All Blog Comments

Gbenro - India is Where You Can Make an Impact on Education Using Technology

Gbenro — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:00:43 +0000

With a school going population of about 40 million pupils in Primary and Secondary schools, I believe Nigerian classrooms are ripe for tech disruption! We are already stoking the flames at First Veritas. We will be willing to explore cooperation and collaboration with willing companies.

Lokesh Mehra - India is Where You Can Make an Impact on Education Using Technology

Lokesh Mehra — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:55:10 +0000

Yes ICT impact has made inroads in the way we work, live and play. However, keep in mind that the solutions don’t lie in technology, they lie in what people do with technology

Roxanna Bassi - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

Roxanna Bassi — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 03:09:14 +0000

this is my list of ideas according to what I see are current hot topics... tell me what you think. MOOCs ( Massive Online Open Courses) what are the challenges and results of large scale open courses? Is the model sustainable? Large scale 1:1 deployments revisited what is happening with 1:1 projects in Uruguay, Peru, Rwanda? What do the latest reports tell us? Robotics in education Robotics has always been a hype in eduaction. What real applications exist out there? what pilots are being conducted? what are the costs involved? Languages in education teach in local languages or in french/english/spanish? How can ICT support language preservation? E-Citizen science Applications and examples of e-citizen science, the participation of citizens and students in massive science projects at all levels. case studies. Digital heritage preservation what is the role of schools in digital heritage preservation? case studies.

Shabnam Aggarwal - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

Shabnam Aggarwal — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 03:08:01 +0000

Do teachers need to be professional educators?

Matthew Wennersten - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

Matthew Wennersten — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:43:23 +0000

Tablet vendors and educators are talking up tablets and tablet apps. iPads are rolling out in large numbers. In the developing world, iPads are not cost-feasible. Are low cost tablets a practical alternative? Can tablets provide useful education tools without additional costly infrastructure such as servers, broadband, and desktop computers in the school? Where and in what use cases have low cost tablets provided strong educational value to children?

Ajitha Nayar - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

Ajitha Nayar — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:25:12 +0000

The topics I suggest for Debate are 1. High Tech Vs Low Tech 2. Free and Open source Software Vs Proprietary Software 3. Unintended Consequences for ICT

Imran Zualkernan - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

Imran Zualkernan — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:24:35 +0000

I would suggest to also add either/and both "authenticity" and "cultural awareness" in addition to language for this topic. We are just completing a 10 school, 6-month longitudinal study of using 'localized' version and augmentation of "Khan Academy" content in semi-rural Pakistan and we found many issues that go beyond language. For example, even for Math, in Khan Academy's original content, some problems speak of "bran muffins" which carry little value for children in rural Pakistan. There were also issues related to curricular mapping and gaps etc. In fact, we were only able to use 30-40% of their localized-to-URDU content (just voice-over translation), and had to create the rest ourselves. This is a BIG issue because if one finds such anomalies in Grade IV and V Math content that typically tends to be semantically agnostic, other fields like social sciences, for example, will suffer a lot more from such problems.

Dr.N.BALASUBRAMANIAN - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

Dr.N.BALASUBRAMANIAN — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:23:48 +0000

Dear Sirs, Greetings. Thanks for having given me an opportunity to suggest topics for discussion. Of course, I have a few topics in mind for discussion. May I give them here for your kind perusal and further action. Satellite Mediated Interactive Classroom (Edusate for Education) Web-Based Learning for a Programme Online Testing: Objective Based and Discrptive Answers Online Tutoring/Counselling for a Graduate Programme Development and Validation of Media Based Instructional Materials(E-content)

Jonathan Nalder - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

Jonathan Nalder — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:30:53 +0000

Hi Wayan - I'm thinking a that after all the buzz of winning the $1 million TED prize, that Sugatra Mitra's work should be interrogated to see if it really is relevent for all learners, or just specific cases. Another topic could be how online and mobile technology is 'breaking' the centralised control of education content and distribution of formal education in the same way it has democratised other industries in line with Chris Dixon's thinking http://cdixon.org/2013/02/10/the-computing-deploy...

mokurai - Call for Topics: Educational Technology Debate in 2013

mokurai — Sat, 9 Mar 2013 00:19:11 +0000

Given that computers cost less than printed textbooks, shouldn't we all be working on free digital learning materials (Open Educational Resources, or OERs) under Creative Commons licenses? That would let us greatly improve education at significantly lower cost, even counting the costs of electricity, Internet, OER development, teacher training, and all the rest.

Rob Power - Mobiles For Teaching And Learning: Translating Theory into Practice

Rob Power — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 17:00:17 +0000

I saw this presentation in Helsinki. Very informatuve. I gave a prentation in the Doctoral Consortium at mLearn 2012 on a similar topic, called QR Cache: Brindging mLearning Theory andd Practice, which will also appear in the forthcoming proceedings. The QR Cache wiki is at http://qrcache.pbworks.com I highly recommend that anyone interested in mLearning check out the full proceedings!

nboruett - Experiment on Classroom Internet Usage by Secondary School Students

nboruett — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 07:36:58 +0000

Martin- this is an interesting study. Ultimately the idea of blocking site does not augur well with me. Y tube for instance us a lot of useful videos. The social media Facebook, twitter are powerful social medias that can we can leverage on. Useful critical thinking and creativity can be enhanced with the social media. If you check on the revised digital Blooms by Andrew Churches you will see the role of the social media- here find the link http://www.techlearning.com/article/44988. With the use of an LMS i have experience with Moodle, you can embed the video on the resource area or even on the Power points uploaded. Links tend to distract the students learning. We must inculcate discipline to our students, yes responsible internet use. What happens tomorrow when they are employed in an organization with stringent use of internet. I know of a number of my fomer students working in reputable organisation who have fired for using Internet in a manner not consistent with the companies policy. This applies with a subject like biology, and the adminstrator has blocked the word SEX. Students miss a lot

STEGER - UNESCO to release research into mobile learning initiatives, policies and teacher development

STEGER — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:36:48 +0000

WapEduc is designed to help secondary-school students prepare for their baccalaureate exams, while the Priory School’s major mobile learning activities have been developed by a single teacher specifically to help students learn geography. This mobile learning plateform is mainly used in France, Belgium, Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, Sénégal. The WapEduc project was started in 2005 by Philippe Steger, a secondary-school teacher in Montpellier, France, to provide ‘anytime, anywhere’ learning for his students. WapEduc has since grown to support students throughout France who are studying for their baccalaureate, a series of exams required for secondary-school graduation. A reported 32,000 students used the system in its first three years of operation. WapEduc is funded by the Montpellier Local Education Authority, and access to its materials is free for both teachers and students, though users must consider the costs of downloading data based on their personal mobile contracts. Contact : wapeduc@wapeduc.net Best regards, P.Steger

DeweyDigit - 10 Lessons Learned From Online Learning for Teacher Professional Development

DeweyDigit — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:35:01 +0000

Thanks for this great article. I thought just to add a quick comment (inevitably I can see that it may not be so quick), but in my own experience training to be a teacher and studying other topics partly through a mix of face-to-face and on-line discussion at university i have also had very 'mixed' experiences with forums. In every course I have attended the on-line forum was used a bit differently. For teacher training it served as a wonderful tool for reflection and group discussion based on our experiences before and during practicum / placement in schools. It also was structured but only in that you were required to post a reply to one post each week and to write on of your own. If this was not done then marks were docked from your eventual total percentage (5% max). Everyone participated but I think their motivation was strongly driven by the need to share their stories (and stressful experiences) as well as their joyful experiences and discoveries. In another course in the social sciences the forum posting regime was a little different as we all had set readings which we were required each week. Each person was assigned to give a summary of the reading and develop a question for the discussion on-line, although some people had the same topic or reading their summaries often were quite different and so were their questions. Your summary and participation counted as part of your grade (around 15% I think). In my current MA course there is no requirement at all so it is more a social forum and a place for posting material. It seems to me that different subjects / areas might have different strategies for the use of the on-line component depending on the kinds of discussions that you want to generate and so the accountability mechanisms for learners to participate seem best to tied to those learning goals and methods that fit the material, either more 'informal' or more formally. Also each of those two forums had to be led by a facilitator who started us off with example posts. Personally I think that the idea of setting higher expectations but less frequent posts in more structured tasks (such as in the summary forum) is great for theoretical stuff, while the other mode is better for the practical stuff of teaching and I would personally would go for a mix of both and maybe even create two forums that operated differently. I felt very lucky to have such an innovative experience at university in Australia and was a little surprised when I took up study in the UK on an MA course. Although the forum was used it was regulated to being the place for social information and although others on the course thought it was very active, there was actually very little 'dialogic' discussion on it - mainly offers, suggestions etc..The understanding of 'active' translates differently in different places. So it seems that actually creating a really good forum requires a lot of thought. I really like the idea of learner training to give people guidelines about what a good post is like. I would also want to keep it fun. People love recognition and participation is driven by students searching also for a way to identify with the group and also to define themselves. I remember a teacher at university who had kept us engaged throughout a whole semester on the legal implications of being a teacher, duty of care issues and the finer points of the law. She did it by being very personable, and often referred to people in ways that really showed that she saw them (for example by maybe remembering that they were the person who had been asking about fights in the courtyard and referring to him as 'peacemaker ben' etc..) I think most of us were just waiting for her humorous comments too in the face of a fairly dull topic :) It just shows what differences these small details make and what a big impact they can have on the level of engagement and interaction! Also I wonder if there might be culturally appropriate ways to encourage people to post too - it is not surprising to me that in Australia the expectation was that everyone should have 'a fair go' at the forum. In Indonesia however many of my friends there use social media constantly but make a lot of shorter comments generally. Maybe encouraging debate and disagreement in more dialogic discussion on-line would be easier in a culture where it is not considered slightly impolite to openly disagree with people openly or to offer criticism in public.

Mary Burns - 10 Lessons Learned From Online Learning for Teacher Professional Development

Mary Burns — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:01:31 +0000

Hi again Tracy, I am hoping others will weigh in on this but I would like to share some strategies that worked for us in Indonesia. We did mandate a minimum of 2 discussion posts per week, and provided alternatives to writing,such as a voice recording tool for those who did not like to write or write well. We also substituted some of the discussion forums for live discussions via Skype or DimDim for live, synchronous discussions. Since about 40% of their grade was based on participating in online discussions, we spent a lot of time with them in the orientation, analyzing and practicing " good" discussion posts along with checklists that they could use to assess their own posts and anchors of good discussions since, as you note, the learning gets pretty stale if the discussions get stale. It would be great to hear from others about this.

@tracyolpcau - 10 Lessons Learned From Online Learning for Teacher Professional Development

@tracyolpcau — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:12:42 +0000

We are currently using Yammer as a platform for OLPC Australia teachers to connect with each other. Course participants are introduced to the network and encouraged to engage with more experienced teachers and ask questions about implementing the program. One of the course outcomes is to introduce participants to the ongoing support and learning networks available to them. We'd like to formally fold this process into our courses, but how to do it authentically? Minimum contributions will force participation but not authentically. Mandated discussions become dry quickly. We're thinking about a points system that participants earn as they interact in some way of their choosing. We should have enough participants to have a few at the same point in the course at the same time. I'd be interested in other ideas!

Mary Burns - 10 Lessons Learned From Online Learning for Teacher Professional Development

Mary Burns — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:12:05 +0000

Hi Tracy--and thank YOU for sharing your experiences. I'm curious about the self-paced and online community combination you mention since they are often mutually exclusive. Can you say more about this?. I will also refer you (though this is about facilitating online communities of practice in a cohort model of online learning) to Chapter 16 of this free publication: Distance Education for Teacher Training: Modes, Models and Methods. It's at go.edc.org/07xd.

@tracyolpcau - 10 Lessons Learned From Online Learning for Teacher Professional Development

@tracyolpcau — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:24:31 +0000

Thanks for this really useful checklist of criteria to measure our own courses by. I'm going to keep referring back to it because I think you have 'hit the nail on the head'. I can see some areas that we're doing well in and some others we're in the process of addressing. I strongly agree with 'Lesson 1' being in top spot. A strong sense of structure and clear expectations helps busy teachers manage their time and find space to participate. I'd be interested to know if anyone has had success building online communities to complement self-paced courses? We're looking for strategies but many of the usual methods work well with cohorts but not with participants at different points in the course. Ideas?

@callaurrea - Distance Education Should Be a Viable Solution to Create Quality Teaching

@callaurrea — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 16:32:38 +0000

I joined the conversation late, but your comments resonate so much with my work... a key word we deal with so often is scale and distance/online solutions seem an attractive avenues for professional development. We just have to remember that change requires time, and online solutions are not a miracle; support is not only necessary, but the most important component in professional development; and like you said, scale is not just about reach, it is also about depth.

@callaurrea - 10 Lessons Learned From Online Learning for Teacher Professional Development

@callaurrea — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:41:24 +0000

Great article! I have been facilitating a weekly online session for over two years with key educators from different OLPC programs in the Latam region. I was looking at the data this week, and we have about 80 sessions documented. Most of your lessons resonate with the experience we have had in this chat/webinar sessions. Two things I feet have helps us continue to have a strong participation and community: 1) keep structure, but at the same time be flexible with topics and format... I know certain topics, guests and formats get the interests of the greatest number of people, so I bring one of those when I realize participation is going down, 2) we organize a few seminars that bring some of the participants together in one location, sometimes by region. I know it is not always possible to facilitate a face-to-face meeting, but those make a huge difference.