Open University chooses Moodle 2.0 as their LMS of the future — from Moodle News by Joseph Thibault
The Open University, after commissioning a survey of the alternative/rival LMSs available, has decided to continue using Moodle as it’s primary Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) moving forward and is now planning it’s site wide upgrade which will be a several phase process over the next 12 months according to Ross MacKenzie.
Massive cut in Britain — from InsideHigherEd.com
Government funding for higher education in Britain is to be cut by 40 percent over four years, suggesting that public funding for teaching in the arts, humanities and social sciences may come to an end.
The Comprehensive Spending Review unveiled Wednesday includes a reduction in the higher education budget of £2.9 billion – from £7.1 billion to £4.2 billion – by 2014-5.
The Treasury says in a statement that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which oversees higher education, will “continue to fund teaching for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.”
However, no mention is made of other subjects.
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010: Final list, presentation and more — from Jane Knight
Yesterday I finalised the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 list. Many thanks to the 545 people who shared their Top 10 Tools for Learning and contributed to the building of the list. Although this list is available online, I also created this presentation which provides the information as a slideset – embedded below.
Jane Hart, a Social Business Consultant, and founder
of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.
What will universities of the future be like? — from bbc.co.uk by Hannah Richardson BBC News education reporter
It’s the end of your shift, you dash for the train and switch on your mobile phone as you find yourself a seat.
You log into your degree course learning zone and discover you’ve been set a tough assignment. You download some key text books from the online university library and begin swotting.
While fellow commuters bury their heads in the Metro, you get some tips from course mates through an online forum.
By the time you reach your stop you have tapped out an essay plan on your smartphone.
Is this the university experience of the future? For an increasing number of students it’s happening now.
And with the cost of university set to rise considerably, many more are likely to study for their degrees in cheaper, more flexible ways – perhaps through digitally-based distance learning providers.
‘Mortgage-sized debts’
This is the view of the vice-chancellors’ body, Universities UK, which warns that as public funding contracts, the traditional residential university experience could become the preserve of an elite.
New private university signals drive to privatise higher education in Britain — from sott.net by Zach Reed
BPP, a private company that possesses 14 sites around the UK providing law and business degrees, was granted “university college” status in July, creating the first private university in the UK for 30 years. The decision signals the coalition government’s drive to privatise higher education.
Massive spending cuts brought forward by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, combined with rising youth unemployment, has seen 200,000 students denied a university place this year. It is in this context that calls have been made to privatise higher education.
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Learning to change report — from Learning Conversations by Mark Berthelemy
“We’ve just published a research report, based on the opinions of senior decision makers among the UK’s largest 500 firms. Here are some of the findings.”
- The majority (70%) of business leaders fear that inadequate staff skills are the greatest threat to their ability to capitalise on the recovery.
- More than two thirds of business leaders admit that their under-trained workforce is struggling to cope with expanded job remits following waves of job cuts during recession.
- … as the economy moves out of the downturn, two fifths (40%) of leaders estimate that at least half of employee skills risk becoming obsolete.
- Over a third of leaders (36%) lack confidence that their employees have the skills required to deliver the firm’s upturn strategy, with close to half (46%) casting doubt on their L&D department’s ability to provide these learning services.
- Over half (55%) claim that their firm is failing to deliver the necessary training for recovery.
- Around half fear for their company’s ability to respond to surges in demand (51%), retrain and redeploy people where required (47%) and identify where current skills are becoming obsolete (49%).
- More than two thirds (67%) of business leaders are concerned their employees are struggling to cope with expanded remits following job cuts.
- More than half (52%) describe their L&D function as slow to respond to the changing requirements of their business during economic turbulence.
- As strategic objectives have evolved, close to half (46%) of senior managers report no significant change in the training delivery to their workforce. Going forward, almost as many (43%) expect no significant change to L&D delivery over the next 2-3 years.
- The vast majority (82%) of leaders lack confidence that their firm’s L&D strategy and delivery are aligned to the company’s operational strategy.
- Half (50%) believe that their L&D function is stuck in a ‘business as usual’ mindset.
Another interesting quote here:
“Perhaps L&D needs to rebrand – towards performance consulting… Often performance problems are more around culture, systems, processes and communication. Solve those, and you won’t need to provide training in a lot of cases.”
iPod/iPhone Apps: Language Teacher (Part 1) — by Isabelle Jones
General/Productivity
Skype (free): I hear Skype is planning to charge for skype-to-skype calls using the 3G network even if called supported by wifi will still be free. I have found Skype a brilliant way to use text with anybody abroad as well as using good quality voice calls for free, of course.
TweeetDeck (free): A classic Twitter client although there are many many more available including Twitter’s own newly released iphone client and Seesmic.
Edutecher (free): Great application to find subject-related sites and ed-tech tools. A selection of ed-tech videos is also available as well as a copy of their Twitter feed and a search function.
iMindMap (free): simple MindMaps that can be exported and emailed
SimpleMindMaps (free): MindMaps can be saved to desktop, exported or saved to camera roll.
Diigo (free): Great to bookmark new sites from the safari browser although the bookmark does not allow for saving to groups
Box.net (free): useful to share documents between various locations. I have a box on my blog and I can add to it via my phone.
Dropbox (free): very handy to transfer back-up copies of documents to your phone. Just drop a copy in Dropbox folder and a copy will appear on your phone
Linkedin (free): more serious professional networking tool, it also has a wide range of groups for linguists and teachers that are worth keeping an eye on
Evernote(free): good to make notes and add audio or pictures to them. Notes can also be e-mailed too.
TED (free): really interesting speakers featuring in podcasts and videos
Teaching UK(free)-News, ideas and twitter feed
Tumblr(free): for quick logging of text, photo, quotes, link, chat, audio, and video. Great to keep it all in one place, and could be used to collect material for later thoughts and blog posts.
Save My Doc lite (free iTunes): just put in the url to download the document onto your phone
Errands (free iTunes): to do list with scheduling and mailing facility
Schoolbook (free iTunes): great to get to learn your new timetable, particularly if it is a two-weekly one.
Audio
ipadio (free): broadcast, record, play back and share high quality audio up to 60 minutes in length. Recorded calls can be shared on Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Posterous, Blogger and more…
VR+lite (free Blackberry): simple recorder for messages to be shared by email or social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or Blogger. Recordings can be made private or public. A short audio watermark is attached to recording on the lite version (full version costs £1.19)To be able to edit and receive free storage you need to sign up for VR+Online (free)
iSaidWhat?! (£0.59): simple recorder allowing to do some sound editing directly from your iphone: record, import sound file, cut, arrange snippets, duplicate, share via email, Facebook or Twitter.
iRevise lite (free iTunes): revision timetable, notebooks to write summary, prompt cards for key words, audio recording with gaps for answers.
Photo/ picture resources
Flickr (free): A great way to back up the pictures on your phone, pictures from Flickr’s favourites can also be saved onto your phone quite easily.
Photoshop.com (free) simple tool to edit photos directly on your phone: crop, straighten, flip, rotate, exposure, contrast, colours, black and white, sketch, effects, borders, pictures can be saved, uploaded and posted to Facebook and TwitPic.
Art (£0.59 for full version-lite version available iTunes): Excellent source of Art and information about international artists-great stimuli to discuss colours, shapes and produce extended description or even stories in the foreign language! Pictures can be saved onto your camera roll or emailed and saved onto a laptop.
99 Happy Paintings (free iTunes): can be viewed, exported, used as wallpaper and emailed for copying and importing into teaching resources.
Technology brings education to you wherever you may be — from timeslive.co.za [via Ray Schroeder]
Survey: MBA – Now you can do that MBA via your computer
In the face of international competition, technology and the need for flexibility, business schools have adapted their offerings for MBAs.
No so long ago, the very notion of a distance learning MBA would be regarded with disdain, the chief argument being that it lacks face-to-face contact. But as technology has progressed, so too are those perceptions shifting rapidly.
Irving says the perceived lack of personal contact is no longer an issue. “The way our online students engage, build international networks and share knowledge is no different from the way our students on campus do it.”
Once a year, Warwick runs an eight-day residential programme for online students, but Irving says this may have become superfluous. “The way technology has progressed, especially over the past two years, the experience you can get online now is equivalent to an on-campus experience. And it’s cheaper than getting students to travel across the world.”
