Stephen's Web, the home page of Stephen Downes, with news and information on e-learning, new media, instructional technology, educational design, and related subjects...
![Facebook Rolls Out File-Sharing for All Groups [EXCLUSIVE] | Curating-Social-Learning | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/y06DVg5TXvR9UJ21VvfV5Tl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
Could Facebook be the next DropBox? Could Facebook become the next Dropbox — or a haven for sharing files without regard to copyright?
The social network has revealed to Mashable that all Groups will now offer the ability to send files. This update rolls out to a small percentage of groups Thursday, and will become available to others during the following days. If you don’t have the feature already, Facebook wants you to know you’ll have it “soon.” Facebook Groups for Schools, launched last month, incorporated the file-sharing feature — but you needed a .edu address to use it. Users can upload most file types up to 25MB — the same file size limit as Gmail. The exceptions: music files (sorry, old-school Napster fans) and executable (.exe) files (sorry, hackers). But e-books, comics, music videos and other small movies are fair game. To prevent the spread of malicious, inappropriate or copyrighted files, “users can report files the same way they can with other content across the site,” a Facebook spokesperson said. Whether a group that wants to share such things will willingly turn itself in remains to be seen. More than 380 million people use Facebook Groups. Being able to share files was one of the most common requests from groups users, the spokesperson said.The social media site announced Thursday that Groups will have the ability to share files. *** 
MIT's seminal OpenCourseWare and MITx have brought free, high-quality educational content to anyone who wants it.
*** MIT’s seminal OpenCourseWare and MITx have brought free, high-quality educational content to anyone who wants it. Now MIT is turning its attention to younger students with the newly announced MIT+K12, developed with the Khan Academy. With this venture, MIT students will develop videos on science and engineering topics aimed at younger students.Some of the videos will also be featured on the Khan Academy. Read about this new collaboration in the press release below. 
Here are ten trends in online education that are currently materializing in the field that we can expect to continue onward into the near future:
A shift to open source... Being considered more valuable by employers—Online educational degrees... Hybrid courses are surfacing—Blended classes that feature some online education and some face to face... Enrollment growing exponentially compared to brick-mortar-schools... Shared data, collaborative functionality... Shift from books and closed texts to digital content distribution... Social learning systems to be cloud-based... Podcasting is on the rise... Better technology is emerging... Social media becoming educational... Via David Truss 
As you read this, students all over the country are sitting for state standardized exams. Schools spend up to 40% of the year on test prep, so that, shall we say, no child is left behind. Via Costas Vasiliou
As you read this, students all over the country are sitting for state standardized exams. Schools spend up to 40% of the year on test prep, so that, shall we say, no child is left behind.
Schools used to be gatekeepers of knowledge, and memorization was key to success. Thus, we measured students’ abilities to regurgitate facts and formulas. Not anymore.
As Seth Godin writes, “If there’s information that can be recorded, widespread digital access now means that just about anyone can look it up.
We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number.”
Read more, very interesting...
Via Gust MEES 
The Technology Learning Cycle is a tool that faculty can use to reflect on their own learning about technology. It provides a way to think about how we learn to use new tools and incorporate them into our teaching. Via Terese Bird 
The current generation of students will witness the remaking of our education system. Change is happening on many fronts: economic, technological, paradigmatic, social, and the natural cycles of change that occur in complex social/technical systems. ... People have attempted to define change principles: Christensen’s disruptive innovation, Schumpeter’s creative destruction, Kuhn’s revolution structures, Paul A. David’s model of long systemic change, and (my personal favorite) Carlota Perez’ techno-economic revolutions. Each of these are a different lens for viewing big, dramatic, change. ... Education faces enormous pressure. Almost unanimously, teachers, parents, students, politicians, and random people who like having opinions, are declaring education broken. This “it’s broken” declaration is directed at primary, secondary, higher education, and even corporate training. In higher education, the language of change is usually framed in economic and knowledge terms (i.e. world class universities and the strong role of universities in economic development). K-12 reform is structured as a call for change in a changed world: learners need less memorization and more creativity. TNW details how numerous companies are revolutionizing education. Mark Oehlert looks at how the education ecosystem is being commodified. 
"Technology affords educators the opportunity to design assessments that are closer to the real world......Our challenge then, as educators of the digital natives, is to take advantage of the technology and this critical moment in education to create a new kind of assessment."
@jdferries shares his design of a new kind of assessment in this post with great reflection and student feedback.
His comments on the "Connected Test-taking : Is it Cheating" post offer further insights worth sharing: "Obviously, part of this is assessment design - closely related to what is being assessed (content, skills, etc.). Ultimately, the goal for assessment of digital citizens includes the ability to solve problems utilizing the resources that are commonly at our fingertips (or in our pockets). That said, if an assessment is primarily or secondarily about recall, accessing outside information defeats that purpose. If the teacher is clear about the parameters of the test and a student violates it, that is cheating. There are new types of assessments that are similar to the traditional open-note/open-book assessments that call for a higher level of analysis and problem solving or application. These assessments benefit from access to information and can be useful in evaluating how student use time and access to solve problems" http://geekreflection.blogspot.com/2012/04/assessing-21st-century-assessment-meta.html
Via Anne Whaits 
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaming up in a $60 million venture to provide classes online for free. The move is the latest by top universities to expand their intellectual reach through the Internet a trend that is changing higher education. Last month, Stanford, Princeton, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan announced that they were working with Coursera, a Silicon Valley startup, to put more than a dozen classes online this year in subjects ranging from computer science to public health to poetry. ... Earlier this year, Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun, one of the inventors of Google's self-driving car, announced he was leaving the school to start a company called Udacity, which would hire world-class professors from leading universities to create free online classes. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/02/17/147006012/when-the-car-is-the-driver ... Coursera and Udacity, which are set up as for-profits, said they are committed to keeping their classes free and have each raised millions from venture capitalists. ... NPR's Steve Henn tells All Things Considered host Robert Siegel that the companies grew out of an experiment at Stanford last year that allowed anyone to take computer science classes online and get graded for free. The classes attracted hundreds of thousands of students from all over the world. Wednesday's announcement was a bit different. Harvard and MIT are creating a nonprofit called edX; the universities are investing $30 million each significantly more than what has been raised by their West Coast for-profit competitors. 
Web search can be a remarkable tool for students, and a bit of instruction in how to search for academic sources will help your students become critical thinkers and independent learners.
With the materials on this site, you can help your students become skilled searchers- whether they're just starting out with search, or ready for more advanced training. Via Ana Cristina Pratas |
A Minnesota high school with severe budget constraints enlisted YouTube in its successful effort to boost math competency scores.
Via CurriculumLeadership 
Webster University’s East Academic Building unites faculty, staff and students around the world through technology-enhanced learning spaces. According to Erik Palmore, head of Webster’s Faculty Development Center, one of these spaces is the new Collaborative Classroom, whose mix of space, furniture, pedagogy and technology is configured to promote group work and sharing, creative and collaborative problem solving and design thinking.
“Collaborative learning is when students work in teams toward a learning goal that is best realized through the contributions of fellow students,” Palmore said. ”More and more programs of learning identify teamwork and collaboration as essential, and having a classroom space tailored for collaboration will enhance student learning in which collaboration is essential.” The collaborative classroom allows students the space and flexibly to work in groups stationed around the room. Within their group, students may switch between laptops and other individual devices to see and share insights as formal and informal work progresses related to the content on the team’s own display. The instructor has easy-to-use controls for further extending each group’s work, and for projecting to other groups or to the class as a whole. Via Ana Cristina Pratas
Could Facebook be the next DropBox? Could Facebook become the next Dropbox — or a haven for sharing files without regard to copyright?
The social network has revealed to Mashable that all Groups will now offer the ability to send files. This update rolls out to a small percentage of groups Thursday, and will become available to others during the following days. If you don’t have the feature already, Facebook wants you to know you’ll have it “soon.” Facebook Groups for Schools, launched last month, incorporated the file-sharing feature — but you needed a .edu address to use it. Users can upload most file types up to 25MB — the same file size limit as Gmail. The exceptions: music files (sorry, old-school Napster fans) and executable (.exe) files (sorry, hackers). But e-books, comics, music videos and other small movies are fair game. To prevent the spread of malicious, inappropriate or copyrighted files, “users can report files the same way they can with other content across the site,” a Facebook spokesperson said. Whether a group that wants to share such things will willingly turn itself in remains to be seen. More than 380 million people use Facebook Groups. Being able to share files was one of the most common requests from groups users, the spokesperson said.The social media site announced Thursday that Groups will have the ability to share files. *** 
Positive Education activities focus on building relationships, identifying one’s strengths, goal setting, mentoring, teamwork, overcoming challenges, perseverance and how to deal with success and disappointment with the aim of increasing mental resilience and wellbeing.
And it’s not only for the students. According to Weekes, teachers at Knox are also benefitting from the program being run by Dr Suzy Green and Paula Robinson from the Positive Psychology Institute and the program’s efficacy is being studied by the University of Wollongong.
Read more...
Via Gust MEES 
Aus Anlass des Open Course Workplace Learning 2011 (#ocwl11) veranstaltete die MFG Innovationsagentur in Zusammenarbeit mit Johannes Moskaliuk ein World Café zu „Lernen und Bildung im Social Web“ . An dem von Kristin Knipfer und mir moderierten Tisch gingen wir der Frage nach, wie Hochschule und offene Bildungsformate zusammenpassen. Ich fasse in diesem Beitrag, die aus meiner Sicht spannendsten Diskussionspunkte zusammen. Via Volkmar Langer 
Some great conclusions by Tony Bates "- we know how to teach well online; follow best practice
Lastly, in all the institutions I went to the audience in general agreed that:
There are clear signs though that the revolution is beginning to happen: vive la révolution!"
Via Paulo Simões, Ebba Ossiannilsson 
Coursera, edX, Khan Academy, UoPeople - Are the Floodgates for Free Education finally open? Kirsten Winkler on May 3, 2012, 2:21 PM http://bigthink.com/users/kirstenwinkler ... It’s all but a secret these days that online education has developed itself into a hot market as founders, developers and investors get attracted to the vertical and now take it more serious than some 2 years ago. What many people have criticized so far was a reluctance from most of the top universities to have serious ambitions and invest in innovative online programs both paid and free. ... Personally, I have always been careful of judging them too quickly. My point of view was that they were simply waiting for the right moment. Understandably, top universities have a reputation to maintain and their bread and butter are their graduate programs. Costly, for sure, but still almost a guarantee to find a good job later on. ... The reasoning is complex, but it is obvious that those institutions won’t play around with online courses just for the sake of having a program online, unless they are very sure how to set it up and what they want to achieve. 
When I tell training vendors “Courses are dead,” they look at me as if I’d brought a skunk to their picnic. ... Roger Shank sums up the failure of training in four little words: “It’s just like school.” The better part of two decades of schooling has brainwashed, er convinced, us that courses are the default means of learning. People think of courses as the basic, fundamental model against which other modes must compare themselves. Propose that workers learn something through conversation, a game, or trial and error, and the knee-jerk response is “How do you know it will be as effective as a course?” ... Upon close inspection, you find that courses themselves are not that effective. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of what is taught in a course transfers to the job. Courses have a miserable track record when it comes to changing behavior. The most common way of learning one’s job comes not from taking a course but from asking someone. ...
Via juandoming 
Hybrid Pedagogy is an academic and networked journal on teaching and technology that combines the strands of critical and digital pedagogy to arrive at the best social and civil uses of technology and digital media in education.
... : combines the strands of critical and digital pedagogy to arrive at the best social and civil uses for technology and digital media in on-ground and online classrooms. : avoids valorizing educational technology, but seeks to interrogate and investigate technological tools to determine their most progressive applications. : invites you to an ongoing discussion that is networked and participant-driven, to an open peer reviewed journal that is both academic and collective. Via Mark Carrigan 
Online edX courses will open both universities’ classrooms to the world while enhancing on-campus learning. ... The new venture, called edX, will provide interactive classes from both Harvard and MIT — for free — to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. But a key goal of the project, Faust said, is “to enhance the educational experience of students who study in our classrooms and laboratories.” ... Hockfield described edX as a “shared expedition to explore the frontiers of digital education.” In launching some of the two institutions’ classes into the world in a highly interactive way, she said, “What we will discover together will help us do what we do better — to more effectively, more creatively, increase the vitality of our campuses — and at the same time increase educational opportunities for learners and teachers across the planet.” ...
The online tools developed for edX will also supplement the lectures, seminars and labs available to MIT’s and Harvard’s own students, and will provide detailed data about how well different parts of lessons are understood and what areas may require further explanation. 
A site from the US with a superb collect of professional development videos for teachers to improve their skills and knowledge of teaching and learning in a range of areas and subjects. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Video%2C+animation%2C+film+%26+Webcams Via ICTmagic |
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