Technology in Education: Online Courses: The Change of the Educational Landscape

In regards to cons, and there always will be cons:

Identity: an Privacy always an  issue. I believe eventually technology will become sophisticated enough where synched specified data checks on information would be verifiable.

Multi-tasking: I dont see where this is a problem if a class is asynchronous or even synchronous but at a distance. That may likely be the case (if informally) for many situations including business ones of the future. Who knows what people do off the screen during the meetings? What matters is they are engaged to the situation in general have the skill and focus to give strong feedback when appropriate.

Cheating: Also an issue. But it depends what’s being learned. Is is regurgitating information that may be available anywhere online? If so what’s the point of memorization. Or is it requiring a processing of the information and critical thinking skills? Copy pasting essays can be a problem, but technology may likely can catch those bugs with opensource available data in the long run. Perhaps essays could become more about collaboration. referencing or include a live audio component.

techedblog:

The typical landscape of learning as we know it is changing drastically. Students are being influenced by other motivators such as technology and the Internet. Internet, the online portal to all information known is changing how our students learn and the information they have access toEducation has always been an influential factor in success and status. However, over the recent years this view is changing. With new start-ups, some founders come from no education at all, just a passion for something. For some this is a passion for education. Start-ups such as the Khan Academy focus on providing online education to all. There is no need to pay for your learning here. It’s free! Providing education in such an innovative way has proven groundbreaking and life changing. While it is being praised as being beneficial there is a lack of studies being done to understand the influence that this may have on education and students.

Benefits

Online courses are changing the education landscape. They provide many benefits and positive functions that differ from the typical classroom environment.

Convenience

  • Students come in all shapes, sizes and ages. Online courses are beneficial to worldwide learners as they can learn from wherever they are, whenever they want.
  • With busy schedules learning can happen at any point in the day

Scaffolding

  • Students can learn at own pace. All students learn at different speeds and levels. By allowing students to learn at their own pace they can take in the information, make it personal and take their time while learning.

Groundbreaking

  • The typical classroom environment is now changing. It’s been proven that the classic classroom is not benefiting all types of learners. By shifting the environment, location and speed of education, students can learn at their own pace and learn where they feel most comfortable.

There are many benefits and positives to online courses but with the only recent changes and lack of studies and results it is difficult to portray it as the greatest change in education and learning.

Challenges/Con

Online courses offer many possibilities, but also many challenges. Courses offered online automatically must operate differently than ‘brick-and-mortar’ classrooms.

Class discussions will change:

  • Student responses will have lag time as students go on and offline throughout the day
  • It’s easier to be doing more things at once when not observed by a teacher- divided attention means less engagement in discussion

New ways to cheat will crop up:

  • How are we sure the student signing on is who they say they are?
  • What’s to stop a student from having their book out or a Google search up during a test?

We have to figure out what they mean:

  • What level of qualification does an online certificate represent?
  • How will employers or further education programs interpret them?
  • Different online courses don’t all operate under the same rules- how do we know what each certificate really means?

Answers to some of these questions are beginning to form as the new frontier of online coursework is being established. Those pioneers come in all shapes and sizes and include Khan Academy, edX by MIT and Harvard, Open Yale Courses on YouTube, Coursera, and more. It looks like online coursework is leading toward increased accessibility to education not only for current college students, but individuals of all ages and walks of life. It will be exciting to watch the development of this new educational tool!

For additional resources and online courses, check out:
Kahn Academy – http://www.khanacademy.org/
edX - MIT Online Education – https://www.edx.org/
Open Yale Courses –http:// oyc.yale.edu
Coursera – https://www.coursera.org/
University of Oxford – Podcasts – http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/

This article is in collaboration with ThinkTechEd.com and StudyHall.com. 
For more information check out:

www.studyhall.com

www.thinkteched.com

owsposters: Silhouette Man Wonders WTF is Wrong with Americans View larger size: At Zoom.it | 800x3600 | 1600x7300   Download the poster pack This comic uses some text from the Letter of Support for Quebec Students from Nordic Students. The letter is written by a coalition of student unions from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. UPDATE: The original version of this poster cited the above mentioned letter, and the Student Union in Finland was not included among the letter’s authors. That caused some confusion. The poster has been updated to include Finland, because it does have essentially the same higher education policy as its Nordic neighbors. UPDATE #2: Wow, since my posting this on DailyKos, this comic has been shared about a half-million times over two days. Thank you! Here’s KOS founder Markos Moulitsas on the comic: UPDATE #3: It’s been interesting to watch how many officials from the for-profit “schools” mentioned in this comic, and their law firms, have visited this site to view this comic.
Pop-upView Separately

owsposters:

Silhouette Man Wonders WTF is Wrong with Americans

View larger size: At Zoom.it | 800x3600 | 1600x7300  

Download the poster pack

This comic uses some text from the Letter of Support for Quebec Students from Nordic Students. The letter is written by a coalition of student unions from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

UPDATE: The original version of this poster cited the above mentioned letter, and the Student Union in Finland was not included among the letter’s authors. That caused some confusion. The poster has been updated to include Finland, because it does have essentially the same higher education policy as its Nordic neighbors.

UPDATE #2: Wow, since my posting this on DailyKos, this comic has been shared about a half-million times over two days. Thank you! Here’s KOS founder Markos Moulitsas on the comic:

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/5060/moulitsas.png

UPDATE #3: It’s been interesting to watch how many officials from the for-profit “schools” mentioned in this comic, and their law firms, have visited this site to view this comic.

The Sweet Spot Zines produced and distributed by CUP The Sweet Spot by Kara Y. Frame It’s notable to point out the expression of education, civic agency and the performative socially activist arts tend to utilize a variety of tactics usually edging towards the technologically emergent. Many of the strategies used, whether gaming, infomatics, performance, immersive storytelling or networked communities each serve similar goals albeit through the lens of aesthetics, urban civic action or pedagogical education. In an attempt to merge these similarities with a call for study on the intersection as well as a streamlined application of appropriate theories to better develop the core idealology of civic agency come the International Journal of Learning and Media particularly with this article entitled Civic Tripod with a particular focus on ‘mobile’ and ‘games’  by the collaboration between three researcher Susana Ruiz, Benjamin Stokes, and Jeff Watson of USC.  Civic  Tripod curates, offers some interviews and wraps it up in the three distinct areas mentioned above with an invitation for cohesion: ” We ambitiously seek to curate a set of conceptually important mobile projects, and to connect them with a light weave of theory from three distinct traditions of practice. Specifically, this report outlines the emerging field of mobile and pervasive games along the dimensions of (1) civic learning, (2) performance/art, and (3) social change. Focusing on real projects from the field, we aim to reveal key opportunities and constraints on the mobile frontier for civic games…We argue that this three-legged “tripod” is increasingly necessary to articulate how mobile game projects are succeeding (and failing).” While the Civic Tripod focuses specifically on gaming and activism, within recent years organizations such as Center for Urban Pedagogy in NY seek to facilitate collaborations with designers, media artists, and civic agencies in accessible formats. which often translates as multilingual poster/zines giving the concept of technology back to it’s traditional form, the printing press. “CUP projects are collaborations of art and design professionals, community-based advocates and policymakers, and our staff. Together we take on complex issues—from the juvenile justice system to zoning law to food access—and break them down into simple, accessible, visual explanations.” Often this translates as multilingual poster/zines giving the concept of technology back to it’s traditional form both nationally and internationally, the printing press. However, CUP’s projects have recently ended with calls that branch out into the mediums of animation and interactive design and with that hopefully a potential for simplified mobile applications available on the feature phone entry level can become available in the future. It’s taken an evolution forwarded by both the emergence of mobile technology and mass networking as well as the rejection of universal efficacy and utopianism of these applications that have brewed these current organizations of agency and outreach.
View Separately

The Sweet Spot

Zines produced and distributed by CUP

The Sweet Spot

by Kara Y. Frame

It’s notable to point out the expression of education, civic agency and the performative socially activist arts tend to utilize a variety of tactics usually edging towards the technologically emergent. Many of the strategies used, whether gaming, infomatics, performance, immersive storytelling or networked communities each serve similar goals albeit through the lens of aesthetics, urban civic action or pedagogical education. In an attempt to merge these similarities with a call for study on the intersection as well as a streamlined application of appropriate theories to better develop the core idealology of civic agency come the International Journal of Learning and Media particularly with this article entitled Civic Tripod with a particular focus on ‘mobile’ and ‘games’  by the collaboration between three researcher Susana Ruiz, Benjamin Stokes, and Jeff Watson of USC.  Civic  Tripod curates, offers some interviews and wraps it up in the three distinct areas mentioned above with an invitation for cohesion:

” We ambitiously seek to curate a set of conceptually important mobile projects, and to connect them with a light weave of theory from three distinct traditions of practice. Specifically, this report outlines the emerging field of mobile and pervasive games along the dimensions of (1) civic learning, (2) performance/art, and (3) social change. Focusing on real projects from the field, we aim to reveal key opportunities and constraints on the mobile frontier for civic games…We argue that this three-legged “tripod” is increasingly necessary to articulate how mobile game projects are succeeding (and failing).”

While the Civic Tripod focuses specifically on gaming and activism, within recent years organizations such as Center for Urban Pedagogy in NY seek to facilitate collaborations with designers, media artists, and civic agencies in accessible formats. which often translates as multilingual poster/zines giving the concept of technology back to it’s traditional form, the printing press.

“CUP projects are collaborations of art and design professionals, community-based advocates and policymakers, and our staff. Together we take on complex issues—from the juvenile justice system to zoning law to food access—and break them down into simple, accessible, visual explanations.”

Often this translates as multilingual poster/zines giving the concept of technology back to it’s traditional form both nationally and internationally, the printing press. However, CUP’s projects have recently ended with calls that branch out into the mediums of animation and interactive design and with that hopefully a potential for simplified mobile applications available on the feature phone entry level can become available in the future.

It’s taken an evolution forwarded by both the emergence of mobile technology and mass networking as well as the rejection of universal efficacy and utopianism of these applications that have brewed these current organizations of agency and outreach.

Source: digitalhopscotch.com

futuramb: Education is undergoing an incredible and exciting transformation, but I can’t help but wonder if the “experts” can’t see the forest for the trees. We are continuing to see roiling debates from the likes of Vivek Wadhwa and Peter Thiel over whether kids should go to college or not, administrations battling technologists over whether they need to flip the classroom, and politicians forcing us to pick sides as if there were only two options – all the while missing the extraordinary revolution taking place around us. (via Education is Undergoing a Startling Revolution — Let’s Support it! | Singularity Hub)
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futuramb:

Education is undergoing an incredible and exciting transformation, but I can’t help but wonder if the “experts” can’t see the forest for the trees. We are continuing to see roiling debates from the likes of Vivek Wadhwa and Peter Thiel over whether kids should go to college or not, administrations battling technologists over whether they need to flip the classroom, and politicians forcing us to pick sides as if there were only two options – all the while missing the extraordinary revolution taking place around us.

(via Education is Undergoing a Startling Revolution — Let’s Support it! | Singularity Hub)

 What if a game designer creates a historical Choose-Your-Own-Adventure event specifically designed for learning rather than learning as a secondary outcome? Hap Aziz, formerly a game programmer and interactive fiction aficionado, is currently on Kickstarter.com developing a game based on the city Williamsburg and it’s role in the creation of the original 13 colonies of the United States called the Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative Project  (See Example 3).  Originally his intention was an educational discovery game, however, the addition of the interactive fiction creates a narrative opening for engagement and secondary complexity in the layers. His game harkens back to the original text based productions managed by an algorithms as these text based games were popular in 1980s. Azizs’ enhancements include a map, architectural blueprints, characters and storylines outside the main narrative. Aziz notes, “I envisioned a two-phased approach, in which the result of the first phase would be a teaching experience with a good game play foundation. In the second phase, I would add an additional plot line separate from the historical time line, allowing students or game players to focus on the aspect of most interest to them.” (Short, 2012). Cultural memory is dynamic. With a re-emergence of this kind of storytelling within an technologically programmable environment, a new possibility exists.  Emily Short when discussing the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre aptly suggests, “You put the book down, and somehow wish that world could go on… so I do see that as an opportunity. I see that as a place where i want people to re-engage…The whole idea that a story is a kind of intellectual property and only counts the first time you tell it, and that it’s cheating to repurpose someone else’s story, to retell it, is, … not the way people conceived of these things in the ancient world.”  (Alexander, 2012). Repurposing narratives has deep historical roots and reitorates the contemporary idea of transmedia engagement as transformation through a community. _____________ Alexander, L., (2012) In-depth: Is it time for a text game revival?, GamaSutra. Retreived from:http://gamasutra.com/view/news/167665/Indepth_Is_it_time_for_a_text_game_revival.php Short, E., (2012), Hap Aziz and Colonial Williamsberg, Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling. Retreived From:http://emshort.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/hap-aziz-and-colonial-williamsburg/#more-4710
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 What if a game designer creates a historical Choose-Your-Own-Adventure event specifically designed for learning rather than learning as a secondary outcome? Hap Aziz, formerly a game programmer and interactive fiction aficionado, is currently on Kickstarter.com developing a game based on the city Williamsburg and it’s role in the creation of the original 13 colonies of the United States called the Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative Project  (See Example 3).  Originally his intention was an educational discovery game, however, the addition of the interactive fiction creates a narrative opening for engagement and secondary complexity in the layers. His game harkens back to the original text based productions managed by an algorithms as these text based games were popular in 1980s. Azizs’ enhancements include a map, architectural blueprints, characters and storylines outside the main narrative. Aziz notes, “I envisioned a two-phased approach, in which the result of the first phase would be a teaching experience with a good game play foundation. In the second phase, I would add an additional plot line separate from the historical time line, allowing students or game players to focus on the aspect of most interest to them.” (Short, 2012).

Cultural memory is dynamic. With a re-emergence of this kind of storytelling within an technologically programmable environment, a new possibility exists.  Emily Short when discussing the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre aptly suggests, “You put the book down, and somehow wish that world could go on… so I do see that as an opportunity. I see that as a place where i want people to re-engage…The whole idea that a story is a kind of intellectual property and only counts the first time you tell it, and that it’s cheating to repurpose someone else’s story, to retell it, is, … not the way people conceived of these things in the ancient world.”  (Alexander, 2012). Repurposing narratives has deep historical roots and reitorates the contemporary idea of transmedia engagement as transformation through a community.

_____________

Alexander, L., (2012) In-depth: Is it time for a text game revival?, GamaSutra. Retreived from:http://gamasutra.com/view/news/167665/Indepth_Is_it_time_for_a_text_game_revival.php

Short, E., (2012), Hap Aziz and Colonial Williamsberg, Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling. Retreived From:http://emshort.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/hap-aziz-and-colonial-williamsburg/#more-4710

albertmarch:

Transmedia in Education

“For three weeks in Feb 2012, 600 students across Florida worked in teams of five to role-play c-level executives of a space cargo company. When one of their rockets crashes into a local town causing environmental damage, the students much decide how their company should respond.”

Yesterday I reblogged a post about transmedia storytelling focused on entertainment, but today I read about this case study on education. Also the power to engage students through transmedia storytelling is amazing. 

(via dhcontentsummit)

Source: albertmarch

smarterplanet: Harvard researchers develop personalized-curriculum system | KurzweilAI Finally, an alternative to cookie-cutter education: the personalized curriculum. That’s the promise of Digital Teaching Platforms: Customizing Classroom Learning for Each Student, a book by Harvard educational technology researchers Chris Dede and John Richards, who say they have identified a new learning technology called digital teaching platforms (DTPs). DTPs represent the culmination of several evolving technology trends in K-20 education: the print-to-digital transition, the push for one-to-one computing, and the embrace of interactive display technologies. “For decades, researchers have been developing technology solutions to support learning, monitor student progress, foster classroom discussion, and provide a framework for teachers, but it’s been a challenge to create the efficient, one-step approach schools need,” says Dede, Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A core of the technology is “Time To Know,” which provides a one-step solution for today’s one-to-one computing classrooms. Teachers use the interactive comprehensive curriculum and the digital teaching platform to manage all classroom activities and deliver a personalized curriculum to every student.
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smarterplanet:

Harvard researchers develop personalized-curriculum system | KurzweilAI

Finally, an alternative to cookie-cutter education: the personalized curriculum.

That’s the promise of Digital Teaching Platforms: Customizing Classroom Learning for Each Student, a book by Harvard educational technology researchers Chris Dede and John Richards, who say they have identified a new learning technology called digital teaching platforms (DTPs).

DTPs represent the culmination of several evolving technology trends in K-20 education: the print-to-digital transition, the push for one-to-one computing, and the embrace of interactive display technologies.

“For decades, researchers have been developing technology solutions to support learning, monitor student progress, foster classroom discussion, and provide a framework for teachers, but it’s been a challenge to create the efficient, one-step approach schools need,” says Dede, Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

A core of the technology is “Time To Know,” which provides a one-step solution for today’s one-to-one computing classrooms. Teachers use the interactive comprehensive curriculum and the digital teaching platform to manage all classroom activities and deliver a personalized curriculum to every student.