Learning in a Digital Age - JISC - 2012

 

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Contents of Learning in a Digital Age -- from JISC in 2012

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Envisioning the future of education — from envisioningtech.com by Michell Zappa

Excerpt:

Models of teaching worldwide are being revolutionized and reconsidered in real-time, and it seems everybody is looking for the holy grail of how to future-proof their classrooms. Advancing technology is leaving old schools of thought in their wake, and teachers are waking up to the fact that things will only speed up further in the foreseeable future.

Having spent time with the wonderful people at TFE Research in Dublin earlier this year, our new visualization is a concise overview of technologies that have the potential to disrupt and improve teaching on all levels.

Along with a few dozen emerging techs, we identified six key trends that link and contextualize said technologies, including classroom digitization, gamification and disintermediation.

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Envisioning the future of educational technology

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Beyond Siri - A report regarding the future of Virtual Assistants -- from VisionMobile -- June 2012

 

Contents

  • Virtual assistants: four generations in 20 years
  • The evolving VA technology landscape
  • The VA Competitive landscape
  • VA business models: Revenue share rather than paid app downloads
  • Leaders and challengers in the VA value chain
  • Beyond Siri: What’s in store in the VA market

Behind this report

  • Lead researcher: Marlène Sellebråten
  • Project lead: Michael Vakulenko
  • Marketing lead: Matos Kapetanakis
  • Editorial: Andreas Constantinou

 

Ocean Blue launches world’s first digital TV calendar and diary at ANGA 2012 — from virtual-strategy.com
Ocean Blue Software, a leading innovator of digital TV middleware software, has developed an interactive assistive living TV calendar and diary that will help people organise their lives via their TVs and enable doctors to interact with patients at home.

Excerpt:

With IP connectivity the Timewatch Calendar can be linked to, for example, Google calendar, health care system servers or medical clinic online calendars. Examples of such interaction would include family and friends being able to post reminders on to the calendar. Doctors and other health care professionals will also be able to interact with patients and manage medical appointments through the calendar.

Also see:

Only 14% think that company training is an essential way for them to learn in the workplace — from Learning in the Social Workplace by Jane Hart

Excerpt:

That was one of the findings of my recent anonymous survey on how people learn best in the workplace, and even I was surprised by the results.  But I think the biggest take-away from my survey is that we can no longer assume we know how people like to learn in the workplace nor how we think people should learn. So in this blog post, I want to share the data from my survey, some of my thoughts about the results, and the importance of undertaking your own survey.

whatiflearning.co.uk -- Examples of connecting Christian faith and teaching across various ages and subjects.

 

Excerpt:

This site is for teachers who want their classrooms to be places with a Christian ethos whatever the subject or age group you teach. It explores what teaching and learning might look like when rooted in Christian faith, hope, and love. It does this by offering 100+ concrete examples of creative classroom work and an approach which enables you to develop your own examples.

‘What if Learning’ is a “distinctively Christian” approach developed by an international partnership of teachers from Australia, the UK and the USA. It is based on the premise that a Christian understanding of life makes a difference to what happens in classrooms. Its aim is to equip teachers to develop their distinctively Christian teaching and learning strategies for their own classrooms.

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 Addendum on 4-17-12:

 

GSMA Reveals How Mobile is Set to Transform Education Worldwide, with the Meducation Market Valued at US$70 billion by 2020; mEducation Solutions Could Revolutionise Learning for More than a Billion Students Globally

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2011 Year in Review: Global Changes in Tuition Fee Policies and Student Financial Assistance.

Excerpt:

All around the world, the pace of change in higher education is accelerating. In the face of continued increases in participation, demographic change and – in the west at least – profound fiscal crises, higher education institutions are increasingly being required to raise funds from students as opposed to relying on transfers from governments. Indeed, the pace of policy change is coming so quickly that it is difficult to keep track of all the relevant developments in different parts of the world.

In this, the second edition of Year in Review: Tuition Fees and Student Assistance, we outline the major changes related to higher education affordability around the world in 2011. In order to keep our sample manageable, we have kept our inquiries to a selection of 40 countries that collectively best represent the global situation:

The G-40 consists of: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea (Republic of), Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam.

Marcucci, Pamela and Usher, Alex (2012). 2011 Year in Review:
Global Changes in Tuition Fee Policies and Student Financial Assistance.
Toronto: Higher Education Strategy Associates.

 

My notes on two presentations from the Learning Without Frontiers Conference, London, 26th January 2012:

My notes for:
Sir Ken Robinson’s talk

Practice <–>Theory <–> Policy

  • People who practice don’t often have time to get the latest and greatest information re: theory
  • Theorists don’t have much time for practice
  • Policy makers don’t know much about either 🙂

Purposes of education:

  • Economic.  Not solely, but there are economic reasons for providing education. Academic vs vocation programs – Sir Ken doesn’t subscribe to this dichotomy in educational DNA. Need new sorts of education
  • Cultural. Aim to pass on cultural genes – values, beliefs
  • Personal. The most important! In the end, education is ultimately, personal. Too much impersonal testing that students aren’t engaged in.

Key point:

  • There is everything you can do – at all levels; many of us ARE the educational system – at least for the group(s) of students that we are working with. So we can make immediate changes; and collectively this can create a revolution.

Education not linear, not monolithic. Rather, it’s a complex, adaptive system – many moving parts, like a vortex…not like an undistributed canal; more like an ocean with different forces tugging this way and that. (From DSC: I agree with what Sir Ken is saying here, but I especially agree with this particular perspective — thus the name of this blog.)

Personalization is key! Education needs to be customized to the communities where it’s taking place.

Principles

  • Curriculum – towards disciplines (skills, processes, procedures) and away from subjects
  • Teaching & Learning – dynamic; flow of knowledge; not static; forms need to tap into streams; move towards collaborative activities; active learning trumps passive learning
  • Assessment – must move from judgment to description

 


My notes (part way) for:
Jim Knight – If Steve Jobs Designed Schools

What if Steve Jobs had re-invented the education system rather the computer and consumer electronics industry?

Steve Jobs was a contradictory character, combining control freak and Zen Buddhist, and technology with design. He had a revolutionary impact on computing, animation, the music industry, printing, and publishing. Last year he and Bill Gates together expressed surprise at how little impact technology had had on schools. Jobs’s wife is an educational reformer, he was a college dropout; but what would it have been like if Steve Jobs had focused on education? What would the Jobs School be like?

How do we make an insanely great school?

  • Must go really deep to create something that’s easy to use (from DSC — I call this “Easy is hard.”) Need to de-clutter the teaching & learning environment, the curriculum, the qualifications, and the people.
  • How does it make me feel when I walk through the doorway of your school?
  • Get to choose who you want to learn with and from
  • Simple, beautiful space; flexible; social; reflective, all year round
  • More seductive, intuitive, enthralling
  • Does it inspire curiosity?
  • “Don’t need instructions”
  • Not just a school – learning doesn’t stop when school bell rings
  • 24×7 thing
  • Curriculum
  • Is there a range of things to interest everyone?
  • Need more choice; selection; more control of their learning
  • All ages
  • Enterprising
  • Creative, technical, practical…but most of all, it would be fun!

More here…


 

A dangerous game — from learning with ‘e’s by Steve Wheeler

Excerpt:

This got me thinking that many of the world’s education systems are a little like the eating game of Meze. We pile the students plates high with content. Content of every kind is presented to be consumed, and the poor students don’t stand a chance. Many are overwhelmed by the amount of content they need to learn, and the pace at which they have to learn it. Even while they are struggling their way through an overburdened ‘just in case’ curriculum, still more content continues to arrive at an alarming pace. Some learners cry out for mercy, but they are still compelled to consume the content, because later, they are required to regurgitate it in an examination to obtain their grades. The examinations bear no resemblance to that which will be required of them in the real world. No wonder so many wish to leave the table early. What can teachers do to obviate this problem? Some are making a difference, reinterpreting the curriculum they are given by enabling activities and creating resources that facilitate student centred learning. Learning at one’s own pace, and in a manner that suits the individual will overcome some of the problems of overload, but more needs to be done. Things are changing, but they are changing slowly, too slowly for many people’s tastes. It’s a dangerous game we are playing in education. Isn’t it about time we stopped?

Recordings from Learning Without Frontiers - from the UK from January 2012
Also see:

Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) hosted its annual conference at London’s Olympia on January 25th-26th creating a unique environment to present a compelling exploration into our learning futures.

  • See the talks here.
  • See pictures here.
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Next on TV: Data driven programming — from wired.co.uk by Matt Locke

Excerpt:

Quiz shows such as The Million Pound Drop Live on Channel 4 use real-time data from hundreds of thousands of online players to feed interesting stats and observations to host Davina McCall. [From DSC: What if this related to an online-based learning exercise/class/module/training session?]

This is the real revolution that is about to hit TV production — data is moving off the servers and in front of the cameras. With this comes a new generation of creative talent — data storytellers for whom the spreadsheet is as important as a script when it comes to content. TV is no longer stuck behind the screen — around 60 per cent of people in the UK watch with a “second screen” (a mobile or laptop) at the same time, and a lot of them are talking online about what they’re watching. TV is now back in the crowd, and if you make, commission or distribute content right now, you’d better learn to love data, and fast.

Also see:

  • What comes after Siri? A web that talks back — from gigaom.com by Stacey Higginbotham
    Siri may be the hottest personal assistant since I Dream of Jeannie, but Apple’s artificial intelligence is only the tip of the iceberg as we combine ubiquitous connectivity, sensor networks, big data and new methods of AI and programming into a truly connected network.
  • Ball State University Center for Media Design to Host Workshop Session — from thetvoftomorrowshow.com
    Entitled “Researching the Second Screen and Social Viewing: Two Recent Studies,” the workshop will see CMD researchers summarizing the findings from: 1) an eye-tracking study of viewers’ distribution of visual attention between the TV and second screen during use of two commercially released second-screen apps; and 2) a study of show-specific Twitter traffic rates during programming and ad pods for multiple episodes of three shows from different genres.
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