December 7, 2012
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: MOOCs
Audrey Watters,
Hack Education, December 7, 2012.
Excellent overview of 2012, "The Yera of the MOOC". Audrey Watters writes, "It was students — two from India and one from Canada — who created what I think is the among most important MOOC innovations this year — 6.003z... MITx had no plans to offer the follow-up class to 6.002x. So Bhave took matters into his own hands, creating his own open online course with help from two other members of the 6.002 learning community – a class based on a blend of MIT OpenCourseWare and student-created materials. 'Taking matters into your own hands' (and 'taking learning into your own hands') is one of the most empowering things that the MOOCs can offer. But while they do offer the chance for anyone to sign up and learn, the ease with which you can drop in is echoed in the ease with which you can drop out."
See also Audrey Watters's other four top trends in eduation for 2012:
Great well-researched seried; don't miss any of the articles.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Learning Communities, Traditional and Online Courses, Online Learning Communities, OpenCourseWare, Canada, Attrition]
Meeker’s 2012 Internet Trends Update
Steve Borsch,
Connecting the Dots, December 7, 2012.
Thd always-relevant Mary Meeker has presented her latest update and as usual it is full of goodness. She "delivered her report to a group of Students at Stanford University and, to me, the biggest revelation within it is a huge section of her report that shows how device and connectivity trends are leading to the complete re-imagination of everything from encyclopedias to money." I think this is exactly right - I can't recall how many people I've tried to convince that we need device interconnectivity, not just (enterprise) platforms.
It Could Be Beautiful: VSTE12 Presentation
Tom Woodward,
Bionic Teaching, December 7, 2012.
Interesting presentation, sharply critical of a lot of educational technology, and a look at an icon of our times, the botched restoration: "On the left is good education/learning etc. The middle is roughly what we have now, suffering from extensive damage and quite vulnerable to being completely destroyed. The far right is what a lot of technology integration does. It is covering up gaping holes and damage but at the same time utterly destroying what it purports to be protecting and conserving." Good stuff; read and reflect.
Learning about learning from the London Underground
Alice Leung,
learning and leading, December 7, 2012.
I've used the travel analogy in the past to characterize different approaches to (more or less guided) learning. This is a good version of the same anaogy. "Many teachers, including myself, often hold our students’ hands and lead them from A to B; just like how I was led from A to B. We give our students scaffolds that tell them exactly what to do. We work through questions in worksheets as a whole class so all students have to do is copy the answers from the board or write down what they heard from another student. Students look like they know what they are doing, but really they were like me, just following someone who knows what they are doing. But what if we just let our students get from A to B by themselves? Why are we so scared of letting them find their own way?"
Google Plus rolls out Communities, a place for every tribe
Bogdan Petrovan,
Android Authority, December 7, 2012.
Thabks to Lucy Grey, who joined us during my Hangout from Ibague, Clolombia, today, and told us about the launch of Google Communities. The idea is that Google Plus members can invite other people to join together to converse on topics of interest. And the land rush has begun. I created my own community, of course, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) - I tried to invite people, but I only have one grou of 4000+ people I follow, and G+ won't let me invite that many people to my community (I don't see why not; that's the problem with these proprietary set-ups, there's always restrictions and limitations).
Creative Commons, Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Policy
Cable Green,
Alt, December 7, 2012.
Webinar about open educational resources. Links to slides and webinar recording.
Digital Badging for Veterans
Paul Fain,
Inside Higher Ed, December 7, 2012.
The challenge now for proponents of badges will be to address the flood that's about to follow. This is a case in point. This article describes BadgesforVets.org, which will be "a résumé translation and job search service." It will contain more than 1,000 badges tied to (U,S.) ilitary credentials. "A veteran clicks on his or her job classifications and then receives an e-mail with a link to the badges. The link is designed for easy embedding in a résumé or for use on Facebook or LinkedIn." All very good. But the reason why images work well as badges is that people recognize what they stand for. With thousands of badges, people won't know what the images mean. So whats the point of having them?
Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2013
Jeffrey Beale,
Scholarly Open Access, December 6, 2012.
Clip this one and save it. "The gold open-access model has given rise to a great many new online publishers. Many of these publishers are corrupt and exist only to make money off the author processing charges that are billed to authors upon acceptance of their scientific manuscripts."
This newsletter is sent only at the request of subscribers. If you would like to unsubscribe, Click here.
Know a friend who might enjoy this newsletter? Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you received this issue from a friend and would like a free subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list. Click here to subscribe.