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Each time a teacher or a learner interacts with an Open Educational Resource (OER), these interactions produce data. This "interaction data" includes "artifact data" routinely captured during any online interaction by Web server logs (e.g., users' browsers, users' IP addresses) and "social data" created during Web 2.0-style interactions with resources (e.g., tags, comments, ratings, favorites). Interaction data can serve a number of purposes in a period of increased interest worldwide in OERs quality and uptake. First, interaction data is a valuable source of analytics about OERs and typical audience profiles. Second, combined with metadata, interaction data can enhance searching, ranking, and recommendations of learning resources. However, obtaining this data is not always easy since OERs, in particular, are generally dispersed among different systems where the interactions between resources and their users take place. This paper describes approaches to unlocking, collecting and aggregating this interaction data.
Via Andreas Link
by Maria Popova "On May 21, 2005, David Foster Wallace got up before the graduating class of Kenyon college and delivered one of history’s most memorable commencement addresses. It wasn’t until Wallace’s death in 2008 that the speech took on a life of its own under the title This Is Water, and was even adapted into a short book. Now, the fine folks of The Glossary have remixed an abridged version of Wallace’s original audio with a sequence of aptly chosen images to give one pause:" Wallace: “The real value of a real education … has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness.”
Via Jim Lerman
For creating open content as a continually ongoing process of refinement, re-distribution, correction, modification, re-arrangement and reuse, better quality of the open content is the result of these possibilities. It’s important to make reuse easier. This requires authors to consider visibility and circulation of the published open educational resources(OER).
Via Andreas Link
Google has released a major new education program called Google Play for Education that organizes and manages the way teachers share apps, books, and other learning content with their classes.
Via Andreas Link
Most teachers t think that students today have a problem paying attention. They seem impatient, easily bored.
I’ve argued that I think it’s unlikely that they are incapable of paying attention, but rather that they are quick to deem things not worth the effort.
Via Nik Peachey
New Ken Robinson video from Discovery Education Network, posted May 6, 2013. Runs for about an hour. Always a great pleasure to listen to him.
Via Jim Lerman
Africamooc will bring together a range of free, open, online courses and course providers from leading universities, training organisations and educators in the same place and under the same brand. Here is a list of MOOCs course providers we found so far and want to share with you. We are constantly updating this list and hope you forward us your favourite links to jens@aelsnet.net.
Via Alastair Creelman
The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses The primary criticism of what I will address in this chapter is that success is process-defined rather than outcomes-defined.[1] Without outcomes measurement we cannot measure success, we can’t focus our efforts toward that success, we can’t become more competitive and efficient, we can’t plan for change and improvement, and we can’t define what you want to accomplish as a result. All this is true, and yet there is no measure of outcome or success that can be derived from designer and user motivations, or even from the uses to which MOOCs are put. The only alternative is to identify what a successful MOOC ought to produce as output, without reference to existing (and frankly, very preliminary and very variable) usage.
Via Alastair Creelman
By Greg Anrig Summary by Carnegie Perspectives "The Cincinnati school district has improved both test scores and graduation rates since 2003 while -- unlike Atlanta and Washington -- transparently pursuing highly collaborative reform strategies that, counter to the current trend, don't rely on rigid hierarchy and punitive accountability. Because Cincinnati has implemented proven instructional approaches while nurturing a culture in which administrators, teachers, parents, and community groups closely communicate and work together as teams, the case serves as an important counterweight to the public school stories that have been dominating the news in the past few years. It also can serve as a roadmap for reversing course from the high-pressure tactics that gave rise to the cheating scandals and led to little progress elsewhere."
Via Jim Lerman
Duncan McCue looks at the MOOC, otherwise known as, the Massive Open Online Course. They are changing the way teachers teach and the way students learn because they can fill a classroom with a billion brains.
Via Nik Peachey
There is a great deal of energy, enthusiasm, and change happening in today’s education sector. Existing and new education providers are leveraging the Internet, ICT infrastructure, digital content, open licensing, social networking, and interaction to create new forms of education. Open Educational Resources (OER) (including open textbooks), Open Access, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have all gained traction as significant drivers of education innovation.
Via Andreas Link
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.
Via Andreas Link
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The problem is that Wikipedia in the classroom has gotten a bad reputation in the K-12 world, undeservedly so I think. I would suggest that Wikipedia can be used for a multitude of educational purposes at a wide variety of grade levels. Too many teachers are still afraid to use it in class, so I’m here to right that wrong and show our educators how they can responsibly integrate Wikipedia into their lessons.
Via Nik Peachey
Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them.
Via Andrea Zeitz
Plagiarism, defined as the “wrongful appropriation” of another’s words or ideas, is a pervasive problem in schools. Many teachers and administrators believe that the internet has caused an explosion of academic dishonesty (a recent PEW survey of College Presidents would agree). While, most teachers and administrators are familiar with tools like turnitin that can catch plagiarism after the fact, there are some ways that educators can combat plagiarism before it starts!
"Today at its I/O event, Google announced Google Play for Education: A version of the Play store that is aimed and curated for young kids. "Applications that are in the Play for Education store are sorted by age and genre. So, users can find math-based applications that are appropriate for their kindergartener, who wants to learn more math. "However, what is most interesting about Play for Education is the ability for administrators to send out applications to their entire tablet fleet. So, if a school wants to send an app to their 200 Nexus 7 devices, they can do so, by simply inputting the group’s name. The app will be pushed out by Google."
Via Jim Lerman
Response to Intervention (RtI) can target each learner's needs when they need it as they need it.
Via Kathleen McClaskey
"We hear often of the "high expectations" schools must have of and for their students, yet we seldom hear of the expectations students have of their schools."
Via Kathleen McClaskey
Infographics are interesting–a mash of (hopefully) easily-consumed visuals (so, symbols, shapes, and images) and added relevant character-based data (so, numbers, words, and brief sentences). The learning application for them is clear, with many academic standards–including the Common Core standards–requiring teachers to use a variety of media forms, charts, and other data for both information reading as well as general fluency...
Via Baiba Svenca
Dotspin is a web & mobile app that gives real recognition to good shared photos. Everybody should keep their rights and receive something in return.
Via Andreas Link
Flipped Learning Model Yields Higher Grades in High School Math Course While an administrator at a rural secondary school district in America, with the poverty level at about 65% free and reduced lunch (an indicator of the level of poverty in the United States school systems), I observed teachers who implemented a flipped classroom with materials they designed and created. Over 250 video podcasts were made district-wide to provide content instruction. Visiting the classrooms of teachers who had flipped their classes, I saw groups of students working together on real world problems, reviewing or being re-taught as needed, and students who were well ahead of the others in their classes regarding the content they had acquired.
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Towards data-driven education ... an important step towards evidence-based pedagogy