These include two pull-out information sheets on the social software and personal tools and technologies used by the learners participating in the studies, and a CD-ROM containing the original reports from the studies, five video case studies and a series of short guides summarising key messages for different sectors and roles.
In Their Own Words will primarily be of interest to managers, academic practitioners and technical staff in further and higher education, but is also of relevance to researchers and systems and tools developers.’
Learner Experiences of e-Learning: Phase 1 and Phase 2.
October 9th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
The eLearning Guild’s Handbook of e-Learning Strategy. ‘In many organizations, there is a need to better identify and document a comprehensive learning strategy and to answer the question, “What should we be doing in order to support improved learning and performance?” This e-Book will help you make a broad, fundamental connection between learning, e-Learning, and your organization’s mission, business objectives, and the bottom line. Chapters address everything from crafting a focused strategy, to keeping your strategy focused, to change management. Refocus on e-Learning strategy and insure that your e-Learning technology and methodology investments pay off and so you can achieve your e-Learning goals.’
The Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro. ‘One of the great benefits of rapid e-learning is the ability to create e-learning courses much faster and easier than ever before. However, going faster and making your job easier are not the only considerations. That’s where this free 46-page ebook by Tom Kuhlmann comes in.’
September 30th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
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
September 3rd, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
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”.’
