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| The ten most widely read online EDUCAUSE Review articles from 2010 focused on innovation, current IT issues, individual/collaborative learning, attention, openness, the future campus, scholarly publishing, and libraries.
In case you missed them in 2010:
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Content Curation Tools: How to pick the right venue? — from Content Curation Marketing by Pawan Deshpande
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By definition, content curation is the act of continually identifying, organizing, and sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific topic or issue online. When evaluating which content curation tool to use, there are three primary areas of consideration:
1. The Inputs – Where does the content curation tool get information from? What type of content will this allow me to curate? Will it help identify and recommend relevant content?
2. The Organization – What does this tool offer in terms of organizing content once it has been identified? What type of data models does this represent content as? In a simple chronological list, or an inter-linked structure? Does it let me annotate and editorialize the curated content?
3. The Venue – How and where can I share the content once I have decided to curate it?
In this blog post, I am primarily going to focus on the decided on a content curation tool based on the venue – the channels to which your content is curated. And just like most things, there’s no one right answer. It really depends on your goals and objectives.
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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.
Some examples:
Systemic Changes in Higher Education
Author(s): George Siemens | Kathleen Matheos
A power shift is occurring in higher education, driven by two trends: (a) the increased freedom of learners to access, create, and re-create content; and (b) the opportunity for learners to interact with each other outside of a mediating agent. Information access and dialogue, previously under control of the educator, can now be readily fulfilled by learners. When the essential mandate of universities is buffeted by global, social/political, technological, and educational change pressures, questions about the future of universities become prominent. The integrated university faces numerous challenges, including a decoupling of research and teaching functions. Do we still need physical classrooms? Are courses effective when information is fluid across disciplines and subject to continual changes? What value does a university provide society when educational resources and processes are open and transparent?
The Net Generation’s Informal and Educational Use of New Technologies
Author: Swapna Kumar
Harnessing New Technologies to Teach Academic Writing to the Net Generation
Author(s): Sean Wiebe | Sandy McAuley
Abstract:
While the ubiquity of Web 2.0 technologies disrupts conventional notions of schooling and literacy, its impact on learning is idiosyncratic at best. Taking the form of a dialogue based on the fifteen-week collaboration of two colleagues implementing an innovative first-year university writing course, this paper documents some of the successes and challenges they faced as they sought to create a space for those technologies in their classrooms.
Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) — from Erik Qualman [via G. Siemens]
Per George:
Erik Qualman’s socialmedia revolution video has been updated. He starts by asking: “Is social media a fad? Or the biggest shift since the industrial revolution?”. While the stats provided are interesting, his questions mistake the effect for the cause. It’s like asking, 150 years ago, “is the railway a fad? Or the biggest shift since the agricultural revolution?”. Of course, the railway was part of the industrial revolution. But it was needed largely because of other trends (economic, societal, technological innovation, etc.). In the same sense, social media is an expression, a carrier, of fundamental changes around information and interaction. It is not, however, the change itself. Three years ago, I communicated a similar concept in It’s not about the tools. It’s about the change*.
*In that posting George states:
It’s the change underlying these tools that I’m trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated (emphasis DSC).
But to create real change, we need to move our conversation beyond simply the tools and our jargon. Parents understand the importance of preparing their children for tomorrow’s world. They might not understand RSS, mashups, and blogs. Society understands the importance of a skilled workforce, of critical and creative thinkers. They may not understand wikis, podcasts, or user-created video or collaboratively written software. Unfortunately, where our aim should be about change, our sights are set on tools. And we wonder why we’re not hitting the mark we desire. Perhaps our vision for change is still unsettled. What would success look like if we achieved it? What would classrooms look like? How would learning occur? We require a vision for change. It’s reflected occasionally in classroom 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 projects. But the tool, not change centric, theme still arises. We may think we are talking about change, but our audience hears hype and complex jargon.
What is your vision for change?
