What's Obvious to You, Is Amazing to Someone Else
One of the reasons I sometimes hear people give for not blogging, Tweeting, or otherwise participating in sharing their ideas online is, "I don't have anything to say." To that I often reply, "yes, you do." The great thing about sharing online is that you never know who is going to discover what you share. Something that you think has been said one hundred times over might be brand new to someone else. We all have something to share. Applications for Education This message needs to be shared with our students too.
3 Steps for Building a Professional Learning Network - Education Week Teacher
Published Online: December 31, 2014 —Photo by Sean Chaffey, via Flickr Creative Commons By Brianna Crowley Recently, a colleague asked me, “What is a PLN?” She was taking a graduate course on technology implementation and was required to form a “PLN” using digital communities and tools. But after signing up for various wikis, Nings, and virtual professional groups, she was overwhelmed: “Do I have to actually log in and check all of these things on a regular basis?! Her question prompted me to articulate how I define a professional learning network (PLN) and how I have shaped my own. A professional learning network is a vibrant, ever-changing group of connections to which teachers go to both share and learn. Teachers build PLNs the same way they build any network: by investing time to find and connect with people they trust, who have shared interests and passions. Although technology is often the vehicle to build connections, a PLN is about relationships. Step One: Find the Professionals
Learning Environments Research
IT@UMN > Services Overview > All Services > Academic Technology Support Services > Academic Technology Consultation Academic Technology Consultation Academic technologists are available to help faculty and staff explore how to effectively incorporate technology into their academic practice to advance their teaching, research, and outreach goals. We offer expertise in instructional design and teaching strategies that can be applied to common good technologies like our course management system (Moodle), video conferencing, media production, social networking technologies, evaluation and assessment of educational technologies, and more. The service includes:
How to Create a Robust and Meaningful Personal Learning Network [PLN]
This post describes how educators can develop a personal learning network that supports meaningful and relevant learning. The MOOC, Education Technology & Media, etmooc, is used here as a working example of how to develop a PLN. “My Personal Learning Network is the key to keeping me up-to-date with all the changes that are happening in education and how technology can best support and engage today’s students.” Brian Metcalfe: teacher, blogger at lifelonglearners.com I wrote a post recently about how to develop a personal learning environment [PLE], the need and benefits of doing so, for educators in particular. A PLE is a self-directed learning space; a virtual framework that consists of tools to collect, curate and construct knowledge that is customized to an individual’s learning goals and interests. What is a PLN? How to use a cMOOC develop your PLN The nature of cMOOC is to learn, to connect, to share and create knowledge, which makes MOOCs an ideal venue to build a PLN. Resources
Interdependent Catalysts for Transforming Learning Environments ... and the Faculty Who Teach in Them (EDUCAUSE Quarterly
Key Takeaways Designers of technology-rich interactive learning environments must consider the interdependent factors of physical and virtual spaces, faculty, students, and institutional infrastructure to create an effective setting for teaching and learning. Faculty learning to use active learning environments benefit from an interdisciplinary team approach involving instructional designers and IT support staff. The Faculty Fellows Program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, supported five faculty in a transformation process that explored the possibilities and affordances of emerging learning technologies and active learning classrooms. Key chapters of the EDUCAUSE e-book Learning Spaces1 celebrate new models of learning environments. At the University of Minnesota, a small group of faculty, staff, and administrative partners engaged in a transformation process to meet the potential offered by emerging learning environments. Jodi Sandfort on Transformation As Amy put it:
Digital technology trends in education
One of the difficulties for school and educational leaders is to develop strategies for innovation and change, writes Gerry White in DERN. There is no doubt that digital technologies used professionally and with skill can improve student and professional learning engagement and performance. A concise, succinct explanation of trends and successful strategies that have been tried and tested carefully over time can be very useful at such a time. The State Educational Technology Directors Association External Links icon (SETDA) in the US produces an annual report of the trends and efforts of school districts that innovate using of digital technologies. is a rich analysis of trends with a compendium of successes. National Educational Technology Trends: 2012 report is structured to amplify four major trends in using digital technologies in education. • Ensuring an infrastructure for learning• Educator effectiveness• Innovative learning models, and• College and career preparation (p. 1). .
The Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 list is revealed
UPDATE: The Top100Tools Club opening January This year’s Top 100 Tools for Learning list (the 6th Annual Survey) has been compiled from the votes of 582 learning professionals worldwide – 55% working in education, 45% working in non-educational organizations. The top tool for the 4th year running is Twitter, with both YouTube (2nd) and Google Docs (aka Google Drive) (3rd) retaining their places for the 3rd year in succession. Once again the list is dominated by free online social tools. Whilst there is a clear differentiation between the personal/professional tools and the enterprise tools being used by workplace learning professions, in education teachers are frequently making use of the same toolset for both their teaching and their own personal learning. In terms of tool trends, this year’s list has seen an increase in the popularity of curation tools and social magazines for the iPad (like Scoopit, Flipboard and Zite). But now for the complete 2012 Top 100 Tools list.
Future of learning: obsolescence of knowledge, return to real teaching
The future of learning is far more than new devices, digital content and online classrooms. It means potentially rewritten relationships between students and information, teachers and instruction, and schools and society. In a short documentary released Tuesday, telecom giant Ericsson pulls together observations from leading voices in education technology and entrepreneurship to give a high-level snapshot of what the future of education could look like and how technology is leading it there. The 20-minute film, called the Future of Learning, which is part of the company’s ongoing Networked Society project, is particularly timely given the momentum behind online education platforms like Khan Academy and Coursera, adaptive learning technology from Knewton and the transition to digital textbooks. It includes commentary from Knewton founder and CEO Jose Ferreira and Coursera cofounder Daphne Koller explaining how their startups are shaping the new world of education.
education everywhere | life = growth = learning = change
