8 Exam-Prep Activities Students Actually Like After Christmas break students will return to school for 8 days of review prior to taking their End of Course Exams. I can give my students a review packet with hundreds of problems, but that would only lead to them giving up, sleeping, and not even trying. So below are 8 fun activities I created to motivate and engage my students in their final exam reviews. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. These are 8 fun review games that is sure to get students motivated to review for their final exams! Visit my blog for printables, instructions, and examples! Coursera forced to call off a MOOC amid complaints about the course Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype. But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application." Technology and design problems are largely to blame for the course's problems. And many students are angry that a course about online education -- let alone one offered by the Georgia Institute of Technology -- wouldn't have figured out the tech issues in advance, or been able to respond quickly once they became evident. Many of the problems related to the course's use of Google Docs to sign up for group discussions. Among the comments on blogs and Twitter: "Wowzers, 40,000 students signed up for considering google spreadsheets limit of 50 simultaneous editors ... not a good choice!"
What Makes a MOOC Massive? Responding to a LinkedIn Discussion. When people ask me what makes a MOOC 'massive' I respond in terms of the *capacity* of the MOOC rather than any absolute numbers. In particular, my focus is on the development of a network structure, as opposed to a group structure, to manage the course. In a network structure there isn't any central focus, for example, a central discussion. Different people discuss different topics in different places (Twitter, Google Groups, Facebook, whatever) as they wish. Additionally, my understanding is that for the course to be a *course* it has to be more than just a broadcast. So what is essential to a course being a *massive* open online course, therefore, is that it is not based in a particular environment, isn't characterized by its use of a single platform, but rather by the capacity of the technology supporting the course to enable and engage conversations and activities across multiple platforms. Why Dunbar's number?
A Brooklyn High School Takes a New Approach to Vocational Education The building and its surroundings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, may look run-down, but inside 150 Albany Avenue may sit the future of the country’s vocational education: The first 230 pupils of a new style of school that weaves high school and college curriculums into a six-year program tailored for a job in the technology industry. By 2017, the first wave of students of P-Tech — Pathways in Technology Early College High School — is expected to emerge with associate’s degrees in applied science in computer information systems or electromechanical engineering technology, following a course of studies developed in consultation with I.B.M. “I mean, in 10th grade, doing college work?” said Monesia McKnight, 15, as she sat in an introduction to computer systems course taught by a college professor. “How great is that?” Into this breach, school systems around the country have been aiming to start new high schools like P-Tech. Stanley S. “Because that is the problem,” he said.
Una docena de MOOC o cursos online gratuitos para completar tu formación Todo parace indicar que 2013 será el año del despegue definitivo dentro del ámbito de la formación online, de los MOOC (cursos online abiertos masivos). Ya os hablé de estos cursos basados en contenidos online, principalmente de educación superior, que se imparten en varias plataformas gratuitas de e-learning y formación online, como Coursera. Desde que comenzase este fenómeno con el primer curso MOOC de la Universidad de Stanford sobre inteligencia artificial, en el que se matricularon 160.000 alumnos de 190 países, estos cursos se han convertido en un recurso muy interesante para completar nuestra formación. A nivel tecnológico, las plataformas que albergan estos MOOC siguen desarrollándose y aún no han alcanzado la madurez. A continuación os dejo con unos cuántos MOOC gratuitos sobre materias innovadoras, impartidos por algunas de las mejores universidades españolas y norteamericanas, utilizando plataformas de formación online. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
To MOOC or Not to MOOC - WorldWise MOOCs have become a media obsession. Why? In part because they are the continuation of a story that has been around since at least the 1990s and the first days of magazines like Wired and Fast Company. At that time, information technology was depicted as part of a revolution: Marxist rhetoric had been appropriated by capitalism. I’d like to think that since then we’ve learned something. After all, universities have produced a substantial body of research that argues that information technology is not an epochal economy-changing technology. These sources must induce at least some suspicion about the wider claims concerning MOOCs, or massive open online courses. Why this obsession with MOOCs? Second, because it taps into a vein of middle-class anger over tuition costs. Third, because in a time of austerity, nations are searching for ways of reducing higher-education spending, and MOOCs can look like a silver bullet, making it all so much easier to cut and still feel good about it.
7 Ways to Create and Deliver Online Quizzes Creating and delivering quizzes and tests online offers a number of advantages over paper-based quizzes and tests. Many online quiz services allow you to create quizzes that give your students instant feedback. Some of the services provide the option to include picture and video prompts in your quizzes. And all of these services save you the hassle of printing your quizzes. Here are seven ways that you can create and deliver quizzes online. Blubbr is a neat quiz creation service that you can use to create video-based quizzes. Zoho Survey is a feature-packed tool for creating online quizzes and surveys. Quizdini is a free tool for creating online quizzes. ImageQuiz is a free service that allows you to create quizzes based on any images that you own or find online. Socrative is a free quiz/ survey tool that I've been using a lot over the last couple of years. Infuse Learning is similar in concept to Socrative with a couple of differences worth noting.
Stanford, Harvard Scholars Dissect Big Data GOOD DATA, BAD DATA: After blended learning, Big Data, and MOOCs, another edtech term is gaining steam in 2013: learning analytics. The phrase (which refers to finding meaningful data patterns that inform effective learning) is presumably where the Big Data movement in education is placing all bets. The only problem is mining data for meaningful patterns is a bit difficult when there's no strong definition of effective learning. Just ask Stanford GSE Professor Roy Pea. In this recent keynote address delivered at the Educause Learning Initiative, Pea cautions that learning sciences are "largely missing" from MOOCs and expose "a great chasm" in their design. Across the country at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Reynol Junco is equally unforgiving. His call for more learning sciences is a bit more nuanced than Pea's. Still any type of data can be difficult to handle in the context of school environments.
MOOCs: The Myth Of Online Classrooms | INFO 203, Spring 2013 by Sandra Helsley, Ajeeta Dhole, Kate Rushton In The Myth of the Paperless Office, Sellen and Harper write, “For each limit, for each set of actions that paper prevents, there is a set of actions that it enables. In other words, each limitation is also an affordance.” In a previous post, Ignacio, Andrew, and Sydney wrote about the impersonal nature of online education. MOOCs such as Coursera or Udacity provide open and (typically) free access to high-quality educational resources to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. However, analyses of MOOCs reveal many problems with the online format that may, in part, be attributed to their open-ended affordances. Aside from economics, the difference in completion rates between online and offline classes may be attributed in large part to the affordances of a physical classroom. MOOCs offer a standardized, one-size-fits-all approach to education that demands a high level of self-motivation and independent learning.