The MOOC Quality Project MOOCs represent the latest stage in the evolution of open educational resources. First was open access to course content, and then access to free online courses. Accredited institutions are now accepting MOOCs as well as free courses and experiential learning as partial credit toward a degree. MOOCs are moving from an early entrepreneurial stage into the reality of more and more educational institutions. The MOOC Quality Project, an initiative of the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (www.efquel.org), addresses the latter question not by trying to find one answer which fits all, but by trying to stimulate a discourse on the issue of Quality of MOOCs. Each Wednesday you will find a new post, with a length of 1000-1500 words maximum length. We are looking forward to a lively debate, for EFQUEL, Ulf-Daniel Ehlers & Ebba Ossiannilsson & Alastair Creelman (www.efquel.org)
National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies: Chapter 2—The Themes of Social Studies Standards Main Page Executive Summary Preface Introduction Thematic Strands Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of culture and cultural diversity. Human beings create, learn, share, and adapt to culture. Cultures are dynamic and change over time. Through experience, observation, and reflection, students will identify elements of culture as well as similarities and differences among cultural groups across time and place. In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with geography, history, sociology, and anthropology, as well as multicultural topics across the curriculum. Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of the past and its legacy. Studying the past makes it possible for us to understand the human story across time. Knowing how to read, reconstruct and interpret the past allows us to answer questions such as: How do we learn about the past?
The Teacher's Quick Guide To Digital Scavenger Hunts If you’ve got a smartphone or a tablet in your classroom, you’re ready for the adventure to begin! By adventure I mean, of course, the world of active learning through digital scavenger hunts. In this hunt, students are tasked with finding a particular physical object, person, or place and have to use technology to track it down. Note: an ‘online scavenger hunt’ usually implies that you’re hunting around online and not physically with classmates. The Simple Goal So now that you’re all ready to start your very first scavenger hunt, let’s figure out what the goals are. Finding The Technology Like the movie National Treasure, students will need a lot of ingenuity and tools to help them uncover the mysteries you’ve laid out before them. In an effort to get your scavenger hunt jump-started, here are a few useful tech tools that might be of use. SCVNGR – A useful free app that lets you create your very own digital scavenger hunts, start to finish. Finding An Objective A Quick Note
Documentary 'Print the Legend' Goes Inside the World of 3D Printing The genesis of and challenges to the 3D-printing revolution are subjects that take center stage in a new documentary called Print the Legend. From directors Clay Tweel and Luis Lopez (Freakonomics), the film sets out to act as a "'time capsule' of a nascent industry," Tweel told Mashable. "The result is both a look inside a compelling new technology, and hopefully, a story about the challenges of growing any type of business, and facing the moral dilemmas our marketplace presents." That it is. Tweel said he knew "nothing" about 3D printing when he walked into the doors of MakerBot nearly two years ago, but working behind the scenes has taught him much about the industry. Print the Legend is now in theaters across New York and Los Angeles, and is also available on Netflix. BONUS: What Is 3D Printing and How Does It Work? Have something to add to this story?
Why is the Arctic and Antarctica cold? An experiment for kids. - The Hands-On Homeschooler This month, we are doing a unit study of the Antarctica and the Arctic with The Usual Mayhem, No Doubt Learning, Journey 2 Excellence, and Childhood Beckons. This week, we decided to look at why the Arctic and Antarctica are cold. Our inspiration comes from Sunshine Makes the Seasons by Franklyn Branley. (As I’ve mentioned before, I LOVE these “Let’s Read and Find Out Science books”!) The book does a wonderful job of explaining that the earth’s rotation around the sun determines which season we are in. To create your orange “earth”, you pierce an orange with a pencil, draw a line for the equator, and place a thumbtack at your approx. location on the earth. We went into a dark room, and then shined the flashlight on the orange “earth.” Afterwards, the author recommends that you tilt your orange so that the axis was at an angle, and then pictorially demonstrated how the earth’s tilt is the reason we have seasons. Finally, we started to explore the 2 poles – the North Pole and the South Pole.
Your Committed Sardine Blog Update Jul 16, 2013 10:00 am | Ross Crockett via Reading Today Online Author/consultant Harry Dickens has written three Apps for Learningbooks for Corwin Press: High School, Middle School, and Elementary School. He has been an educator for twenty-three years. Those years include classroom teacher and instructional technology director in a … Continue reading → Jul 16, 2013 09:59 am | Ryan Schaaf via Ars Technica One of the problems with cognitive and behavioral research is getting a good cross-section of the general population. Jul 16, 2013 08:40 am | Ryan Schaaf via Edutopia Settlers of Catan Photo credit: andresgarciam via flickr CC BY-NC 2.0 I had a great time at this year’s ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference, as both a presenter and participant. Jul 15, 2013 10:00 am | Ian Jukes via Edudemic We began our journey as educators in the early months of 2007.
Astronauts getting 3-D printer at International Space Station Now Playing NASA awards 'space taxi' contract to Boeing and SpaceX CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The 3-D printing boom is about to invade space. NASA is sending a 3-D printer to the International Space Station in hopes that astronauts will be able to one day fix their spacecraft by cranking out spare parts on the spot. The printer, made by a Northern California company called Made in Space, is among more than 5,000 pounds of space station cargo that's stuffed into a SpaceX Dragon capsule that was supposed to lift off before dawn Saturday. Rainy weather forced SpaceX to delay the launch until Sunday. Besides real-time replacement parts at the station, NASA envisions astronauts, in the decades ahead, making entire habitats at faraway destinations like Mars. "If we're really going to set up shop on Mars," we have to do this, Jeff Sheehy, NASA's senior technologist, said Friday. At Kennedy Space Center, the company showed off a number of objects made by its 3-D printers.
Atlantis Remixed Transformational play involves the use of virtual worlds to help people learn and grow in a context where they can fail safely. Theory At its core, transformational play is a learning and empowerment philosophy that is grounded in the belief that each one of us is capable of, wants to, and deserves to achieve, great things. Unlike any other form of curriculum, these games offer entire worlds in which learners are central, important participants; a place where the actions of a ten-year old can have significant impact on the world; and a place in which what you know is directly related to what you are able to do and, ultimately, who you become. The theory highlights relations among the three interconnected elements of person with intentionality, content with legitimacy, and context with consequentiality. This stands in sharp contrast to the more traditional positioning of content as facts to be memorized, not as meaningful tools that are necessary for transforming a problematic situation.
25 Inspiring Quotes From Unlikely Inbound Marketing Experts [SlideShare] We all know famous inbound marketers, from David Meerman Scott to Seth Godin to Guy Kawasaki to our very own Mike Volpe. But what you may not know is that Coco Chanel, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Didion, and Michael Jackson all have indispensable advice to inform your inbound marketing strategies and tactics. We thought it'd be fun to outline what the most unlikely experts -- folks like Coco and Bruce and Joan -- can teach us about marketing. Their quotes have helped inspire, engage, and revitalize our inbound marketing from time to time, and there's no time like the present for a little pick-me-up. Take a look at the quotes in the SlideShare below, and keep reading to see what some of these pearls of wisdom can teach us about being better inbound marketers. People are inspired in different ways, but these were a few of my favorite quotes from the collection, and how I think about them in the context of inbound marketing. Ensure that your data hierarchy matches your customers’ needs.
Maker Movement.pdf Games for Science Learning and Scientific Discovery Even though more people are recognizing the potential for teaching and learning through video games, there are still plenty of skeptics -- those who see video games as a mindless distraction, as entertainment and not education. But the work of a research center at the University of Washington may be at the forefront of challenging that notion. And this isn't just about how students can benefit from educational gaming either; it's about how scientific discovery can benefit from gamers. That latter element has found UW's Center for Game Science in the news a lot lately, as one of the games it developed has helped lead to a breakthrough in AIDS research. Creative Research Outsourcing The game in question is called Fold.it, an online protein-folding game. Since the game's release, some 100,000 people have played Foldit, most of whom have little or no background in biochemistry. "We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Dr. A Peek Under the Hood