May 30, 2012

Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies


How can we reach more learners, more effectively, and with greater impact?
Education changes lives and societies, but can we sustain the current model? New models and new technologies allow us to rethink many of the premises of education—location and time, credits and credentials, knowledge creation and sharing.
Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies is a collection of chapters and case studies contributed by college and university presidents, provosts, faculty, and other stakeholders. Institutions are finding new ways of achieving higher education’s mission without being crippled by constraints or overpowered by greater expectations.
Find out who is changing the game and what we can learn from their different approaches in Game Changers.

Moving Outside the LMS: Matching Web 2.0 Tools to Instructional Purpose




What considerations support the decision to either augment or replace an institution’s existing learning management system (LMS) with a cloud-based, Web 2.0 technology tool to support students’ learning? The use of instructional technologies should be evaluated against a backdrop of pedagogical objectives, and students’ selection of tools to support their learning can result in a more collaborative, constructive, and authentic learning experience. Instructors must balance the benefit of introducing new technology tools into the curriculum with the additional load—for instructors (supporting the tool) and students (learning the tool). This paper describes the experiences of an online graduate program in instructional technology at Georgia Southern University (GSU) and the program faculty who have chosen to move beyond the LMS.

By
Charles Hodges, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology, Georgia Southern University
Judi Repman, Professor of Instructional Technology, Georgia Southern University

Learning with Digital Technologies in Museums, Science Centres and Galleries - Report


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND with social class the major determinant - digital technologies for learning are available to the majority of UK households and to almost all UK schoolchildren. Museums, galleries and (especially) science centres are among the most enthusiastic providers of digital learning opportunities. Virtual visitors to museum websites already out-number physical (on-site) visitors, and many of these are engaged in dedicated learning activities - as even a cursory glance at the 24 Hour Museum website will confirm. Indeed, so rapid and widespread has been the growth - in both provision and uptake - that the extensive survey of UK museum education activity in 1999 did not include websites and conflated audio-visual guides with printed materials.

The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On - Free ebook



The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On
By : Stephen Downes

July, 2008. In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998, and with the benefit of ten year’s experience, recast and rewrite each prediction.

Handbook on cultural web user interaction - Free ebook






The quality of cultural web applications, as all MINERVA handbooks, guidelines and tools have always remarked, depend mostly on the user’s needs and curiosities satisfaction. But which are these needs? How can we identify and satisfy them? How can users help in (re)planning and improve our cultural web application? Can we monitor and measure the use made of our web products? The new MINERVA handbook wants to give you the most updated answers to these questions.
It is targeted for you! All people, institutions and projects connected with culture (ancient or contemporary, tangible or intangible, cultivated or popular, local or global...), which are planning to develop web applications or want to monitor and improve those already on the web.
It includes an updated and synthetic overview of current questions connected to the user interaction via web, made of websites and portals, but also of the new types of technical experiences, gathered under the name of Web 2.0 (and beyond...).
To help you passing from theory to practice, some solutions are proposed to let you find your way, proposing you reasoned schemata, information and tools to auto-orientate your web project taking into serious account users needs and user opinions about your web application

2011 Horizon Report



The 2011 Horizon Report is made possible via a grant from HP
HP creates innovative technology solutions that benefit individuals, businesses, governments and society. HP’s Office for Global Social Innovation applies HP’s global reach, broad portfolio of products and services, and the expertise of its employees to support initiatives in education, healthcare and communities around the world. As the world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com/.

The 2011 Horizon Report is a collaboration between The New Media Consortium and theEDUCAUSE Learning Initiative An EDUCAUSE Program Since 2005, the annual Horizon Report has been the most visible aspect of a focused collaboration between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium in which the two organizations engage their memberships in both the creation and outcomes of the research.
The New Media Consortium (NMC) is a globally focused not-for-profit consortium dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. Its hundreds of member institutions constitute an elite list of the most highly regarded colleges, universities, and museums in the worlds. For nearly 20 years, the consortium and its members have dedicated themselves to exploring and developing applications of emerging technologies for learning, research, and creative inquiry. For more information on the NMC, visit http://www.nmc.org/.

Videoconferencing Cookbook - Free ebook


This work is the intellectual property of ViDe and the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be used for non-commercial, educational purposes with the stipulations below. To disseminate or republish otherwise requires written permission from ViDe. (Please use the Feedback Form for this purpose.)
Incorporation of all or portions of the Cookbook into other electronic, online or hard copy works is not allowed.
The online Cookbook may not be mirrored or duplicated without written permission of ViDe, but all or portions of it may be linked to from other works as long as credit and copyright are clearly noted at the point of the link in the referencing work.
Reproduction of the Cookbook as a whole is allowed in hard copy or offline electronic versions for non-profit educational purposes only and provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the authors.
By
Video Development Initiative

Free Learning - Free ebook


Essays on open educational resources and copyrightAugust 16, 2011. There is a story to be told about open source, open content, and open learning from the point of view of the person desiring access to these things, rather than from the point of view of the provider. This book is a collection of my writings on open educational resources and open access to learning.

By :
Stephen Downes

Web Tools applied to teaching



Ana Maria Menezes has just published a 53 page free ebook titled 20 WEBTOOLS Applied to Teaching. In addition to some well-known services like Animoto, Ana Maria has included some lesser-known tools that could be particulary useful for ESL/ELL instruction.

This book is dedicated to teachers who wish to maximize their
students´ learning experience by using the new webtools available.
Most tools described in this book are in English, however, teachers
can use various languages in order to develop projects.

100 Tips for Google Chrome - Free Ebook



The book is organized under 10 categories with 10 tips in each of them. I am sure that you will find at least 10 new things about Google chrome by the time you finish reading this ebook.