The professors who make the MOOCs — from The Chronicle by Steve Kolowich
Excerpt:
Like many professors at top-ranked institutions, Mr. Sedgewick was very skeptical about online education. But he was intrigued by the notion of bringing his small Princeton course on algorithms, which he had taught for five years, to a global audience. So after Princeton signed a deal with an upstart company called Coursera to offer MOOCs, he volunteered for the front lines.
Dave Chidley for The Chronicle
From DSC:
The worlds of K-12, higher education, and corporate training/development are all seeking solid solutions to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or the Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) solution. (The way I see it, it would sure be helpful it Apple worked with the other relevant vendors to establish better wireless networking protocols.) Anyway, below are some items on this topic:
How to BYOT for Learning? –– from shift2future.com by Brian Kuhn
Responding to the “Shift to the Future” — from seanrtech.blogspot.com by Sean Robinson
BYOD: 7 reasons to leave them to their own devices — from Donald Clark Plan B
Ten reasons the iPad is an awesome tool for classrooms and education — from isource.com with thanks to Krista Spahr, Senior Instructional Designer at Calvin College, for this resource
The 4 easiest ways to mirror the iPad (comparison chart) — from edudemic.com by Seth Hansen; working off of a similar posting from Tony Vincent
Strategies for taking flight with BYOT — from byotnetwork.com
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills identified 4 critical areas of learning for students that include creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. In Forsyth County Schools, we’ve been working hard with parents, teachers and students to embrace learning with student-owned technologies; something we call Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT). What we know for sure is that BYOT is really more like Bring Your Own Learning because we’ve discovered that it is NOT about the technology – it IS about the learning.
From DSC:
This aligns well with Alan November’s replacing “one-to-one” with “one-to-world.”
But whether we use the acronomyns BYOD, BYOT or BYOL (or whatever), it’s all about students being able to contribute content (hopefully that they created) and participate in the discussions.
From June 2012
From October 2009:
Building off of Steelcase’s media:scape product line
Harvard’s plan to dominate higher education — from jumpthecurve.net by Jack Uldrich
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Critics of online education and MOOCs may delude themselves by thinking an online course can never offer the same level of intimacy or interaction as a traditional college course but they are missing a key component of the MOOC movement: analytics.
What Harvard and other MOOC providers understand is that every time a student interacts with the material on an online course, she provides the institution feedback that allows it to learn a little more about how that student learns. Armed with this information they can then offer future courses designed not only to meet that individual’s specific educational needs but which are delivered in a manner personally tailored to his or her unique learning style.
…
Imagine Harvard charges a $100 accrediting fee to every student who takes one of its free courses. If one million students—students who formerly populated state universities and colleges—opt instead to take just one accredited course a year from Harvard that amounts to $100 million a year.
From DSC:
Readers of this blog will know that I think MOOCs are in an iterative process of morphing into something else, something new. MOOCs are half-baked at this point. I say that because it’s like drinking from a firehose (at least as of early March 2013). But what Jack Uldrich points out is what I was trying to get at in the graphic below. That is, if technologies that can capture, filter, curate, provide relevant information based upon analytics, one doesn’t have to drink from a fire hose anymore…the drinking fountain now becomes a better metaphor.
On a potentially related note — and a veeeerrrryyyy interesting question asked at this article out at Chief Learning Officer:
Either one of these forces could create what I’ve been calling “The Forthcoming Walmart of Education” (since 2008). As Smart/Connected TVs proliferate, Apple’s developing infrastructure and ecosystem could easily fill the bill.
The Professors’ Big Stage — op-ed from the New York Times by Thomas Friedman
Excerpt:
I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” — a k a “How can colleges charge $50,000 a year if my kid can learn it all free from massive open online courses?”
Briefing on MOOCs for the Board of Governors — from Tony Bates
From DSC:
Some very frustrated reflections after reading:
Excerpt:
Right now, boys are falling out of the kindergarten through 12th grade educational pipeline in ways that we can hardly imagine.
This situation continues to remind me of the oil spill in the Gulf (2010), where valuable resources spilled into the water untapped — later causing some serious issues:
.
From DSC:
What are we doing?!!! We’ve watched the dropout rates grow — it doesn’t seem we’ve changed our strategies nearly enough! But the point that gets lost in this is that we will all pay for these broken strategies — and for generations to come! It’s time to seriously move towards identifying and implementing some new goals.
What should the new goals look like? Here’s my take on at least a portion of a new vision for K-12 — and collegiate — education:
Building on the success of the Stanford Online High School (OHS), OHSx will allow middle- and high-school students everywhere to engage in real-time, seminar-based online courses without being formally enrolled in the OHS. Students who successfully complete a course through OHSx will receive a Stanford University Online High School transcript reflecting their achievement.
We are fortunate that our first course will be “Introduction to Mathematical Thinking,” by Dr. Keith Devlin, whose distinguished career includes authoring numerous textbooks as well as a recurring presence as “the Math Guy” on National Public Radio.
This course was originally designed for undergraduates considering a mathematics major in college and has been previously offered to over 70,000 students using the Coursera platform. OHSx is offering this course to advanced high school juniors and seniors. The OHSx course will incorporate Dr. Devlin’s absorbing lectures and will include additional material including regular real-time video-conference seminars should be lead by a Stanford OHSx instructor.
Also see:
On notice, again — from insidehighered.com by Libby A. Nelson
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday night called for major changes to the criteria accreditors use to evaluate colleges, asking Congress to either require accreditors to take college prices and educational value into account or to create an alternative system based on “performance and results.” Either could mark a significant shift in how the federal government judges higher education quality and eligibility for financial aid programs.
From DSC:
