July 8, 2011
DART System: Data Analysis and Reporting Toolkit
Various Authors,
Bering Strait School District, July 8, 2011.
The Data Analysis and Report Toolkit (DART) is a tracking and analysis of student progress application that can be, according to the description, applied to any set of learning standards. Developed to support the Bering Strait School District, in Alaska, the tool has been expanded to support the needs of pretty much any middle-sized school division. "The first "generalized" version of DART is being created with assistance from Carnegie Mellon University's Technology Consulting in a Global Community program (TCinGC) during the summer of 2011. Thanks to the CMU team, DART will now be easy for any typical school district to customize, install and maintain." John Concilus writes to me from BSSD that "The main thing we need is a few school districts or schools that want to experiment with this running their own version of the system during the coming year...maybe just in a beta sense." Here's the Github code repository - respond quickly, before the CMU consultants go back home. And here's the Google Group.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools, Project Based Learning, Customization, Google, Learning Object Repositories]
Open Questions on Open Courseware
Eric Jansson,
Inside Higher Ed, July 8, 2011.
With funding pressures - and closures - impacting traditional sources of open education resources (OERs), questions are being raised about best practices and models of sustainability for open learning. Readers here will know of my own view, which involves community-based authoring and sharing. This column by Eric Jansson, an affiliated fellow with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), represents another view:
- First, there is the obvious integration of interactivity and media.
- Second, the building blocks of curriculum are evolving as new delivery methods (adaptive learning systems, new portable computing devices and robust network infrastructures are creating new contexts for learning, and these will affect the design) become available.
Related, Sui Fai John Mak discusses Eric Duval's Ustream video on openness.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Open Educational Resources, Interaction, Project Based Learning, Networks, Online Learning]
MoocGuide
Inge de Waard,
Wikispaces, July 8, 2011.
Inge de Waard has created a website on Wikispaces to host a guide to building and running a MOOC. "This MOOC guide based on the experience of the MobiMOOC(ourse) which was a course that ran from 2 April until the 14 May 2011 and had 580 participants that hooked up to its resources. The course resulted in collaborations transcending the duration of the course. The course focused on the subject of mobile learning and was delivered over 6 weeks, each of which had a different angle: introduction to mLearning, mLearning planning, mLearning for development, leading edge mobile innovations, mLearning in a mobile connected society and mLearning in k12 settings." Readers are, of course, invited to contribute to the site.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Experience, Online Learning]
William Shatner Narrates Space Shuttle Documentary
Dan Coleman,
Open Culture, July 8, 2011.
Today was the day of the last space shuttle lift-off. The end of the program marks the end of an era that has characterized pretty much my entire adult life - I remember where I was in university when Challenger exploded, where I was eight years ago when Columbia broke up over east Texas. And yes, I remember the Moon landing as well - I was ten years old. To me the space program has always represented what is best about humanity, a dedication to science and exploration, of expanding our horizons and finding our limits. William Shatner - who probably personifies this best - narrates this documentary on the space shuttle era. Also, the history of the space shuttle in pictures.
Re-Assassination of Trotsky
Scott McLemee,
Inside Higher Ed, July 8, 2011.
Not exactly ed tech, but Inside Higher Ed reaches a new high with its coverage of a recent review of Robert Service's book on Leon Trotsky. The reviewer, Bertrand M. Patenaude, says of Trotsky: A Life, that it "commits numerous distortions of the historical record and outright errors of fact to the point that the intellectual integrity of the whole enterprise is open to question" and that its publisher, Harvard University press, "has placed its imprimatur upon a book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship." Scott McLemee quite rightly asks, without harping on the point, how the academic review process could let such a cavalcade of errors proceed to print, much less achieve glowing reviews from numerous sources.
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