Group work assignment – what is digital literacy and why is it important to people of all ages:
Students work in groups and outline a definition of digital literacy and a list of 5 reasons about the importance – 5 min
Study and discuss the following infographic (5 min) https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2014/10/16/early-learners-tech-use/
For and against children spending time with technology. Gaming, social media, and computer use in general as addiction. “Disconnect/Unplugged” (Sherry Turkle) versus contemplative computing and similar meditative and contemplative practices: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2013/11/05/getting-unplugged/
1) Start Where Your Students Are … 2) Know Where Your Students Are Going … 3) Expect Students To Get To Their Goals 4) Support Students Along The Way http://www.transl8it.com – (English to text lingo conversion – I blogged about this last night – see my post below). Google Translate – Language translation – spells it (correctly and phonetically), and says it. Skype – great for author conferences, social studies (talk to people in other countries), keep a student connected who has been absent, or is away on a trip. https://posterous.com/ – easy way to create your own blog through your email – great for setting up a class blog to keep students / parents informed. 5) Use Feedback edmodo.com – It’s almost like a kind of facebook – but you can set it up for your classroom – post questions, reading clubs, etc. and give feedback to students as they answer questions. ed.voicethread.com https://docs.google.com – Students can use this for their writing assignments, and not worry about bringing files back and forth to school. Teachers have access to the page to make corrections / give feedback throughout the writing process. 6) Focus on Quality Rather Than Quantity edu.glogster.com – I’ve set up an account with glogster so we can make multi-media posters next year. I can so see myself using this with science / social studies. http://www.animoto.com/education – A site for making movies and slideshows. photopeach.com/education – Another site for making movies and slideshows. http://www.jaycut.com – Yet another site for making movies and slideshows – this one looks like it has a few more features (like slow-motion). blabberize.com – Bring your still pictures to life by making them talk – I can so see myself using this next year with my SMARTboard lessons! Wouldn’t it be cool to make a fraction talk and explain how to do a concept during a math lesson?!? http://www.wikispaces.com – I am definitely going to investigate this one further. I’d like to make a wiki for one of my science units next year – assigning students a different part or concept, and then putting it all together. We could even print off the pages later and turn them into our own reference book. livebinder.com – A lot of the teachers at the webinar talked about how they would use this resource to set up student portfolios … hmmmmm … intriguing. epubbud.com – Students can create their own ebooks (which other people can access) and display them on a shelf (similar in looks to shelfari). A great way to publish their writing, and make the writing process more authentic for them. http://www.prezi.com – Another multi-media site great for presentations. Use as an introduction to a new unit, or have students create their own presentations for a certain topic.
Of course, not all aspects of online course design require a team of specialists, a longer development time, and more funding. Some things can be done quickly, cheaply and by individuals with focused skill sets.
But technology can, when built with a deep understanding of how students learn, meet both of these needs. We can build online courses that provide students with hundreds of opportunities to test their knowledge. Using scientifically-based learning analytics, we can provide each learner with immediate, context-specific feedback. We can build software that constantly responds to each student’s cognitive and educational differences and serves up activities that address these differences.
Educator, technologist, researcher, and innovator in edtech, distance education, and faculty development
“Placing the burden on lone educators with minuscule (or non-existent) funding and who are not hired for their strengths in instructional media development is neither logical, nor fair. But more to the point, it’s a lost opportunity to leverage high-quality course design to drive improvements in learning outcomes.”
I could not agree more with this statement and the remainder of the article. I’ve long supported an instructional design partnership model where faculty occupy a leading role along with other professionals capable of making the interactions, activities, and rich-media meet the quality needs of an increasingly complex learning environment (and world).
We need to start imagining new models for building, acquiring and sharing instructional media.
This has always been an issue. My students love activities that provide them with immediate feedback. I spend extra hours building a wide variety of different activities into each Learning module. It takes time and effort and if I am going to address different learning styles that is an entirely different issue. To create effective interactive learning tools that will not waste my students time and will challenge their skill level consumes more time than planning for a face to face class with different activities. I would love to talk to someone-be able to explain what I want my students to learn, suggest a few interactive choices, and come back later to find age related learning activities that fit different learning styles.
There is going to be a fight because this model is more like a business product that educators contribute to, rather than own. Perhaps this is the true industrialization of education, replacing the craft model of individual teaching with standardized, high quality product?
I have forwarded this article on to members of the course development team within Pearson for their feedback. I am curious to see their impression of the article versus mine, considering I predominantly am a part of recruitment services for Pearson specifically. Within our academic partnerships platform, we do contend with faculty, should they employ our course development team, to this vein because the ownership usually rests with the instructor solely. Editing course content or abridging related material so that it could be received potentially as more either user-friendly or technologically savvy can be a source of major contention with faculty members. I do agree that this is an industrialization of education to an extent, but it also pushes the ownership of traditional education past the instructor, a predominantly sole proprietorship environment, to an completely different team effort. The natural technological growing pains coupled with role expansion and differentiation are also issues needing to be addressed as well.
Suppose one was to take this seriously. What might such a course look like – for a subject like Biology? Could it be built on existing LMS platforms, or is a new platform required?
I think that both individual ownership and team collaboration are important to the development of successful online learning. We (hopefully) use the concepts of group and team learning in our classroom environments. We should not be afraid to open ourselves up to some of the positive opportunities that could develop from participating in these practices. It does not mean giving up our ownership of content and presentation. I see it as a marketplace of choice where instructors can decide what kinds of activities, helps, prompts, extra materials, and resources they want to add to their class content. The choices could be categorized by learning styles or how they fit into learning paradigms. I think we must face the reality that some parts of education will have to be more industrialized than others just because of the delivery method. This does not have to be a negative issue if there are enough choices to help instructors develop the rigorous content they want to deliver without sacrificing their entire life to the project.
My note: Can “3rd person” of Facebook posts help our self image? Or hurt it?
David Sarwer is a psychologist and clinical director at the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania. The goal, he says, is to remove “negative and pejorative terms” from the patient’s self-talk. The underlying notion is that it’s not enough for a patient to lose physical weight — or gain it, as some women need to — if she doesn’t also change the way her body looks in her mind’s eye.
Branch Coslett, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s clear that we all have an internal representation of our own bodies, Coslett says. imagining a movement over and over can have the same effect on our brains as practicing it physically — as well as lead to similar improvements in performance.
Research published this year suggests that talking to yourself and using the word “I” could stress you out instead of bringing on waves of self-love and acceptance. Psychologist Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan led the work, studying the pronouns people use when they talk to themselves silently, inside their minds. “What we find,” Kross says, “is that a subtle linguistic shift — shifting from ‘I’ to your own name — can have really powerful self-regulatory effects.”
Considering the research of David Sarwer, Branch Coslett, and Ethan Kross, it will be interesting to explore how FB posts affect us and mold our self image or mental self. FB posts are by default 3rd person. Most of us use nevertheless “I,” but each of us has moments when we used FB default and narrated about ourselves from 3rd person.
7th Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries International Conference (QQML2015) 26-29 May 2015, IUT-Descartes University, Paris, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
It is our pleasure to invite you in Paris (IUT-Descartes University) for the 7th Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries International Conference (QQML2015, http://www.isast.org) which is organized under the umbrella of ISAST (International Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology).
This is the seventh year of the conference which brings together different disciplines on library and information science; it is a multi–disciplinary conference that covers the Library and Information Science topics in conjunction to other disciplines (e.g. innovation and economics, management and marketing, statistics and data analysis, information technology, human resources, museums, archives, special librarianship, etc).
The conference invites special and contributed sessions, oral communications, workshops and posters.
Target Group
The target group and the audience are library and archives professionals in a more general sense: professors, researchers, students, administrators, stakeholders, librarians, technologists, museum scientists, archivists, decision makers and managers.
Main topics
The emphasis is given to the models and the initiatives that run under the budget restrictions, such as the Information Management and the innovation, the crisis management, the long-term access, the synergies and partnership, the open access movement and technological development.
The conference will consider, but not be limited to, the following indicative themes:
1.Information and Knowledge Management
2.Synergies, Organizational Models and Information Systems
3.Open Data, Open Access, Analysis and Applications
You may send proposals for Special Sessions (4-6 papers) or Workshops (more than 2 sessions) including the title and a brief description at:secretar@isast.org or from the electronic submission at the web page: http://www.isast.org/abstractsubmission.html
You may also send Abstracts/Papers to be included in the proposed sessions, to new sessions or as contributed papers at the web page: http://www.isast.org/abstractsubmission.html
Contributions may be realized through one of the following ways
a. structured abstracts (not exceeding 500 words) and presentation;
b. full papers (not exceeding 7,000 words);
c. posters (not exceeding 2,500 words);
In all the above cases at least one of the authors ought to be registered in the conference.
Abstracts and full papers should be submitted electronically within the timetable provided in the web page: http://www.isast.org/.
The abstracts and full papers should be in compliance to the author guidelines: http://www.isast.org/
All abstracts will be published in the Conference Book of Abstracts and in the website of the Conference. The papers of the conference will be published in the website of the conference, after the permission of the author(s).
Student submissions
Professors and Supervisors are encouraged to organize conference sessions of Postgraduate theses and dissertations.
Please direct any questions regarding the QQML 2015 Conference and Student Research Presentations to: the secretariat of the conference at: secretar@isast.org
Important dates:
First call of proposals: 29th of September 2014
Deadline of abstracts submitted: 20 December 2014
Reviewer’s response: in 3 weeks after submission
Early registration: 30th of March 2015
Paper and Presentation Slides: 1st of May 2015
Conference dates: 26-29 May 2015
Paper contributors have the opportunity to be published in the QQML e- Journal, which continues to retain the right of first choice, however in addition they have the chance to be published in other scientific journals.
QQML e- Journalis included in EBSCOhost and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).
Submissions of abstracts to special or contributed sessions could be sent directly to the conference secretariat at secretar@isast.org. Please refer to the Session Number, as they are referred at the conference website to help the secretariat to classify the submissions.
For more information and Abstract/Paper submission and Special Session Proposals please visit the conference website at: http://www.isast.orgor contact the secretary of the conference at : secretar@isast.org
Looking forward to welcoming you in Paris,
With our best regards,
On behalf of the Conference Committee
Dr. Anthi Katsirikou, Conference Co-Chair
University of Piraeus Library Director
Head, European Documentation Center
Board Member of the Greek Association of Librarians and Information Professionals
Higher education institutions are abuzz with the concept of Open Badges. The concept was presented to SCSU CETL some two years ago, but it remained mute on the SCSU campus. Part of the presentation to the SCSU CETL included the assertion that “Some advocates have suggested that badges representing learning and skills acquired outside the classroom, or even in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), will soon supplant diplomas and course credits.”
“For higher education institutions interested in keeping pace, establishing a digital ecosystem around badges to recognize college learning, skill development and achievement is less a threat and more an opportunity. Used properly, Open Badge systems help motivate, connect, articulate and make transparent the learning that happens inside and outside classrooms during a student’s college years.”
Educational programs that use learning design to attach badges to educational experiences according to defined outcomes can streamline credit recognition.
The badge ecosystem isn’t just a web-enabled transcript, CV, and work portfolio rolled together. It’s also a way to structure the process of education itself. Students will be able to customize learning goals within the larger curricular framework, integrate continuing peer and faculty feedback about their progress toward achieving those goals, and tailor the way badges and the metadata within them are displayed to the outside world.
Google’s chief executive has expressed concern that we don’t trust big companies with our data – but may be dismayed at Facebook’s latest venture into manipulation
The field of learning analytics isn’t just about advancing the understanding of learning. It’s also being applied in efforts to try to influence and predict student behavior.
Learning analytics has yet to demonstrate its big beneficial breakthrough, its “penicillin,” in the words of Reich. Nor has there been a big ethical failure to creep lots of people out.
“There’s a difference,” Pistilli says, “between what we can do and what we should do.”
Sophia: Nudged along by my friend Todd Nesloney, I use Sophia for my computer applications instruction and am very pleased with the results.
Haiku Learning: This is the full content management system that I’m trying to get our school to adopt. It’s multiplatform and robust, which makes it a great fit for our BYOD environment.
There are many other apps like Moodle, Canvas, and Coursesites. The point is that you should have one in a BYOD environment.
Assessment Aids
All three of these apps — Quick Key, Grade Ninja, and WISE — are available on iTunes and Google Play, but there are more.
If you’re working with multiple apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive, Evernote and need to search across them in one shot, take a look at Xendo (http://xen.do) – gives you a personal, private Google-like search across all your apps.
With these tips and tools, you’ll be able to get connected with the people that matter most to you on Twitter.
Follow experts: Get useful information from other experts in your field.
Twitterholic: With Twitterholic, you’ll be able to find the most popular users on Twitter.
Make friends with your competition: It may seem counterintuitive, but connecting with your competition can help keep you in the know and well networked.
TwitterPacks: Check out this tool to locate people according to their interest group.
WeFollow: Find people by industry or hobby using WeFollow.
Follow back: When you discover new followers, be sure to follow them back if they are interesting or offer value to you.
Keep your follow ratio balanced: Follow too many people without being followed back, and you will seem spammy, but if you have lots of followers that you don’t follow back, you’ll come off as snobby.
Localtweeps: You can use this tool to filter tweets by zip code.
Participate in Twitter events: Be a part of #followfriday, #musicmonday, and similar events to be a part of the community.
Geofollow: Search for others in your location with this site.
Twitterel: With Twitterel, you can find users with common interests.
Twinfluence: Use Twinfluence to discover users with good reach, velocity, and social capital.
Twellow: Use Twellow to find Twitter users based on category.
Twitter Snipe: Twitter Snipe will auto follow users based on your niche.
Be patient: Amassing Twitter followers doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient, and you’ll build a group of valuable followers.
Search
Put Twitter’s massive amounts of information to work by using these search tips and tools.
Twitority: This search engine offers results based on Twitter users with authority.
TwitterLocal: Search for tweets around a specific area with the help of this tool.
Use keyword tricks: Take advantage of the advanced search option on Twitter.
Use quotation marks: If you’re looking for a specific term, put it in quotation marks to get better results.
Twithority: With Twithority, you’ll find Twitter search results with authority.
Use hashtags: If you come across a useful hashtag, click on it to see what else you’ll find.
Subscribe: Keep up with useful keywords and hashtags by setting up an RSS subscription for them.
Pay attention to trends: Stay on top of the latest in your field by seeking out and participating in trending topics. For instance, students enrolled in political science degree programs may want to follow trending topics related to upcoming local and state elections.
Retweetist: Retweetist shares popular trends, topics, and people using retweets on Twitter.
Tweet Volume: With this tool, you can find out if your keywords are popular on Twitter or not.
Tweetmeme: Check out Tweetmeme to learn about retweeting stats for articles on Twitter.
Twitt(url)y: Find out about hot news with this tool that sorts URLs by how frequently they are mentioned in tweets.
Twackle: With this aggregator, you’ll be able to find news and more in a single destination.
Twitter Sniffer for Brands: Twitter Sniffer makes it easy for you to keep track of conversations about you on Twitter.
Twuoted: Find popular quotes with this site that follows the #quote hashtag.
Tweet Scan: Follow Twitter conversations by keyword and category using Tweet Scan.
Monitter: Stay on top of 3 keywords at once with this keyword search tool.
Pay attention to timing: Monitor the most popular hours for your Twitter followers, then concentrate your most important messages in those hours for more effective tweeting.
Organization
With these tips and tools, you can keep all of your information on Twitter well organized.
Tweetdeck: Make use of this tool to organize tweets from various groups into easy to manage categories.
Don’t try to read everything: You will be on Twitter all day and all night if you try to read every single tweet from your followers-just drop in when you can.
My Tweeple: This tool will help you organize the people you’re following.
Tweetree: See your Twitter stream in a tree with organized conversations using Tweetree.
Make good use of alert tools: Make sure you’re not missing good conversations by setting up alerts that will tell you when friends and other Twitter users discuss keywords you’re interested in.
Tweet Clouds: Analyze your keyword usage with this tool.
Twitterator: Monitor groups of people while staying organized with the help of this script.
Authority Building
Follow these tips and use these tools in order to establish yourself as an authority in your field.
Own your brand: Even if you don’t want to use your real name on Twitter, at least claim it so that no one else can use it against you.
Be retweetable: Share tweets that others will want to retweet.
Use popular tweets as blog posts: If you share a site or bit of information that turns out to be very popular, use it as a jumping off point for a blog post.
Enjoy ambient knowledge: With Twitter, you’ll be able to stay on top of news in your field around the clock.
Listen: Just listen, and you’ll find interesting and useful information.
Promote events: Use Twitter to promote live and virtual events like seminars, sales, and more.
Ask for help: Get instant feedback by asking for help on Twitter.
Meet your customers: Use Twitter as a way to interact with your customers, whether through the service or in real life.
Listen to your critics: Find out what people are saying about you, then respond to it and act on it.
How To Connect With Students On Twitter
Don’t require that students follow your account.
Commit to posting at regular intervals.
Vary the time of day of the posts.
Post links to content that is user friendly.
Know your audience’s interests.
Don’t just retweet, generate original links.
Suggest people, organizations or magazines to follow.
Be personal.
… yet avoid the overly personal comments.
Twitter Rules Every Teacher Should Know
Rule #3
If you’re adding the Twitter logo to some marketing materials, here’s how to properly format it all. Same goes if you’re just adding in the Twitter Bird to other materials. Useful to know.
Rule #4
Always capitalize the T in Twitter and Tweet. Seriously. That’s a little-known rule that basically everyone doesn’t follow but it’s worth trying to remember!
Actually complete your bio. You’ll get more mileage out of your Twitter account if you actually create a profile that says something about you, offering potential followers information about your interests, professional or otherwise.
Learn the basics. Learn the basic terminology for Twitter and the major functions it can perform by doing a little reading on helpful social media blogs beforehand. You’ll thank yourself later.
Get some style. Before you send out your first tweet, decide what kind of tweeter you want to be. The London School of Economics and Political Science offers up three major styles here so you can learn more about the subject.
Learn from others. One of the best ways to learn how to use Twitter is to spend some time seeing how others have set up and been using their accounts. Luckily, there are tons of other academics on Twitter to learn from.
Don’t be mean. The Internet is full of people who are all too happy to say some pretty harsh things, but just because they’re incredibly tactless doesn’t mean you have to be. Never say anything on Twitter you wouldn’t want people to find out about, or wouldn’t say in any other situation. If people are hassling you, ignore them and move on.
Announce that you’ll be joining a hashtag chat or conference. If you’re going to be tweeting more than usual, let your followers know in advance so they can choose to tune out if they’re not interested in your live tweeting or chatting.
Actually respond in a reasonable amount of time. If someone asks you a question or directs a tweet your way, respond as soon as you can, just like with email or any other digital communication, especially if you’re using Twitter in your courses.
Be gracious and say thank you. A little bit of gratitude goes a long way on Twitter. If someone helps you out or shares your research, don’t forget to say thanks.
Make mistakes. No one is perfect, and if you’re new to Twitter you’re probably going to have a few gaffes along the way as you learn the ropes. That’s OK! Don’t let it slow your enthusiasm for using the social site.
Start your own hashtag chat. Twitter chats have exploded in popularity in recent months, so get in on the trend while the getting’s good. Start your own chat on an academic topic, or chime in on other bigger existing chats for a chance to network.
Find and use some hashtags. You’ll make it easier for others to find your tweets if you add a few relevant hashtags here and there.
Do ‘Follow Friday’. Every Friday, Twitter explodes with suggestions on who to follow. Offer up your own and you may just end up in someone else’s suggestions.
Share the stuff you’re reading. Reading a story on a site like Edudemic? Found an amazing article in pop-science about your research field? Share it! If it’s interesting, it’ll probably get retweeted and passed around, and you might just interest a student or two to boot.
Reach out and connect with someone. Not everyone you connect with on Twitter has to be in your field or even in academia. In fact, you might enrich your research and your professional life by reaching out to other fields and professions.
Do some backchannel talks. Whether you have students post to Twitter during class or ask them to share comments during a presentation, these backchannel talks can help facilitate conversation and provide a record of a shared learning experience.
Create your own classroom hashtag. One way to keep classroom tweets organized is by having a shared hashtag that all students use. Just make sure no one else is using it!
Connect Twitter to Moodle or Blackboard. You can help push students to interact using Twitter by adding a Twitter widget to your Blackboard or Moodle site for the class. Follow the instructions here to get started.
Don’t mandate your students follow you on Twitter. Don’t force students to follow you on Twitter unless it’s part of the course. Let them decide to follow or not.
Be happy (see #5 above). You don’t have to be super serious on Twitter to earn students’ respect. In fact, loosening up could just help improve your rapport with your students.
Live-tweet a conference or event (see #6). Share your conference-going experience by tweeting updates about it throughout the day to your followers.
Share some of your lesson plans. Educators and academics can come together to share and collaborate on lesson plans quite easily using Twitter.
Collaborate with other teachers / parents / students. If you find you have similar interests with another academic, use Twitter to work together on research ideas, classroom solutions, and other topics.
Collaborate with other classrooms in your school, district, or another country.Why work alone when you can connect with other college classrooms? That’s just what many college classes are doing these days.
Host reading discussions. Holding a reading discussion over Twitter gives everyone a chance to chime in, even shy students who might not otherwise speak up.
Actually use Twitter for writing assignments. Want to teach your students the art of brevity? Assign them poetry or prose to be written on Twitter.
The Teacher’s Guide To Twitter Hashtags
Are you looking to figure out exactly which Twitter hashtag is the right one to follow? There’s no shortage of options and it can feel overwhelming. Sure, there’s the popular #edchat and #edtech hashtags most of us follow. But what about the more focused tags that you’re missing out on?
#edapp
educational apps
#elearn
I’d suggest using this rather than the longer #elearning
#flipchat
chat platform for flipped classroom educators. See here.
#flipclass
platform for those interested in the flipped classroom.
#flippedclassroom
Obsolete. Use the shorter #flipclass. All about the flipped classroom
#gbl
game-based learning
#globalclassroom
Good for finding global collaboration / connections, sharing #globaled practice. Official chats run monthly over 3 days. Click here for schedule