The Digital Public Library of America: Collaboration, Content, and Technology at Scale (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu

The Digital Public Library of America: Collaboration, Content, and Technology at Scale (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu

The vision of a national digital library has been circulating among U.S. librarians, scholars, educators, and technologists since the early 1990s. Efforts led by a range of organizations—such as the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and others—have successfully built resources that provide books, images, historical records, and audiovisual materials to anyone with Internet access. Scores of institutions have digitized vast numbers of materials held in U.S. libraries, archives, and museums, making available a shared cultural heritage in ways unimaginable not so long ago.

Can New Technologies Increase Interaction in Online Education?

There are three types of interaction in online courses: learner-to-content, learner-to-instructor, and learner-to-learner. Each contributes to student retention and motivation. This article elaborates on these types of interaction and suggests which technologies can facilitate each type of interaction.

By Angie Parker, Ph.D., and Steve Parker

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http://www.magnapubs.com

Overhypoed Typos

To spell-check or not to spell-check? Many people would find this question absurd: Of course you run spell-check on anything longer than a text message. Take some pride in your work! But I wandered away from that moral high ground recently after fiddling around with software called Lingofy that lets you run style-guide checks on your writing using The Associated Press Stylebook (or a style book of your own making).

by Rose Jacobs

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http://chronicle.com

Belated: SysAdmin Day

SysAdmin Day 

July 25, 2014 

15th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day

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http://sysadminday.com/

Using Video Annotation Tools to Teach Film Analysis

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in teaching undergraduate film courses is developing students’ close reading skills. This can include not only teaching the formal aspects of film—lighting, cinematography, sound, editing, and other techniques—but also aspects of the film’s content, such as historical references and other details that students might overlook.

by Prof. Hacker

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http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker

Annotate Video on the Fly: A Review of VidBolt

As a literature professor, I’m always looking for new ways to teach my students to pay close attention to what they are reading or watching. I’ve found that one of the best ways of doing this is through encouraging them to mark up their texts and have integrated shared annotations as an assignment in a few of my classes. But I’ve been limited to texts for these assignments so far. Because of this, I’m really excited by the pedagogical possibilities offered by Vidbolt, a new platform that allows users to easily annotate Youtube video and to share their comments either publicly or with a specific community.

by Adeline Koh

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http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker

Virtual reality: The next frontier in gaming

In recent years, the gaming industry has seen a number of hyped trends come and go: games on social networks, 3-D gaming, systems that let you control in-game avatars by moving your body.

Now get ready for another one: Virtual reality.

This technology, which plunges headset wearers into three-dimensional virtual worlds that feel incredibly lifelike, is coming to consumers very soon, according to the two companies spearheading the charge.

By Larry Frum

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http://www.cnn.com

A Liaison for a Classroom Building? Curating a Learning ecosystem.

It is very common for librarians to serve as liaisons to academic departments. They teach classes, purchase materials, answer reference questions, assist with research endeavors, and generally get involved with the odds-and-ends of those units. Some librarians also liaise with defined user communities such as first-year students, international students, or students associated with particular residence halls.

This classic approach enables librarians to connect their expertise with different user segments that likely share similar needs, interests, or perspectives. In short, these librarians serve as the human interface of the library.

By Brian Mathews

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http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian

Why The Future Of Education Involves Badges

Higher education institutions are abuzz with the concept of Open Badges. Defined as a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest, Open Badges are not only a hot topic as of late, but are also debated by some critics as the latest threat to higher education.

A closer look at this emerging trend reveals benefits for traditional institutions and alternative learning programs alike. Some advocates have suggested that badges representing learning and skills acquired outside the classroom, or even in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), will soon supplant diplomas and course credits.

By LindsayH

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http://www.edudemic.com

Closing the Technology Skills Gap: Can E-Learning Save the Day?

A look at how the e-learning platform may help bridge the education gap for tech jobs in emerging fields.

Everyone from kindergarten teachers and university professors, to CEOs and government leaders seem worried about the "technology skills gap." It's become commonplace to decry that we're not equipping students with the STEM skills they need to succeed in a tech-centric economy. Companies complain they have thousands of open tech jobs, but can't find qualified candidates to fill them. From San Francisco and Austin, to Sydney and London, companies say they could grow faster and boost hiring across teams, if only they could fill their open IT positions.

By Kristi Essick

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http://newsroom.cisco.com

Disruptive Innovation And Education

Taking Clay Christensen’s class at the Harvard Business School altered my understanding of how the world works. Changes that had previously seemed counterintuitive—the struggles of certain organizations at certain times despite having great leaders and team members, for example—could be explained by understanding the theories of innovation that Clay and others were developing, including the theory of disruptive innovation.

By Michael Horn

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http://www.forbes.com

5 Powerful Videos That’ll Help You Understand Global Education

The Global Education Conference is a free, week-long event that connects teachers, students, administrators, and organizations from around the world. This particular conference is really awesome because it happens completely via webinar – so you can participate without having to travel to a conference location and go broke on hotel rooms, meals, and entrance fees to the conference.

Aside from the advantages the all-webinar format offers, it also allows for a huge breadth of presenters and topics. The 2013 conference was host to over 200 general sessions and 19 keynote speakers, which really means there’s something for everyone in there. We’ve put together a short list of our 5 favorite videos from the 2013 conference – check them out below!


By Katie Lepi

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http://www.edudemic.com/

7 key steps in creating an online learning program

Single district online programs are the largest and fastest-growing segment of online and blended learning. There were an estimated 1,816,400 enrollments in distance-education courses in K-12 school districts in 2009-2010, almost all of which were online courses (Economics & Statistics, 2011).

Fueling the growth of district online learning programs are technology initiatives. School districts across the country continue to create technology enable learning environments by providing students and teachers with computing devices, often called one-to-one programs.


By Vanessa Wrenn

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http://www.eschoolnews.com

Lehigh Valley liberal arts colleges warm up to online education

For years, liberal arts schools felt digital learning was at odds with their mission.

Small classes. Lots of face time with professors. Lively debates on the humanities.

These have long been the hallmark of liberal arts colleges. They're also the reason that such schools have resisted what has become a staple on many college campuses: online education.

But with a student body now populated by so-called digital natives, schools like Moravian, Muhlenberg and Lafayette colleges have begun dipping their toes into the digital learning waters.

By Meghan Moravcik Walbert

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http://articles.mcall.com

How to Overcome Challenges to Complete an Online Degree

Online students who discuss school plans with family have a better chance of finishing their degree, experts say.

It’s one thing to start your online degree, but it’s another to finish it.

Completion rates for online students are tough to track, since the U.S. Department of Education only began looking at the issue recently, but many instructors and school leaders say the numbers are low. A 2013 study by Babson Survey Research Group found that that 41 percent of chief academic officers reported "that retaining students was a greater problem for online courses than for face-to-face courses."

By Dawn Reiss

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http://www.usnews.com

How E-Reading Threatens Learning in the Humanities

The student was angry. Why hadn’t I mentioned there was a shorter version of the book I assigned for this week’s class? After brashly announcing she had unearthed an earlier article by the author ("Same thing, right?"), she instructed me that anything said in a book could be reduced to an article. The rest is just padding.

For some years, the amount of reading we assign university students has been shrinking. A book a week is now at best four or five for the semester; volumes give way to chapters or articles. Our motivation is often a last-ditch attempt to get students to actually read what’s on the syllabus. Other factors include the spiraling cost of textbooks and copyright limitations on how much we may post digitally.

By Naomi S. Baron

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http://m.chronicle.com

QuickWire: Desire2Learn Rebrands and Adds Partners

The education-technology company Desire2Learn said on Monday that it was renaming its learning-management system, which will now be called Brightspace, and adding assorted features, including game-based learning. The company also said it was teaming up with IBM to improve Desire2Learn’s predictive analytics and with Microsoft to add a Windows 8 mobile app for e-books to Desire2Learn’s offerings.

by Lawrence Biemiller

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http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus

Rethinking What a 'Traditional' College Education Entails: Five Misconceptions About the Online Learning Experience

Society's notions of "traditional students" have become antiquated as yesterday's nontraditional student has become today's traditional student.

The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) Digest of Education Statistics data shows the median age of a college student is closer to 27 than 19. In fact, in the next 10 years the adult student undergraduate population (over 25 years old) is anticipated to grow faster than the "traditional" college student. The study's data shows that the majority of students -- whatever the age or reason -- are opting to pursue their education on a part-time basis. The same study showed that 32 percent of undergraduate students are pursuing their degree while working full-time. So, it may be just the time to start referring to part-time students as "traditional" and recognize that their needs are different and should not be ignored or trivialized.

By Tracy Lorenz 

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com

10 New Technologies You Should Know About

Every year has its standouts, right? 2007 had the original iPhone, and 2010 had the iPad. But what has 2014 offered us in terms of awesome technology thus far? There’s been some chatter about things like Google Glass, but I have yet to see any notable number of folks walking around donning their Google specs. There are lots of little things that come out that are better than the last version, but we’ve really been looking at a lot of incremental improvements on existing technology – iOS8 is not offering any major breakthroughs or improvements over iOS7, iOS6, etc.

By Katie Lepi 

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http://www.edudemic.com/

Students, Colleges are Embracing Online Learning

Today, the Internet has the ability to help many individuals achieve their dream of higher education. Whether it's helping people apply to college or fund their academic endeavors, the Internet is a priceless resource, and many modern students are even using it to complete the bulk of their education.

By Vanessa Denice

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http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com

Classroom Management and the Flipped Class

Lets face it. We teachers spend far too much time and energy trying to keep students quiet so that they can listen to us. We have taken countless courses and workshops on classroom management in our careers, and it seems that the underpinning goal of classroom management is for teachers to keep kids quiet so that they can learn. Is there a better way to think about classroom management?

What if the goal of class was for the students to actively engage in the content and participate in tangible ways in the learning process? Our experience before we flipped our class was that we spent the majority of class time at the front of the room. Students sat in nice neat rows as we taught them stuff. Our view of teaching had us in the front of the room "teaching."

By Jon Bergmann

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http://www.edutopia.org/

In a MOOC Mystery, a Course Suddenly Vanishes

A massive open online course on making sense of massive open online courses caused massive confusion when the course content was suddenly deleted and the professor started writing cryptic things on Twitter.

The MOOC, called “Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required,” was taught by Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a lecturer at the University of Zurich. Offered through Coursera, the course had been conceived of as a meta-MOOC designed to help disoriented educators find their feet in the online landscape. The course “grew out of the author’s experiences as an early adopter and advocate of newer technologies (such as Coursera) for online teaching,” according to a description on Coursera’s website.

by Steve Kolowich

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http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus

In the Digital Era, Print Still Gets Plenty of Love From Scholars

Nothing gladdens a publisher’s heart more than hearing readers say they still like to buy books—and printed books at that. At the Association of American University Presses’ annual meeting, which wrapped up here this week, a panel of scholars talked about how much of their work was still print-based even as chatter at the conference focused on e-books, metadata, and new ideas about how to make it easier to publish monographs digitally.

The panel included associate and assistant professors as well as graduate students in the humanities and social sciences. They work with PDFs and e-books but made it clear they are still attached to the hold-it-in-your-hand, mark-it-up-with-a-pencil reading experience.

by Jennifer Howard

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http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus

5 Things Researchers Have Discovered About MOOCs

In December 2013 a group of academics gathered during a Texas snowstorm and began the second phase of a discussion about massive open online courses. They were not terribly impressed by the hype the courses had received in the popular media, and they had set out to create a better body of literature about MOOCs—albeit a less sensational one.

The MOOC Research Initiative, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, had given many of those academics research grants to study what was going on in the online courses. Now the organization has posted preliminary findings from some of those research projects.

by Steve Kolowich

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http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus