Facebook Apps for eLearning Facebook has been making many inroads into education over the last few years. Many institutions are using Facebook sites to publicize events on campus, as well as to aid in their recruiting. As well, many students, instructors and administrators are using a number of Facebook applications for a wide variety of academic purposes. Recently we’ve been examining a number of Facebook apps that are relevant for educational use. If you have other suggestions feel free to add them to the list. TOPYX social LMS is a revolutionary eLearning solution that incorporates Facebook and other social networking resources right into the learning platform to enhance the learner’s experience (social LMS). MOOCs are here. How should state universities respond? Here is a short essay on MOOCs that Drs. Steve Vardeman and Max Morris, Statistics faculty at Iowa State University, gave me permission to share. Their essential premises? The full essay is below. The Inevitable Coming Impact of Online Education on State Universities and Rational Response to What is ComingStephen B. The recent appearance and publicity of organizations created to provide “massively open online courses” (MOOCs) is a truly revolutionary development in higher education. In the following, we outline what we see as the “realities” and “consequences” of this revolution, and “options” that should be considered now for university administrators and faculty. Realities The coming impact of MOOCs is begin made possible by a number of factors. Consequences The realities described above carry with them consequences which will constitute a massive change in the environment in which WRSU must operate. Options But simple reduction without a strategy for what comes next is not sufficient.
15 Free Tools for Storing and Sharing Files Six months ago I shared a list of good file sharing tools for teachers and students. Since then, I've come across some more tools to add to that list. Here is my new list of file sharing tools for students and teachers. Using these tools can help you avoid having an email inbox that is overflowing with file attachments. The tools that I frequently use: I use Google Documents and Google Drive for nearly all of my document storage needs. The other tool that I frequently use for collecting, storing, and sharing files is Dropbox. DROPitTOme is a free service that works with Dropbox to allow people to upload files to your Dropbox account without giving them access to the contents of your Dropbox account. File Dropper is the file sharing tool that I have used longer than any of the tool on this list. Other file sharing tools that I have tried. File Stork is a tool that works with Dropbox and allows you to collect files in two ways. Go Pileus is a simple free service for quickly sharing files.
Experiences from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and how the MOOC could potentially increase diversity, social inclusion & learner engagement | Squire Morley There is currently much interest and excitement at the emergence of an educational approach commonly termed the ‘Massive Open Online Course’ or MOOC. These MOOCs are truly global in their reach, and can be massive with tens of thousands of participants. Whilst the approach is very much in its infancy the concept has gained traction in a short time and is developing and evolving almost on a month/weekly/(or even) daily basis. I have participated in several MOOCs and wanted to present my experiences to the conference, and allow delegates to consider the positives that MOOCs could offer in and of themselves, but also how lessons can be learned to potentially improve on-campus courses. As the name implies, in their original form these ‘courses’ are open in the sense that they are available for anyone to participate, they are at zero cost to the participants and the content is freely available without restriction. Depending on the type of MOOC there may be no prerequisites to participation.
Understanding Multimedia For Rapid E-Learning We’ve looked at understanding the customer’s perspective, how to jump start you project, what you should know about designing a course, how to build a project plan, and working with your subject matter experts. Today’s rapid elearning tools make creating elearning courses so much easier. It’s possible to build good elearning courses with a limited understanding of the technology. However, you can really leverage the rapid elearning tool’s capabilities and make more engaging content if you have a basic understanding of the multimedia technology. In this post, we’ll take a quick peek at graphic, audio, and video technology. What Should I Know About Graphics When using images in your rapid elearning courses you want to maintain the best quality possible. This is article from Wikipedia does a great job explaining image formats and their differences. Typically, you’ll find the best success if you can stick with vector-based images because they scale better. What Should I Know About Audio
Tom Vander Ark: Canvas.net Shifts The MOOC Model Paradigms Faith Goble via Compfight This post “Canvas.net: An Open MOOC From Instructure” by Tom Vander Ark first appeared on GettingSmart. Next week classes kick off on Canvas.net, a hosting site for massively open online courses (MOOC) from universities including Ball State, Brown, Central Florida, and Utah. Unlike Coursera and Udacity, content partners can make decisions about the course instruction, assessment, instructional materials, and cost. Most interesting from a K-12 perspective is Exploring Engineering, a two-week high school course starting April 1, 2013 and taught by Karen Haberstroh, Director of STEM Outreach at Brown University. The courses will be hosted by Instructure, a Salt Lake City company, on Canvas, a learning management system (LMS) currently used by 300 schools and universities. Instructure got off to a big start two years ago by winning a Utah Education Network bid to work with 17 institutions that made up that consortium.
10 сбывшихся технологических предсказаний \ Курилка Есть ли польза от предсказаний будущего? И насколько точны различные прогнозы? Теория вероятности говорит, что кто-то из предсказателей в любом случае окажется прав. Вот только мы не знаем кто именно. Вот несколько примеров того, что технологические прогнозы успешно сбываются. Мы живем в 21 веке, который был излюбленным временем для фантастики 20 века. Посмотрим, что же сбылось из технологических предсказаний прошлого века. 1. Вот пример одного из первых рекламных роликов мобильной связи — весьма знакомый сценарий. Кстати, вот еще одно предсказание из 30-х годов — мода 2000-х. Телевидение В 1945 году в США появился фильм о новых технологиях, появившихся во время войны. 3. Первая сеть предшественник современного Интернета ARPANET начала работу в 1969. 4. Представьте себе компьютерный дисплей в вашей машине, показывающий, где вы находитесь куда вам ехать. Кстати, началось все с того, что в 1945 году Артур Кларк предсказал появление коммуникационных спутников. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
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