Some Influentials on Educational Technology
Below find a list of interesting folks to follow on Twitter to keep tabs on the latest technology trends. Some are individuals, and others are tech sites or companies who use Twitter regularly. Descriptions are from the users’ profile descriptions. Keep in mind that there are a LOT of folks out there who talk about technology of all kinds – so don’t consider this an exhaustive list! Feel free to share your favorite tech tweeters in the comments section!
Read also: Some more on Twitter
Will MOOC Technology Break the Education Cartel?
“Education is the cartel that technology is going to break next” “Higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse … I think even five years from now these enterprises are going to be in real trouble”. So where once you chose one college or university and hoped that each semester there would be an interesting subject available to you, the availability of MOOCs means that anyone with an internet connection can choose a course from the world’s top universities. For the remote and distant learners I work with, or those in developing countries where university-level education is not universally accessible, it means something even more – being able to study at all, and world-class courses at that. The other example of Education defying its ‘slow to adopt’ past has been the rise of mobile devices and the increased access to content they engender.
OpenEMIS – Open Source Education Management Information System
UNESCO launched a new version of OpenEMIS, a generic and open source Education Management Information System software package issued without conditions or restrictions for use by countries. Able to run offline on desktop computers or on the web and on mobile devises, OpenEMIS facilitates the collection, processing, analysis and supports the dissemination of data on education systems. It is a tool conceived to be easily and quickly adapted to the needs of information producers and users at national and sub-national levels. It manages a broad range of information: data on student enrolment, teachers, non-teaching staff, classes, textbooks, infrastructure, finances and learning outcomes. In order to meet country requirements, OpenEMIS can handle both individual and aggregated (census) datasets for pupils, teachers and non-teaching staff.
Facilitating Effective ICT-Pedagogy Integration Project
ICT remains abysmally under-used by students and teachers in classrooms, and ICT-enabled student-centred teaching and learning approach finds no ground of pervasiveness within school systems, especially for developing countries. Three obstacles still remain in the way of teachers’ using ICT to its full potential toward enhancing student learning and improving the quality of education: 1) the lack of policy encouragement (especially at the school level), 2) the lack of knowledge on new pedagogy and techniques of integrating ICT in student-centred teaching and learning activities, and 3) the lack of long-standing professional support which further leads to teachers’ lack of confidence.
In response to these, UNESCO Bangkok implemented the “Facilitating Effective ICTPedagogy Integration Project” from January 2010 to March 2013 with the goal of creating an enabling environment that facilitate students’ direct and effective use of ICT for more meaningful and productive learning activities, with a specific focus on project-based tele-collaboration.
Improving your use of Google Scholar
Google Scholar is among the best scholarly search engines online, yet only a few educators know its secrets. As a rule of thumb that applies to all Google products, the effective use of any service from Google’s can only be achieved through mastering its deep and hidden features. I will be walking you step by step through those important features that Google Scholar provides to its users. I am very much hoping that you would share it with your students and help them conduct better searches in Google Scholar.
Using keyboards before pencils
Swedish first-grade children in a pilot project are starting to read, learn and network socially. They’re doing this – successfully – by writing on PCs and discussing their texts with peers and teachers. With that in mind, their teacher Annika Agélii Genlott has experimented with letting first-graders learn to read by writing on a computer before learning to write by hand. The idea is that handwriting demands dexterity and motor skills that many six-year-olds lack. So writing with a pencil has been postponed until second grade. And if Genlott’s approach is right, these kids aren’t stressed by attempting to learn too many mental and motor skills at once.
World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
The principal objectives of the WDL are to:
- Promote international and intercultural understanding;
- Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
- Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;
- Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.
A social creativity app – Scoot & Doodle
Inside our first collaborative studio, Scoot & Doodle on G+ Hangouts, young people connect face-to-face, teaming up with others to tackle creative challenges, draw, tell stories, do homework and collaborate on projects in real-time. All this is done while naturally practicing the ‘Four Cs’: creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking—which educators know are vital elements to a student’s future success in life and work.
Mobile learning – Delivering Web to Mobile
This report is intended to help staff of UK education institutions, involved in the development of content, gain an understanding of the emerging approaches to delivering services and content for mobile devices using the Web. The use of mobile devices for the consumption and use of Web content and services has grown steadily over the last few years and continues to do so, with analysts predicting that mobile will soon exceed the traditional desktop PC as the most common means users interact with the Web and other Internet services. This report looks at the growth of mobile, the state of the Web and gives an overview of approaches to delivering content and services optimised for the mobile context. This includes approaches to Web design for responsive sites, leveraging access to device functions and capabilities and the use of Web technologies to build mobile applications.
Open Educational Resources – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education
The rapid growth of OER provides new opportunities for teaching and learning, at the same time, they challenge established views about teaching and learning practices in higher education. This briefing paper provides the background to the current development of and future trends around OER aimed at adding to our understanding, stimulating ongoing debate among the JISC community and developing a research agenda. The briefing is structured in three sections:
- Discussion on the conceptual and contextual issues of Open Educational Resources.
- A review of current OER initiatives: their scale, approaches, main issues and challenges.
- Discussion on trends emerging in Open Educational Resources, with respect to future research and activities.
