How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms. A survey of 2,462 Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers finds that digital technologies have helped them in teaching their middle school and high school students in many ways. At the same time, the internet, mobile phones, and social media have brought new challenges to teachers. In addition, they report that there are striking differences in the role of technology in wealthier school districts compared with poorer school districts and that there are clear generational differences among teachers when it comes to their comfort with technology and its use in their classrooms.
Asked about the impact of the internet and digital tools in their role as middle and high school educators, these teachers say the following about the overall impact on their teaching and their classroom work: AP and NWP teachers bring a wide variety of digital tools into the learning process, including mobile phones, tablets, and e-book readers About this Study The basics of the survey. Tom Vander Ark: Personal Digital Learning Is Changing the World. About a decade ago, the launch of Wikipedia was symbolic of an important threshold in human history -- anyone with a broadband connection could learn almost anything for free or cheap. This year inexpensive tablet computers and free resources like Khan Academy are extending the learning revolution. The teachers and students that grew up as digital natives are bringing new tools to school. The promise of personal digital learning is finally rippling through educational institutions of developed economies and creating new opportunities for getting smart in emerging economies.
The outcome will be more students in the U.S. will be prepared for college and careers and more young people in developing economies will connect to the idea economy. Personal digital learning is providing three primary benefits, as outlined in my new book, Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World. Mobile learning and motivated learners means more learning hours per year -- at schools and at home. MOOCs and Museums | Edgital. Video by Dave Cormier, coiner of the term “MOOC”. I just participated in my first Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) – the University of Edinburgh’s E-Learning and Digital Culture.
While the content was interesting, if somewhat more theoretical than I was looking for, the experience itself was the educational payoff. Forty thousand students enrolled for the course (and it felt like every one of them replied to the discussion thread I experimentally requested email me all responses – I was cleaning out my inbox for weeks!). I don’t know how many completed the course. Full disclosure: I didn’t since it turned out not to be quite what I was after. But one of the beauties of MOOCs for the student is a low barrier to enrollment. This allows any student to freely experiment and explore various topics. The whole experience has gotten me thinking about the possibilities for museums to offer MOOCs. Okay – there is one, and it’s the one that generally plagues us: opportunity cost. Like this: British Museum launches online courses.
The British Museum has announced it is joining the e-learning site Fathom to offer a range of courses and online seminars. The Fathom consortium, based at Columbia University in New York, includes 12 other institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, including the London School of Economics, the British Library and the Victoria and Albert, Natural History and Science museums in London. While demand for degree courses was less than predicted, Fathom is now concentrating on online seminars, lectures and features aimed at "enrichment" learning rather than gaining qualifications. The British Museum is offering a free e-seminar on Agatha Christie and Archaeology, linked to a current exhibition, along with features on Cleopatra, Japanese festivals and the history of European currencies.
Dr Carol Homden, the museum's director of marketing, said the museum already had online tours and educational sites on ancient civilisations. Number of students taking online courses rises. By Justin Pope, The Associated Press Roughly one in six students enrolled in higher education — about 3.2 million people — took at least one online course last fall, a sharp increase defying predictions that online learning growth is leveling off. A new report scheduled for released Thursday by The Sloan Consortium, a group of colleges pursuing online programs, estimates that 850,000 more students took online courses in the fall of 2005 than the year before, an increase of nearly 40%.
Last year, the group had reported slowing growth, prompting speculation the trend had hit a ceiling. "The growth was phenomenal," said Jeff Seaman, Sloan's CIO and survey director, who also serves as co-director of the Babson College survey research group. "It's higher in absolute numbers and higher in percentages than anything we've measured before. And it's across the board," at schools ranging from doctoral institutions to those offering associate's degrees to for-profit colleges. Outsourced Ed: Colleges Hire Companies to Build Their Online Courses - Technology. By Marc Parry Michael Tricoli was a middle manager looking for a leg up in his career, so he got an online M.B.A. from Northeastern University.
Well, not only from Northeastern. Much of his college experience was outsourced to a private company. The company, Embanet, put up millions to start the online business program. Its developers helped build the courses. Its staff talked Mr. Tricoli through the application. In exchange, Embanet gets what Northeastern's business dean calls "a sizable piece" of the tuition revenue.
As more colleges dip their toes into the booming online-education business, they're increasingly taking those steps hand-in-hand with companies like Embanet. But the new breed of online collaboration can tread into delicate academic territory, blurring the lines between college and corporation. "You're creating a whole set of temptations to make the choices that will increase profits rather than improve education," Mr.
A Small but Growing Industry Mr. Mr. Mr. For Mr.
Clay Christensen: First the media gets disrupted, then comes the education industry. Clay Christensen literally wrote the book on disruption, so it’s worth paying attention to him when he talks about where the disruption fueled by the web is going to strike next. The Harvard business professor and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma spoke to Jeff Howe — the Wired writer who coined the term “crowdsourcing” — and had some interesting things to say about where disruption is occurring now and where it is likely to strike next. At one point, Howe asks Christensen to name some industries that are “either in a state of disruptive crisis or will be soon,” and the professor says: “Journalism, certainly, and publishing broadly.
Anything supported by advertising. That all of this is being disrupted is now beyond question. And then I think higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse. Generally, universities are doing very well financially, so they don’t feel from the data that their world is going to collapse. Image courtesy of Shutterstock / Don Skarpo. A Future Full of Badges - Commentary. By Kevin Carey In the grand University of California system, the Berkeley and UCLA campuses have long claimed an outsized share of the public imagination. It's easy to forget that the state system has more than two great institutions of higher education. In the heart of the Central Valley, UC-Davis has grown in a hundred years from being the "university farm" to becoming one of the world's most important research universities. Now it's part of a process that may fundamentally redefine the credentials that validate higher learning.
Throughout the 20th century, scientists at UC-Davis, a land-grant institution, helped significantly increase crop yields while leading research on plant genetics, water conservation, and pest control. The university also conducted a detailed survey of practitioners, scholars, and students to identify the knowledge, skills, and experiences that undergraduates most needed to learn. What is a digital badge, exactly? Why does this matter?