A collection of curated items:


 

Socratic questioning: 30 thought-provoking questions to ask your students — from opencolleges.edu.au by Saga Briggs

 

 

Open Educational Resources – from the Babson Survey Research Group by I. Elaine Allen, Ph.D. and Jeff Seaman, Ph.D.

Opening the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014

This report, funded by a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation with additional support from Pearson, examines the attitudes, opinions, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) among teaching faculty in U.S. higher education. Some of the key findings:

 

Opening the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014

 

 

Katie Novak: Universal Design for Learning, an introduction — from edtalks.org
Dr Katie Novak is a Reading curriculum coordinator and an independent ‘Universal Design for Learning’ (UDL) consultant. Universal Design for Learning is a framework that allows teachers to meet the needs of all learners in the classroom, and in this keynote speech at ULearn14 Katie outlines the background to UDL and demonstrates how UDL enables teachers to take rigorous curriculum and make it accessible to all students.

Related:
What is UDL?
UDL Guidelines

 

 

 

Five inspiring EdTekTalks — from iste.org by Diana Fingal

Harvard researchers spent six years studying innovative entrepreneurs to find out how their creative processes work. What they found was that the number one skill all innovators practice regularly is connecting across a variety of disciplines. In other words, innovators are people who cross-pollinate, or use ideas from other industries to spark their own creativity.

With that in mind, ISTE reached out to inspiring people from a range of fields and asked them to share their insights in mini-keynotes called EdTekTalks. This provocative series of five talks includes futurists, designers and entrepreneurs from beyond the world of ed tech.

 

 

Berklee College of Music Opens Major WSDG-Designed Audio Teaching Complex in 160 Mass. Ave. Tower — from aeccafe.com; via @eduwiretech

Excerpt:

BOSTON, MASS.  Berklee College of Music opened the doors to its 160 Massachusetts Avenue,residence tower in January 2014.  The building now features one of the largest, most progressive, and versatile professional audio teaching/production/performance complexes in the U.S.  Over three years and $100 million have been invested in the development and construction of this cusp point educational compound.  Situated over four dedicated floors in a striking, sixteen-story, 155,000 sq. ft.  William Rawn Associates building, the ten-studio Walters-Storyk Design Group – designed, audio education component represents a pinnacle of contemporary studio planning.

Berklee-College-of-Music---new-100M-building-nov2014

 

7 Simple Ways You Can Help Students Pay Attention In A Traditional Classroom — from teachthought.com

  1. Use the 10:2 method (2 minutes of response for every 10 minutes of instruction.)
  2. Incorporate movement into your lessons
  3. Pick up the pace
  4. Provide frequent feedback
  5. Allow 5-7 seconds of “think time”
  6. Have students use the 3-2-1 method of summarizing
  7. Periodically pause mid-sentence

 

 

 

Oculus Connect Videos and Presentations Online — from oculus.com

 

 

Excerpt:

All the keynotes, panels, and developer sessions from Connect are now available to watch online. The slides from each session are also available for download from the Connect site under the “Schedule” section.  Complete list of the keynotes, panels, and developer sessions from Connect:

Keynotes:

  • Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell — Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe and VP of Product Nate Mitchell officially open Connect with their Keynote discussing Oculus, the Gear VR, and the newest prototype: Crescent Bay.
  • Michael Abrash  — Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash discusses perception in virtual reality, the future of VR, and what that means for developers.
  • John Carmack — Oculus CTO John Carmack discusses the Gear VR and shares development stories at Oculus Connect.

.

Keynote Panel:

.

Developer Sessions:

 

 

 

Related items:

 

 

Last week I attended the 20th Annual Online Learning Consortium International Conference.  While there, I was inspired by an excellent presentation entitled, “A Disruptive Innovation: MSU’s Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse – Are You Ready to Survive a New Way of Learning?“   The four team members from Michigan State University included:

  • Glenn R. Stutzky | Course Instructor
  • Keesa V. Muhammad | Instructional Designer
  • Christopher Irvin | Instructional Designer
  • Hailey Mooney | Course Librarian

Check out the intro clip on the website about the course:

 

MSUZombie-Oct2014

 

From the description for the presentation:

This session highlights MSU’s award winning, groundbreaking online course that fuses social theory, filmmaking, social media, and viral marketing while students survive an apocalyptic event. http://zombie.msu.edu/

MSU created and used powerful digital storytelling and multimedia to overlay real, experiential, immersive learning. Important content was relayed, but in a way that drew upon your emotions, your ability to solve problems and navigate in a world where you didn’t have all of the information, your ability to work with others, and more.

“This innovative course integrates current research and science on catastrophes and human behavior together with the idea of a zombie apocalypse. In doing so, we actively engage with students as they think about the nature, scope, and impact of catastrophic events on individuals, families, societies, civilizations, and the Earth itself.”

“Our innovative approach to teaching and learning features: students as active participants, the instructor becomes the facilitator, storytelling replaces lectures, zombies become the catalyst of teaching, a “zombrarian” (librarian) drives research, and the students emerge as digital storytellers as a way of assessing their own learning.”

Others outside MUS have found out about the course and have requested access to it. As a result of this, they’ve opened it up to non-credit seeking participants and now various people from police forces, Centers for Disease Control, and others are able to take the course. To make this learning experience even more accessible, the cost has been greatly reduced: from $1600+ to just $500. (So this talented team is not only offering powerful pedagogies, but also significant monetary contributions to the university as well.)

For me, the key thing here is that this course represents what I believe is the direction that’s starting to really pull ahead of the pack and, if done well, will likely crush most of the other directions/approaches.  And that is the use of teams to create, deliver, teach, and assess content – i.e., team-based learning approaches.

So many of the sessions involved professional development for professors and teachers – and much of this is appropriate. However, in the majority of cases, individual efforts aren’t enough anymore.  Few people can bring to the table what a talented, experienced group of specialists are able to bring.  Individual efforts aren’t able to compete with team-based content creation and delivery anymore — and this is especially true online, whereby multiple disciplines are immediately invoked once content hits the digital realm.

In this case, the team was composed of:

  • The professor
  • Two Instructional Designers
  • and a librarian

The team:

  • Developed websites
  • Designed their own logo
  • Marketed the course w/ a zombie walking around campus w/ brochures and a walking billboard
  • Used a Twitter stream
  • Used a tool called Pensu for their students’ individual journals
  • Made extensive use of YouTube and digital storytelling
  • Coined a new acronym called MOLIE – multimedia online learning immersive experience
  • Used game-like features, such as the development of a code that was found which revealed key information (which was optional, but was very helpful to those who figured it out).  The team made it so that the course ended differently for each group, depending upon what the teams’ decisions were through the weeks
  • Used some 3D apps to make movies more realistic and to create new environments
  • Continually presented new clues for students to investigate.  Each team had a Team Leader that posted their team’s decisions on YouTube.

They encouraged us to:
THINK BIG!  Get as creative as you can, and only pull back if the “suits” make you!  Step outside the box!  Take risks!  “If an idea has life, water it. Others will check it out and get involved.”

In their case, the idea originated with an innovative, risk-taking professor willing to experiment – and who started the presentation with the following soliloquy:

Syllabi are EVIL

Syllabi are EVIL and they must die!
Listen to me closely and I’ll tell you why.
Just want students to know what is known?
See what’s been seen?
Go – where we’ve been going?
Then the Syllabus is your friend,
cuz you know exactly where you’ll end.
But if you want to go somewhere new,
see colors beyond Red, Green, and Blue.
Then take out your Syllabus and tear-it-in-half,
now uncertainty has become your path.
Be not afraid because you’ll find,
the most amazing things from Creative Minds,
who have been set free to FLY,
once untethered from the Syllabi.

Glenn Stutzky
Premiered at the 2014
Online Learning Consortium International Conference
October 29, 2014

 

 

They started with something that wasn’t polished, but it’s been an iterative approach over the semesters…and they continue to build on it.

I congratulated the team there — and do so again here. Excellent, wonderful work!

 


By the way, what would a creative movie-like trailer look like for your course?


 

 

The amazing ways new tech shapes storytelling — from stuff.tv by Stephen Graves

Excerpt:

From the moment some singer-poet livened up his verse performances with a musical instrument, technology has changed entertainment. The printing press, theatrical lighting, the cinema, radio, cinematic sound – they’ve all either impacted on existing storytelling forms, or created whole new ones.

In recent years, the arrival of digital formats and non-linear editing changed TV. Existing TV formats like drama benefited from the same level of technical polish as films; and at the same time, the ability to shoot and edit large amounts of footage quickly and cheaply created a whole new form of storytelling – reality TV.

…

Streaming media’s one thing – but the biggest tech leap in years is, of course, your smartphone. Texting during films may infuriate but whipping your phone out in the cinema may become an integral part of the story: the 2013 film App used a second-screen app to display extra layers of narrative, synced to the film’s soundtrack. There are books that use second-screen apps: last year’s Night Film lets you scan tags in the physical book to unlock extra content, including mocked-up websites and trailers.

 

 

The amazing ways new tech shapes storytelling

 

 

 

Also see:

 

TextingInTV-Film-Romano-Aug2014

 

Excerpt from A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film — by Tony Zhou

Is there a better way of showing a text message in a film? How about the internet? Even though we’re well into the digital age, film is still ineffective at depicting the world we live in. Maybe the solution lies not in content, but in form.

 

 

From DSC:
With a shout out/thanks to Krista Spahr,
Senior Instructional Designer at Calvin College, for this resource

 

Transmedia and education: How transmedia is changing the way we learn — from thedigitalshift.com by Carolyn Sun

 

From

Transmedia -Illustration By Oanh Le

 

 

Excerpt:

Transmedia, a broad descriptive word that literally translated means “across media” and encompasses many strategies that transverse industries, is generally regarded as the use of multiple media platforms to tell a story or story experience. Though the word “transmedia” is thought to have entertainment franchise origins, its adaptation for education purposes is both valuable and becoming more and more common. While teachers like Sansing are using coding and programming in their language arts instruction, others are taking advantage of increasingly sophisticated apps and interactive media for classroom use.

 

 

Also see:

  • The Science of Storytelling [Infographic] The chemical and psychological makeup of our minds affects how we consume content: Our brains are wired to connect with compelling stories.
 

Reinventing libraries for ‘hanging out, messing around and geeking out’ — from CNN.com by Emanuella Grinberg

Excerpt:

The staff takes special pride in its mentor-led activities, offered in partnerships with various community organizations: a spoken word workshop, a video game program and a makerspace, or workshop, where teens create birdcages, duct tape wallets and other art projects.

It might be a library, but for 18-year-old Alexis Woodward, the atmosphere is more like a “family reunion,” she said.

“It’s always packed until it closes. Everybody goes to the library after school,” said Woodward, who began participating in the spoken word program when she was 14.

 

ReinventingLibraries-CNN-June2014

 

 

New children’s book combines modern technology and storytelling — from iwantpop.com by

 Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

MONTREAL, April 15, 2014 /IWANTPOP.COM/ — Jonathan Belisle, a Montreal teacher, script writer and web entrepreneur, has developed the ultimate storytelling system. It’s a combination of old and new, traditional mythology and modern technology, a mixture of fantasy and reality.

Wuxia the Fox is a transmedia project that comes as an illustrated book paired with an iPad app. “The app reacts to what it hears and sees,” explained Belisle. “As you read the story, the app adds the music and sound effects, based on where you are in the story and the tone of your voice. It’s the future of children’s books.”

The iPad app triggers new scenes of content using image recognition, and transforms into a musical instrument when interacting with small wooden blocks provided with the book.

 

Also see:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonathanbelisle/wuxia-the-fox-augmented-book-and-ipad-app

 

 

 

Also, another interesting item:

Predicting the future of cinema: No limits — and the web wins — from variety.com by David Cohen

Excerpt:

He said today’s tech already offers hints of what the future will bring: screens large and small that can duplicate nearly anything the eye can perceive; cameras that let filmmakers choose framing, depth of field, focus and brightness in post, rather than on the day of shooting; fast networks that permit “collaboration at the speed of thought” and allow people to work together regardless of how far apart they are.

 

 

oculus rift Facebook

 

 

 

Why you should try video feedback with students — from edudemic.com by bcotmedia; with thanks to Tim Pixley’s Scoop on this

Excerpt:

…the rationale being that the learners, so used to consuming information from a resource-rich moving image centred multimedia experience, are provided with more detailed, personalised, and engaging feedback that is in keeping with the way they choose to consume information in their free time.

Similarly, by asking learners to submit video responses themselves (on phones/ vine/ webcams) they too are encouraged to embrace the technology driven environment of industry, enhance their digital literacy, demonstrate ICT competency, and develop their own communication skills in a real differentiated option to achieve criteria beyond the traditionalist (written) assessment.

 

App Ed Review

 

APPEdReview-April2014

 

From the About Us page (emphasis DSC):

App Ed Review is a free searchable database of educational app reviews designed to support classroom teachers finding and using apps effectively in their teaching practice. In its database, each app review includes:

  • A brief, original description of the app;
  • A classification of the app based on its purpose;
  • Three or more ideas for how the app could be used in the classroom;
  • A comprehensive app evaluation;
  • The app’s target audience;
  • Subject areas where the app can be used; and,
  • The cost of the app.

 

 

Also see the Global Education Database:

 

GlobalEducationDatabase-Feb2014

 

From the About Us page:

It’s our belief that digital technologies will utterly change the way education is delivered and consumed over the next decade. We also reckon that this large-scale disruption doesn’t come with an instruction manual. And we’d like GEDB to be part of the answer to that.

It’s the pulling together of a number of different ways in which all those involved in education (teachers, parents, administrators, students) can make some sense of the huge changes going on around them. So there’s consumer reviews of technologies, a forum for advice, an aggregation of the most important EdTech news and online courses for users to equip themselves with digital skills. Backed by a growing community on social media (here, here and here for starters).

It’s a fast-track to digital literacy in the education industry.

GEDB has been pulled together by California residents Jeff Dunn, co-founder of Edudemic, and Katie Dunn, the other Edudemic co-founder, and, across the Atlantic in London, Jimmy Leach, a former habitue of digital government and media circles.

 

 

Addendum:

Favorite educational iPad apps that are also on Android — from the Learning in Hand blog by Tony Vincent

 

Layar’s industry leading Augmented Reality app now available on Google Glass — from layar.com

Excerp:

AMSTERDAM, NEW YORK, TORONTO – March 19th, 2014 – Layar, the world’s number one provider of Augmented Reality (AR) and Interactive Print products and services, today announced the availability of its industry leading mobile app on Google Glass. Glass users can go to Layar.com/Glass to download the app and see instructions for how to install it. By just saying “Ok Glass, scan this,” users can easily experience any of the platform’s over 200,000 Interactive Print pages and 6,000 location-based Geo Layers.

With Interactive Print, static print content comes alive with videos, photo slideshows, links to buy and share and immersive 3D experiences. Glass users can now access Layar’s rapidly growing platform of Interactive Print campaigns, including magazines like Men’s Health, Inc. and Glamour, as well as newspapers, advertising, art and more. Geo Layers allow users to see location-based information – including points-of-interest like local real restate listings, geotagged media like nearby photos and tweets, 3D art and more – in an augmented, “heads up” view using the camera on the Glass device.

 

Excerpt of video:

LayarOnGoogleGlass-March2014

 

From DSC:
Using Layar’s Creator  app, there could be numerous and creative applications of these technologies within the realm of education.  For example, in a Chemistry class, one could have printouts of some of the types of equipment one would use in an experiment.

 

TypesOfChemEquipment

 

Looking at a particular piece of paper (and having loaded the app) would trigger a pop-up with that piece of equipment’s name, function, and/or other information as well as which step(s) of the experiment that you will be using that piece of equipment on.

Or, one could see instructions for how to put things together using this combination of tools. A set of printed directions could pop up a quick video for how to execute that step of the directions. (I sure could have used that sort of help in putting together our daughter’s crib I tell ya!)

 

 

 

 

How do your learning spaces measure up? — from campustechnology.com by David Raths

Excerpt:

Now, however, two separate yet complementary initiatives under development promise to fill that void: 1) FLEXspace, an interactive online database with images and videos of learning spaces, provides a searchable collection of best practices in active learning design, and 2) the Learning Space Rating System (LSRS) seeks to provide a set of measurable criteria to assess how well classroom design supports and enables active learning activities.

 

 

Also see:

FlexSpace-March2014

Excerpt:

The Flexible Learning Environments eXchange – FLEXspace – is a robust, open access repository populated with examples of learning spaces.  It contains high resolution images and related information that describes detailed attributes of these spaces from institutions across the globe.

The incentive for participation is to showcase innovative design solutions open to peer review ranking and comments.  As more contributions are received, the repository will emerge into a very useful planning resource for education and supporting entities at multiple levels.

 

Somewhat related/also see:

 

 

Bringing the Wonder of the Web to Video (emphasis DSC)
Our mission is to usher in a new age of expression.

Anyone can easily create professional-quality videos combined with all the interactivity you expect to find inside a browser. We call these TouchCasts, a new medium that looks like video, but feels like the web.

— Per TouchCast.com


 

TouchCast in Education

 

TouchCast-in-Education1

 

TouchCast-in-Education2

 

TouchCast-in-Education3

 

 

Also see:

 

TVs are becoming the next app battleground — from by Emily Adler

Excerpt:

The app store phenomenon, centered on smartphones and tablets, has been the biggest story in software for the past five years.

Its next logical destination: the living room, via smart TVs and set-top boxes connected to the Internet.

…

  • The smart TV app revolution is inevitable: People spend four hours in front of their TVs in the U.S., and 63% of all global ad spending goes to TVs. The old guard, represented by cable and entertainment conglomerates, will not be able to fend off improvements like those that apps are bringing to mobile phones.
    .
  • The smart TV revolution will not just be led by new TVs with built-in Internet connections, it will also result from consumer adoption of less expensive game consoles or set-top boxes like Roku and Apple TV, which transform traditional TVs into smart TVs with access to app stores. At least 20% of U.S. consumers already have their TVs connected in one of these ways.

 

From DSC:

  1. Keep an eye on the convergence of the telephone, the television, and the computer.
    .
  2. Start thinking of ways that you could provide learning/educationally-based experiences with second screen apps. What would that experience look and act like?
    .
  3. If such “channels” come to fruition — and happen to coincide with MOOCs and advances in cognitive computing (such as IBM’s Watson) — the word disruption comes to mind.
    .
  4. The trick, then, will be to offer streams of content that are relevant, and up-to-date.
    .
  5. Such a platform could be used in learning hubs throughout the world, as well as in hybrid/blended classrooms — while also addressing lifelong learners from their living rooms.
    .
  6. Such a platform could take Communities of Practice to an entirely new level.

 

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

 

streams-of-content-blue-overlay

 

 

 

Addendum/also see:

 

IoE-SmartTVs-Feb2014

 

 

 

Mesmerizing fairy tale on the power of transmedia storytelling — from frametales.com by DRAFTFCB Madrid and posted by Filip Coertjens; with thanks to the Scoop on this from Laura Fleming (@NMHS_lms)

Cinderella2Dot0-Jan2014

 

BBC iWonder: Introducing Interactive Guides — from bbc.co.uk by Andrew Pipes

See this piece as an example of what they’ve come up with.

 

interactive guides_3_screens.jpg

Interactive guides on three screens

The BBC article also pointed to a bit older,
but very creative piece from the NYT entitled:
Snow Fall

 

Transmedia Story Stream: Don’t just read a book–play it! — from bleedingcool.com by Dan Wickline; with thanks to Digital Rocking Chair for the Scoop on this

Excerpt:

Instead of downloading a static book, Transmedia Story Stream allows readers to log into story worlds filled with fans, activities, and extended narrative that can include video, audio, casual video games or live gatherings. And just like in a video game, the book will award fans for participating in the story. Fans can earn points and badges, collect digital goodies to share, earn money for spreading word of mouth, participate in a live chat with an author or illustrator right in the book or win a phone call with a character in a story.

 

TSS_assured_destruction

 

Transmedia Story Stream

 

TransmediaStoryStream-Jan2014

 

Also see:

 

CleverWayToReopenRennovatedSpace-Amsterdam-April2013

 
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