Forget tiny iPads – the classrooms of the future might turn entire tables into interactive touchscreens.
Given that many children can sit rapturously before a glowing touchscreen for hours, such gadgets seem like a natural for the classroom. But as with any new teaching technology, it’s important to make sure it actually helps students learn and teachers teach before getting caught up in its “cool” factor.
Leave a Comment » | 
Emerging Technologies | 
Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
In the latest salvo in a debate over MOOCs that has drawn national attention, the San Jose State University chapter of the California Faculty Association has thrown its weight behind recent criticisms of the university’s partnerships with outside providers of massive open online courses—specifically, edX and Udacity.
Meantime, on the opposite side of the country, American University has announced a “moratorium on MOOCs.”
Leave a Comment » | Emerging Trends, Massive open online course (MOOC) | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
In a few weeks, Bernard Bull, assistant vice president for academics at Concordia University Wisconsin, will ask participants in his new course to cheat.
There’s a caveat, though. They’ll have to disclose to the rest of the class exactly how they cheated. “Of course, if the assignment is to cheat, then you’re not really cheating,” Mr. Bull admitted.
Leave a Comment » | Emerging Trends, Massive open online course (MOOC) | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
February 11, 2013, 7:45 am
By Robert Talbert
Last week’s flare-up over Khan Academywas interesting on a number of levels, one of which is that we got a new look at some of the arguments used in KA’s favor. Perhaps one of the most prominent defenses against KA criticism is: Khan Academy is free and really helps a lot of people. You can’t argue with the “free” part. On the other hand, the part about “helping” is potentially a very strong argument in KA’s favor —but there are two big problems with the way in which this is being presented by KA people.
Leave a Comment » | Blended/Hybrid/Online Learning | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
Online Community Provides Educators with STEM-focused Curriculum Tools Based on Award-Winning SimCity Videogame
Electronic Arts, in collaboration with GlassLab, today announced SimCityEDU, an online educational community based on the award-winning SimCityTM videogame. SimCityEDU will serve as a resource for classroom teachers who have a strong interest in utilizing digital platforms as a learning tool to drive student interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects*
Leave a Comment » | Augmented Reality, Education, Emerging Technologies | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
Classes at liberal arts colleges bring to mind small groups of students bunched around a long wooden table, batting around big ideas with a professor.
That tradition would seem at odds with the new trend in higher education, opening courses to the masses via the Internet. But now a new partnership involving Wellesley College is seeking to bridge these two worlds, in a test of how humanities classes will translate into the growing on-line arena.
Leave a Comment » | Emerging Technologies, Massive open online course (MOOC) | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
The American Council on Education has agreed to review a handful of free online courses offered by elite universities and may recommend that other colleges grant credit for them.
The move could lead to a world in which many students graduate from traditional colleges faster by taking self-guided courses on the side, taught free by professors from Stanford University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and other well-known colleges.
Leave a Comment » | Education, Emerging Technologies, Massive open online course (MOOC) | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
Is this merger a sign of reduced support for both projects and the need to bring funding sources together to support future efforts?
Early this year, Jasig, the parent organization for uPortal, CAS, Bedework and other open source software serving higher education, and the Sakai Foundation, which supports the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment, formed Board-level groups to examine ways the two organizations could collaborate more closely. These Strategic Alliance Committees, led by Jasig Chair Aaron Godert, and Sakai Foundation Chair Josh Baron, met in New York in September to consolidate the outcomes of their discussions and bring proposals to their respective Boards.
Leave a Comment » | Learning Management Systems | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
A Georgia-based company today announced at Educause 2012 the availability of an enterprise extensible LMS built fully on Drupal technology. The company expects to take Moodle, Instructure and Blackboard head on by leveraging one of the world’s largest open source communities to deploy an enterprise open source learning management system.
Leave a Comment » | Learning Management Systems | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
The Digital Preservation Network (DPN) was formed to ensure that the complete scholarly record is preserved for future generations. DPN uses a federated approach to preservation. The higher education community has created many digital repositories to provide long-term preservation and access. By replicating multiple dark copies of these collections in diverse nodes, DPN protects against the risk of catastrophic loss due to technology, organizational or natural disasters.
Leave a Comment » | Digital Humanities | Permalink
Posted by Charles Wachira
Charles Wachira
harryhaddon
Oscar Retterer
Teb Locke
