Three Kinds of MOOCs « Lisa's

The Death and Life of Higher Education | The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (Editor’s note: This article is based on a presentation for a conference sponsored by the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders and directed by John W. Sommer in February 2012. It begins a series of such articles.) We desperately need to equip and inspire our next generation to take on the opportunities and challenges of the twenty-first century. But our traditional universities have become trapped in a bureaucratic death spiral, more interested in preserving and expanding pay and perks for tenured faculty and administrators than serving students. The decline has become so self-evident that students, parents, employers, taxpayers—and even the rabble with Occupy Wall Street—now recognize the problem. Faculty senates at traditional universities seem indifferent to the mounting problems. Those who expect traditional universities to reform on their own are kidding themselves. A Lifelong Adventure 1. 2. 3. 4. A Modest Proposal Portfolios vs. But college degrees also denote status.

MOOC MOOC » Napster, Udacity, and the Academy Clay Shirky Fifteen years ago, a research group called The Fraunhofer Institute announced a new digital format for compressing movie files. This wasn’t a terribly momentous invention, but it did have one interesting side effect: Fraunhofer also had to figure out how to compress the soundtrack. The result was the Motion Picture Experts Group Format 1, Audio Layer III, a format you know and love, though only by its acronym, MP3. The recording industry concluded this new audio format would be no threat, because quality mattered most. Who would listen to an MP3 when they could buy a better-sounding CD at the record store? If Napster had only been about free access, control of legal distribution of music would then have returned the record labels. How did the recording industry win the battle but lose the war? The story the recording industry used to tell us went something like this: “Hey kids, Alanis Morisette just recorded three kickin’ songs! But who faces that choice? But you know what?

15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends One of the great things about TwitterTwitter reviews is that it is a great place to track emerging trends. When major events or big stories occur, people tweet about it and it inevitably ends up at the top of Twitter Search as a top trend. But this only scratches the surface of tracking Twitter trends. There are a wide variety of web applications, Twitter accounts, and even iPhone apps that can help people do everything from track popular hashtags to graph out recent Twitter trends. Web-based Applications 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Twitter Accounts 8. twithority: Twithority is an easy way to have the most recent Twitter trends tweeted to you. 9. 10. 11. gtrend: gtrend is short for "Google Trend." iPhone Apps 12. 13.

What is a connectivist MOOC? | Connectivist MOOCs “MOOCs” are massive open online courses. Dave Cormier introduces the MOOC: There’s a great written explanation of MOOCs in the introduction to the PLENK2010 MOOC Stephen Downes explains: This longer interview with George Siemens and Howard Rheingold is also a very helpful introduction to connectivism: August 2012′s MOOCMOOC was a one-week course led by Hybrid Pedagogy which examined the MOOC medium. As a springboard for more on MOOCs, check out the readings from Sunday and Monday and have a look at this piece on the MOOC Misnomer which does a nice job of dismantling lazy use of the term. A shorthand has emerged which distinguishes between connectivist courses – cMOOCs – and ones that are more broadcast-focused and reliant upon certification and peer testing. I’ve made my own attempt at distinguishing between xMOOCs and cMOOCs. This site exists to point people towards connectivist courses. xMOOCs are already excellently served by Class Central.

MOOC: lancement de la plate-forme nationale, ça va être FUN Coup de théâtre dans le milieu académique français. Mme Fioraso, Ministre de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, annonçait mercredi matin le lancement de la plate-forme nationale pour MOOC dans le cadre du programme France Université Numérique (ouverture courant octobre, site de présentation à cette adresse). Ce nouveau site dédié aux établissements français est destiné à héberger dès janvier prochain ses premiers cours. Retour sur l’histoire récente du phénomène… Les MOOC, pour Massive Open Online Courses (aucune traduction française ne fait consensus), sont des cours gratuits organisés entièrement en ligne et pouvant accueillir un nombre non limité de participants ; l’audience des cours américains se compte en général en dizaines de milliers, parfois en centaines de milliers pour les plus populaires. Le choix de la plate-forme américaine de la part de Polytechnique est on-ne-peut-plus logique compte tenu de la visibilité qu’elle apporte.

Free and Open Source Authoring Tools for e-Learning As an e-Learning consultant I was always a fan of open source software. Why? The answer is simple. Because I could use them as I wish, for whatever I wish, without long-term commitments and with the extra bonus of a community of professionals that use, extend and support them. In this post I am not going to talk about open source learning management systems such as eFront[1] but rather dedicated open source “authoring tools”. The list that it follows is not in particular order. => If you know a free or open source authoring tool that is not included in the list I will highly appreciate if you write a comment with a link! Free & Open Source Authoring Tools for e-Learning What2Learn makes it easy for e-Learning developers to create interactive games and quizzes and track learners’ attainment. xical.org ClassTools.net Create free educational games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! eXe Wink CourseLab Quandary Hot Potatoes

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