Archive of ‘learning’ category
Some Very Good STEAM Websites to Use in Your Class
https://plus.google.com/+Educatorstechnology/posts/BTk2UjWECqJ
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2017/08/some-very-good-steam-websites-to-use-in.html
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering ,Art, and Math) tools to use in your classroom
provide teachers with a handy resource to use with their students to help them develop critical thinking skills and adopt ‘an engineering or design approach towards real-world problems while building on their mathematics and science base’.
download in PDF format from this link.
Do critical thinking skills give graduates the edge?
It has long been claimed that critical thinking ability sets graduates apart. But are universities really preparing students for the modern workplace? David Matthews reports
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/do-critical-thinking-skills-give-graduates-the-edge
what value is higher education supposed to add? And how is this different from what school or vocational education offer?
A further question is whether even the academic brand of critical thinking is being particularly well taught at university. According to Bryan Greetham, a philosopher and university researcher who has written several books on how students and professionals can improve their thinking, “We tend to want to do the simple thing – which is to teach students what to think, not how to think.”
This was most famously explored in the 2011 book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. The authors, American sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, found that 45 per cent of US undergraduates failed to significantly improve their critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills during their first two years at university. Other US-based studies have raised similar concerns. One from 2009, “Improving Students’ Evaluation of Informal Arguments”, published in the Journal of Experimental Education, warned that college and high school students have “difficulty evaluating arguments on the basis of their quality”.
But if universities don’t have the resources to offer intensive classes, could they weave the teaching of critical thinking skills into regular teaching? Britt thinks that academics can easily make time for quick “check-ins” during their lectures to ensure that their students understand what they’ve been told.
High school experience, of course, varies enormously by country. In France, studying philosophy – arguably the closest that traditional disciplines get to explicit critical thinking courses – is compulsory. In England, meanwhile, the critical thinking A level has recently been scrapped.
As well as calls for critical thinkers and smart thinkers, there are also frequent demands from politicians for more “entrepreneurial” university graduates – who, instead of joining graduate recruitment programmes at large employers, might start their own businesses.
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critical thinking
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=critical+thinking
Nobody’s Watching: Proctoring in Online Learning
There is no single best way to handle proctoring for digital courses, as this community college system pilot discovered.
By Dian Schaffhauser 07/26/17
https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/07/26/nobodys-watching-proctoring-in-online-learning.aspx
The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 lays out the rule: An institution offering “distance education” needs to have processes in place for verifying student identity to ensure that the student who registers for a class is the “same student who participates in and completes the program and receives the academic credit.”
OLC (Online Learning Consortium) Innovate conference and shared the solution: a combination of the use of an automated proctoring application and the creation of a network of colleges across the state that would provide no-cost proctoring on their campuses for students attending any of the member schools.
put together an online proctoring working group with “lots of faculty representation,” said Hadsell, which “paid off in the long run.” Other participants included people from testing centers and learning centers. Proctorio, the proctoring solution eventually recommended by the working group, is a web service that can be deployed through Canvas and installed by students with one click
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more on proctoring in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=proctor
Losing the White Working Class, Too
Survey of voting bloc that favored Trump finds skepticism about value of higher education.
Scott Jaschik July 31, 2017
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/31/new-data-point-white-working-class-skepticism-value-college
professors and college leaders were stunned and concerned by recent data showing that more than half of Republicans say that colleges have a negative impact on the U.S., with wealthier, older and more educated Republicans being least positive.
Study after study has found that a college credential is essential for economic advancement, and these studies include associate-degree programs that focus on job-related training.
Among white working-class voters who voted for Barack Obama and then voted for Trump, only 21 percent saw debt-free public college as a major issue. That was behind six other possible issues, with building up infrastructure in ways that would create jobs attracting the most support, from 43 percent of these voters.
Among black working-class voters, however, 39 percent identified debt-free public college as a top issue, and that was the second rated of the seven possibilities. (Raising the minimum wage won top billing.)
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more on employment in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=employment
Where: Normandale Community College (G) When: August 3, 1:45 PM
join our discussion #mnsummit2017 #vrlib on Twitter (@scsutechinstruct) and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InforMediaServices/
http://www.cce.umn.edu/documents/CPE-Conferences/MELS/2017-MELS-Program-Booklet.pdf
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more on elearning summit MN in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mnsummit
Report: Millennials and Generation Z are Changing Media Habits
By Richard Chang 07/17/17
https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/07/17/report-millennials-and-generation-z-are-changing-media-habits.aspx
These findings come from a March 2017 survey by content provider and streaming solutions company Fullscreen and market research firm Leflein Associates, which polled 1,173 American internet users from ages 13 to 34.
younger internet users, the so-called Generation Z (ages 13 to 17), are moving away from text-based content online, as well as television, while increasing their time with video and social media.
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More on Gen Z in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=gen+z
more on Millennials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=millennials
A New World: VR and AR Tech Developments
Authors: by Emory Craig and Maya Georgieva Monday, July 17, 2017
http://er.educause.edu/blogs/2017/7/a-new-world-vr-and-ar-tech-developments
We’re now seeing a move toward mid-range, standalone VR headsets with everything built into the device. Some include their own processors, while others, like the forthcoming Microsoft headset, will work with current desktops. Microsoft’s device claims to do both VR and a modified version of mixed reality
The low end of the VR spectrum has been dominated by Google Cardboard, with over 10 million distributed
Augmented Reality
AR burst into the public’s consciousness with the Pokemon Go craze in 2016. And Snap (formerly Snapchat) expanded the range of their social media platform with the release of Spectacles, their wearable glasses and World Lens filters that add digital objects to your environment. A second version of Spectacles may include far more extensive AR capabilities.
At Facebook’s spring F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg made the case that our mobile cameras will be the first popular AR platform. Apple just announced ARKit for iOS at their June WWDC developers conference.
Mixed Reality
Meta Glasses has been developing its own mixed reality unit that offers a wider field of view than the 40° of HoloLens. And Intel’s Project Alloy promises a “Merged Reality” headset prototype combining both VR and AR by the end of this year.
Kickstarter Projects
Aryzon which is creating a Google Cardboard-like device for simple AR experiences. Another is the NOLO Project, which offers an HTC Vive-like experience with full freedom of movement using only a plastic headset and your phone.
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Google Glass 2.0
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/07/19/google-brings-back-much-maligned-google-glass-headset/
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nevkgb/google-glass-adopters-on-glass-enterprise
https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-2-is-here/
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Top 5 Vendors in Global AR Education Market
https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/07/14/report-top-5-vendors-in-global-ar-education-market.aspx
Market research firm Technavio has identified the top five vendors in the global augmented reality (AR) in education market. The companies are EON Reality, DAQRI, GAMOOZ, Magic Leap and QuiverVision, according to a newly published report.
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more on VR in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+reality
Quickly Dictate Notes in Multiple Languages on Dictation.io
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/03/quickly-dictate-notes-in-multiple.html#.WW-stnqHqzB
Dictation.io is a good tool to add to yesterday’s list of free tools for dictating notes.
Dictation.io doesn’t require students to register in order to use it. It also supports more than two dozen languages. Those two aspects of Dictation.io make it accessible to students who don’t have Google Docs accounts and to those who don’t speak English as their first language.
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http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/02/three-free-tools-students-can-use-to.html
Mic Note is a free Chrome and Android app that allows you to create voice recordings, text notes, and image-based notes
Evernote users can make audio recordings on iOS and Android devices. Follow Evernote’s directions available here to learn how to dictate a note on an iOS device.
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more on voice recognition in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=voice+recognition
Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning
José Antonio Bowen, president, Goucher College
https://www.magnapubs.com/2017-teaching-with-technology-conference/plenary-sessions.html
Technology is changing higher education, but the greatest value of a physical university will remain its face-to-face (naked) interaction between faculty and students. Technology has fundamentally changed our relationship to knowledge and this increases the value of critical thinking, but we need to redesign our courses to deliver this value. The most important benefits to using technology occur outside of the classroom. New technology can increase student preparation and engagement between classes and create more time for the in-class dialogue that makes the campus experience worth the extra money it will always cost to deliver. Students already use online content, but need better ways to interact with material before every class. By using online quizzes and games, rethinking our assignments and course design, we can create more class time for the activities and interactions that most spark the critical thinking and change of mental models we seek.
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more on online teaching in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=online+teaching
LinkedIn discussion from the group: Higher Education Teaching and Learning
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2774663/2774663-6276441184563011585
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more on e-learning in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=elearning
Dr. Vijayender Nalla Rafiat A. I am visiting back to your post to share the insights from engaging students in an e-learning mode. You can review the post here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/live-learning-ice-breaker-engaging-e-learners-dr-vijayender-nalla
While there has been significant attention to improving the key technology (that is the Learning Management Systems) the critical instructional design part (which forms the essence of creating the engagement) is in it’s early stages. Instructional design, the way we at Agribusiness Academy understand is made up of 2-elements: 1) quality of content (the storytelling style is what seems to work which should form the core focus area for the content expert to master); and 2) the manner in which this content is delivered (to the learner) to fulfill the learning objectives .
Live Learning initiative