SchooL-i-Tecs 101

Excelente e book

by manuel area 

This is a great discussion that was started by Jesse Wojdylo yesterday. It's a topic that often comes up, or has come up, since the beginning of our service time together. 

Do I see Scoop.it and Paper.li as competitors? No, I see them as completitors - complimentary services in the same arena. 

Great insight from power user Marty Smith on why he likes and uses both. 

Scoop.it and Paper.li are both powerful infotention tools. Here's a how-to about using them together.

I don't think there is any harm in combining the two, however, I feel scoopit with its own works best for curators and Paperli for auto content publishing (very dynamic no intervention and bias)

Bricks and mortar institutions will need to adapt

This is not new - I taught the International Writing Exchange (IWE) from 1993, but technology allows much more nowadays. Go for it and learn whatever your heart desires!  Go for challenging courses though, not a book on the Web!! 

Information and knowledge is there. Only you decide what to make of it.

Sharing knowledge will always give you back more than what you give.

I have participated in one...have you? Try them out. Check out www.coursera.org for courses!

Many teacher want to get their classes online for various reasons. The info here will help anyone set it up more professionally.

Some really interesting reflections and comments in this article. What makes the current form of MOOCs particularly challenging for the learner? Poonam argues that effective learning materials involve the learners and makes a case for the interactive MOOC - the iMOOC. "Those wanting to build iMOOCS – or at least include greater learner interactivity into their courses – could gather inspiration for their instructional design strategy from interactivity building tools."

Certain "truisms" run through articles written on MOOCs. One of the more consistent "stories" repeated from article to article involves the completion rate of MOOCs, hovering around 7%. There are many reasons why MOOCs have low completion rates, but typically the "story" is told as one of MOOC design failure, as in this piece. Quote from this article: "“To engage learners and keep them interested in the course - and motivated to continue and complete it, there’s a need to develop MOOCs that are highly interactive (iMOOCs). No wonder that MOOCs’ learner drop-out rates are extremely high,” [Poonam Jaypuriya] commented. “According to our information, typically, we’re seeing only seven or eight per cent of learners completing courses.” I agree with the 7% completion rate, which matches my hands-on experience. But I disagree with the assessment of why 93% of my students did not complete my MOOC. In fact, let's consider the admission requirements for a MOOC. Typically, a student submits an email address. There is no transcript verification, there is no statement of commitment (i.e. how much this "learner" will prioritize a free class when other life and work events occur during the course), and no really penalty from just dropping out of the course at any time for any reason. MOOCs are a fascinating experiment, and while some MOOCs clearly have a way to go to fully leverage the full and already available possibilities of a quality engaging online education, that is not the fundamental reason for low completion rates. MOOC providers need to figure out how to secure learning commitments from students. And to play the contrarian on this issue, I would argue that the top retention tools of traditional higher education have been tuition cost, admissions standards, and verifiable transcripts, not the quality of course design (and I mean course design principles as opposed to faculty reputation).