[technology and teachers]

I just glimpsed this ad. while waiting for an educational site to load. I love the tag line: "no teacher left behind." Precisely. If the educators don't know how to use new media technology, how can they help the students? Educators, in general, require more support from heads of institutions (and probably governments for funding assistance too).

Although, of course, I don't think we should be scared of technology as intimated in the above image.

[your amazing brain]

I came across this inspiring video via @ontarioliteracy on twitter:

[new media & innovative curriculum]

Via New Media Literacies Blog:

New Media Literacies Newsletter NML Announces its Monthly Webinar Series

Webinar Series NML has recently partnered with New Hampshire's Department of Education to facilitate a year-long professional development initiative using the new media literacies as a springboard for developing innovative curriculum. Our goal is to help foster a broader perspective of what it means to be media literate in the digital age, and offer tools for translating the social skills and cultural competencies outlined in the white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006) into meaningful and engaging learning experiences in the classroom and beyond. These NH educators are exploring the urgent challenges that 21st Century learners face by expanding their own learning experiences using a participatory, digital model of professional develmopment. In this context, educators are able to practice their own skills as teachers by creating, collaborating, connecting, and circulating with one another in an interactive, multi-media environment. Not only are they developing new materials for their own schools and districts, but also an 8-part webinar series focused on a comprehensive, practical understanding of the NML skills for the larger educational community. The 8-part series will begin on February 11th and share the framework of social skills and cultural competencies which shapes the work of New Media Literacies, and illustrate the skills by looking more closely at learning through such cultural phenomenon as computer game guilds, youtube video production, Wikipedia, fan fiction, Second Life and other virtual worlds, music remixing, social network sites, and cosplay. Each webinar will examine closely new curricular materials which have emerged from New Media Literacies, Global Kids, Harvard's GoodPlay Project, Common Sense Media, the George Lucas Foundation, and other projects which are seeking to introduce these skills into contemporary educational practices and leave participants with plenty of opportunities to take the material, information and methods back into their classroom. We will host the first webinar on Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 7pm EST and focus on the new media literacies, judgment and appropriation as well as copyright, fair use, and creative commons. Our special guests will be Flourish Klink, a graduate student at MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program, and Erin Reilly, NML Research Director. See the full listing of upcoming webinars and get information on how to join the sessions at http://projectnml.ning.com/page/nmls-monthly-webinar-series.

[assessment in the digital age]

Via hastac:




How to grade, assess, teach, learn and structure the learning experience for students in the digital age?

Many interesting projects are working on this question, and we invite you to share others with us below. For example:

- The Learning Record, a portfolio-based evaluation system designed to emphasize student learning, not product-based outcomes
- Nils Peterson and his colleagues at the Center for Teaching, Learning, & Technology (at Washington State University) have been working on developing new assessment strategies and forms of classroom engagement
- Pecha Kucha in the classroom - reframing the presentation from the unstructured long-form speech to the conversation-starting breakdown
- Digital Youth Research was a 3 year project to investigate how kids use technology and media in their everyday learning. They have reports available on their site, and the group recently published a book, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out. 
- Re-mediating assessment, a blog considering participatory assessment models in education, authored by Daniel T. Hickey, Michelle Honeyford, and Jenna McWilliams (Indiana University).
 - The DML Research Hub, funded by a MacArthur grant, is supporting two projects. One, lead by Mimi Ito, is called Distributed Learning Research Network, and works on distributed learning that happens in social environments. The other, lead by Joseph Kahne, is called Youth, New Media, and Public Participation Research Network, and investigates the ways that youth, through social and political participation in online communities, affects their capacity and motivation to engage in social and political issues.
 - Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg's report, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (also available as a free PDF). The report found that students are learning in deeply collective and innovative ways, and that learning institutions - schools - have to keep up or risk obsolescence. They offer ten principles for redesigning learning institutions and pedagogical systems to better reflect the way students learn today. The book-length version of the project, The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age will be coming out in 2010.

 Note: Image on flickr by violet.blue

[pedagogy news]

Interesting pedagogical tidbits:

State law requires digital college textbooks by 2020

"Companies that sell textbooks to California universities must offer electronic versions by 2020, under a new state law.

Electronic books are generally less expensive, better for the environment and often more suited to the way today’s students study, proponents say. And a Kindle weighs a whole lot less than a backpack full of 500-page textbooks.

'Think about kids carrying around all these books — or just carrying a Kindle wherever you go,” said Joan Wines, an English professor at California Lutheran University who is doing research on digital textbooks.'"

Read the article here.

U.K. Universities are now (also) facing huge classes:


Cash-starved universities will have huge classes, says union

"Universities in the UK will be among the most overcrowded in the world within three years if savage government cuts to higher education go ahead, ­academics warned today.


The lecturers' union, UCU, said more than £900m of cuts announced last month would fill lecture halls with "some of the biggest class sizes in the world" by 2013.


A report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development published last year shows that while the average ratio of students to lecturers in UK universities is 17.6, in OECD countries the average is 15.3.


Sally Hunt, the union's general secretary, said that "the dreams of many hardworking parents for their kids to go to university ... will be over". The cuts would send at least 14,000 academics to the dole queue.


The warning comes after top universities accused Gordon Brown of jeopardising 800 years of higher education, saying the cuts – which the Institute for Fiscal Studies says may reach £2.5bn – would 'bring them to their knees.'"

Read this entire article at the Guardian.

[special issue of e-learning and digital media]

Here's a call for papers pertinent to all those educators working with new media (via Chris Joseph's blog):

Special issue of E-Learning and Digital Media, Editor Dr. Norm Friesen







Media today are everywhere. From educational gaming through portable e-texts to cell phones ringing in class, it seems we can’t escape. Nor can we live without media; instead, they form a kind of ecology that we inhabit. In addition, media have an epistemological function: they shape both what we know and how we come to know it: “Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world in which we live,” as Niklas Luhman observed, “we know through… media.”






Speaking of media in education suggests a range of possibilities that are different from what is suggested by educational technology (electronic, digital or otherwise). Describing computers and the Internet specifically as digital media casts their role not as mental tools to be integrated into instruction, but as “forms” and “cultures” requiring “literacies” or acculturation. In this way, speaking of media in education brings instructional environments more closely together with the world outside. Explorations of these terms and possibilities have been initiated by the likes of Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman and Elizabeth Eisenstein, and they are also touched upon in research on media literacies. However, more recent theoretical developments and accelerated mediatic change –from blogging through networked gaming to texting and sexting– offer innumerable opportunities for further exploration.






This special issue of E-Learning and Digital Media invites contributions that focus on media, particularly digital media, and their ecological and epistemological ramifications. Specific topics may include:


· School and classroom as media (ecologies) and the changing world outside
· Digital challenges to media literacy and literacies
· Media socialization and media education
· Histories of media and education
· The epistemological character of (new) media



Submissions for this special issue are due May 1, 2010


Length of submissions: generally 6000-8000 words


Further submission and formatting information is available at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/howtocontribute.asp


Direct comments and questions to: nfriesen[at]tru.ca

[inanimate alice = the future of the novel]

The Future of the Novel is Digital: Interactive Narrative 'Inanimate Alice' Featured in Epic Documentary TV Series

VANCOUVER, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Inanimate Alice, the award-winning multimedia title from novelist Kate Pullinger, recent recipient of the Governor General's Award for fiction, features in the final episode of TVO's epic documentary series Empire of the Word broadcasting December 16, in Canada.

Demonstrating an entertaining new way to read, the interaction of Inanimate Alice makes for an immersive reading experience. Being interspersed with puzzles and games, simple to start with, growing more complex with each episode as the story unfolds, the series has a layered structure and a multi-tasking environment that digital natives feel is their territory and which teachers can employ for reading inspiration.

Inanimate Alice may feel more like playing a casual game than reading a novel, however a richly endowed story is at the heart of the experience. "Inanimate Alice has been created as a world story," said series producer Ian Harper. "It is about peoples and places and the world young people experience today. It reaches beyond borders and the constraints of language and religion."
"What is really exciting is for us to receive messages from young students on their home computers telling us they have been working on Inanimate Alice at school and asking when the next episode will be available," said Harper.

The teaching resources [by me!] associated with the Inanimate Alice series have been accessed by Departments of Education, National Libraries and major universities around the world. In Australia, the series is seen as "demonstrating an innovative way of presenting resources that support learning in the areas of English Literacy and Information and Communications Technology." Elsewhere, teachers are using episodes for improvement in English Language training. "No matter how hard we try we cannot get young students to read from books," a teacher from Singapore noted.

Harper commented, "It is gratifying to see the series being deployed across wide age ranges, encouraging the hard-to-engage while inspiring creative writing amongst the gifted. While we are immersed in the discussion about what shape the books of the future will take, we'd like to see the series be a kick-start for more traditional forms of reading."

http://www.inanimatealice.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/inanimatealice
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Inanimate-Alice/125007357446

Investors interested in learning more about Inanimate Alice contact, Ian Harper, harperjian@gmail.com

[end of term marking!]

This is just too eloquent:





NB: I found the image included in Richard Haswell's article "The Complexities of Responding to Student Writing" and he references the image as: Composition Chronicle: Newsletter for Writing Teachers 8 (3), April 1995, p. 11.

[roots of reading]

[open education]

Anna Batchelder, Founder of Bon Education, has an interesting post on open education at Literacy is Priceless:

"'The advent of the Web brings the ability to disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the playing field…We’re changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge.' - Cathy Casserly, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
With an increasing number of educators putting their lessons, curricula and learning objects online for others to use, customize and share, the open education movement is at a tipping point. That said, with so many educational resources available on the Internet, how does one go about finding the “perfect resource for class tomorrow” without losing too much time, money or sleep?
Before we get to the answer of this question, it is important to take a quick step back and understand “the anatomy of open education”…
What is Open Education?
Open education is a term that refers to education in which knowledge, best practices and learning objects (lessons, units, etc.) are shared freely via the Internet for others to use and under many licenses to modify and re-share.
Why Open Education?
The benefits of open education are many (customization, cost-savings, freedom to innovate, etc.), but one of the primary advantages of the open education movement is that of access. Anyone who has an Internet connection via computer or mobile phone can access millions of readings, videos, simulations, lesson plans, interactive courses and more… all for free!
Open Education and Teacher Effectiveness…
Research shows time and time again that teachers have the greatest potential to influence student achievement (North Central Regional Education LaboratoryMcKinsey 2007, Darling-Hammond 1997). Furthermore, the literature indicates that effective teachers tend to exhibit—commitment (to help every child succeed), information-seeking (intellectual curiosity), flexibilitypassion for learning (drive to support student learning) amongst several other traits (UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning 2004, Kemp & Hall, 1992). 2009, (willingness to differentiate), and
Luckily, the ethos of open education goes hand-in-hand with these findings, enabling educators endless opportunities to improve their craft. Thanks to the millions of people actively engaged in sharing their ideas and content online, teachers today have 24-7 access to continued learning opportunities, professional development, lesson planning guides and resources for differentiation. Take one look at sites like Edutopia, Discover Ed, and Connexions and you will be blown away by the number of free resources available to help educators continuously improve the content area knowledge, skills and expertise they bring to the classroom.

Where to Start—Finding the Perfect Open Education Resources for your Classroom

The following is a curated list of open education resources targeted at helping K-12 teachers find classroom and professional development resources quickly, easily and for free:

• Curriki.org—“Curriki is a social entrepreneurship organization that supports the development and free distribution of open source educational materials to improve education worldwide.  The online community gives teachers, students and parents universal access to a wealth of peer-reviewed K-12 curricula, and powerful online collaboration tools”.
• FreeReading.net—“FreeReading is a high-quality, open-source, free reading intervention program addressing literacy development for grades K-3. Schools and teachers everywhere can use the complete, research-based 40-week program for K-1 students, or use the library of lessons to supplement existing curricula in phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. The site is also filled with free, downloadable supplemental materials including flashcards, graphical organizers, illustrated readers, decodable texts, audio files, videos and more”.
• OERCommons.org—“OER Commons has forged alliances with over 120 major content partners to provide a single point of access through which educators and learners can search across collections to access over 24,000 items, find and provide descriptive information about each resource, and retrieve the ones they need. By being ‘open,’ these resources are publicly available for all to use, and principally through Creative Commons licensing, many thousands are legally available for repurposing, modifying and improving”.

To find additional open education resources of note, visit Bon Education.

The Future Cost of Education
A recent post on Mashable, titled, “In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero,” author Josh Catone shares a recent statement by VC and “Hacking Education” organizer Brad Burnham. He writes:
Knowledge is, as the economists say, a non-rival good… If I eat an apple, you cannot also eat that same apple; but if I learn something, there is no reason you cannot also learn that thing. Information goods lend themselves to being created, distributed and consumed on the web. It is not so different from music, or classified advertising, or news.

A nice notion indeed!
To the sharing of knowledge!"

[social media and pedagogy online seminar]

I'm signing up for this online seminar! Social media AND education?! Perfect.


And yes, those are my professional writing students; on computers, with our class blog on the main screen.


Social Media Seminar Series: Trends and Implications for Learning (Online & No Fee)

http://AACE.org/GlobalU/seminars/socialmedia/

Friday, October 30, 2009: 9:00 PM Eastern USA


(World Clock Calculator: http://url.aace.org/ft/200910302100)

Faculty: George Siemens - Learning Technologies Centre, Univ. of Manitoba, Canada
David Cormier - Univ. of Prince Edward Island, Canada

Organised by: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

(http://AACE.org )
Co-sponsored by: Education & Information Technology Library (http://EdITLib.org)
___________________________________________________________

The seminar series, led by George Siemens and David Cormier, is without fee and will include live interactive sessions, in addition to discussions with guest speakers and participants. All sessions are co-sponsored by and will be archived in the Education & Information Technology Library (EdITLib).

Social media and emerging technologies are gaining increased attention for use in education. The list of tools grows daily.

Examples: blogs, wikis, Ning, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, cloud computing, surface computing, mobile learning, and so on.

"Social Media: Trends and Implications for Learning" will explore the impact of new technologies, research, and related projects.

What does it all mean? Do long term trends and change cycles exist in the constant change? What patterns are emerging?

And, perhaps most importantly, should academics and education leaders respond?


"Social Media" will explore emerging technological and related research trends from a perspective of social and networked learning theory.

Finding coherence in the midst of rapid changes is increasingly difficult. This monthly session will create a forum for educators to gather, present, and discuss the future impact of today's trends.



Links for items discussed during the seminars can be found here on Delicious.

_______________________________________________

To receive event updates, signup at: http://AACE.org/GlobalU/seminars/socialmedia/
Seminar Recordings: http://EdITLib.org/GlobalU/
Seminar Community: http://www.AACEConnect.org/group/socialmedia
________________________________________________

[kids online: new publication]

"Kids Online: Opportunities and Risks for Children", edited by Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon (Bristol: Policy Press). 

The book provides an up to date account of how children use the internet in Europe, including such topical issues as social networking, risky contacts, parental mediation, media literacy and many more.


Ordering information is available here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EUKidsOnline/KidsOnlineflyer.pdf

As Professor Tanya Byron, author of the influential Byron Review into Safer Children in a Digital World says, "Professor Livingstone and colleagues provide extensive evidence-based findings which enable academics, educationalists, policy makers, parents and young people to think beyond anxieties generated by new technologies and make informed decisions about maximizing digital opportunities while managing risks. An impressive and essential book, central to the child digital safety debate."


Expected Results:

• Core findings regarding children’s and parents’ experiences of online technologies, focused on comparisons of children’s and parents’ perceptions of and practices regarding online risk and safety.
  
• Patterns of risk and safety online to be identified following top-down hypothesis testing and bottom-up exploration of relationships among different variables, conducted on a cross-national basis.
  
• Evidence-based policy and research recommendations.
  

Read more here.






Note: top image from Kids Online book site and second image from Teenagers Today site.

[digital materials]

It seems quite apt, following the discussion over at the Transliteracy Research Group blog, that this new publication made its way into my inbox.




Reading Erna Kotkamp's chapter on e-learning I find numerous echoes with my own thinking of both transliteracy and pedagogy.


Here is just one, Kotkamp notes:

"According to Dewey, ‘all genuine education comes about through experience’ (Dewey 1938, 13). In a classroom setting this means that the experience of a learner has to be incorporated in the teaching to improve the learning process" (66).

Precisely. As with transliteracy, we learn about it through experience. And then reflecting on the experience - the coming together of modes, views, participatory sections - can be incorporated into the larger understanding of what transliteracy is meaning (gerund because it's under construction).


Digital Material: Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology
Edited by Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, and Mirko Tobias Schäfer


Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media yielded to a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. New Media Studies crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, which begs the question: where do we stand now? Which new issues have emerged now that new media are taken for granted, and which riddles remain unsolved? Is contemporary digital culture indeed all about 'you', or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how it constitutes us as 'you'? From desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to blogging to e-learning, from role-playing games to Cybergoth music to wireless dreams, this timely volume offers a showcase of the most up-to-date research in the field from what may be called a 'digital-materialist' perspective.


The book is available in print from Amsterdam University Press (ISBN 978 908964 0680) and as a PDF file under a Creative Commons License (BY NC ND).

[digital participation: report]

"This review aims to provide a critical introduction to the policies and research on the subjects of digital literacy and digital participation, seeking to show what they mean for classroom practice. Aimed at teachers and practitioners, especially those involved in continuing professional development programmes, and providers of teacher training or practice-based Masters courses, it reviews the major research and evidence on developing digital literacy and digital participation in the classroom.


It highlights the fact that there is extensive theory, conceptual development and policy on digital literacy and digital participation, yet little evidence about how this can be translated into practice. The review aims to support and enable practitioners to start developing informed strategies to promote digital participation in real school settings by introducing them to a range of debates and key concepts and by relating these concepts to practice. It should be used as the basis for supporting the development of teachers’ professional knowledge and skills in the critical use of digital media and technology for learning and for the enhancement of the curriculum. Throughout, examples of existing and emerging practices are included as breakout boxes to illustrate the conceptual content.


The document supports Futurelab’s Digital Participation project, a programme of research and development in collaboration with teachers in primary and secondary schools which seeks to model, trial and evaluate practical strategies for enhancing young people’s digital literacy in the classroom and their development of digital participation for life.


For more details and related documents see:
www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/digital-participation."

Read the entire report here: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/lit_reviews/DigitalParticipation.pdf

[teaching grammar]

As I craft an exciting lesson to help my students cope with the three-hour session, I came across this funny ransom note generator. After discussing what comparatives, superlatives, direct objects, indirect objects and predicates are, I'm going to ask my students to create their own ransom note. I've asked them to bring in newspapers and magazines and I'll supply the scissors. In the end, they'll have used all of the grammatical elements we've learnt.

[new media and pedagogy: call for papers]

Submissions sought for Higher Education, Emerging Technologies, and Community Partnerships, a book edited by Melody Bowdon, PhD (Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Central Florida, USA) and Russell Carpenter, PhD (Director, Noel Studio for Academic Creativity, Eastern Kentucky University, USA) To be published in 2011 by IGI Global.






We seek manuscripts that document and assess partnerships between institutions of higher education and K-12 schools, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and corporations that have been made successful (or even unsuccessful in interesting ways) in part through the use of emerging and evolving digital technologies.

Topics or sites might include

• service-learning; internships; volunteer programs; cooperative
• education; distance-learning; continuing education;
• professional schools such as law, medicine, education, and nursing;
• community development programs including alumni relations and fundraising; sponsored research. 

Technologies might include:

• social networking, 
• webconferencing,
• mobile devices, 
• virtual environments such as SecondLife, 
• course
• management systems, 
• Web 2.0 applications

For the full call, please go to:
http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=714


Proposal Submission Deadline: December 30, 2009
Full Chapter Submission Deadline: February 28, 2010






INQUIRIES, PROPOSALS AND SUBMISSIONS CAN BE SENT ELECTRONICALLY IN MS
WORD TO:
Melody Bowdon, PhD
Department of English
University of Central Florida
(BEmail: mbowdon@mail.ucf.edu


and/or
Russell Carpenter, PhD
Noel Studio for Academic Creativity
Eastern Kentucky University
(Email: russell.carpenter@eku.edu

[Transliteracy in my Classrooms]

Ok, so I'm halfway through the second week of lecturing.  Classes seem to be going well (students are coming to class and participating! yay!) and essays, stories and grammar theory are being studied.


As I flip through the syllabus and note my "blog comment" assignments and "blog post" reflections the word transliteracy flits back and forth in my mind.  Transliteracy of course isn't on the curriculum but neither are blogging or media literacy per se.  Though transliteracy is always under development, I'm feeling a strong pull to encourage students to see their movements from writing essays in class, group presentations, blogging, reading online narratives like Inanimate Alice, and designing posters (tweeting comes later on) as examples of being transliterate. I wonder if they can name their behaviour, their learning might have even more resonance? 


I remind my students that we're participating in the online environment and honing our new/social media (and transliterate) skills because when they enter the workforce, they'll need to be prepared.  Librarian by Day gives some good life examples on the necessity to be transliterate:

"Government agencies are no longer issuing print forms, you have to access them online.  Your health insurance plan was a website and you have an account, when you call they will tell you to go there to get information. Banks are sending alerts and account balance information via text messages. Facebook privacy settings are complex and change frequently. The price of computers is dropping allowing more people to own one. Free WiFi access points are increasing, allowing more people internet access."

If our students don't experience these kinds of movement, from offline to online, how will they learn to be literate (not just trial and error or basic proficiencies)? I feel more and more strongly that helping to develop these transliterate skills needs a place in a classroom (though some, of course, are better equipped than others).  


There are lots of ways to begin. Students can use blog posts as reading or reflective learning journals. They can add comments on to the teacher-managed class blog as a way of interacting in class discussion, sharing ideas and even doing pre or post-reading activities.  The Future of Ed. site suggests venturing into transliteracy by:

• Viewing or posting a video around your lesson plan or around an educational component on TeacherTube
• Trying e-learning for your own professional development
• Learning how The Transliteracies Project is designing technology to improve the experience of reading for people of all backgrounds
• Exploring how archaeology and media can be used in your next class at MetaMedia
• Downloading courses from Stanford University on iTunes, MIT OpenCourseWare, or another open access sites for use in your classrorom

Also from the Future of Ed. site, this video with director of Media X's (at Stanford) Chuck House on the 21st century workforce:

[new media literacies: employment]

Project Manager:
Project NML seeks a detail-oriented, highly organized, and people-person Project Manager to handle the administration of NML's The Educator's House. This international project joins the NML team with Rio de Janiero's Department of Education to implement a new paradigm for teaching that fully integrates the new media literacies across curricula. The overarching mandate for the position is to provide direction for day-to-day project operations and leadership to staff and students involved. In addition to administrative responsibilities, the Project Manager will be part of a collaborative, distributed applied research program and will be required to demonstrate leadership responsibilities across all projects undertaken by the NML program. This position is housed at USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles, California.

Curriculum Specialist:

Project NML seeks a creative, media-savvy, bi-lingual in Brazilian Portuguese and English Curriculum Specialist to collaborate in the design of the strategies, content and structure of NML's The Educator's House. This international project joins the NML team with Rio de Janiero's Department of Education to implement a new paradigm for teaching that fully integrates the new media literacies across curricula. The overarching mandate for the position is to design and produce activities and class learning experiences; and to monitor, analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the resources to achieve the goals and objectives of the project. In addition to these content development responsibilities, the Curriculum Specialist will be part of a collaborative, distributed applied research program and will be required to contribute to writing study results across all projects undertaken by NML.  This position has the potential to be a work-from-home position with regular scheduled meetings with the team both in-person and online.


Programmer:
Project NML seeks a creative and innovative web Applications Programmer to be responsible for the technical analysis and development of applications used in conducting research and providing education strategies. The overarching mandate for the position is to work collaboratively with NML's partner, Platform Shoes Forum, and contribute to design, development and refinement of the Learning Library (http://newmedialiteracies.org/library/).  This position has the potential to be a work-from-home position with regular scheduled meetings with the team both in-person and online. 

[2 English lessons in 1: parody and bad grammar]

So when students ask us why grammar is important, another reason to add to the list includes maturity.  As the singer says:  "I never changed my verbal habits since I was three."

The video url is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj6QqCH7g0Q&feature=player_embedded

This video might be useful with younger classes or maybe ESL or EFL learners?

[getting students to read]

Here is a great video I think I'll be showing all my first year undergrads. Author Jim Trelease (author of The Read-Aloud Handbook) compares reading to the process of cutting down a tree; both need to be done slowly and carefully.

Take a look:

I found this super article via Gerry McKiernan at Reference Notes. Have a read:

New York Times / August 19, 2009, 1:08 pm / Updated: 1:29 pm / Steve Lohr

A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion:

“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.

Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile.

That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,” said Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.

This hardly means that we’ll be saying good-bye to classrooms. But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.

Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools. The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.

[snip]

“We are at an inflection point in online education,” said Philip R. Regier, the dean of Arizona State University’s Online and Extended Campus program. Mr. Regier sees things evolving fairly rapidly, accelerated by the increasing use of social networking technology. More and more, students will help and teach each other, he said. [snip]

“The technology will be used to create learning communities among students in new ways,” Mr. Regier said. “People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”

Source

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/]

Full Text Available At

[http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf]

[university 2.0 approaches]

The future of the university is set to change, we all know that. But how rapidly and in what ways? Peer 2 Peer University is an example of how to "hack education" and upgrade teaching and learning especially for those who cannot afford the more traditional books, laptops and professor time. Note: the future is just beginning, there is a long way to go.

The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well.

For more information:

Introduction

• About P2PU
• Course list
• Team
• Advisory Group
• Frequently Asked Questions

Courses

• Behavioral Economics and Decision Making
• Copyright for Educators
• Introduction to Cyberpunk Literature
• Land Restoration and Afforestation
• Open Creative Nonfiction Writing
• Poker and strategic thinking

Unless otherwise noted, all content on the P2PU site is licensed under:

[new teaching resource: online learning communities]

Of interest to educators: a new release from IGI Global (they published a paper, "Transliteracy as a Unifying Perspective," written by The Transliteracy Research Group - of which I am a part).

Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery
ISBN: 978-1-60566-780-5; 354 pp; August 2009
Published under Information Science Reference an imprint of IGI Global

http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?id=34727

Edited by: J. Ola Lindberg, Mid Sweden University, Sweden and Anders D. Olofsson, Umea University, Sweden


DESCRIPTION

In today's society, the professional development of teachers is urgent due to the constant change in working conditions and the impact that information and communication technologies have in teaching practices.

Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery features innovative applications and solutions useful for teachers in developing knowledge and skills for the integration of technology into everyday teaching practices. This defining collection of field research discusses how technology itself can serve as an important resource in terms of providing arenas for professional development.

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TOPICS COVERED

• Collaborative online professional development
• Computer-supported collaborative learning
• Education delivery
• Knowledge management in education
• Models of online communities
• Online learning communities
• Online pedagogy design and development
• Pedagogies afforded by technology
• Teacher professional development
• Virtual environments

For more information about Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery, you can view the title information sheet at http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/pdf/34727.pdf

To view the Table of Contents and a complete list of contributors online go
to http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=34727&v=tableOfContents.

You can also view the first chapter of the publication at http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/excerpts/34727.pdf


Some other texts also on pedagogy and online learning communities that may be of interest (but note, some might require institutional access):

• Barriers to online teaching in post-secondary institutions: can policy changes fix it?
• Shift happens: Online education as a new paradigm in learning
• Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: designing and delivering e-learning
• Online learning as information delivery: Digital myopia

[cfp: born digital]

Educational Insights (an online journal mostly focused on education) has a call for papers out. Due date for abstracts is 15 of June:

Teresa Dobson, Academic Editor | Michael Boyce, Managing Editor

Born Digital (Contemporary Art and Education)

"Over the last 20 years a new generation of art and literature born as electronic, or borne within distributive digital channels, has developed in tandem with new ways of defining, measuring and decoding them (i.e. reading), and along side new delivery mechanisms for pedagogical methods and practices. Born Digital wishes to explore these new artifacts and their new distributive form in the context of pedagogy and artistic practice.

A wide range of new forms wherein narrative is restructuring and redefining itself are of interest: Blog novels; E-literature; Narrative within locative applications such as google maps and geo-tagging with GPS; RSS poetics; Narrative in the context of mobile games and social media applications such as youtube, flickr and facebook. Likewise, consideration and analysis of the digital artifacts born out these mediums is a concern to us.

We are interested playing with the concept of being Born Digital, taking into account multiple meanings of Born, including: Existing as a result of birth; Having a natural or perfectly suited ability; Existing as a result of a particular situation or feeling; And keeping in mind its homonym Borne, to play with a notion of transport, of delivery, of support and endurance.

Generally, we support submissions using an original approach, which avoid excessive commentary on any canon, and we encourage efforts to express the matter within the structure of the medium itself. That being said, we expect rigorously critical investigation within the parameters of any play.

Please submit your précis by June 15, 2009 to educational.insights@ubc.ca

For more information : born digital"

[digital citizenship: the internet, society & participation]

Today I attended a presentation given by Karen Mossberger (Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago) on Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society and Participation. Overall the presentation was interesting however I don't think the data told us anything really new...but it certainly backs up what we already surmise. Poor people and African-Americans and Latinas/Latinos has less access to computers and the internet and this filters through to less participation in public life (voting was one of the examples). The definition of citizenship put forth was that by T. H. Marshall, basically you need to participate to be a full member of a community. Citizenship is also a "developing institution" according to Marshall. So how to develop citizenship through digital means...well, Mossberger didn't really talk much about this. She concentrated on providing statistics which empirically show the digital divide. It was pretty apalling. In this day and age (here I am, using a computer, on the 'net, blogging) there are people who are too poor, or without sufficient education which in the States seems to mean you're not white...the statistics were incredible. Of course there are poor white people but apparently they are not on the 'net because they're not interested in it. From Mossberger's research, African-Americans connected internet/computer literacy with better jobs etc....and the statistics back this up. The issue of broadband access also came up. Sure people can use computers (for a bit) at a local library etc...but interestingly enough there are certain neighbourhoods where there is no DSL access (i.e. no affordable access) to the internet...only cable. That's another deterrent. I would have been interested to know what the statistics *really* meant in terms of "going online." Was it for checking bus times? What about banking online and using SNS? Mossberger at the end suggested it was more for *entertainment* purposes....but I guess what we're looking at here is not just issues of access (of course) but issues of literacy. *How* to properly navigate that content/information. Mossberger's latest project, results to be publishes as we speak, looks at Chicago neighbourhoods and notes the use of internet. I wonder what that will show. Two things aside from the presentation that I would like to share here.

1. There were 18 people at the presentation today. 16 in the audience (then the speaker and the introducer). Out of the 18 people 7 were women. All were white.
2. Mossberger made this comment at the end re: twitter: "I don't care what movie you saw lastnight. I don't have time for this." Actually, I think twitter (like mobile 'phones, especially if we're talking about financial cost) has it's uses. Just look at how the knowledge of swine flu is spreading/trending via twitter....

Of interest to those working with participation policies, internet access, excluded groups or web 2.0 in general, check out Mez's great article at Futherfield: The Sound of Reality Lag: Versionals are the New Black. See also Mark Pesce's post on Digital Citizenship (scroll down for a comment by Mez).

[the future of curriculum]

I read this article in the guardian with great interest...On the surface some curriculum reforms seem positive: promoting critical digital literacy...but focusing on certain applications per se (like Twitter and Wikipedia) might be a bit too constraining...Twitter is hot now, but in 5 years? Another app. will have come along with which our students (and teachers) should be au fait. Interestingly the new curriculum notes that children need more time to acquire these kinds of skills (ok) and that it's up to each teacher how and when to use these technological tools (of course)...but where is the time to help the teachers themselves come to terms with each new device? Plus, as always it seems, shifting the focus to technology raises more fears about the death of the book: "Computer skills and keyboard skills seem to be as important as handwriting in this. Traditional books and written texts are downplayed in response to web-based learning." I mean, surely digital literacy is not nearly as important as cursive writing...


Read the entire article here and the comments here.

[web 2.0 tools and education]

I've been reading the JISC report on Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in
Higher Education and on page 8 the authors have this useful list of ideas on how to use certain web 2.0 tools to facilitate learning. None of them are new to me but still good ideas. I'd be interested to hear what innovative uses other educators are coming up with.

Podcasts can be used to provide introductory material before lectures, or, more commonly, to record lectures and allow students to listen to the lectures again, either because they were unable to attend, or to reinforce their learning. Podcasts can be used to make lectures redundant while still supplying (possibly didactic) presentations of learning material by lecturers.
· Vidcasts can be used to supply to supply videos of experimental procedures in advance of lab sessions
· Podcasts can be used to supply audio tutorial material and/or exemplar recordings of native speakers to foreign language learners.
· Distribution and sharing of educational media and resources. For example, an art history class could have access to a set of art works via a photo sharing system.
· The ability to comment on and critique each others work; including by people on other courses or at other institutions.
· Flickr allows for annotations to be associated with different areas of an image and for comments to be made on the image as a whole, thereby facilitating teacher explanations, class discussion, and collaborative comment. It could be used for the example above.
· For Flickr, FlickrCC18 is a particularly useful ancillary service that allows users to find Creative Commons licensed images that are freely reusable as educational resources.
· Instructional videos and seminar records can be hosted on video sharing systems. Google Video allows for longer higher quality videos than YouTube, and contains a specific genre of educational video

"Education in every country and in every epoch has always been social in nature. Indeed, by its very essence it could hardly exist as anti-social in anyway. Both in the seminary and in the old high school, in the military schools and in the schools for the daughters of the nobility [...] it was never the teacher or the tutor who did the teaching, but the particular social environment in the school which was created for each individual instance" ~~Vygotsky