I’m collecting a list of English-speaking university-based OER projects from which to review and compare OER/OCW policy documents. My current list is available here as a wiki (http://oerus.wikispaces.com) read more
I’m collecting a list of English-speaking university-based OER projects from which to review and compare OER/OCW policy documents. My current list is available here as a wiki (http://oerus.wikispaces.com) read more
I attended the 3-day eLearning DevCon 2009 in Salt Lake City this past week, and have compiled some brief notes based on the experience. I summarize the conference as having an enticing depth and knowledge of topics, good “presence” and information from most of the presenters, primarily for corporate e-learning developers (which was a refreshing change), not at all a bargain, and awkwardly spread out across Fort Douglas, though I must admit it was a joy to walk outside in late spring weather.
I’ve had a few people ask me to post the limerick that introduce Chris’s closing keynote at TTIX 2009. Here you go!
Deconstructing entrenchments of the fallen aesthete The future will give us robots endlessly yielding Great Thoughts exceeding Bill Gates or the "famous" Socrates Yes, their brains will be based on Chris Lott's.
If you didn’t see Chris’s talk live, be sure to check out the archive on Ustream.
Anyone who knows me knows about the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange, aka TTIX, a small, free conference dedicated to the open exchange of ideas and best practices in distance learning and technology-enhanced education. If I’m not soliciting proposals, I’m soliciting keynotes, or I’m soliciting sponsors, or I’m soliciting participants–and really, the participants are the most important ingredient for a successful idea exchange!
So let me formally thank and welcome everyone who’s planning on coming to Orem, Utah June 3-5 to present, participate, sponsor, exhibit, help or support. We know some people could not travel this year due to tightening budgets, but we hope to offset that with a sepcial announcement:
Instead of taping and archiving this year’s sessions, we are going to try to live stream each and every TTIX session via UStream. This means that participants from around the world will have a chance to watch and engage with TTIX live audiences via the backchannel. I’ll post more on this soon at http://ttix.org
Finally, of course, Marc and I will be tracking your participation in TTIX via social media to crown this year’s Grand Poobah, and give out some sweet prizes. Every blog post, Twitter update, Flickr photo, Delicious bookmark that you tag TTIX (#TTIX on Twitter) will count towards your effort to claim this coveted award, if you sign up.
In my Web Essentials online course I facilitate a discussion on the future of internet technologies. One student focused on how education is, and, as you’ll see here, should be affected:
The internet is a rebel and a bully, threatening to destroy the established system of education that dictates how we learn. Shocked? Well, this is a good thing any way you look at it. The internet will transform the way you and I learn. It will provide a customized and individual learning experience. Okay, maybe the “internet” alone won’t start the revolution, but it definitely facilitates it. Producers of educational media content already provide fully customizable websites that utilize learning management systems that let you choose what you learn, when you want to learn it. … this means that you get more bang for your buck. Which is more than you can say for the “established” educational institutions that just bark out education in hopes that you’ll keep returning. The future of education online is bright. The things we do with the internet can transform education. It can transform the world.
…
Here is one scenario:
UVU gets rid of the physical school except for one building used to house administration and an office for each teacher. Each teacher is provided with computers, webcams, microphones and other equipment. The teachers now have resources to teach lessons live, record them, and archive them for students to view at a later time. Teachers also have virtual office hours where they can chat with students, they all use email, and have personal LMS tracking their own progress. (customized and specific to the school; and better than Moodle or Blackboard) Students collaborate online.
For those of us in ed tech, nothing here is really new, but there is a palpable frustration re. the absence of teachers’ use of very basic networked technologies. This is the future he’s talking about; when I was an undergrad over 12 years ago I wanted many of the same things! Speaking of being frustrated with teachers, what he said next really grabbed me:
[I] don’t think that enough effort is being put into developing the tools that would empower us as students…
The implication here should have been obvious: if the teachers are not satisfying the students needs, at the very least students should be given tools they need to empower themselves.
Today Blackboard announced that it has acquired ANGEL Learning, Inc., producer of one of the most widely used course management system (CMS) in US higher education (according to ITC’s March 2009 Distance Education survey, ANGEL was 2nd only to Blackboard+WebCT). In 2005 Blackboard acquired its primary rival WebCT, making it quite possibly the number one CMS provider to higher education institutions in the USA. read more
It was a gorgeously sweet-smelling rainy day, but I managed to bring
myself into the confines of a BYU classroom to attend David
Wiley's IPT 692R: Intro to Open Education. Today we're looking
at how an institution, BYU in particular, might approach institutional
policy and practice supportive of open licensing of teaching materials
and research publications read more
Ever been annoyed by Blackboard Vista’s (or Campus Edition 6+’s) rendering of your XHTML + CSS web pages? Yeah, me too–especially on Internet Explorer. This happens because Bb Vista triggers a browser’s quirks mode in spite of DOCTYPEs and validated markup read more
In David Wiley’s IPT 692r - Intro to Open Ed course students have fragmented into two small groups, each of which has chosen to research and catalog appropriate open resources that may be used to fulfill learning objectives for one of the secondary education core curricula for the state of Utah. As I have begun searching for, tagging, and sharing resources, I’ve begun to consider the long-enduring web question: link or copy? read more
The UVU campus is nearly uninhabited today as we swing into spring break. There’s no spring break at BYU, though, so I took advantage of my lightened workload to make it up to David Wiley’s IPT 692r - Intro to Open Ed course early, motivated in part by the fact that Russ Carlson, President of Blackboard, would be joining us in a discussion of the future of the learning management system (LMS) with respect to open education read more
Ignite Salt Lake 2, “a community event celebrating the passion and creativity of geek culture” that sounds quite a bit like pecha kucha, is happening March 26th, 2009 at Brewvies Cinema Pub in Salt Lake City, Utah (677 South 200 West).
I didn’t go to Ignite 1, but a 2-hour series of 5-minute presentations (20 slides or less) sounds like the best-ever format for a geek get-together.
Question: will Brewvies’ grill be open for business?
Ron Hammond sent me this interesting introductory interview with Shai Reshef, founder of University of the People. University of the People is a free, open-access online university that relies on social networking, self-directed learning, and self-forming online communities:
These notes pertain to Brian Lamb’s keynote on Feb 23, 2009 in Portland, Oregon at the ITC 2009 e-Learning conference. Resource/pres page: http://blogs.ubc.ca/open/open-up/ read more
Today’s session of BYU’s IPT 692R was a collaborative workshop day. The following are merely my contributions to the Google Doc, posted as per Dr. Wiley’s request read more
At the start of today’s class session of Dr. David Wiley’s IPT 692R at BYU, Aaron offered thanks for tithe payer contributions to BYU. In response David shoots, “Let’s figure out a way to give the tithe payer a little something back.” read more