Calling All Lecturers

An interesting article from Educause Quarterly.  How to get students using their smart phones for smart learning.

Not sure that Gregory Ferenstein understands what is going on in HE but this is an indication that USA HE is starting to move away from "the sage on the stage"; something we have known about for many years now.

Dr. Jackie Carter from Manchester uni left a comment on the UoW Digital Literacy blog telling me to take a look at the Scarlet project.  Do go and check it out - the project is using augmented reality in libraries to allow students to look at manuscripts they normally would not have access to.  Great idea!  

Download this report - it is interesting , if not important, information for all in education.  Looking to the future and which technologies are going to be leading the way.

"University wants scientists to make their research open access and resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls..."

Following this it is interesting to see the following scoop in the Guardian.

"Leicester City Council’s Youth Engagement project was a year-long innovative programme of research which involved 400 young people (11-19 years old)."

Congratulations Leicester on producing such a useful piece of research.  This is what HE students want too - how close are universities to meeting these needs?

"Over the past year we’ve been migrating our online learning content for the early years of our undergraduate curriculum from Blackboard to WordPress."

Do read this post on e-Lime (and the following comments).  This says exactly what so many of us have being saying between ourselves - what we produce for our students should be much easier to access and very easy to share!

I couldn't get to this Guardian Higher Education Network discussion but it looks as if it was quite interesting.

"A better use of new technology is often advocated as a solution to this time trap. At Cardiff University, the Digidol team are investigating how what they call "digital literacy" can be embedded in all staff and students across all levels and areas of the university."

Will this help reduce the tension?

"Action mapping makes stakeholders work together to analyze the performance problem, commit to the same measurable goal, and agree to focus on activities rather than information." 

Hey this sounds like a lesson plan!  This is written for industry but with a few word changes it applies just as easily to Higher Education.

How does this actually work with a whole education system?  Nice ideas but I still don't see where it finishes.

Using Bloom's Taxonomy Shelley Wright presents her ideas on how education has/is/should change.  It certainly fits with an older idea of presenting the big picture first then helping students to analyse it.  Take a look at the following scoop too - do these ideas fit together?

"When you run some of the biggest and best presses in town, it's hard to imagine them ever going silent. Brian Kibby of McGraw-Hill, well known textbook publisher, would be happy to shut them down tomorrow if the need arose."

I need say no more :)

"Academic spring campaign aims to make all taxpayer-funded academic research available for free online..."

Are we starting to fight back?  Is some sense prevailing?  I would like to think so but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop ...

"Recently I had an opportunity to visit a school for a daylong workshop, where I got to meet with the kids during the day, and their parents at night.  I love it when this happens because I can then ask the children what they struggle most about withtheir parents regarding technology."

This is a great post.  It demonstrates the differences between being digitally literate and digitally illiterate so clearly.  Thank you Mike for this excellent post.

Dr Simon Hosken (profhosken) and Danny Kopp will be presenting, Arkansas: Teaching the State history in Second Life. Today, Thursday 26th April is a SPECIAL so we'll be starting at 14:30hrs BST, 6.30am SLT. As we use voice and text please check your earphones/sound settings before the seminar starts. We record the Seminars so wear your best :) Usual place http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Worcester/161/194/25 See more info http://digitalliteracywork.wordpress.com/research-seminar-at-uow/

"These are heady days for digital higher education. For advocates of all-things-digital, myself included, it appears we’ve earned our permanent place at the table. "

But will we take our places?