UC Irvine’s OpenCourseWare gets Financial Boost
From The Hewlett Foundation:
The University of California, Irvine today announced the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has provided $320,000 in grant support to further develop the University’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) program and to advance the Open Education Resources Movement (OER) which it serves. With this funding, the University will expand existing free online courses and programs, and create new content — all available free of charge, to learners across the globe.
The grant will support the staffing and planning necessary for the University to grow its own OCW initiative, while also actively participating in the OCW and OER communities to further advance these movements. Specifically, the University will remain an active member in the OpenCourseWare Consortium, established by the Hewlett Foundation and now including 200 institutional members, which offer more than 9,000 open courses. In addition, the University will utilize the funding to update the content of existing OCW courses and develop new services associated with OCW, including an independent study model.
Canadian Safety Agency Adds Video Games to eLearning
From CSA Standards:
Canadian agency CSA Standards has launched a suite of interactive games to teach emergency preparedness, safety, and a variety of essential skills that could mean the difference between life and death on the job for many Canadian employees.
“To reduce injuries, workplace training must teach best safety practices and change behavior,” says Suzanne Kiraly, President, CSA Standards. “These new interactive modules go well beyond the simple transfer of knowledge and engage users in making decisions in the workplace that are linked to real-world standards and safety guidelines. From handling hazardous materials to assessing risks to prevent major disasters, preparing workforces with safety and emergency response skills in a virtual environment could mean the difference between life and death on the job.”
The interactive media was created by Distil Interactive, a developer of e-learning products. One piece of the training, Response Ready, challenges a trainee to avoid a dangerous explosion at a gas station and other emergency scenarios such as a toxic train derailment or a factory chemical spill.
Texas Bill Promotes Print-on-Demand Textbooks
A bill that went into effect in Texas on Sept. 1 provides for the adoption and use of open-source textbooks for K-12 students. The bill enables the state to create a repository of digital textbook content, which allows for customizable online or print-on-demand textbooks to be tailored to each school district’s, school’s, or student’s curriculum needs. It also allows for computer software, video, and other learning technologies to be integrated more readily with textbook content.
The bill is similar to changes in California state law, which also allows for the use of open-source textbooks in schools.
Posted by Jill Duffy, Senior Editor
eLearning News Briefs
But Can She Juggle? eLearn Magazine’s Newest Author Was a Clown
People Magazine notwithstanding, gossip is fun. Learning about people’s backgrounds is too.
Typically, though, I don’t know much about the backgrounds of the people who submit to eLearn Magazine beyond their e-learning experiences. A notable exception to this is Roger Schank, because I read many of his books in graduate school, heard him speak, and have a friend who was Roger’s student.
Sue Landay, eLearn Magazine’s newest author, told me about her background and it is fascinating:
About a week before I graduated from Yale (’86), the circus was in New Haven. A pretty good school friend had a friend from home who was on the show. After chatting with him for bit, I learned that auditions would be held in NYC in Madison Sq. Garden during a week I had planned to be in the city visiting my sister. So I went to the audition (I’d done gymnastics in grade school and middle school, and did some humorous mime in college). I never REALLY planned to join… but after my first entry-level job in advertising got stale, I decided it would be an interesting experience – at least as good as taking some time off to travel! So I sent in my application and a few months later, learned I’d been accepted.
It was a great experience that gave me a lot of appreciation for people who choose physical (rather than intellectual or cerebral) work, but also helped me realize that I needed a balance of the two. It’s kind of fun/funny to see where I am now, 20+ years later, still doing that “balancing act” of mixing play with purpose.
Should this be a one-time thing or should I ask all eLearn Magazine authors – and readers – about their backgrounds and how it impacted them?
Achieving Perfection or Avoiding Mistakes: Start Off Your Fall with These Six Tips
It’s September and thoughts turn to apple-picking, fall fashion, and school. Top 10 Common Teaching Mistakes For Teachers To Avoid had valuable points on achieving perfection, as I try to do, or avoiding mistakes. Here are 6 tips to improve as a teacher, culled from the article and from Stephen Downes (the first tip):
1) Pace oneself from the start. The most common first-year mistake is being too ambitious, trying to do too much.
2) Get organized before school starts. Toss or sort all papers immediately. Delete or file all documents.
3) Develop a discipline plan from the start. The problems are certainly different in online courses, but it is better to know how to address them before they happen. (I once had a student who cut his nails in class – that was my worst discipline problem ever!)
4) Connect with the school community and share best practices.
5) Ask for help when you need it and before you’re desperate.
6) Give yourself a break. If your evaluations aren’t perfect, figure out what to do differently next time and then do it.
Underground Efforts Yield Big Results with Social Media
Social Networking on Intranets looked at the use of social media within organizations and found that “Underground efforts yield big results. Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, and then sanctioning them within the enterprise.” This is true not just for internal, but for external social media use. Whether you call it underground efforts or rogue tweeters, the idea is still the same: to let people loose to use social media using their own judgment. It’s not that the attention to social media governance is misguided, but social media successes are more likely to spring from creativity and initiative. One of the ways that governance can help is by encouraging people to use social media who might not otherwise, bringing in fresh initiatives and perspectives.
I dabble in social media, with a less than astounding 253 tweets. Jill Duffy, my editor at ACM, brings more personality to eLearn Magazine on Twitter and to her personal account than I do. (My guess is she spends more time on it than I do.) But even better than Jill or me is Mark Senk, who works at NIOSH and divulged many of his secrets in an interview. My favorite is how he “lays bait” to reach new groups that he believes will benefit from NIOSH messages and sees if he is retweeted.
I noticed a more official looking background on NIOSH’s Twitter page and wondered if that means Mark is above ground now. That is part of the bottom-up social media process: try it out, break some ground, and let governance evolve based on what is already working.
The Next Ten Years: Developing Technological Literacy Skills to Participate Fully in the Modern World
Every year I ask people what they predict for e-learning in the coming year. Recently I asked Johann Ari Larusson, a doctoral candidate in the Computer Science Department at Brandeis University, what he expected the biggest changes to be in e-learning over the next 10 years. His response was he expects technological and societal influences to make learning more social and collaborative. He expanded on this:
What I mean is that because society has chosen to use the technology outside education (it is a critical component of their everyday lives) they are going to adopt it for their educational needs either with or without the schools. We already see people asking questions/solving problems on forums, facebook etc.
I am a bit worried that things might not change for political reasons. Even though we know much about the merit of technology and learning very little has changed up until today. Many faculty and schools still rely on the old unidirectional, solitary approach to firehosing students with textbook facts, which they regurgitate on an exam.
However, I think it will be unavoidable for education to figure out by themselves that the new learning age depends on social technology. Even if they don’t believe in the benefits of social/collaborative learning, the world is going demand students that have the right skills (technological literacy) to fully participate. Society will change the learning whether the schools likes it or not. Its just a matter of whether the schools want the learning to occur on facebook…or some pre-tuned learning-specific social platform.
Do you agree? Please share your thoughts.