WebTools For Teachers 01/01/2009
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Yonkly – Create your own network
Create your own microblogging site. Perhaps for class, or for a work project – lots of possibilities.
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Learning in Hand Blog by Tony Vincent
Comparing netbooks like the Eee PC 1000HA to iPod touch. Via Stephen Downes
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SILENT BLOG: Downes Future of Learning – A summary
A Summary of Stephen Downes on the Future of Learning
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Marking with Voice tools | Virtual Canuck
What a good way to give feedback! via Stephen Downes
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Online Degrees from Accredited Online Colleges & Schools
The design alone makes it look credible, but Stephen Downes recommends it, and that’s enough for me.
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Presentation Zen: Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?
“Suggesting we abandon PowerPoint because it’s often (usually?) misused and abused to produce awful presentation visuals is like saying we should dump the idea of 24-hour cable news because so much of it is vacuous rubbish. But whether we’re talking about bad TV or boring presentations, shouldn’t we blame the content producers not the content medium?” via Stephen Downes
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Open Monologue » Blog Archive » Teaching taxonomy in the age of Wikipedia
Interesting observation on the impact of the web and Wikapedia on education. – “Then Something Big and Important™ happened. It was called the World Wide Web. And the Web begat the wiki, and the wiki begat Wikipedia. And it was good. But it makes the way I teach, and the way I was taught, archaic. Why should someone be forced to memorize endless hierarchies as outlined above. If I really wanted to find out the differences in the digestive systems of animals in Phylum Nematoda compared to Phyum Annelida, I could just look it up in Wikipedia or some other reputable online source.” I agree completely. Why is memorization necessary when good research techniques and familiarity with the topic is more than enough. But perhaps Plato would disagree – http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wordscape/museum/plato.html – via Stephen Downes
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12.02.2008 – EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids
Look at these results in conjunction with the research Gladwell reports in Outliers showing that low-income children learn as well as the better off during the school year, but lose ground during the summer when the better off get enriching activities, and the low-income kids do not. via Stephen Downes
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World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others | Edutopia – Annotated
The reality of learning today (IMHO!) “For educators and the schools in which they teach, the challenges of this moment are significant. Our ability to learn whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want is rendering the linear, age-grouped, teacher-guided curriculum less and less relevant. Experts are at our fingertips, through our keyboards or cell phones, if we know how to find and connect to them. Content and information are everywhere, not just in textbooks. And the work we create and publish is assessed by the value it brings to the people who read it, reply to it, and remix it. Much of what our students learn from us is unlearned once they leave us; paper is not the best way to share our work, facts and truths are constantly changing, and working together is becoming the norm, not the exception.” via Stephen Downes
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How PLEs make sense to me – Intro to emerging tech week 3 « Dave’s Educational Blog
An interesting post on an important current learning dilemma. “There is a sense in which the VLE debate does bridge into a larger discussion about the validity of top down knowledge distribution from the knowledge depot… a model that started to lose its validity 10 years ago and is now working its way to the margins. We are in a post-knowledge-scarcity society and the VLE as it is currently conceived is still designed for transimitting knowledge scarcity. It presumes that the ‘value’ is in the knowledge itself, in the content provided by the university ,and that the contribution of the students is transitory and disposable. This is the old model, the model, ACTUAL student centredness not the ’students get to talk’ model we’ve been sold for years, involves the student s creating their own knowledge in their own space… a PLE or Eportfolio or whatever you want to call it is created as a manner of course. It is the natural result of learning.” via Stephen Downes
Nice article