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What's new, what's cool in emerging technology for education
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k3hamilton
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Tyler Cowen, a star economics professor at George Mason University, isn’t interested in making money off the online university he co-founded last fall. Instead, Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, who also co-write the popular blog Marginal Revolution, have a simple motto for their growing series of online courses, branded as Marginal Revolution University: “Learn, Teach and Share.” “We think learning on the Internet, like blogs, is not something you can charge for,” Cowen said.
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Use engaging videos on TED-Ed to create customized lessons. You can use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube.
k3hamilton's insight:
cool 
Blaine Morrow's curator insight,
June 11, 11:07 AM
"The "flip this video" button allows you to turn a video into a customized lesson that can be assigned to students or shared more widely. You can add context, questions and follow-up suggestions. " Delete the scoop?
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Professors are deeply invested in the logic leading to massive open online courses and are ill-prepared to argue against them. Via Smithstorian 
Smithstorian's curator insight,
June 5, 7:51 PM
Innovation cheerleaders and flat-worlders like Thomas Friedman and Clay Shirky are very excited, for they have seen the future of academe, and it consists of MOOCs. They happily envision open and affordable online access to dynamic, learned professors—the kind once available only to students paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition at places like Harvard and Stanford. MOOCs will democratize education, they say, creating a more equal and consumer-friendly world.
Faculty members, meanwhile, watch these developments with nervousness and fear. In the rapidly rising popularity of MOOCs, they see the beginning of the end of higher education as they have known it.
Yet, far from a radical innovation, MOOCs are simply the natural extension of trends that have been at the heart of the modern university for decades. Defenders of the status quo are reminiscent of Casablanca's Captain Renault, who is "shocked, shocked" to discover an activity in which he himself partook. In April, the philosophy department at San Jose State University published an open letter bashing the use of Michael Sandel's MOOC, "Justice." Those professors compared the situation to "something out of a dystopian novel." ("Departments across the country possess unique specializations and character, and should stay that way," they wrote.)
Such rhetoric notwithstanding, faculties have been deeply invested in the logic leading to the rise of MOOCs, and are fundamentally ill-prepared to mount a serious intellectual argument against them.
For decades, nearly all of America's colleges and universities have moved away from the cultures and intellectual traditions within which they were founded. Religious institutions have become increasingly and uniformly secular (George Marsden documents this in The Soul of the American University).
The widespread abandonment of the title "college" in favor of "university" demonstrates the preference to be perceived as "universal" and research-oriented rather than as a "collegium" drawn to a unique scholastic endeavor rooted in place and history. Higher education is becoming increasingly monocultural as demands for geographic (and market) expansiveness take precedence. The faculty are deeply invested in the logic leading to MOOCs, and are ill-prepared to mount a serious intellectual argument against them.
The faculty is composed of a rootless professoriate drawn from graduate programs aimed at producing research for denizens of the disciplines, and not oriented to culturally specific institutions, which, of course, are disappearing. To compensate for the professoriate's emphasis on narrowly focused research (which diminishes their focus on institutional governance), a cadre of administrators is needed.
Meanwhile, student bodies are becoming more homogeneous, claims of "diversity" notwithstanding, as they are shaped by standardized high-school curricula and nationalized testing regimens. Universities look to one another for prevailing norms and settle on a standardless standardization: the universal commitment to the amorphous goal of "excellence." Universities have come to value the same policies and practices: publishing in national and global academic presses and universally recognized disciplinary journals; participating in international disciplinary associations with conferences that "normalize" every discipline; emphasizing research (especially student research) at the expense of the humanities by insisting that the humanities are valuable only insofar as they create knowledge along the model of the natural sciences; and making broad institutional commitments to globalization, social justice, diversity, and the importance of STEM.
Part of this standardizing shift is driven by accrediting institutions and government bureaucracies, with their demands for "measurable outcomes" and "assessment." But a great deal of this impulse stems from internal institutional actors, including the faculty. The seemingly universal embrace of the research university—whether large and public or small and private—leads faculty members to demand that particular institutional affiliations, missions, cultures, and identities be relegated to occasional ceremonial expression. A global research culture dominates. The demand to generate "new knowledge" requires institutions to conform to canons of academic standardization that, over time, force colleges and universities to become intellectually indistinguishable from one another.
This embrace of uniformity has led nearly every institution to adopt the ethic of "globalization" and "internationalization." One sees a growing number of universities establishing international campuses, such as Education City, in Qatar, which includes programs from Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Georgetown, and Texas A&M. The assumption that knowledge is neither produced nor transmitted in local contexts leads, inevitably, to the conclusion that institutional identity is purely accidental—that every institution is, at its essence, a global content-delivery system. The result? Higher education is more monocultural than ever before.
As any botanist knows, a monoculture is highly susceptible to a single pathogen. A great shakeout is under way, and MOOCs are the logical outgrowth of this push for interchangeable educational delivery. Curricula, faculty, and students are overwhelmingly indistinct, and MOOCs are simply the cheapest way to combine those elements in our economically constrained times.
Colleges and universities are like the once-ubiquitous department stores in every city—Filene's in Boston, G. Fox in Hartford, Woodward & Lothrop in Washington—which, while enjoying distinct locations and histories, became increasingly similar. When consumers grew to value uniformity over a local market culture, those local stores were susceptible to the challenge from a truly universal competitor that could offer the same wares, produced cheaply, at low, low prices. Those stores are all now out of business. MOOCs are the Wal-Mart of higher education.
Consider Clay Shirky's recent paean to MOOCs: "Cheap graduate students let a college lower the cost of teaching the sections while continuing to produce lectures as an artisanal product, from scratch, on site, real time. The minute you try to explain exactly why we do it this way, though, the setup starts to seem a little bizarre. What would it be like to teach at a university where you could only assign books you yourself had written? Where you could only ask your students to read journal articles written by your fellow faculty members? Ridiculous. Unimaginable.
Every college provides access to a huge collection of potential readings, and to a tiny collection of potential lectures. We ask students to read the best works we can find, whoever produced them and where, but we only ask them to listen to the best lecture a local employee can produce that morning."
Shirky is correct, of course, that students at every institution should be exposed to a wide variety of works. Yet he finds it unthinkable that institutions would limit that exposure, or that they might have a commitment to how works are presented to students. The conceit that the cultures, missions, and identities of particular institutions produce "artisanal products" seems quaint. Our contemporary educational Filene's, according to Shirky, must get big or get out. This phrase—"get big or get out," along with "adapt or die"—was the mantra of Earl Butz, secretary of agriculture under President Richard Nixon, who urged the replacement of small, family-owned farms with large-scale, industrial farms. As it did to independent farmers, the consumerist ethic now appears poised to transform higher education. This metaphor points to some small hope for a different future of higher education. A few winners will provide a cheap, mass-produced product to consumers—the Wal-Marts and the Monsantos of higher education—and many losers—today's Filene's, Woodward & Lothrop, and G. Fox. But Shirky's dismissive nod toward "artisanal" teaching points to a better path for those institutions that want not only to survive but to flourish, by refusing to go along with the monoculture. Those are the ones that have, or are seeking to recover, their distinctive institutional identities—often, but not always, a religious affiliation.
Think of Providence or Belmont Abbey among Roman Catholic institutions, or St. Olaf or Baylor among Protestant ones—all rightly anticipating that nondescript and indistinguishable institutions will be easy victims of the logic of standardization. This artisanal direction requires hiring faculty who expressly share a commitment to the institutional mission and attracting students who seek a distinctive education. Consider Hillsdale College, with its traditionalist emphasis on core curriculum and Western civilization, and a growing number of institutions that combine a liberal-arts education with some training in "trades" or manual labor, such as Deep Springs College, in California. (Try to teach baling hay via MOOC.)
If it is indeed time to "get big or get out" — or, better put, "get online or get an identity"—then I'm for the artisanal, the local, the educational equivalent of farmer's markets. The irony is that while most professors embrace the ideal embodied in farmer's markets, they have supported the evisceration of local institutional educational identity. It's time to insist not only on locally grown food, but on local knowledge. I'd rather make and share my own beer than encourage my students to guzzle Budweiser.
timokos's comment,
June 7, 3:59 AM
I completely agree! I too foresee a homogenization of higher education and a few Mass Producers dominating (online) higher education. For all others it is 'time to "get big or get out" — or, better put, "get online or get an identity"
timokos's curator insight,
June 7, 4:02 AM
The homogenization of higher education will lead to a Mass Market with a few dominant players like IKEA or Wallmart. For all others it is "time to "get big or get out" — or, better put, "get online or get an identity", as Smithsonian put it so bluntly. Delete the scoop?
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California state senators voted unanimously last Thursday to pass Senate Bill 520, despite opposition from faculty at California Community Colleges, California State University, and University of California. Via João Greno Brogueira Delete the scoop?
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"Strategically, Pearson is shifting from being a publisher of books and newspapers to being a global knowledge management company focused on learning. It now owns schools and colleges, and partners with educational institutions to design, develop and deploy online and blended learning programs...'
".....Don’t expect to see private universities and colleges growing and expanding in Ontario. They don’t need to. Students will chose their courses and programs from around the world, based on estimates of quality and price. Growth will come in the form of flexible assessment and transferable credits. That is the real bonus and challenge of these developments. These developments are “the elephants in the room” when discussions take place amongst public sector institutions and government agencies. Yet it is exactly these developments that will lead students to look elsewhere for their choices and options. Change is coming – It’s just being driven from the “outside in.”
k3hamilton's insight:
pearson just wants total world domination, that's all..who needs teachers -there's pearson -barf Delete the scoop?
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Online education is likely to lead to cost savings while delivering more to students
"How can this lead to cost reductions? The savings can accrue rapidly if the course is massively enrolled and subsections are taught by less well-paid individuals; or if the course lasts several years and the designers and lead professor may be paid over time."
" Favourite faculty members will gain “rock star” status and be known internationally. "
k3hamilton's insight:
I'm all for technology but the idea that it will make everything cheaper and still good quality is questionable...faculty as rock stars..who is at the centre here -students or the "rock stars?"
Blaine Morrow's curator insight,
June 11, 11:11 AM
"MOOCs will soon conquer the mechanical glitches which have been highly publicized. Some have already solved the evaluation and accreditation issues. When this becomes the normal process, students across the world will have the option of taking a history class at 8:00 am on Friday or the Ivy League professor’s MOOC any time. Students will then ask for transfer credits." Delete the scoop?
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As big names crowd into smaller classrooms via MOOCs, professors begin to wonder if their own teaching is at risk. The MassBay students met for regular class sessions with Harold Riggs, a professor of computer science at the community college. Students were required to come for only 90 minutes each week, rather than the customary three hours. And in addition to graded in-class projects from Mr. Riggs, the students completed homework assignments and three major exams written by the MIT professors and graded automatically by edX. At the end of the semester, the students who passed the class got three credits from MassBay and a certificate of achievement from edX....
k3hamilton's insight:
Article brings up a few good points, comparimg mooc parts to "talking textbooks" Delete the scoop?
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Tim Brook's curator insight,
June 1, 4:33 AM
I'm wondering how the Immersion phase of a design thinking approach and Curation dovetail... 
Designing for Learning's curator insight,
June 17, 1:38 AM
In-depth discussion of how curation can help build meaningful teaching and learning approaches for today's participatory media landscape, using storify.com as an example. Delete the scoop?
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The report has good data, tries to separate out active learners from window shoppers and not short on surprises. It’s a rich resource and a follow up report is promised. Via Nik Peachey 
plerudulier's curator insight,
May 24, 3:08 PM
Main driver – learning, low interest in certificationThis is a lesson that many MOOC commentators are learning, that MOOCs reflect, not demand for certification but demand for ‘learning’ with only around a third interested in certification or career. . That’s not to say that certification is not important, it’s just less important than educators think. Curiosity about online education and MOOCs, however, is the temporary pollutant in the data.
Helena Capela's curator insight,
May 25, 5:19 AM
Relatório com algumas conclusões talvez inesperadas. 
sanford arbogast's curator insight,
May 25, 1:46 PM
one of the surprises should have been that 22K people took an Equine nutrition class. Delete the scoop?
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design, build, and create content for your own mobile app accessible through iOS, Android, and the mobile web. browser-based app builder can organize articles, multiple choice tests, flashcards, and RSS feeds. Free apps are free to build and deploy.
k3hamilton's insight:
might be interesting Delete the scoop?
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"... MOOCs, then, appear to represent everything democratic, inclusive, and populist about American culture at its best. Knowledge is freed from the halls of academe and anyone can learn -- they can even earn credit for taking certain courses, and some traditional colleges, including my own institution, are increasingly willing to accept it. If we’re being open and inclusive, though, what are we opening and what we including people in? Is watching a series of videos the same thing as taking a course? How can a professor evaluate the performance of 93,000 people? It seems indisputable that tens of thousands of students cannot possibly receive personal feedback and mentoring from one instructor...."
k3hamilton's insight:
I hate how online courses always seem to get lumped in with MOOCs. It's not directly stated but ... Delete the scoop?
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Confusion and anger over a major, secretly brokered deal between Library and Archives Canada and a private high-tech consortium heightened Wednesday amid damage-control efforts by archive officials who say the deal is a good one.
k3hamilton's insight:
selling our soul Delete the scoop?
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Use engaging videos on TED-Ed to create customized lessons. You can use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. Delete the scoop?
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Ontario’s government is following through on plans to double the length of teacher education programs, but has knocked universities off balance by demanding they make the switch with 20 per cent less funding for each student. The province will extend teachers’ degrees from one year to two, starting in 2015.
k3hamilton's insight:
double the time in school, cut the enrollment by half and cut the funding per student..the first and second sound good, the third? Not just do more with less money, do twice as much with even less money than before. Delete the scoop?
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Issue number 33 of eLearning Papers focuses on the challenges and future of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a trend in education that has skyrocketed since 2008. […] Among other topics, eLearning Papers 33 explores whether MOOCs may be a viable solution for education in developing countries and analyses the role of these emerging courses in the education system, especially in higher education. Furthermore, valuable examples from the field are presented, such as the quad-blogging concept and a game-based MOOC developed to promote entrepreneurship education. Via Susan Bainbridge, Peter B. Sloep 
Gina Anderson CEO Mopi16 's curator insight,
May 13, 8:19 AM
We are going to see research in the next 3-5 years coming in about the beneficts and challenges of MOOC's. Interesting to me are the business models. Great marketing tool for those who have a current base of clients. 
Peter B. Sloep's curator insight,
June 6, 2:34 AM
I have little to add to this other than that the collection of papers provides a distinctive European perspective on MOOCs. As a consequence (?), the focus is more on the pedagogy than on the economics of higher education (@pbsloep) Delete the scoop?
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Five-year research project at University of Victoria shows that there is an upside to video games for teenagers Delete the scoop?
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The Predatory Pedagogy of On-Line Education
"As the BIG 3 automakers cravenly eye China, the e-learning behemoth is licking its chops at the classroom. On May 14, major industry officials announced their study showing the “enormous potential for the future of the e-learning market.” IBIS Capital and the Edxus Group, said that “While education as a whole is triple the size of the media and entertainment industry at $4.2 trillion, digital education is currently only 20% of the size of the digital media market. Since education is undergoing the same disruptive effects of digitalization that the media industry has seen in recent years, they expect to see fifteen fold growth in the e-learning market in the next 10 years to represent 30% of the total education market,” reported Pippa Cottrell in Realwire, (Cottrell 2013). ...."
k3hamilton's insight:
interesting read!
Blaine Morrow's curator insight,
June 11, 11:10 AM
Joanna Bejus, a former English Professor and computer critic argues that “with the move to online learning, another massive expropriation of social space will have succeeded. And let’s not kid ourselves; this will not happen because online learning is better. It will happen because it is yet another way to guarantee profits and to fragment and isolate the working class.” She adds that, “Online learning makes the structure of domination absolute, the prospect of appeal, unrealistic, and the likelihood of universal surveillance, a sure bet” (Bejus 2013a). Delete the scoop?
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Today’s savvy job seekers are blogging their way to success -- and job opportunities. Here’s why a blog can get you your next job.
k3hamilton's insight:
Makes sense Delete the scoop?
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Back in 2007, Adam Bellow launched a site called eduTecher to aggregate and surface the best educational resources and content on the Web. " The idea behind eduClipper, Bellow says, is to give students the same power of social curation they would have with Pinterest, allowing them to locate and publicly broadcast the best learning resources. In other words, educators and students the ability to explore thousands of pieces of educational content, find lesson plans, resources and videos, search for the most popular content by subject or interest. With eduClipper, users can share individual eduClips (or pieces of content) or eduClipboards (collections of content) with colleagues or students, while cross posting or embedding that content on other social platforms or sending them through email..." Delete the scoop?
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In a wide-ranging consideration of 21st century education, Noam Chomsky argues that much of what passes for education reform is 'a way of turning the population into a bunch of imbeciles.'
selected quotes on history of ed "a lot of public education was, in fact, concerned with trying to teach independent people to become workers in an industrial system." " Emerson- we have to train them in obedience and servility, so they're not going to think through the way the world works and come after our throats."
now- "teachers like you. They're turning into adjuncts, temporary workers who have no rights, you know. I don't have to tell you what it's like, you can tell me." "teach to the test - worst possible way of teaching. But it is a disciplinary technique. Schools are designed to teach the test. You don't have to worry about students thinking for themselves, challenging, raising questions."
"there's a huge part of the advertising industry which is designed to capture children. And it's destroying childhood. ....Kids don't know how to play....the idea of going out just to play with all the creative challenge, those insights: that's gone. "
"Now they have a new program, which sounds very pretty on the surface. It's designed to increase "critical thinking." And the way you increase critical thinking is by having "balanced education." "Balanced education" means that if you teach kids something about the climate, you also have to teach them climate change denial. It's like teaching evolution science, but also creation science, so that you have "critical thinking."
"Kids are naturally creative, and of course, you don't have to beat it out of them. That's why they're asking, "Why?" all the time."
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What is digital curation and why is it important to you? Leading experts in the curation and preservation of digital objects (such as databases, photos, videos, websites, etc) discuss what exactly is digital curation, and why it matters to everybody. Delete the scoop?
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Email It In - Email Files to Google Drive, Skydrive or Dropbox Email files directly to Google Drive, Dropbox or Skydrive Email it in gives you a personal email address which you can send attachments to. Those attachments instantly end up in your GDrive, Dropbox, or Skydrive account. Just click Sign Up and you can get started immediately.
k3hamilton's insight:
could be useful - only 5MB size Delete the scoop?
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Google on Tuesday announced a minor feature addition that will likely take the online video world by storm: YouTube slow motion videos. The company claims its tool can create a smooth, ... If you’re wondering, YouTube currently also offers the following enhancements: Auto-fix: Performs a one click-fix to enhance the video’s lighting and color.Lighting and color: To manually adjust lighting and color, click the icon next to Auto-fix to open a panel of controls.Stabilize: Adjusts the video to correct any shakiness.Trim: Clip parts off the beginning and/or end of your video.Filters: The left side of the page shows pre-set color filters that you can apply to your video to give them a stylish and unique look.Face blurring: Protect the anonymity of people in your video.
k3hamilton's insight:
could be useful Delete the scoop?
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309,628 registered, 123,816 active first week, 75% were first time MOOC users, from 203 countries, 70% already had degrees, 98% felt they got what they wanted from mooc