educationblogs

Jeff Dunn, Edudemic, January 27, 2012.

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I'm not really a WordPress user but if I were I'd probably be looking at "a widget that displays a curated list of your favorite education blogs and websites." It's created by Dell Marketing. Hm. Maybe I wouldn't be so interested. "The widget has a special crawler that goes to a pre-set list of education blogs that are selected based on content quality. It then takes the title of the latest articles written by that blog and populates the widget sitting on the installer’s website." I had a look at the code; it's pretty elegant. I sometimes regret not joining the PHP-WordPress world because it would have been fund to code add-ons like this. [Link] [Comment]

Chad Sansing, Cooperative Catalyst, January 27, 2012.

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This looks like a fun time for people over the weekend: "This weekend several Coöp folks and National Writing Project (NWP) friends will meet-up and facilitate conversations at EduCon 2.4 which is a conference that aims to host conversations about technology in service of learning, learning spaces, and learners (I think)." Christina Cantrill, Paul Oh, Kirsten Olson and Chad Sansing are hosting a conversation called Permission to Speak on Saturday while Mennoo Rami and Chad Sansing will host a hack jam on Sunday, January 29th. The UStream channel is here. [Link] [Comment]

Stephen Downes and George Siemens, CCK12, January 26, 2012.

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For those of you who never had the opportunity, or those of you who want to relive the dream, George Siemens and I are offering yet another iteration - our fourth! - of Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. This has been the smoothest launch of the gRSShoper technology yet (and it has been equally smooth for our sister course, Learning Analytics). Our first live online session is tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern - more information here and if you want you can sign up here. So we're looking forward to welcoming you whether you're an old hand or brand new to the process. [Link] [Comment]

jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, January 26, 2012.

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Interesting commentary about open spaces and dissent, following from some of Dave Snowden's comments in #Change11. As an aside - I don't get where this view that I have some kind of authority comes from. I have no authority. My academic credentials are from another field, and are inadequate anyways. I supervise zero people. I don't issue grades, pass or fail people, or impact their career prospects in any way. In theory I could maybe block some people from using one of my websites, but in practice I don't, and a determined person could probably get around any sanctions I would apply. The only authority whatsoever that I have comes from the weight of my words - and even then, I frequently remind people to disregard them, to weight their own opinions, and write their own words (preferably on their own website outside my scope and control). All this is in its own way a good thing. Because to the extent that I am in a position to punish dissent, I am weakened. [Link] [Comment]

Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Blog, January 26, 2012.

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Interesting question. David Evans describes the online course process as, "anyone who is willing to put in the effort will be able." Mark Guzdial asks, "What does it mean, 'willing to put in the effort'? ... How do you measure effort? I’m seriously wondering — what does it mean to put in 'enough' effort? Are we measuring cognition, or time, or somehow 'mental pain'? If you don’t have the prior knowledge, and have to go read lots of background literature, is that part of 'enough' effort? Is effort measured in terms of time-on-task? If we don’t know how to measure 'effort,' how do we know if our class is demanding too much 'effort'?" He makes a good point. It's like saying "You will succeed if you have faith" - a statement that is followed by explaining "You failed because you didn't have enough faith." [Link] [Comment]

• Circus Physics | Classroom | Circus | PBS

  Circus physics videos from PBS. (Hat tip to Richard Byrne for this great set of videos.) There are 8 short videos that use circus performers to teach physics concepts.

  tags: education lesson lessonplans teaching physics stem science_teacher

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruben Carbo , Edudemic, January 25, 2012.

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The three 'must-have' technologies, according to this article, are e-readers, wifi, and tablets. My question is, if you have tablets, what do you need e-readers for? [Link] [Comment]

Kim Gaskins, Latitude, January 25, 2012.

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Honestly? Yes, I want a robot friend. It would make learning fun. It would always know what I did in the part, and where I'm supposed to be now. It would know my secrets, but would share them only with me (and approved agencies). It would know everything, and have my best interests at heart. And it would be endlessly loyal, never go away, and always be supportive. OK - that's not what this study covers; it's only about how robots in school make learning more fun. But a kid can dream, can't he? [Link] [Comment]

Tom Kuhlmann, The Rapid E-Learning Blog, January 25, 2012.

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If you don't have access to a social network through which to share your thoughts and develop your understanding, creating an e-learning journal will perform many of the same functions. This article looks at the value of such a journal and describes to instructoprs how they can set up the structure of such a journal to assist students. "The learner uses the journal to follow along with the elearning course. It can be used to take notes and jot down quick questions to ask later during the time with the peer coach." [Link] [Comment]

• 4 Sites for Free Vintage Photographs — Life Scoop

  Four great sites to find vintage photographs. For presentations, activities, and authentic learning. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

  tags: teaching photographs lesson plans

• Drive to Life | Scholastic

  A contest that you'll want to consider entering with your students. " Dear Lori, Distracted driving—from texting behind the wheel to turning around to chat with friends in the backseat—can lead to deadly consequences, particularly for teens. Now your students can save lives and change attitudes by entering our Drive2Life Contest. Challenge your students in grades 6–12 to create an exciting, innovative storyboard or script for a memorable Public Service Announcement that educates others about distracted driving. The grand–prize winner receives $1,000 and will embark on a trip to New York City, where a professional film crew will transform the student’s vision into a 30–second commercial! Four runners–up each will receive $500. On our Drive2Life site, you’ll also find lifesaving and skill-building resources tied to National Standards, including: A distracted driving checklist/poll Role-playing and discussion activities A reproducible worksheet for creating a compelling storyboard"

  tags: education teaching lessonplans contest lessonplan distracted driving cellphone safety.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Doug Belshaw, Weblog, January 24, 2012.

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In the denouement of online journals nothing quite matches Daniel Lemire's condemnation of Elsevier: "Elsevier has committed too many sins to give an exhaustive list: they have created fake academic journals so that pharmaceutical corporations could claim that certain facts appeared in a journal, they have sponsored evil regulations, and they have restrictive views on what constitutes fair use. Unbelievably, they were also involved in arms trade. They probably have the devil on their board of directors." And Doug Belshaw links to a good tirade on their worth, quoting Dan Meyer: "They affect a lot of policy, which I think is a really good, top-down approach. But then I’m over here and I can post something that’s seen by 10,000 people overnight. That’s the number of subscribers I have to my blog right now." Or as Belshaw concludes, "Is the only reason we persist with journals and their articles is because they provide a convenient means to weigh the pig?" [Link] [Comment]

Frank Lowney, Thinking About Tomorrow, January 24, 2012.

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I think that if you take the ideas behind open and distributed online learning, and combine them with some of the recent developments in the world of eBooks, you get some very powerful synergies. "For the first time in history, colleges and universities fully control the means of eTextbook production, start to finish, inception to delivery. They need no help in producing world class eTextbooks. The seeds of revolution are in hand." [Link] [Comment]

Jim Shimabukuro, educational technology & change, January 24, 2012.

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Back when 'online' usually had an offline component, it made sense to define an 'online course' as, say, 75 percent online (or whatever). And today, it makes no sense at all. "How would anyone possibly determine, with any kind of accuracy, that a course was 79.4% online and 20.6% F2F (face to face)? Six-tenths of a percent shy of 80% and the course is blended rather than online? This distinction is ultimately irrelevant and serves no practical purpose." Personally, I've always felt that if the course requires you to show up somewhere, it isn't online - because really, unless you live in the same city, you won't be showing up, which means the course is as inaccessible to you as it would be if it were 100 percent offline. [Link] [Comment]

Steve Collis, HappySteve, January 24, 2012.

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'Star Wars Uncut' is a crowd-sourced version of Star wars. Yes, the entire movie, more than two hours long. Each participant create a 15-second slice of the movie. The organizers spliced them together to form the entire 123 minutes. Here it is on YouTibe (most of the other sites, including Vimeo and the main Star Wars Uncut web site have been staggering under the traffic). Steve Collis draws the obvious link between this achievement and education: "Understanding the schooling paradigm-shift requires one to be a culture-watcher. It is the seismic changes in society which make the schooling system appear so anachronistic and functionally irrelevant... Consider the 'technologies of schooling': classrooms, authority figures, timetables, reporting, yadayadayada. These are redundant technologies. They are the equivalent of a horse-and-cart, or a punch-card reader. Schooling as we know it is an anachronistic technology." [Link] [Comment]

Josie Fraser, SocialTech, January 23, 2012.

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Josie Fraser makes a good point arguing that digital literacy extends well beyond computer science. "Not being able to code doesn't make you digitally illiterate. Not being able to participate in social, economic, cultural and political life because you lack the confidence, skills and opportunity to do so is what makes you digitally illiterate." I don't think these are alternatives - you can, after all, do both. And I would argue that being able to code makes you more literate. But the bit about being literate isn't in being able to code - it is, rather, in understanding some of the fundamental principles of reason and method that coding teaches you. But really, the rest of it - being able to participate in social, economic, cultural and political life - is rather more important. [Link] [Comment]

The Winsome Parker Lewis, Metafilter, January 23, 2012.

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These are nasty nasty online puzzles. I'm offering them to you on Monday so you don't waste your entire weekend on them. Which you would if I sent them Friday. I will not be held responsible for the global drop in productivity that will follow this post. "Masyu, also known as Pearls, is an NP-complete logic puzzle created by the makers of Sudoku. Brandon McPhail provides a few free puzzles to get your feet wet on his web site (Java applet). Once you've mastered those, UCLICK Games offers a free daily puzzle (Flash) with the past month of archives available too." [Link] [Comment]

Bill Rosenblatt, Copyright and Technology, January 23, 2012.

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Bill Rosenblatt argues, "Creative Commons is a burglar alarm sign on your lawn without the actual alarm system." I disagree. Creative Commons is a 'private property' sign on your lawn. It isn't about theft and protection from theft. It's about making a statement - or, in the parlance of the field, rights expression. P.S. while he says, "while there are code libraries for generating CC REL code, I have yet to hear of a working system that actually reads CC REL license terms and acts on them," he is probably not aware of my own published work doing just that, Managing Digital Rights Using JSON. Related: Umair Haque, The New Economics of Music. [Link] [Comment]

John Gruber, Daring Fireball, January 23, 2012.

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I imagine this study isn't worth the paper it isn't written on, but Apple is reporting on a study that says students using the iPad to learn obtain increased test scores. "Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced the results of its 'HMC Fuse: Algebra I' pilot program at Ameila Earhart Middle School in California's Riverside Unified School District... In its test run, the 'HMH Fuse' application helped more than 78 percent of students score 'Proficient' or 'Advanced' on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks." Here's the white paper (which I'm quite sure would never have seen the light of day had the results been different). [Link] [Comment]

Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, January 23, 2012.

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Many times I've used Picnik as an example of how the cloud works to send data from one service to another. Now I'll have to use it as an example of how Google is closing down the web. I know they have a billion dollars, but buying out services and shutting them down is not my idea of advancing the web. Yeah, sure, they'll add features to Google+. But they won't be available from Flickr, which is where they are needed. Count this as a big raspberry to Google. [Link] [Comment]

Scott Thornbury, An A-Z of ELT, January 23, 2012.

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Scott Thornbury is starting a new series on his blog, beginning today with "A is for Approach." It's an examination of 'Dogme' and language learning from (at least) 26 perspectives. "What is Dogme? No one, even among the Dogme-gicians, seem to be able to agree on whether it’s an approach, a method, a technique, a tool, an attitude, a lesson type or an irrelevance. And does it matter? I think it matters if people are passing it off as something it’s not (e.g. an approach), at least to me." As usual, when I follow one link, one word, I discover there's an entire community there. [Link] [Comment]