An interactive discussion on MOOCs, online learning, and the goal of 100 million learners by 2022
The Future Trends Forum welcomes
Anant Agarwal , the founder and CEO of edX, a non-profit venture created by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focused on transforming online and on-campus learning through groundbreaking methodologies.
He aims to help bring quality education to everyone, everywhere. Anant has also been a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT for 30 years.
My note: Email is for old people (https://www.chronicle.com/article/E-Mail-is-for-Old-People/4169) compare with Trello + Slack
“The idea behind us using Slack [last fall] was to kill internal email,” says Green. That’s a common refrain in pro-Slack headlines, with good reason. Users can drop links and files into any Slack conversation.
documented here how educators use Trello to manage project-based learning activities that involve group work and peer review.
Slack has been described as “ a private Twitter on steroids.” At first glance, the tool looks like a chat room—but it’s got more going on inside.
Like Twitter, Slack features hashtags that denote specific “channels” dedicated to topics, but each channel operates like its own chat room. Users can send messages to a channel or directly to one another (one-to-one), and also create private groups for focused discussions (one-to-few).
connected Trello to Slack so that he receives a notification whenever his students make edits on a Trello card. He turns to Slack to communicate directly with students and groups, often leaving feedback on assignments. “It hasn’t been effective as a way to broadcast information to the entire class,” Green admits. “But it’s become a very important tool for us to share resources for kids, and have 1-on-1 conversations with students.”
Other educators are exploring how to use Slack as a professional learning network.
Open Learning, Educational Media: An Interview with Theo Bastiaens, Newly Appointed Rector Magnificus of Open University and Chair of AACE Edmedia Conference
Since the Open University was founded in 1984, more than 250,000 students have enrolled in courses. The Open University offers courses of study at the bachelor’s and master’s degree levels in cultural studies, education science, law, management, psychology, science and technology. Five of its master’s degree programs were top-ranked in 2017
Learning Tasks — concrete, authentic, whole task experiences that are provided to learners in order to promote schema construction for non-recurrent aspects and, to a certain degree, rule automation by compilation for recurrent aspects. Instructional methods primarily aim at induction, that is, constructing schemata through mindful abstraction from the concrete experiences that are provided by the learning tasks. Design steps:
Design learning tasks
Sequence task practice
Set performance objectives
Supportive Information — information that is supportive to the learning and performance of non-recurrent aspects of learning tasks. It provides the bridge between learners’ prior knowledge and the learning tasks. Instructional methods primarily aim at elaboration, that is, embellishing schemata by establishing nonarbitrary relationships between new elements and what learners already know. Design steps:
Design supportive information
Analyze cognitive strategies
Analyze mental models
JIT Information — information that is prerequisite to the learning and performance of recurrent aspects of learning tasks. Instructional methods primarily aim at compilation through restricted encoding, that is, embedding procedural information in rules. JIT information is not only relevant to learning tasks but also to Part-time practice. Design steps:
Design procedural information
Analyze cognitive rules
Analyze prerequisite knowledge
Part-task Practice — practice items that are provided to learners in order to promote rule automation for selected recurrent aspects of the whole complex skill. Instructional methods primarily aim at rule automation, including compilation and subsequent strengthening to reach a very high level of automatically. Design step:
Playing video-game shooters, we now know, is not a major contributor to youth violence. Granted, kids’ enthusiasm for Fortnite can be a little much, but we are old enough to remember Garbage Pail kids and have played Pokémon.
Fortnite is, in many respects, a classic “third place”—a place that is neither home nor school, but where kids can socialize and play beyond the watchful eyes of parents or teachers. These are places where kids learn to negotiate conflict, become independent, and explore what kind of person they want to be. They are important experiences that we too often design out of our kids’ lives through structured activities and all of the shuffling back and forth we do in today’s busy world.
we’ve seen that one of the best things educators can do is bystander training.
The U.S. Department of Education has finally made a move on its efforts to fund development of open educational resources. The agency issued a notice this week inviting proposals for an “open textbooks pilot program” with an Aug. 29, 2018 deadline. The program was mandated in an omnibus spending law, H.R. 1625, approved by Congress earlier this year. ED expected to issue between one and three awards.
The winning proposals will be eligible for between $1.5 million and $4.95 million. The latter amount is nearly the entire fund of $5 million stipulated for the pilot in an explanatory document that accompanied the spending bill.
The application has three “absolute priorities” and one “competitive preference” priority. The absolutes are these:
The project must involve consortium with at least three institutions participating, along with representation from industry or workforce groups and nonprofit or community organizations;
The proposal needs to fill current gaps in the OER “marketplace” and be able to scale beyond the consortium members; and
The plan needs to address how the OER will promote degree completion.
A non-profit organization developing a children’s museum to serve the greater St. Cloud community and Central Minnesota. Explore ways you can get involved in making this dream a reality.
Pearson’s digital textbook transformation will likely face stiff competition. Earlier this month, McGraw-Hill, Barnes & Noble Education and Chegg teamed up for a new digital textbook rental program that the trio claims can help students save as much as 70 percent from buying print copies. In August, Cengage will launch a buffet-style offering where students pay $119.99 a semester to access all of the company’s digital higher-ed materials.
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more on OER in this IMS blog https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=oer
In a soon-to-be published study, Jennings and her co-authors provided an extended version of CARE training to 224 teachers in high-poverty schools in New York City, with several two-day sessions spaced over the course of a year.
CARE TECHNIQUES TO TRY IN THE CLASSROOM Mindfulness for students and teachers
An introduction to digital badges and a brief history
Simply put, a digital badge is an indicator of accomplishment or skill that can be displayed, accessed, and verified online. These badges can be earned in a wide variety of environments, an increasing number of which are online.
The anatomy of digital badges
In addition to the image-based design we think of as a digital badge, badges have meta-data to communicate details of the badge to anyone wishing to verify it, or learn more about the context of the achievement it signifies.
The many functions of digital badges
Just like their real-world counterparts, digital badges serve a wide variety of purposes depending on the issuing body and the individual. For the most part, badges’ functions can be bucketed into one of five categories.
Badges are issued by individual organizations who set criteria for what constitutes earning a badge. They’re most often issued through an online credential or badging platform.
Criticism of digital badges
There are various arguments to be made against the implementation of digital badges, including the common issuance of seemingly “meaningless” badges.
The future of digital badges
With the rise of online education and the increasing availability of high quality massive open online courses, there will be an increasing need for verifiable digital badges and digital credentials.