NEW -- Journal of Learning Spaces - Volume 1 from December 2011

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From DSC:
Alan November has spoken to these items in the past as well…nice, informative infographic that I saw at Getting Smart (via Sarah Cargill) as she discusses the infographic from HackCollege:

 

Get more out of Google
Created by: HackCollege

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The Scholarly Kitchen - What's hot and cooking in scholarly publishing

 

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Deficit Supercommittee’s failure triggers steep cuts for education and research — from The Chronicle by Kelly Field

Excerpt:

The Congressional supercommittee charged with cutting $1.2-trillion from the federal budget conceded defeat Monday, after its members reached an impasse over taxes and entitlement spending.

The panel’s failure to produce a deficit-reduction plan triggers across-the-board cuts of roughly $1-trillion in discretionary spending over nine years, starting in the 2013 fiscal year. Unless Congress finds a way around the process, the Education Department’s budget will be slashed by $3.54-billion in 2013, according to the Committee for Education Funding, an advocacy group.

While the Pell Grant program is exempt from cuts in the first year, the other student-aid programs will lose $134-million, reducing aid to at least 1.3 million students. Career, technical, and adult education will lose $136-million, affecting 1.4 million students, says the committee.

Studying teacher moves — educationnext.org by Michael Goldstein
A practitioner’s take on what is blocking the research teachers need

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

But there is almost nothing examining the thousands of moves teachers must decide on and execute every school day. Should I ask for raised hands, or cold-call? Should I give a warning or a detention? Do I require this student to attend my afterschool help session, or make it optional? Should I spend 10 minutes grading each five-paragraph essay, 20 minutes, or just not pay attention to time and work on each until it “feels” done?

My point is simply that relative to education policy research, there is very, very little rigorous research on teacher moves. Why? Gates knows it’s more than a lack of raw cash; it’s also about someone taking responsibility for this work. “Who thinks of it [empirical research on teachers] as their business?”  he asked. “The 50 states don’t think of it that way, and schools of education are not about [this type of] research.”

I agree, but I contend there are a number of other barriers. The first is a lack of demand.

A second issue is that researchers don’t worry about teacher time. Education researchers often put forward strategies that make teachers’ lives harder, not easier. Have you ever tried to “differentiate instruction”? When policy experts give a lecture or speak publicly, do they create five different iterations for their varied audience? Probably not.

Free software models how humans move -- from Stanford

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George Siemens 10-21-11 Presentation: Transforming Learning Through Analytics

 

Sample slides/excerpts:

 

George Siemens 10-21-11 Presentation: Transforming Learning Through Analytics

 

 

Best idea for higher ed since about 2002  —  from HASTAC.org by Cathy Davidson

Excerpt:

I just learned about an amazing project (still in Beta) sponsored by the Australian Eight, the eight largest national universities in the country,  called “The Conversation.”  It may well be the most inspiring collaborative project I’ve heard about since about, oh, 2002-2003 (ie I’m joking of course–2002-2003 happens to be when HASTAC went from an “aha!” moment around a conference table to our first actual meeting as a collective; there are tons of other great ideas in higher ed, inc HASTAC’s founding!).   The Conversation translates the best scholarly research into lively journalism.   It makes a giant step towards public intellectualism, taking HASTAC-ish principles of an online network of education innovators learning together in a public and open forum, to their logical (if highly curated) conclusion. Unlike HASTAC, the Conversation’ has a team of professional editors, quite renowned in their collective experience.  They curate and select the best research from many fields produced by specialized academics and recasts it as journalism for the larger public as well as for academics in other fields.   They turn specialized scholarly research written originally for academic experts and peers into accessible, interesting, urgent, and sometimes even delightful fun and creative information for the public at large.

 

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The Conversation   BETA

Academic rigour, journalistic flair

Addendum later on 10/24/11:

  • Here’s an even BIGGER Idea for Higher Ed! —  from HASTAC.org by Cathy Davidson
    Well, after blogging and tweeting yesterday about the tremendous public aggregator of university research in Australia, an online publication called The Conversation, I heard today from lots of people that there is an even BIGGER version already here in the U.S.—and it includes top research from the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia too.  It’s called “Futurity,” and it is wonderful, and, yes, I should have known about it since Duke is one of the universities that cofounded  it, along with Rochester and Stanford.  But somehow I missed it so now take this opportunity to say how fabulous it is (check it out, it really is fabulous), and how now we have to make sure that HASTAC gets involved to make sure there is even more arts and humanities aggregated as part of its “Society and Culture” category.  Here’s the url for Futurity:  http://www.futurity.org/

When the dam breaks… — from learning with ‘e’s by Steve Wheeler

Excerpt:

Publication of research is one of the most important facets of academic life. I can’t stress enough how important it is for good research to be as widely and swiftly disseminated as possible. Without it, our practice is less likely to be informed, and more prone to repeated errors. As a researcher myself, I take this challenge very seriously. Along with other educational researchers, I attempt to identify key issues for investigation and then spend considerable time and energy examining as much of the terrain that surrounds my research question as I can. Once I have analysed the data, I am usually able to arrive at some conclusions and write some form of report, which is likely to include a set of recommendations that I hope will benefit my community of practice. Such findings should be published widely to inform the entire community. This is the way it should be. And yet often, sadly, it just doesn’t happen.

From DSC:
Steve, I was unsuccessful in leaving a comment on your posting here…but I celebrate your walking the talk on this and for pushing the envelop on the proliferation of open access journals. And thanks for making some recommendations in your reports — for taking some stances. I was greatly disappointed in my ID Master’s Program to find how few scholarly articles took any sort of stand and asserted much of anything to move their communities of practice forward.

 

 

The Digital Promise - September 2011

Excerpt:

Digital Promise is an independent 501(c)(3), created through Section 802 of the federal Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, authorizing a nonprofit corporation known as the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies (Digital Promise). According to the statute, Digital Promise’s purpose is “to support a comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.”

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Online marketplace helps professors outsource their lab research — from The Chronicle by Alex Campbell

Excerpt:

Jill Wykosky, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, needed to make some antibodies, but she couldn’t do it all herself.

To help find a lab partner, she tried a new Web site called Science Exchange, posting an ad there saying she needed someone to make peptides to be used as “antigen for monoclonal antibody production.” Within a couple of days, she had bids from seven or eight companies.

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http://scienceexchange.com/

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  • The NMC Announces New Horizon Report Series of Regional Analyses
    Under the umbrella of the NMC Horizon Report, The NMC has launched the Technology Outlook, a new series of regional analyses aimed specifically at understanding both local and global differences in technology uptake, as well as the current and future state of education in different parts of the world. These publications are a product of collaborations between the NMC and innovative organizations across the world that seek to leverage the well-known medium of the NMC Horizon Report to bring important research, trends, and challenges in their regions to light. The Technology Outlook series furthers the NMC’s goal of driving innovation in every part of the world.
Steve Jobs has resigned as Apple CEO "effective immediately"

 

From DSC:
I want to post a thank you note to Mr. Steven P. Jobs, whom you most likely have heard has resigned as Apple’s CEO. Some articles are listed below, but I want to say thank you to Steve and to the employees of Apple who worked at Apple while he was CEO:

  • Thank you for working hard to enhance the world and to make positive impacts to our world!
  • Thank you for painstakingly pursuing perfection, usability, and excellence!
  • Thank you for getting back up on the horse again when you came out of a meeting with Steve, Tim and others and you just got reamed for an idea or implementation that wasn’t quite there yet.
  • Thanks go out to all of the families who were missing a dad or mom for long periods of time as they were still at work cranking out the next version of ____ or ____.
  • Thanks for modeling what a vocation looks like — i.e. pursuing your God-given gifts/calling/passions; and from my economics training for modeling that everyone wins when you do what you do best!

Thanks again all!

 

 

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