Educational Technology and Change Journal

ETCJ’s Jessica Knott will be at the 3rd Annual Sloan-C Symposium: Emerging Technologies for Online Learning Conference, in San Jose, California, July 20-23, 2010. While participating as tech support for TechSmith Corporation’s Camtasia Relay team, she plans to share — via live ETCJ updates — her impressions on trends, questions being asked, things people are buzzing about, etc. These will be gathered and posted, as she submits them, on this page. Please stand by. (Note: If you bookmark this page, a link will be provided at this URL to take you to the article. We plan to bump Jessica’s report to the top of the first page on July 20. A quirk in WordPress changes the URL when the publishing date is changed.)

Updated 7.21.10: Click here for Jessica’s latest reports.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
Published 18 Feb. 2010

The use of personal digital communication devices (PDCDs) is growing exponentially in the U.S. and the rest of the world, pervading nearly every aspect of our lives. Rachel Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff’s Frontline special, “Digital_Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier” (2 Feb. 2010), purports to examine this phenomenon, this invasion of electronic devices, if you will, and to provide a report on its implications for the nation.

The fact that the program tries to cover the impact of PDCDs in one 90-minute special should have been ample warning that Dretzin and Rushkoff really couldn’t be serious. But I was curious and logged in to the site to view the segments in order.

I had my paper notebook and pen ready, planning to take notes for this article. However, I quickly gave up all hope of notetaking when it became obvious from the get-go that the pace was going to be frenetic and fragmented. So I watched, instead, and went along for the ride, allowing the rush of images and comments to lead me to the gist or point of the program.

In the end, after 90 minutes, I had the kind of “Huh?” moment that comes after I’ve watched a video out of sequence with key scenes omitted. I must’ve missed something because that couldn’t be all there was.

So I downloaded and replayed the sequence once more, beginning to end, fast-forwarding through parts that were familiar and reviewing key segments.

After the second time through, I realized that I hadn’t missed anything. The sequence was correct. And this was all there was.

The this is some generalizations, poorly guised as implications, that emerged from the disjointed blasts of video bites that were barely coherent from one segment to the next. The logic that bound the parts into a whole was elusive if not totally absent.

Perhaps the most damning is the idea that the nation’s brightest college students are growing dumber because of their preoccupation with PDCDs. The proof or evidence comprises a few testimonials by college faculty and alleged authorities on the subject matter as well as interviews with a handful of students. The charge is that today’s college students can no longer express themselves coherently in sustained pieces of writing. They’re capable of thinking in paragraph fragments only with little or no connection between thoughts. The proof is a student’s admission that he did, indeed, think and write in paragraph fragments.

The evidence also includes a “scientific” study of multitasking and its effect on performance. The conclusion, similar to that of driving while talking on a cellphone, is that performance suffers. But the experiment is far too simplistic and fails to address the notion that complex cognitive activities such as writing are inherently multitasking, requiring the control and coordination of many different cognitive procedures all at the same time. In fact, PDCDs actually ease the cognitive load by providing a means to instantly locate information and references, schedules and resources, with a click of the mouse.

Douglas Rushkoff’ and Rachel Dretzin

Without further evidence, the claim that students today are dumber because of digital distractions is hogwash. It doesn’t match my experience, and I’ve been teaching college composition for over thirty years.

One prof says that his students averaged only 75% in a midterm that tested them on their ability to recall info from his lectures and assigned readings. Had they not been distracted by their web-connected laptops and cellphones, he claims, they would have easily gotten 100%. Ironically, he says they’re not dumb — they’re just distracted. This is ironic because they’re really not dumb in the sense that they’re not limiting themselves to the prescribed sources and modes of information provided by the prof. There are many more ways of learning the same info, and the midterm tests but two.

One of the “experts” cites the results of a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education and claims that writing and reading skills of college students are deteriorating. What the expert and correspondents fail to consider is today’s radically altered rhetorical context. The context they’re using as a reference is based in 19th century technology. In the 21st century, classrooms, lectures, books, blackboards, paper and pencil have been augmented or replaced by electronic media that extends the rhetorical context to the entire planet, across time and space barriers, allowing potential access to all the world’s knowledge 24-7 and giving Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric a whole new meaning. For today’s students, “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (Aristotle’s Rhetoric, book 1) includes PDCDs.

Throughout the program, we see similar shortsighted conclusions for the American home, social relationships, work, etc.

In the segment on the home, we see a typical middle-class family (Dretzin’s) living the American dream. Dretzin’s comment is that the family is physically together but alone at the same time, separated by PDCDs. In one sense, yes, this is true. But in another, the members of the family are connected in ways that transcend the traditional family-at-home model. Through PDCDs, they are instantly accessible to one another 24-7 — not only when they’re at home, together.

In the segment on people who socialize and meet others online, the implication is that many of us are losing sight of the distinction between real and virtual interactions. The assumption seems to be that we’re becoming alienated and delusional, less human. But are we? The fact is, we may have reached the tipping point for maintaining a distinction between F2F (face-to-face) and virtual. For digital natives, there may be no distinction, and insisting that there is may be delusional. Thus, conversing with someone digitally is simply an extension of F2F communication. In both cases, the interaction is real.

In the segment on work, Rushkoff takes us to an IBM business complex. The drive up through the manicured park and parking lot is eerily quiet and static. No one’s around. The vast lobby of the building is empty of people, and so are the hallways and offices that are open to our view. He finally finds a single worker in an office, sitting with a laptop and headset. She explains that she’s collaborating in real-time with distant colleagues via a virtual reality program. They are physically separated, and, no, they have never met F2F.

The point seems to be that the American worker is becoming increasingly alone and that business offices are becoming ghost towns. A walk through most college faculty office buildings on any given day would reveal the same. The hallways are empty, and the offices are locked tight. No one seems to be around. And the assumption is that there is something wrong with this picture.

One could argue that there’s nothing wrong with this picture. In fact, workers and faculty are realizing that they can communicate with others much more efficiently and effectively via PDCDs. An office or conference room is no longer the only or best medium for communication.

Other segments of the program take a look at addiction to video games and the use of video simulations and remotely controlled weapons by the military. The warning is that overdoing games is unhealthy and that digital distance may blur the distinction between real and virtual violence. My reaction to the dangers of game addiction is “So what else is new.” Too much of anything is bad for your health. Period. The comments from those interviewed re the military’s use of digital devices seem to pooh-pooh the fear that the young can’t distinguish between real and faked. They can.

I won’t try to cover all the points made in the program, but there’s one more that ought to be mentioned. This is the segment where a researcher claims that reading uses less brain energy than digital multitasking, and this is somehow healthier. During the latter, the person is supposedly distracted and confused while in the former the person is focused and relaxed. I’d need to hear other interpretations before deciding that multitasking is, indeed, bad for your health.

In conclusion, I’d say that Dretzin and Rushkoff simply tried to cover too much of a complex subject in a relatively brief program. To do the subject justice, no less than a well-researched 12-part series spread out over a year would suffice. Each segment would need to be 90 minutes or longer, and the pace would need to be slowed to allow for thoughtful viewing.

Beyond just the scope of coverage, however, there’s need for a more intelligent approach to the underlying issues. Producers, writers, and correspondents have to get beyond the sensational and zero in on the more profound and complex implications of PDCDs in our lives. How are they making us more instead of less human? How are they positively changing the way we live and define our lives? How are they promoting a global village mentality and thus underscoring similarities rather than differences? How are they removing boundaries that separate nations and peoples and promoting world peace? How are they providing a means for everyone, regardless of age, gender, socio-economic status, or national origin to get a first-rate K-16 education? How are they improving the ways in which we learn and teach? How are they erasing the discrepancies that doom so many to poverty and suffering? How are they contributing to a more just and humane world? How are they being used to battle crime and political corruption? How are they helping us to recover and maintain the health of our environment?

So many questions, so many issues, so much to be learned. As a topic that impacts all our lives and the world we share, our digital nation deserves more than 90 minutes of our time.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

By Jessica Knott
Editor, Twitter
Published 18 Feb. 2010

Hello, my name is Jessica, and I’m attached to my Blackberry like a sand burr to a pant leg. When I’m not sleeping, I’m answering e-mails, texting my friends and checking my Twitter account. Embarrassing fact: I’ve been known to text message my ever-patient husband from another room of the house to ask him to bring me a soda. I believe in gaming as education, in building social networks and making education engaging and effective using technology. I identify as a girl geek and revel in technology as a powerful life-enhancing tool.

That said, as with all things, I believe that moderation is key in technology, lest our lives be overtaken by the flashing Blackberry LED or the pressure of harvest season in FarmTown. I view life through the lens of higher education practice and scholarship. Sherry Turkle’s statement that “students need to be stimulated in ways they didn’t need to be stimulated before” is powerful and holds many implications for teaching, learning and design with technology. Does this mean we should design every lesson of every course as an adventure in learning? Not necessarily. But consciousness in regard to technology-assisted content delivery is of the utmost importance not only for student engagement but in ensuring that students are processing the information and transforming content into knowledge.

As a PhD student and practitioner of online learning, my laptop is a critical tool in my knowledge construction and application. As concepts are presented in classes or meetings, I often Google them to see elements of what I’m learning at play in “real life.” This allows me to transcend physical walls and immediately familiarize myself with the practices and applications of what I’m learning. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel the tempting lure of my Facebook friends or the intense need to check my Twitter stream. Fighting these urges, while difficult, is necessary for me to truly process the information I receive. When I fall prey to temptation I later find holes in my understanding that may not have been there had my multitasking not interfered with my concentration.

A further example of the power of distraction comes in the form of how I watched this video segment. As I watched this video, I took notes but found myself checking e-mail, responding to professors and answering the questions of co-workers. How much of the information in these segments did I really process? More importantly, what did I miss?

The front page of The Chronicle Review for February 5, 2010 screams “Attention Deficit? Distraction and the Data Deluge.” Scholars are increasingly concerned about learning retention and the digital age, seemingly for many of the reasons I stated above. Are we engaging with the content or are we sort of engaging with the content and sort of engaging with everything else around us? Technology is a powerful engagement tool, but course design is incredibly important in that it should guide technology use, channeling cognition and facilitating exploration. We need to make them listen; more importantly we need to make them want to listen.

With technology comes responsibility. Be it a conference back channel or a course lecture, expectations for use must be set and outcomes made explicit. Ample opportunity for exploration and self-reflection is crucial in any learning environment, and technology can facilitate this in ways that were impossible even 15 years ago. It is important, however, not to lose ourselves in the technical abyss. We are not educators of technology, we are educators harnessing technology. This is an important lesson not only for our students, but for us as individuals. As you watch “Digital_Nation,” I encourage you to reflect upon your own practices. How much of this segment do you see at work in your own life? What do you find problematic or concerning? And, most importantly, how can you not only co-exist with technology but most effectively take command of what it has to offer? This program is an eye-opener on many levels, not the least of which is thsese implications for the future.

(Disclaimer: This reaction essay contains my own thoughts regarding Digital_Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier. My thoughts do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan State University, Libraries, Computing and Technology or Virtual University Design and Technology. Please feel free to contact me at jlknott@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.)

Further Reading:

Divided Attention by David Glenn, The Chronicle Review, February 5, 2010

Appraising Information Abundance by W. Russell Neuman, The Chronicle Review, February 5, 2010

From Distraction to Engagement: Wireless Devices in the Classroom by Berlin Fang, Educause Quarterly

Student Engagement and Technology in the Classroom, Tech Ticker

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Thomas Ho, Ph.D.

Previously, he was Professor of Computer and Information Technology atIndiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Previously, he was a Senior Fellow in Information Systems and Computer Science at theNational University of Singapore from 1993-1994. From 1990-1992, he was Director of the Information Networking Institute atCarnegie Mellon University. From 1978 to 1988, he was Head of the Department of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University which was recognized by the Data Processing Management Association for its Four-year Institution Award for undergraduate computer information systems programs. From 1986-1988, he was on loan from Purdue to serve as Executive Director of the INTELENET Commission which pioneered the INdiana TELEcommunications NETwork. He received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Purdue University.

ETC Publications

Should Students Have a Personal Brand?
Facebook Timeline: They’re Already Telling Us the Story of Their Life…

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Franklin P. Schargel
Bio
Website

Franklin Schargel, a native of Brooklyn, New York now residing in Albuquerque, NM, is a graduate of the University of the City of New York. Franklin holds two Masters Degrees: one in Secondary Education from City University and a degree from Pace University in School Administration and Supervision. His career spans thirty-three years of classroom teaching, school counseling and eight years of school supervision and administration. In addition, Franklin taught a course in Dowling College’s MBA Program.  Read more.

ETC Publications

Sound Bites Aren’t the Answer for Reform

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Robert Plants
Bio

Dr. Plants serves as Assistant Dean, Director of Off-campus Undergraduate Advising, and Assistant Professor. Bob teaches the School of Education’s only technology classes, online and a live lab-based course. While not performing his off-campus duties, he has served as the School of Education’s “webmaster” and on its technology committee. Read more.

ETC Publications

Living in Glass Schoolhouses: 21st Century Teaching and Learning Is Much More Than Standards
Arne and Michelle vs. Larry: The Statistical Battle
Real Change with 21st Century Learning Communities
Computer Science – A Field of Dreams

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Marc Prensky
Guest Author
Bio

Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, and designer in the critical areas of education and learning. He is the author of 3 books: Teaching Digital Natives — Partnering for Real Learning (Corwin 2010), Don’t Bother Me Mom — I’m Learning (Paragon House 2005), Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill, 2001).

Marc is the founder and CEO of Games2train (whose clients include IBM, Nokia, Pfizer, the US Department of Defense and the L.A. and Florida Virtual Schools) and creator of the sites http://www.dodgamecommunity.com and http://www.socialimpactgames.com .

Marc has created over 50 software games for learning, including the world’s first fast-action videogame-based training tools and world-wide, multi-player, multi-team on-line competitions. He has also taught at all levels. Marc has been featured in articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and the BBC, and was named as one of training’s top 10 “visionaries” by Training magazine. He holds graduate degrees from Yale (Teaching) and Harvard (MBA).

ETC Publications

Simple Changes in Current Practices May Save Our Schools

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Selected Publications

“Innovate Blog: Need for More Discussion.” Innovate, the journal of online education, February/March 2009 (Volume 5, Issue 3).

“Innovate-Blog: A Step into Blog 2.0.” Innovate, the journal of online education, December 2008/January 2009 (Volume 5, Issue 2).

“Innovate-Ideagora: Introducing a New Feature in Innovate.” Alan McCord, Denise Easton, and James N. Shimabukuro. Innovate, the journal of online education, October/November 2008 (Volume 5, Issue 1).

“Freedom and Empowerment: An Essay on the Next Step for Education and Technology.” Innovate, the journal of online education, June/July 2005 (Volume 1, Issue 5).

“Rising Stars in Virtual Education: A Peek into 2010.” Technology Source, November/December 2002.

“The Evolving Virtual Conference: Implications for Professional Networking.” Technology Source, September/October 2000.

“What Is an Online Conference?” Technology Source, January/February 2000.

“How to Get the Most Out of an Online Conference.” TCC Worldwide Online Conference: Looking Back Towards the Future, April 7-9, 1999.

“How to Survive in an Online Class: Guidelines for Students.” First published at the Fourth Annual TCC Online Conference: Best Practices in Delivering, Supporting, and Managing Online Learning, April 7-9, 1999.

“CMC and Writing Instruction: A Future Scenario.” A chapter in volume 1 of Berge and Collins’ Computer-Mediated Communications and the Online Classroom (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995).

“Stimulating Learning with Electronic Guest Lecturing.” A chapter coauthored with Morton Cotlar in volume 3 of Berge and Collins’ Computer-Mediated Communications and the Online Classroom (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995).

Beyond the Classroom: International Education and the Community College. A four-volume series co-edited with Robert W. Franco (University of Hawaii, 1992).

Selected Presentations

“The Force Is with US—The Teachers: Freedom in the New Classroom.” Keynote presentation. Ninth Annual TCC 2004 Online Conference Apr. 20, 2004.

“The Evolving Virtual Conference: Trends in an Emerging Medium for Professional Networking.” Keynote presentation. GATE 2000 International Virtual Conference. June 15-16, 2000.

“Teaching a Required Freshman Course Online: Implications for Distance Education.” Presentation. Third Seminar for Presidents of Junior and Community Colleges, June 16, 1997, at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

President, HyLighter, Inc

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

The following excerpts are from Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (Washington, D.C., 2009), conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. It was prepared by Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia, and Karla Jones. Click here for the complete report.

Abstract

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

Executive Summary

Online learning—for students and for teachers—is one of the fastest growing trends in educational uses of technology. The National Center for Education Statistics (2008) estimated that the number of K-12 public school students enrolling in a technology-based distance education course grew by 65 percent in the two years from 2002-03 to 2004-05. On the basis of a more recent district survey, Picciano and Seaman (2009) estimated that more than a million K–12 students took online courses in school year 2007–08.

Online learning overlaps with the broader category of distance learning, which encompasses earlier technologies such as correspondence courses, educational television and videoconferencing. Earlier studies of distance learning concluded that these technologies were not significantly different from regular classroom learning in terms of effectiveness. Policy-makers reasoned that if online instruction is no worse than traditional instruction in terms of student outcomes, then online education initiatives could be justified on the basis of cost efficiency or need to provide access to learners in settings where face-to-face instruction is not feasible. The question of the relative efficacy of online and face-to-face instruction needs to be revisited, however, in light of today’s online learning applications, which can take advantage of a wide range of Web resources, including not only multimedia but also Web-based applications and new collaboration technologies. These forms of online learning are a far cry from the televised broadcasts and videoconferencing that characterized earlier generations of distance education. Moreover, interest in hybrid approaches that blend in-class and online activities is increasing. Policy-makers and practitioners want to know about the effectiveness of Internet-based, interactive online learning approaches and need information about the conditions under which online learning is effective.

The findings presented here are derived from (a) a systematic search for empirical studies of the effectiveness of online learning and (b) a meta-analysis of those studies from which effect sizes that contrasted online and face-to-face instruction could be extracted or estimated. A narrative summary of studies comparing different forms of online learning is also provided.

These activities were undertaken to address four research questions:
1. How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with that of face-to-face instruction?
2. Does supplementing face-to-face instruction with online instruction enhance learning?
3. What practices are associated with more effective online learning?
4. What conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning?

This meta-analysis and review of empirical online learning research are part of a broader study of practices in online learning being conducted by SRI International for the Policy and Program Studies Service of the U.S. Department of Education. The goal of the study as a whole is to provide policy-makers, administrators and educators with research-based guidance about how to implement online learning for K–12 education and teacher preparation. An unexpected finding of the literature search, however, was the small number of published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. Because the search encompassed the research literature not only on K–12 education but also on career technology, medical and higher education, as well as corporate and military training, it yielded enough studies with older learners to justify a quantitative meta-analysis. Thus, analytic findings with implications for K–12 learning are reported here, but caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

This literature review and meta-analysis differ from recent meta-analyses of distance learning in that they

• Limit the search to studies of Web-based instruction (i.e., eliminating studies of video- and audio-based telecourses or stand-alone, computer-based instruction);
• Include only studies with random-assignment or controlled quasi-experimental designs; and
• Examine effects only for objective measures of student learning (e.g., discarding effects for student or teacher perceptions of learning or course quality, student affect, etc.).

This analysis and review distinguish between instruction that is offered entirely online and instruction that combines online and face-to-face elements. The first of the alternatives to classroom-based instruction, entirely online instruction, is attractive on the basis of cost and convenience as long as it is as effective as classroom instruction. The second alternative, which the online learning field generally refers to as blended or hybrid learning, needs to be more effective than conventional face-to-face instruction to justify the additional time and costs it entails. Because the evaluation criteria for the two types of learning differ, this meta-analysis presents separate estimates of mean effect size for the two subsets of studies.

Key Findings

The main finding from the literature review was that

• Few rigorous research studies of the effectiveness of online learning for K–12 students have been published. A systematic search of the research literature from 1994 through 2006 found no experimental or controlled quasi-experimental studies comparing the learning effects of online versus face-to-face instruction for K–12 students that provide sufficient data to compute an effect size. A subsequent search that expanded the time frame through July 2008 identified just five published studies meeting meta-analysis criteria.

The meta-analysis of 51 study effects, 44 of which were drawn from research with older learners, found that

• Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction. Learning outcomes for students who engaged in online learning exceeded those of students receiving face-to-face instruction, with an average effect size of +0.24 favoring online conditions. The mean difference between online and face-to-face conditions across the 51 contrasts is statistically significant at the p < .01 level. Interpretations of this result, however, should take into consideration the fact that online and face-to-face conditions generally differed on multiple dimensions, including the amount of time that learners spent on task. The advantages observed for online learning conditions therefore may be the product of aspects of those treatment conditions other than the instructional delivery medium per se.

• Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction. The mean effect size in studies comparing blended with face-to-face instruction was +0.35, p < .001. This effect size is larger than that for studies comparing purely online and purely face-to-face conditions, which had an average effect size of +0.14, p < .05. An important issue to keep in mind in reviewing these findings is that many studies did not attempt to equate (a) all the curriculum materials, (b) aspects of pedagogy and (c) learning time in the treatment and control conditions. Indeed, some authors asserted that it would be impossible to have done so. Hence, the observed advantage for online learning in general, and blended learning conditions in particular, is not necessarily rooted in the media used per se and may reflect differences in content, pedagogy and learning time.

• Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning. The mean effect size for studies with more time spent by online learners was +0.46 compared with +0.19 for studies in which the learners in the face-to-face condition spent as much time or more on task (Q = 3.88, p < .05).

• Most of the variations in the way in which different studies implemented online learning did not affect student learning outcomes significantly. Analysts examined 13 online learning practices as potential sources of variation in the effectiveness of online learning compared with face-to-face instruction. Of those variables, (a) the use of a blended rather than a purely online approach and (b) the expansion of time on task for online learners were the only statistically significant influences on effectiveness. The other 11 online learning practice variables that were analyzed did not affect student learning significantly. However, the relatively small number of studies contrasting learning outcomes for online and face-to-face instruction that included information about any specific aspect of implementation impeded efforts to identify online instructional practices that affect learning outcomes.

• The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types. Online learning appeared to be an effective option for both undergraduates (mean effect of +0.35, p < .001) and for graduate students and professionals (+0.17, p < .05) in a wide range of academic and professional studies. Though positive, the mean effect size is not significant for the seven contrasts involving K–12 students, but the number of K–12 studies is too small to warrant much confidence in the mean effect estimate for this learner group. Three of the K–12 studies had significant effects favoring a blended learning condition, one had a significant negative effect favoring face-to-face instruction, and three contrasts did not attain statistical significance. The test for learner type as a moderator variable was nonsignificant. No significant differences in effectiveness were found that related to the subject of instruction.

• Effect sizes were larger for studies in which the online and face-to-face conditions varied in terms of curriculum materials and aspects of instructional approach in addition to the medium of instruction. Analysts examined the characteristics of the studies in the meta-analysis to ascertain whether features of the studies’ methodologies could account for obtained effects. Six methodological variables were tested as potential moderators: (a) sample size, (b) type of knowledge tested, (c) strength of study design, (d) unit of assignment to condition, (e) instructor equivalence across conditions, and (f) equivalence of curriculum and instructional approach across conditions. Only equivalence of curriculum and instruction emerged as a significant moderator variable (Q = 5.40, p < .05). Studies in which analysts judged the curriculum and instruction to be identical or almost identical in online and face-to-face conditions had smaller effects than those studies where the two conditions varied in terms of multiple aspects of instruction (+0.20 compared with +0.42, respectively). Instruction could differ in terms of the way activities were organized (for example as group work in one condition and independent work in another) or in the inclusion of instructional resources (such as a simulation or instructor lectures) in one condition but not the other.

The narrative review of experimental and quasi-experimental studies contrasting different online learning practices found that the majority of available studies suggest the following:

• Blended and purely online learning conditions implemented within a single study generally result in similar student learning outcomes. When a study contrasts blended and purely online conditions, student learning is usually comparable across the two conditions.

• Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes. The research does not support the use of some frequently recommended online learning practices. Inclusion of more media in an online application does not appear to enhance learning. The practice of providing online quizzes does not seem to be more effective than other tactics such as assigning homework.

• Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection. Studies indicate that manipulations that trigger learner activity or learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are effective when students pursue online learning as individuals.

• Providing guidance for learning for groups of students appears less successful than does using such mechanisms with individual learners. When groups of students are learning together online, support mechanisms such as guiding questions generally influence the way students interact, but not the amount they learn.

Conclusions

In recent experimental and quasi-experimental studies contrasting blends of online and face-to-face instruction with conventional face-to-face classes, blended instruction has been more effective, providing a rationale for the effort required to design and implement blended approaches. Even when used by itself, online learning appears to offer a modest advantage over conventional classroom instruction.

However, several caveats are in order: Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium, In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction.

In addition, although the types of research designs used by the studies in the meta-analysis were strong (i.e., experimental or controlled quasi-experimental), many of the studies suffered from weaknesses such as small sample sizes; failure to report retention rates for students in the conditions being contrasted; and, in many cases, potential bias stemming from the authors’ dual roles as experimenters and instructors.

Finally, the great majority of estimated effect sizes in the meta-analysis are for undergraduate and older students, not elementary or secondary learners. Although this meta-analysis did not find a significant effect by learner type, when learners’ age groups are considered separately, the mean effect size is significantly positive for undergraduate and other older learners but not for K–12 students.

Another consideration is that various online learning implementation practices may have differing effectiveness for K–12 learners than they do for older students. It is certainly possible that younger students could benefit more from a different degree of teacher or computer-based guidance than would college students and older learners. Without new random assignment or controlled quasi-experimental studies of the effects of online learning options for K–12 students, policy-makers will lack scientific evidence of the effectiveness of these emerging alternatives to face-to-face instruction.

__________

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, Washington, D.C., 2009.
[www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html]

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Posted in dotSUB by tedtalks on 16 June 2010

Transcript for video: “Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums”

It’s a great pleasure to be here. It’s a great pleasure to speak after Brian Cox from CERN. I think CERN is the home of the Large Hadron Collider. What ever happened to the Small Hadron Collider? Where is the Small Hadron Collider? Because the Small Hadron Collider once was the big thing. Now, the Small Hadron Collider is in a cupboard, overlooked and neglected. You know when the Large Hadron Collider started, and it didn’t work, and people tried to work out why, it was the Small Hadron Collider team who sabotaged it because they were so jealous. The whole Hadron Collider family needs unlocking.

The lesson of Brian’s presentation, in a way — all those fantastic pictures — is this really: that vantage point determines everything that you see. What Brian was saying was science has opened up successively different vantage points from which we can see ourselves. And that’s why it’s so valuable. So the vantage point you take determines virtually everything that you will see. The question that you will ask will determine much of the answer that you will get.

And so if you ask this question: Where would you look to see the future of education? The answer that we’ve traditionally given to that is very straightforward, at least in the last 20 years. You go to Finland. Finland is the best place in the world to see school systems. The Finns may be a bit boring and depressive and there’s a very high suicide rate, but by golly they are qualified. And they have absolutely amazing education systems. And so we all troop off to Finland, and we wonder at their social democratic miracle of Finland and its cultural homogeneity and all the rest of it, and then we struggle to imagine how we might bring lessons back.

Well, so, for this last year, with the help of Cisco who sponsor me, for some balmy reason, to do this, I’ve been looking somewhere else. Because actually radical innovation does sometimes come from the very best, but it often comes from places where you have huge need, unmet, latent demand and not enough resources for traditional solutions to work — traditional high-cost solutions which depend on professionals, which is what schools and hospitals are.

So I ended up in places like this. This is a place called Monkey Hill. It’s one of the hundreds of favelas in Rio. Most of the populations growth of the next 50 years will be in cities. We’ll grow by six cities of 12 million people a year for the next 30 years. Almost all of that growth will be in the developed world. Almost all of that growth will be in places like Monkey Hill. This is where you’ll find the fastest growing young populations of the world. So if you want recipes to work — for virtually anything — health, education, government politics and education — you have to go to these places. And if you go to these places, you meet people like this.

This is a guy called Juanderson. At the age of 14, in common with many 14-year-olds in the Brazilian education system, he dropped out of school. It was boring. And Juanderson, instead, went into what provided kind of opportunity and hope in the place that he lived, which was the drugs trade. And by the age of 16, with rapid promotion, he was running the drugs trade in 10 favelas. He was turning over 200,000 dollars a week. He employed 200 people. He was going to be dead by the age of 25. And luckily, he met this guy, who is Rodrigo Baggio, the owner of the first laptop to ever appear in Brazil. 1994, Rodrigo started something called CDI, which took computers donated by corporations, put them in community centers in favelas and created places like this. What turned Juanderson around was technology for learning that made learning fun and accessible.

Or you can go to places like this. This is Kibera, which is the largest slum in East Africa. Millions of people living here, stretched over many kilometers. And there I met these two, Azra on the left, Maureen on the right. They just finished their Kenyan certificate of secondary education. That name should tell you that the Kenyan education system borrows almost everything from Britain, circa 1950, but has managed to make it even worse. So there are schools in slums like this. They’re places like this. That’s where Maureen went to school. They’re private schools. There are no state schools in slums. And the education they got was pitiful. It was in places like this. This a school set up by some nuns in another slum called Nakuru. Half the children in this classroom have no parents because they’ve died through AIDS. The other half have one parent because the other parent has died through AIDS. So the challenges of education in this kind of place are not to learn the kings and queens of Kenya or Britain. They are to stay alive, to earn a living, to not become HIV positive. The one technology that spans rich and poor in places like this is not anything to do with industrial technology. It’s not to do with electricity or water. It’s the mobile phone. If you want to design from scratch virtually any service in Africa, you would start now with the mobile phone. Or you could go to places like this.

This is a place called the Madangiri Settlement Colony, which is a very developed slum about 25 minutes outside New Delhi, where I met these characters who showed me around for the day. The remarkable thing about these girls, and the sign of the kind of social revolution sweeping through the developing world is that these girls are not married. 10 years ago, they certainly would have been married. Now they’re not married, and they want to go on to study further, to have a career. They’ve been brought up by mothers who are illiterate, who have never ever done homework. All across the developing world there are millions of parents, tens, hundreds of millions, who for the first time are with children doing homework and exams. And the reason they carry on studying is not because they went to a school like this. This is a private school. This is a fee-pay school. This is a good school. This is the best you can get in Hyderabad in Indian education. The reason they went on studying was this.

This is a computer installed in the entrance to their slum by a revolutionary social entrepreneur called Sugata Mitra who’s adopted the most radical experiments, showing that children, in the right conditions, can learn on their own with the help of computers. Those girls have never touched Google. They know nothing about Wikipedia. Imagine what their lives would be like if you could get that to them.

So if you look, as I did, through this tour, and by looking at about a hundred case studies of different social entrepreneurs working in these very extreme conditions, look at the recipes they come up with for learning, they look nothing like school. What do they look like? Well, education is a global religion. And education, plus technology, is a great source of hope. You can go to places like this.

This is a school three hours outside of Sao Paulo. Most of the children there have parents who are illiterate. Many of them don’t have electricity at home. But they find it completely obvious to use computers, websites, make videos, so on and so forth. When you go to places like this what you see is that education in these settings works by pull, not push. Most of our education system is push. I was literally pushed to school. When you get to school, things are pushed at you, knowledge, exams, systems, timetables. If you want to attract people like Juanderson who could, for instance, buy guns, wear jewelry, ride motorbikes and get girls through the drugs trade, and you want to attract him into education, having a compulsory curriculum doesn’t really make sense. That isn’t really going to attract him. You need to pull him. And so education needs to work by pull, not push.

And so the idea of a curriculum is completely irrelevant in a setting like this. You need to start education from things that make a difference to them in their settings. What does that? Well, the key is motivation, and there are two aspects to it. One is to deliver extrinsic motivation. That education has a payoff. Our education systems all work on the principle that there is a payoff, but you have to wait quite a long time. That’s too long if you’re poor. Waiting 10 years for the payoff from education is too long when you need to meet daily needs, when you’ve got siblings to look after or a business to help with. So you need education to be relevant and help people to make a living there and then, often. And you also need to make it intrinsically interesting.

So time and again, I found people like this. This is an amazing guy, Sebastiao Rocha, in Belo Horizonte, in the third largest city in Brazil. He’s invented more than 200 games to teach virtually any subject under the sun. In the schools and communities that Taio works in, the day always starts in a circle and always starts from a question. Imagine an education system that started from questions, not from knowledge to be imparted, or started from game, not from a lesson, or started from the premise that you have to engage people first before you can possibly teach them. Our education systems, you do all that stuff afterward, if you’re lucky, sport, drama, music. These things, they teach through. They attract people to learning because it’s really a dance project or a circus project or, the best example of all — El Sistema in Venezuela — it’s a music project. And so you attract people through that into learning, not adding that on after all the learning has been done and you’ve eaten your cognitive greens.

So El Sistema in Venezuela uses a violin as a technology of learning. Taio Rocha uses making soap as a technology of learning. And what you find when you go to these schemes is that they use people and places in incredibly creative ways. Masses of peer learning. How do you get learning to people when there are no teachers, when teachers won’t come, when you can’t afford them, and even if you do get teachers, what they teach isn’t relevant to the communities that they serve? Well, you create your own teachers. You create peer-to-peer learning, or you create para-teachers, or you bring in specialist skills. But you find ways to get learning that’s relevant to people through technology, people and places that are different.

So this is a school in a bus on a building site in Pune, the fastest growing city in Asia. Pune has 5,000 building sites. It has 30,000 children on those building sites. That’s one city. Imagine that urban explosion that’s going to take place across the developing world and how many thousands of children will spend their school years on building sites. Well, this is a very simple scheme to get the learning to them through a bus. And they all treat learning, not as some sort of academic, analytical activity, but that’s something that’s productive, something you make, something you can do, perhaps earn a living from.

So I met this character, Steven. He’d spent three years in Nairobi living on the streets because his parents had died of AIDS. And he was finally brought back into school, not by the offer of GCSEs, but by the offer of learning how to become a carpenter, a practical making skill. So the trendiest schools in the world, High Tech High and others, they espouse a philosophy of learning as productive activity. Here, there isn’t really an option. Learning has to be productive in order for it to make sense.

And finally, they have a different model of scale. And it’s a Chinese restaurant model of how to scale. And I learned it from this guy, who is an amazing character. He’s probably the most remarkable social entrepreneur in education in the world. His name is Madhav Chavan, and he created something called Pratham. And Pratham runs preschool play groups for, now, 21 million children in India. It’s the largest NGO in education in the world. And it also supports working-class kids going into Indian schools. He’s a complete revolutionary. He’s actually a trade union organizer by background. And that’s how he learned the skills to build his organization.

When they got to a certain stage, Pratham got big enough to attract some pro bono support from McKinsey. McKinsey came along and looked at his model and said, “You know what you should do with this Madhav? You should turn it into McDonald’s. And what you do when you go to any new site is you kind of roll out a franchise. And it’s the same wherever you go. It’s reliable and people know exactly where they are. And they’ll be no mistakes.” And Madhav said, “Why do we have to do it that way? Why can’t we do it more like the Chinese restaurants?”

There are Chinese restaurants everywhere, but there is no Chinese restaurant chain. Yet, everyone knows what is a Chinese restaurant. They know what to expect, even though it’ll be subtly different and the colors will be different and the name will be different. You know a Chinese restaurant when you see it. These people work with the Chinese restaurant model. Same principles, different applications and different settings. Not the McDonald’s model. The McDonald’s model scales. The Chinese restaurant model spreads.

So mass education started with social entrepreneurship in the 19th century. And that’s desperately what we need again on a global scale. And what can we learn from all of that? Well, we can learn a lot because our education systems are failing desperately in many ways. They fail to reach the people they most need to serve. They often hit the target but miss the point. Improvement is increasingly difficult to organize. Our faith in these systems, incredibly fraught. And this is just a very simple way of understanding what kind of innovation, what kind of different design we need.

There are two basic types of innovation. There’s sustaining innovation, which will sustain an existing institution or an organization, and disruptive innovation that will break it apart, create some different way of doing it. There are formal settings, schools, colleges, hospitals, in which innovation can take place, and informal settings, communities, families, social networks. Almost all our effort goes in this box, sustaining innovation in formal settings, getting a better version of the essentially Bismarckian school system that developed in the 19th century. And as I said, the trouble with this is that, in the developing world there just aren’t teachers to make this model work. You’d need millions and millions of teachers in China, India, Nigeria and the rest of developing world to meet need. And in our system, we know that simply doing more of this won’t eat into deep educational inequalities, especially in inner-cities and former industrial areas.

So that’s why we need three more kinds of innovation. We need more reinvention. And all around the world now you see more and more schools reinventing themselves. They’re recognizably schools, but they look different. There are Big Picture schools in the U.S. and Australia. There are Kunscap Skolan schools in Sweden. Of 14 of them, only two of them are in schools. Most of them are in other buildings not designed as schools. There is an amazing school in Northen Queensland called Jaringan. And they all have the same kind of features, highly collaborative, very personalized, often pervasive technology. Learning that starts from questions and problems and projects, not from knowledge and curriculum. So we certainly need more of that.

But because so many of the issues in education aren’t just in school, they’re in family and community, what you also need, definitely, is more on the right hand side. You need efforts to supplement schools. The most famous of these is Reggio Emilia in Italy, the family-based learning system to support and encourage people in schools. The most exciting is the Harlem Children’s Zone, which over 10 years, led by Geoffrey Canada, has, through a mixture of schooling and family and community projects, attempted to transform, not just education in schools, but the entire culture and aspiration of about 10,000 families in Harlem. We need more of that completely new and radical thinking. You can go to places an hour away, less, from this room, just down the road, which need that, which need radicalism of a kind that we haven’t imagined.

And finally, you need transformational innovation that could imagine getting learning to people in completely new and different ways. So we are on the verge, 2015, of an amazing achievement, the schoolification of the world. Every child up to the age of 15 who wants a place in school will be able to have one in 2015. It’s an amazing thing. But it is, unlike cars which have developed so rapidly and orderly, actually the school system is recognizably an inheritance from the 19th century, from a Bismarkian model of German schooling that got taken up by English reformers, and often by religious missionaries, taken up in the United States as a force of social cohesion, and then in Japan and South Korea as they developed.

It’s recognizably 19th century in its roots. And of course it’s a huge achievement. And of course it will bring great things. It will bring skills and learning and reading. But it will also lay waste to imagination. It will lay waste to appetite. It will lay waste to social confidence. It will stratify society as much as it liberates it. And we are bequeathing to the developing world schools systems that they will now spend a century trying to reform. That is why we need really radical thinking, and why radical thinking is now more possible and more needed than ever in how we learn.

Thank you.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

“Encounters” is a new feature suggested by Steve Eskow, ETC editor of hybrid vs. virtual issues, on 25 July 2009. In an email exchange, I asked Steve to consider expanding a comment that he had posted as a reply to Lynn Zimmerman’s “Computers in the Classroom Can Be Boring.” In his email to me, he asked, “Could you create an ETC feature called ‘Encounters’? Or ‘Exchanges’? Or ‘Idea-ologies’? Or ‘Quoteabilities’? Or ‘Notable and Quotable’?” He explained, “This is the age of Twitter. Short bursts of language exchanged. You, Jim, would introduce the short piece with a comment, and invite responses. If you start with my paragraph, I’ll respond immediately with additions to the basic idea of the quote.”

Following Steve’s suggestion, I created our first encounter with his reply to Lynn. Please, all of you, join in this and other encounters that we’ll be publishing from now on. If you’ve commented in the past, your reply will be published immediately. If this is your first comment, then it will wait in a queue for approval. I monitor this site regularly so it shouldn’t take more than 3-6 hours for approval. After that initial approval, all of your comments will be posted instantly, as soon as you press the publish button.

Please submit your encounter ideas to me, Jim, at jamess@hawaii.edu.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

At the start of each month, conference announcements from the previous month will be posted here for archival purposes. The latest year, in chronological order, will appear at the top. In some cases, the links will point to post-conference information that you might find useful.

2011

January 2011

January 28-30, 2011
EduCon 2.3
Philadelphia
http://educon23.org/

February 2011

February 2-4, 2011
Lift11
Geneva, Switzerland
http://liftconference.com/

February 3-4, 2011
3rd Annual Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy
The Inn at Virginia Tech, and the Skelton Conference Center
http://www.cider.vt.edu/conference/

February 13-16, 2011
PETE&C 2011
The Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference
Hershey Lodge and Convention Center
http://www.peteandc.org/directions.asp

February 14-16, 2011
METC 2011
Midwest Education Technology Conference 2011!
St. Charles Convention Center, St. Charles, Missouri
http://metcconference.org/moodle2011/

February 15-18, 2011
Education 2011-2021
DEHub partners and ODLAA
Global Challenges and Perspectives of Blended and Distance Learning Summit
Dockside Venue, Darling Harbour, Sydney
http://www.dehub.edu.au/summit2011/index.html

March 2011

March 7-8, 2011
Heartland eLearning Conference
Rock Out Your eLearning
University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma
http://www.uco.edu/heartlandconference/

March 7 – 11, 2011
SITE [Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education] 2011
Nashville, TN
http://site.aace.org/conf.

March 16-19 2011
CUE [Computer-Using Educators, Inc.] Annual Conference
(with also an “unplugged program” for online participation)
http://www.cue.org/conference.

March 28 – April 1, 2011
Global Learn Asia Pacific 2011
Global Conference on Learning and Technology
http://aace.org/conf/glearn

April 2011

April 6, 2011, 6 pm
“Le Web, un outil pour le développement?” (roughly: “The web as tool for development?” – in English with French simultaneous interpretation).
A conversation between Tim Berners-Lee and Gordon Brown, moderated by Alberto Ibargüen,
Organized by Geneva University and World Wide Web Foundation.
Uni Dufour
Announcement (Geneva University’s website) and Facebook page.

April 13-15
CASE: Social Media & Community
(CASE = Council for Advancement and Support of Education)
Westin Market Street, San Francisco
Announcement

April 13-15, 2011
CAL Conference 2011
Computer Assisted Learning: Learning Futures: Education, Technology & Sustainability
Manchester, UK
http://www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/

April 16, 2011
Télécom ParisTech Paris (France)
W3Café – accessibilité
http://fr.amiando.com/W3Cafe_accessibilite.html

April 18 (Geneva) April 19 (Bern) 2011
AILIS – CERN
Lawrence Lessig: “The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge: Just How Badly We Have Messed This Up”
Announcement (Swiss National Library’s website).

April 19, 2011
HCID 2011
(HCID = human-computer interaction design)
City College, London, UK
http://hcid.soi.city.ac.uk/cityinteractionlab/events/

April 28, 2011
Guardian Activate Summit 2011
New York – The Paley Center for Media
Activate is the Guardian newspaper’s platform for leaders working across all sectors who are proving that, through the use of technology and the internet, we can make the world a better place.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/activate/new-york

May 2011

May 6-9, 2011
CSEDU 2011
International Conference on Computer Supported Education
Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands
Website

May 18, 2011
Art and Literature, Psychoanalysis
Discussion with Claudia Mejía Quijano
Agalma foundation, Geneva, Switzerland
Website.

May 20 & May 21, 2011
Accessibility Camp Seattle at the Seattle Public Library, Central Branch
http://accessibilitycampseattle.org

May 22-25, 2011
DLA2011
Distance Learning Administration Conference 2011
Hilton Savannah DeSoto Hotel, Savannah, Georgia
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/dla/

May 23, 2011
Psychoanalysis
Discussion with Philippe Lacadée
Agalma foundation, Geneva, Switzerland
Website.

May 25, 2011
WebAIM: Web Accessibility Training
Logan, Utah

http://webaim.org/training

May 25-27, 2011
IETC 2011
International Educational Technology Conference
Istanbul University
http://www.iet-c.net/

June 2011

June 1st, 2011
TEDxKids@Brussels 48 kids, all of them born in 2000, are going to get their hands dirty, soldering, tinkering, hacking and composing. A series of hands-on workshops will introduce the kids to a range of skills and methods. At the same time 400 adults will be treated to an all day program of leading thinkers, experts and makers. They’ll get regular updates on the workshops from some leading child psychologists throughout the day. St John’s International School, Waterloo, Belgium http://www.tedxkids.be (also for live online streaming)

June 4, 2011
How can we build a city that thinks like the web?
with Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing), Mark Surman (Mozilla) and Sara Diamond (OCAD University), moderated by Dan Misener (CBC)
Innis Town Hall – 2 Sussex Ave – Toronto, Ontario M5S 1J5 – Canada
http://citythathinksliketheweb.eventbrite.com.

June 6-7, 2011
Personal Democracy Forum
“exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics and government”
New York University’s Skirball and Kimmel Centers
http://personaldemocracy.com/pdf-2011

June 8, 2011
Webinar – Captioning in the University Environment
Tools, services, case studies, and preparation for the future
Org: University of Colorado at Boulder
colorado.edu/ATconference/webinarcap.html.

June 9-10, 2011
Editech
International Conference on Digital Publishing
Milan, Italy
Website.

June 13 – 14, 2011
Bullying @ School and Online:
International Experts Offer Real World Solutions
Omaha Marriott – 10220 Regency Circle – Omaha, NE 68114
http://bullying.unl.edu

June 13-14, 2011
The ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit NYC
“Experience the Future of the Web…2WAYS”
Columbia University, NYC
http://www.readwriteweb.com/2way

June 15-16, 2011
Sixth International Blended Learning Conference “From Innovation to Institutional Enhancement – operating in challenging times.”
The Fielder Centre, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
http://bluconf.herts.ac.uk/conference.asp

June 17, 2011
Engaging Minds, Inspiring Ideas, an interdisciplinary teaching institute
The Key School
Annapolis, MD
Focusing on interactive white boards and their meaningful use in the classroom
https://www.keyschool.org/community/engaging-minds-inspiring-ideas.

June 17-19, 2011
CSIE 2011
2011 2nd World Congress on Computer Science and Information Engineering
Changchun, China
http://world-research-institute.org/conferences/CSIE/2011

June 24, 2011
Northern Grid Conference 2011 – Professional Development Event
Gosforth Park Marriott Hotel, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK
Description

June 26-29, 2011
ISTE.2011 “Unlocking Potential”
Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia
http://www.isteconference.org/2011/

June 27-29, 2011
Eyeo Festival: Converge to Inspire
Digital art, interaction, and information
McNamara Alumni Center – Minneapolis
http://eyeofestival.com.

July 2011

July 4, 2011
EuroHCIR 2011 – the 1st European Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction & Information Retrieval at BCS HCI2011
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
http://fitlab.eu/euroHCIR2011.

July 4-5, 2011
CCID2 – the Second Intl Symposium on Culture, Creativity, & Interaction Design  in conjunction with BCS HCI 2011 – 25th BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
http://ccid2.wordpress.com.

July 4-8, 2011
CSCL2011
9th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
Connecting computer supported collaborative learning to policy and practice
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
http://www.isls.org/cscl2011/home.htm.

July 5, 2011
Beyond Mobile Context – workshop on mobile technologies, mobile interaction, design practice & theory , in conjunction with BCS HCI 2011
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
http://beyondmobilecontext.wordpress.com.

July 5, 2011
1st Workshop on Delivering User Centred Mobile Design
in conjunction with BCS HCI 2011
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
http://ducmd11.offis.de.

July 6-8, 2011
6th Education in a Changing Environment Conference
Creativity and Engagement in Higher Education
Salford University, Salford, UK
http://www.ece.salford.ac.uk

July 7-9, 2011
Language World 2011: All together!
Imperial College, London, UK
Announcement

July 11-12, 2011, plus optional three days (13-15)
ARIA and Accessibility Hackathon
Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University, Toronto, Canada
Goal: Work on ARIA [Accessible Rich Internet Applications] and accessibility implementations of jQuery UI; get in touch with the ARIA community, help out elsewhere.
Announcement.

July 11-13, 2011
4th Annual Emerging Technologies for Online Learning International Symposium
Empowering Next Generation Teaching
Fairmont Hotel – San José, California
sloanconsortium.org/et4online.

July 18-21, 2011
TeraGrid ’11: Extreme Digital Discovery
Marriott Downtown Hotel
Salt Lake City, Utah
teragrid.org/web/tg11/home.

July 23, 2011
Avenir, on how technology is shaping the future
San Francisco, US
http://www.avenirconf.com

July 25–28, 2011
Advancing Higher Education Through Technology (CT 2011)
Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, MA.
Registration Opens March 2011.
http://events.campustechnology.com/Events/CT-2010/Home.aspx.

July 25-29, 2011
OSCON 2011 – The Open Source Convention
Oregon Convention Center
777 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Portland, Oregon 97232
oscon.com/oscon2011.

July 29, 2011
eduTweetup
McGreevy’s
911 Boylston St
Boston, MA 02115
edutweetup.com.

August 2011

August 4–7, 2011
Wikimania 2011
Haifa, Israel
wikimania2011.wikimedia.org.

August 7 – 11 , 2011
SIGGRAPH 2011
Vancouver,  Canada
siggraph.org/s2011.

August 23-25, 2011
Serious Play Conference 2011
Redmond, Washington, US
seriousplayconference.com.

August 25-26, 2011
eAssessment Scotland 2011 – Keeping it Real
Dundee, United Kingdom
e-assessment-scotland.org.

September 2011

September 2, 8,  9-11
Il futuro della memoria dal Risorgimento al web
Pieve Santo Stefano (Italy)
archiviodiari.it/premiopieve2011.

September, 6-7
Third European Congress on E-Inclusion ‘Transforming Access to Digital Europe in Public Libraries’  (ECEI11)
Brussels (Belgium)
ecei11.eu.

September 7-9, 2011
ALE 2011
Agile Learning Europe Unconference
Berlin, Germany
ale2011.eu.

September 12, 2011
Interdependence Day 2011
New York and Worldwide
Website + @intrdpndncemvmt on Twitter.

September 16-18, 2011
5th SLANGUAGES Annual Symposium
AVALON Learning and EduNation Islands (Second Life)
virtual-round-table.com/events/5th-slanguages-annual-symposium.

September 16-18, 2011
Medicine 2.0’11
Stanford University, USA
medicine20congress.com.

September 17, 2011
Media at the Center – A McLuhan Centenary Symposium at Fordham University
New York (US)
Description (dedicated website forthcoming)

September 17, 2011
Boston Accessibility Unconference
Boston, USA
a11y-bos.org.

September 20-21, 2011
Strada Summit – The Business of Data
New York Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway
New York, New York, 10036
strataconf.com/summit2011.

September 21, 2011
Web Accessibility London Unconference
on cognitive impairment and mental health
London, UK
a11yldn.org.uk.

September 24, 2011
Accessibility Camp Toronto
Toronto, Canada
accessibilitycampto.org.

September 25-27, 2011
Excellence in journalism
New Orleans, USA
excellenceinjournalism.org.

September 26-28,  2011
AAL Forum – Annual conference of the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme
Lecce, Italy
aalforum.eu/page/call-for-contributions.

October 2011

October 4, 2011
DICE 1: A Methodology to approach Digital Copyright in Education
Webinar – registration until Sep. 30, 2011
eduhub.ch/events/webinars/11oct4-dice1.

October 11, 2011
Tools of Change Frankfurt Conference 2011
Frankfurt, Germany
tocfrankfurt.com.

October 12, 2011
STEMtech 2011 Online Conference

October 17-19, 2011
Web 2.0 Summit 2011
San Francisco, USA
web2summit.com/web2011.

October 17 – 21, 2011
E-Learn 2011 – World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher Education
Honolulu, Hawaii
Sheraton Waikiki Beach Resort
aace.org/conf/elearn.

October 18-20, 2011
The LearningTimes – Jossey-Bass Online Teaching &amp; Learning Conference (OTL 2011) will take place completely over the Internet.

October 18-21, 2o11
mLearn 2011 – 10th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning
Beijing, China
mlearn.org/mlearn2011.

October 19-20
Open Source Now
Geneva, Switzerland
opensourcenow.net.

October 20-21, 2011
Wireless EdTech 2011
Capital Hilton, Washington, DC

October 21, 2011
Third international symposium on live subtitling with speech recognition
Antwerp, Belgium
respeaking-symposium-antwerp.be.

October 22, 2011
Accessibility Camp DC
Washington, USA
accessibilitycampdc.org.

October, 24-26, 2011
ACM ASSETS 2011 – The 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
Dundee, United Kingdom
sigaccess.org/assets11.

October 25-26, 2011
iStrategy Global Digital Media Conference
Amsterdam (Netherlands), San Francisco (USA) and Sydney (Australia)
istrategyconference.com.

October 25-27,  2011
Open Education Conference 2011 – The annual family reunion of the Open Education community
Park City, United States
openedconference.org/2011.

October 26-28 , 2011
Brussels (Belgium)
McLuhan’s Philosophy of Media Centennial Conference
mcluhancentennial.eu.

Oct 26-28, 2011
Rome Florence (Italy)
eChallenges e2011
echallenges.org/e2011.

Oct 28, 2011
National Air and Space Museum: Free Interactive Online Conference

October 28, 2011
FridayLive! Steven Bell Interview — free & online

October 29, 2011
UXconference 2011
Lugano, Switzerland
uxcon.com.

November 2011

November 2, 2011
DICE 2: Discuss your Digital Copyright Issues in Education with a Legal Expert
Webinar – registration until October 28, 2011
eduhub.ch/events/webinars/11nov2-dice2.

November 2, 2011
2 p.m. EDT
Training the Hybrid Educator

November 2-4, 2011
Free Library 2.011 Worldwide Virtual Conference November 2-4

November 9-10, 2011
FOSI 2011 Annual Conference
Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Washington, DC

November 14-18, 2011
Global Education Conference 2011 – Online & Free

November, 16-17, 2011
Creativity World Forum
Hasselt, Belgium
creativityworldforum.be.

November 19, 2011
Italian Agile Day 2011
Rome, Italy
agileday.it.

November 28-30, 2011
Accessibility Reaching Everywhere – AEGIS Workshop and International Conference
Brussels (Belgium)
epr.eu/aegis.

November 29 – December 2 2011
International Conference on Education, Informatics, and Cybernetics: icEIC 2011
Orlando, FL (USA)
iiis2011.org/iceic.

December 2011

December 8, 2011
Thursday, Dec. 8, 12 to 1 p.m. ET
Free Live Webinar from Education Week
“Deepening and Strengthening Teacher Education”

December 15-17, 2011
eINDIA 2011
Mahatma Mandir, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad (India)
eindia.net.in/2011.

2010

January 2010

January 12-15, 2010
FETC 2010
Orlando FL
http://www.fetc.org/default.aspx

January 13–15, 2010
Ninth Annual EDUCAUSE Mid–Atlantic Regional Conference
Baltimore, MD
http://net.educause.edu/marc10

January 15-17, 2010
Technology Conference 2010
International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society
Berlin, Germany
http://techandsoc.com/conference-2010/

January 19–21, 2010
2010 EDUCAUSE
Learning Environments for a Web 2.0 World
Austin, Texas
http://net.educause.edu/eli10

February 2010

February 3-5, 2010
CIEC 2010
2010 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration (CIEC)
Palm Springs, CA
http://www.asee.org/conferences/ciec/2010/

February 5-7, 2010
Connecting Online 2010 Live Online Conference (CO10)
“Share your experiences in using the Internet for instruction and learning.”
Completely online! at wiziq
http://wikieducator.org/Proposals-connecting-online-conference-2010

February 8-10, 2010
METC 2010
Reaching Beyond the Cloud!
St. Charles Convention Center, St. Charles, MO
http://2010.metcconference.org/

February 20-23, 2010
eLearning 2010
Instructional Technology Council (ITC)
Fort Worth, Texas
http://www.itcnetwork.org/

March 2010

March 3-5, 2010
Global TIME: Global Conference on Technology, Innovation, Media & Education
AACE
Completely online!
http://www.aace.org/conf/gtime/

March 3-5, 2010
CFTTC 2010
Creating Futures Through Technology 2010
Biloxi, MS
http://sbcjcweb.sbcjc.cc.ms.us/conf/

March 4-6, 2010
Advancing Student Achievement Through Technology Challenge the Present, Design the Future: Tools for Universal Learning
CUE (Computer-Using Educators, Inc.)
Palm Springs, CA
http://www.cue.org/

March 5 and 6, 2010
Virtual Worlds and Libraries Online Conference
American Library Association Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Initiative Group (ALA VCL MIG)
Completely online! using OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) web conferencing software, demonstrations and tours in virtual worlds such as Second Life
http://connect.ala.org/node/90551

March 8-10, 2010
INTED2010 (International Technology, Education and Development Conference)
Valencia, Spain
http://www.iated.org/inted2010/

March 11-12
SREB Educational Technology Cooperative
It’s About Place: Different Thinking for A Different World
Atlanta, Georgia
http://home.sreb.org/programs/EdTech/Registration/index.asp

March 12-14, 2010
Cybercultures: Exploring Critical Issues
Salzburg, Austria
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/cyber/cybercultures/call-for-papers/

March 15 – 17, 2010
EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Conference
Chicago, IL
Early registration ends February 15, 2010
http://net.educause.edu/mwrc10

March 15-17, 2010
MEC 2010 (Microcomputers in Education Conference)
Arizona State University
http://mec.asu.edu/

March 17-19, 2010
IOC 2010
8th annual International Online Conference (IOC) for Teaching and Learning
LearningTimes, ILCCO and the Illinois Online Network
Completely online!
http://www.internationalonlineconference.org/

March 18-20, 2010
ITEA’s 72nd Annual Conference
International Technology Education Association
Green Technology: STEM Solutions for 21st Century Citizens
Charlotte, North Carolina
http://www.iteaconnect.org/Conference/conferenceguide.htm

March 18-20, 2010
LIFT@austria
Enable! Profound Innovation in Society, Economy & Knowledge; Exploring a new paradigm for bringing forth game-changing innovation
Vienna, Austria
http://liftconference.com/lift-at-home/events/2010/03/lift-austria

March 22-27, 2010
2010 CSUN
25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference
San Diego, CA
http://csunconference.org/index.cfm?EID=80000218

March 29 – April 2, 2010
SITE Conference 2010
Society for Information Technology & Teacher Educatio
San Diego, CA
http://site.aace.org/conf/

March ??-?? 2010
iCTLT 2010
International Conference on Teaching and Learning with Technology
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
Singapore
http://ictlt.com/

April 2010

April 7-10, 2010
CSEDU 2010
International Conference on Computer Supported Education
Valencia, Spain
http://www.csedu.org/

April 8-10, 2010
2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference
Atlanta, GA
http://www.nten.org/ntc

April 12-14, 2010
ITNG 2010
7th International Conference on Information Technology – New Generations
Las Vegas, Nevada
http://www.itng.info/

April 15-May 13, 2010
Computers and Writing 2010: “Virtual Worlds” @ Purdue
Completely online!
http://www.digitalparlor.org/cw2010/

April 15-16, 2010
3rd National Student Safety & Security Conference (3rd NSSSC)
Four Points by Sheraton Orlando Studio City
Orlando, Florida.
http://www.new-fields.com/3rd_nsssc/sales.pdf

April 19-20, 2010
8th Communia Workshop
Education and the Public Domain: The Emergence of a Shared Educational Commons
Istanbul, Turkey
http://communia-project.eu/ws08

April 20-22, 2010
TCC 2010
15th Annual TCC Worldwide Online Conference
Completely Online!
http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu/2010/welcome.html

April 24, 2010
OKCon 2010
The 5th Open Knowledge Conference: Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
London
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/

April 26-28, 2010
IETC 2010
10th International Educational Technology Conference
Istanbul, Turkey (Albert Long Hall, Bogazici University)
http://www.iet-c.net/

April 29-May 1, 2010
ITHET 2010
9th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training
Cappadocia, Turkey
http://www.ithet.org/index.php

May 2010

May 3-6, 2010
EDUTE ’10
The 6th WSEAS/IASME International Conference on Educational Technologies
Mouradi Hotel, Kantaoui, Sousse, Tunisia
http://www.wseas.us/conferences/2010/tunisia/edute/

May 5-7, 2010
LIFT 10
What can the future do for you?
Geneva, Switzerland
http://liftconference.com/about

May 10-11, 2010
WiscNet Future Technologies Conference 2010
Madison, Wisconsin
http://wire.wiscnet.net/2009/11/wiscnet-future-technologies-conference-2010/

May 17-20, 2010
Learning Impact 2010
Understanding and Harnessing the Next Generation of Technology to Transform the Educational Enterprise
Long Beach, California
http://www.imsglobal.org/learningimpact2010/

May 20-23, 2010
Computers and Writing 2010: “Virtual Worlds” @ Purdue
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
http://www.digitalparlor.org/cw2010/

May 23-26, 2010
Fifth Conference of Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC)
“University Leadership: Bringing Technology-Enabled Education to Learners of All Ages”
MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts
http://linc.mit.edu/linc2010/

May 26–28, 2010
eLearning Africa 2010 – LEARN, SHARE, NETWORK
5th International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training
Mulungushi International Conference Centre
Lusaka, Zambia
http://www.elearning-africa.com/

June 2010

June 7-10, 2010
Tech·Ed 2010
Microsoft Tech·Ed North America 2010
New Orleans, LA
http://northamerica.msteched.com/registration?fbid=OPl9eJ9nLH2

June 21-25, 2010
Clean Technology 2010
Anaheim, CA
http://www.techconnectworld.com/Cleantech2010/

June 22-23, 2010 [Posted after the fact on 7.14.10]
OU2010 – Open University Annual Learning and Technology Conference 2010
“Learning in an Open World”
Completely Online and Free!
Click here for the site.

June 22-24, 2010
ICETC 2010
International Conference on Education Technology and Computer
Shanghai, China
http://www.icetc.org/

June 23-25, 2010
INTE2010
International Conference on New Horizons in Education
Salamis Bay Conti Resort Hotel, Famagusta, North Cyprus
http://www.int-e.net/index.php

June 27-30, 2010
ISTE 2010
International Society for Technology in Education
Denver, Colorado
http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010/

June 29 – July 2, 2010
ED-MEDIA 2010
AACE: World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications
Toronto, Canada
http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/

June 29-July 2, 2010
EISTA 2010
8th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications
Orlando, Florida
http://www.2010iiisconferences.org/eista
(To be held in the context of The 4th International Multi-Conference on Society, Cybernetics and Informatics: IMSCI 2010 http://www.2010iiisconferences.org/imsci)

June 29-July 2, 2010
EEET 2010
The 2nd International Symposium on Engineering Education and Educational Technologies
(Part of IMETI 2010 The 3rd International Multi-Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation)
Orlando, Florida
www.2010iiisconferences.org/eeet

July 2010

July 5-7, 2010
Lift France 10
Marseille, France
http://liftconference.com/lift-france-10
July 6-8, 2010
ICT-Learn 2010
9th International Internet Education Conference & Exhibition
Cairo, Egypt
http://www.distant-learning.net/

July 12-17, 2010
iEARN 2010
17th Annual iEARN International Conference and 14th Annual Youth Summit 2010
The Youth Summit is Completely online and FREE!
Barrie, Ontario Canada
http://www.iearn2010.org/

July 19-22, 2010
Campus Technology 2010
Advancing Higher Education Through Technology
Boston, MA (Seaport World Trade Center)
http://campustechnology.com/microsites/events/campus-technology-conference.aspx

July 20-23, 2010
3rd Annual Sloan-C Symposium: Emerging Technologies for Online Learning Conference
Fairmont Hotel San Jose, California
http://www.sloan-c.org/

July 22-25, 2010
WORLD-EDU’10
Education and Educational Technologies
NAUN: North Atlantic University Union
Corfu Island, Greece
http://www.naun.org/conferences/2010/edu/index.html

July 30-31, 2010
2010 Reform Symposium
Showcasing Innovation in Education
Completely online and FREE!
worldwide e.conference
http://reformsymposium.com/

August 2010

August 2- 3, 2010
43rd Annual Oklahoma Career and Technology Education Summer Conference
Tulsa Convention Center, Tulsa, OK
http://www.okcareertech.org/summerconference/index.htm

August 3-4, 2010
3Cs ETC
Three C’s Educational Technology Conference: Connect, Communicate and Collaborate
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
Webpage

August 3-5, 2010
Inaugural Education Technology Conference: Technology Tools for Inspiring Young Minds
For K-8 educators, superintendents, and schools administrators
University of Montana, Missoula, MT, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences Building
https://www.blackfoot.com/etc/

August 4-6, 2010
26th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
Madison, Wisconsin
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/

August 4-6, 2010
6th digital LEARNING 2010
In conjunction with eINDIA 2010
Hyderabad, India
http://www.eindia.net.in/2010/digitallearning/index.asp

August 11-12, 2010
COLTT 2010
13th Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology Conference
University of Colorado – Boulder Campus
https://www.cusys.edu/coltt/2010/index.html

August 13-22, 2010
Inaugural Seattle Geek Week
Celebrate geek culture with a series of networking events, parties and conferences
http://seattlegeekweek.com/

August 23–25, 2010
CATE 2010
The Thirteenth IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education
Maui, Hawaii
http://www.iasted.org/CONFERENCES/home-709.html

August 23–27, 2010
ECER 2010
The European Conference on Educational Research 2
“Education and Cultural Change”
Helsinki, Finland
http://www.eera-ecer.eu/ecer/ecer2010/?no_cache=1

September 2010

September 7-9, 2010
ALT-C 2010 Conference
17th International Conference of the Association for Learning Technology
Nottingham University, UK
http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2010/

September 8, 2010
Netizenship – citoyenneté numérique et cyberintimidation
9ème forum eCulture
Lausanne, Switzerland
http://www.forumeculture.net/

September 10-12, 2010
eBookFest
Fosdinovo, Italy
http://www.ebookfest.it/cose-lebookfest/

September 10-12, 2010
National Conference on Free Software in Education
Tagore Centenary Hall, Kozhikode, India
Link

From September 13, 2010, for 8 weeks
Personal Learning Environments, Networks, and Knowledge
Free online course sponsored and organized by the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University.
https://tekri.athabascau.ca/content/personal-learning-environments-networks-and-knowledge

September 15-17, 2010
ICL 2010
13th International Conference on Interactive Computer-aided Learning, Academic and Corporate E-Learning in a Global Context
Hasselt, Belgium
http://www.icl-conference.org/icl2010/

September 15-17, 2010
Summit 54
Emerging Trends & Innovations in Urban Education: Instruction, Mentorship and Guidance for Life Success
Aspen Meadows Resort, Aspen, Colo.
http://www.ljmfoundation.com/summit54agenda/

September 16-17, 2010
Lift Asia 10
Jeju, South Korea
http://liftconference.com/lift-asia-10

September 22-24, 2010
IDEC-2010
International Distance Education Conference
Sakarya University
Sakarya, Turkey
http://www.ide-c.net

September 27-28, 2010
NBC News first annual “Education Nation”
Nationally broadcast in-depth conversation about improving education in America, a week-long event beginning with an interactive two-day summit on Rockefeller Plaza.
http://www.nbclearn.com/portal/site/learn/summit

October 2010

October 1, 2010
FOTE 10 [Free]
Future of Technology in Education
Spotlighting both new technologies and practical examples of how the spirit of web 2.0 era is impacting teaching and learning today.
University of London Ccomputer Centre, Senate House, London
http://fote-conference.com/

October 2, 2010
TSETC 2010
The First Annual Tri-State Educational Technology Conference
New York, New Jersey, Connecticut
http://www.tsetc.org/home

October 4-6, 2010
The 9th International Conference on EDUCATION and
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (EDU’10)
Iwate, Japan
http://www.wseas.us/conferences/2010/japan/edu/

October 4-6, 2010
ITEXPO West 2010
The World’s Communications Conference!
Los Angeles Convention Center
http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-10/

October 6-8, 2010
IODL & ICEM 2010
Anadolu University and the International Council for Educational Media
Eskisehir, Turkey
http://iodlicem2010.anadolu.edu.tr/

October 6-10, 2010
CCUMC 2010
Consortium of College and University Media Centers Annual Conference
Hyatt Regency Buffalo (New York)
http://ccumc.buffalo.edu/

October 7-8, 2010
GeNeMe’10
Virtual Enterprises, Communities & Social Networks – Communities in New Media
Dresden, Germany
http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/zentrale_einrichtungen/mz/veranstaltungen/konferenzen/2010/geneme10/GeNeMe_CfP.pdf

October 8-10, 2010
The Education Project
“Classroom of the Future”
Bahrain
http://www1.albawaba.com/en/news/upcoming-global-summit-bahrain

October 10-12, 2010
ITEC 2010 Conference
Iowa Technology & Education Connection
Coralville Marriott
http://www.itec-ia.org/

October 12–15, 2010 (Online: October 13–15, 2010)
2010 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference
Anaheim, California
http://www.educause.edu/E2010

October 16-18, 2010
CISP 2010 and BMEI 2010
3rd International Congress on Image and Signal Processing and 3rd International Conference on BioMedical Engineering and Informatics
Yantai, China
http://cisp-bmei2010.ytu.edu.cn

October 18-20, 2010
IMCSIT 2010
International Multiconference on Computer Science and Information
Hotel Golebiewski, Wisla, Poland
http://www.imcsit.org/
[CLA’10 – Computational Linguistics – Applications]

October 19-21, 2010
24th Annual Technology + Learning (T+L) Conference
National School Boards Association (NSBA)
Phoenix, Arizona
http://s36.a2zinc.net/clients/nsba/t+l2010/public/enter.aspx

October 27-29, 2010
ISTEC2010
International Science & Technology Conference
Salamis Bay Conti Resort Hotel, North Cyprus
http://www.iste-c.net/

October 27-29, 2010
International Greening Education Event 2010
Education for Sustainability
Etech Germany
Karlsruhe, Germany
http://www.etechgermany.com/IGEE2010.pdf

October 31 – November 3, 2010
First Annual STEMtech Conference
The League for Innovation
Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin, Orlando, Florida
http://www.league.org/stemtech/

November 2010

November 2-4, 2010
ICEMT 2010
2010 International Conference on Education and Management Technology
Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
Website

November 3-5, 2010
16th Annual Sloan Consortium
International Conference on Online Learning
Caribe Royale Hotel, Orlando, Florida
http://www.sloan-c.org/

November 3-5, 2010
23rd Annual Georgia Educational Technology Conference
“Explore – Engage – Empower”
Georgia International Convention Center (GICC), Atlanta, Georgia.
http://www.gaetc.org/

November 5-6, 2010
Fall CUE Conference
CUE (Computer-Using Educators, Inc.)
“Soaring to New Heights!”
American Canyon, Napa Valley, CA
http://www.cue.org/

November 10-13, 2010
WCET’s 22nd Annual Conference
La Jolla, CA
Website

November 11-13, 2010
iconte 2010
New Trends in Education and Their Implications
Porto Bello Hotel, Antalya, Turkey
http://www.iconte.org/

November 15-19, 2010
The 2010 Global Education Conference: Call for Preliminary Participation
Classroom 2.0 in partnership with Elluminate
Completely online and FREE!
Virtual online global education conference. To join the mailing list, to stay informed of developments, sign up via this online form: http://tinyurl.com/globaledcon
http://www.globaleducationconference.com/

November 18-19, 2010
National School Response Conference
Beefed Up School Resiliency Plan on Pandemic Outbreak & School Vi0lence
Las Vegas, Nevada
http://www.nsrc.eve-ex.com/

November 18, 2010, 10:30 am – 6:00 pm EDT
Campus Technology Virtual Returns!
Expo & Conference
Completely online and FREE!
http://campustechnology.com/microsites/campus-technology-virtual/home.aspx

November 27-28, 2010
ETT 2010
Third International Conference on Education Technology and Training
Focus on basic/applied research results in the fields of Education and Training
Wuhan, China
http://www.ieee-ett.cn/ett2010/

November 29, 30 and December 1, 2010
IADIS International Conference on International Higher Education 2010
Perth, Australia
Link

November 29 – December 1, 2010
CreateWorld 2010
Working on the Edge – Creativity, Technology and Innovation
Rydges Hotel, Grey Street, Southbank, Brisbane
Link

November 30-December 2, 2010
COMATIA’10
Communication and Management in Technological Innovation and Academic Globalization (part of International conference of the Institute for Environment, Engineering, Economics and Applied Mathematics)
Puerto De La Cruz, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
http://www.ieee.am/ieee.am-tenerife2009-comatia.html

December 2010

December 1 – 3, 2010
ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2010
16th International Conference on Technology Supported Learning & Training
The Largest Global E-Learning Conference for the Corporate, Education and Public Service Sectors
Berlin
http://www.online-educa.com

December 3-5, 2010
ICSTE 2010
The International Conference on Science and Technology Education with Focus on the Islamic World
Kish Island, “Pearl of the Persian Gulf”
http://icsaconf.ir/icste/default.asp?lang_id=2

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

[Published 3.16.12]

Samantha Peters is a frequent blogger who runs  theeducationupdate.com and enjoys examining new and innovative educational technologies such as digital textbooks.

ETC Publications

The Short Shelf Life of Digital Textbooks

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Melissa A. Venable, PhD
Instructional Designer/Education Writer
Design Doc
Inside Online Learning
Bio
melissa.a.venable@gmail.com
Twitter

ETC Publications

Social Media Tips for Virtual Conference Attendance
A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter Chat Participation
Twitter for Professional Use – Part 4: Participating in a Live Event
Twitter for Professional Use – Part 3: Curating the Chaos
Twitter for Professional Use – Part 2: Channeling the Streams
Twitter for Professional Use – Part 1: Getting Started

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Jan Schwartz, M.A.

Resume

Jan Schwartz, M.A., is co-founder and president of Education and Training Solutions, LLC. EdTS helps educators and schools design courses for online delivery and can also host and maintain those courses on the EdTS elearning site. Jan is the co-founder of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care, a national non-profit organization working to promote interdisciplinary education within the CAM fields. She also teaches a hybrid business course at the Asian Institute of Medical Studies in Tucson, AZ.

twitter: @couchlearner.
facebook: Education Training Solutions.

ETC Publications

Project Based vs Problem Based Learning
‘Net Generation’ — A Myth?
In Favor of Hybrid Education
Learnings from a MOOC

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

[Post date 10.18.10]
Technology Curriculum Director
Westside Neighborhood School in Los Angeles, CA
Blog

Prior to joining WNS, I worked with the Fox River Country Day School, Elgin Academy, and Ramirez Charter High School. You may also know me from; the Prairie School in Racine, Wisconsin, Haverford College in Haverford, PA, SFSU in San Francisco, CA.  Some of my current interests are expressed on this site.

ETC Publications

Why Educational Games Fail

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

[Post date 10.18.10]
Dr. Tina (Sartori) Rooks
VP & Chief Instructional Officer for Turning Technologies

Dr. Tina Rooks’s experience includes ten years as a classroom teacher grades Pre-K through college, three years as a middle school principal, technology administrator for a charter school, and three years as the vice president of a professional development division in an educational technology company. Tina completed her doctorate in Instructional Technology at Pepperdine University and her dissertation was on the impact of student response systems, specifically the TurningPoint student response system, on student achievement and engagement. Additionally, Tina has a B.S. in secondary social science and an M.Ed in administration and leadership.

ETC Publications

‘Adequate’ Isn’t Good Enough: The NETP Roadmap to Higher Expectations

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

[Published 7.14.11]

I am self-taught in computer science and passionate about it. I have had the opportunity to create web pages, to develop and manage a web community, at least as long as I was able to. Due to the evolution of my eyesight condition, I have had leave this field aside. I like astronomy, chess, film, traveling, science in general and good cooking. My motto is inspired by a sightless person’s autobiography: “At that point, I made a promise to myself. I would give up the things I could not do, but whatever I could do I would learn to do well.” [Photo courtesy of Andrea Miccoli, “Elementary Astronomy Seminar for the Blind and Visually Impaired,” Italian Union of the Blind (UICI) and Associazione Pontina di Astronomia, 21 May 2011]

ETC Publications

Tactile Learning: Italian and US Experiences.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

This is a continuation of Jim Shimabukuro’s list of ETCJ publications. (Click here to return to the originating page.)

‘Students Come First’ in Idaho, but the Task Force Has to Do Its Homework
Bush and Hunt’s ‘New Higher Education Model’ Falls Short
University Leaders Beginning to Flex Their eMuscles
The Aakash $35 Tablet – A Breakthrough for Universal Access
Harry Keller Interview in AJDE
The Digital Promise – It Must Be Sustainable
Online and Teacherless Aren’t Synonymous
A Lesson from Kyrene: Technology Alone Is Not the Answer
Open Online Classes: Is Retention an Effective Measure of Success?
Managing Online Learning: What’s Best Practice?
Online Science Initiatives Are Changing Traditional Roles
Data Mining and Online Learning
iPhone 4 – Redefining Mobility in Education
e-G8 – Lawrence Lessig: ‘Outsider Innovation Threatens the Incumbent’
e-G8 – Rupert Murdoch: Education Is the Last Digital Holdout
e-G8 Forum – ‘Future Net: What’s Next?’
Education Reform: If It Can’t Fit into a Tablet PC, Forget It
A Quick and Dirty Look at Project-Based Learning
An Interview with Jessica Knott: Teaching an Online Class on Course Development
Will $90 DVD Players Replace Home PCs?
The Web As a Platform for Teacher Revitalization
When Medium Meets Message: Professional Development for the 21st Century
A Celebration of Healing and the New Web Rhetoric: ‘StarFestival’
‘StarFestival: A Return to Japan’ with Shigeru Miyagawa
A Cloud-Based Model for Change – Brookdale Community College
Mental Model for 21st Century Education: School First or Student First
‘Asians in the Library’ and Lessons for Colleges
The ‘Net Generation’ and the Myth of Research
Why LMSs Aren’t the Answer
Panic in an Online Class: A Message to My Students
The ‘Dojo’ Model for Student-Led Learning
‘PISA 2009 Results’ Released Today: US Hovers at the Mean
Sloan-C 2010 Report on Online Education – A Quick Review
Trolls – How to Deal with Them?
PLENK2010: Theory As Practice
EBUS – A Model for Online Learning
Totally Online: The Confused State of ‘Online’ Courses at Sac State
A Glimpse at the 2010 National Education Technology Plan
Open Courseware: A Survey and Comments
Totally Online: Disconnect Between Means and Ends: 2010 NCREN Community Day
Attwell @ Preskett, or Don’t Fix It If It Ain’t Broke
Education Reform: Incremental or Disruptive?
Change Has Already Arrived but We Don’t Know It, Yet
The Bright New Face of Educational Leadership – Eric Sheninger
‘Has the Internet obsoleted formal schools?’
For Educational Change — Teachers Are the Key
We Need an Eco-Smart Model for Online Learning
JRTE Spring 2010 Issue – A Sacrilegious Review
Was Rischard’s ISTE 2010 Keynote Really That Bad?
Totally Online: Live Lecture Better Than Video Lecture?
The Limits of Educational Technocracy: Change As No More of the Same
Totally Online: Gov. Tim Pawlenty: iColleges Are the Wave of the Future
A Quick Review of JOLT’s June 2010 Issue
Bill Gates on Online Learning in 2010
A Peek at ‘Technology and Pedagogy Expectations for an In-Person Course’
The Internet Helps Us to Be Smarter – A Reply to Nicholas Carr
Totally Online: Texas A&M Decentralizing Office of Distance Ed
Totally Online: Is Writing Best Taught F2F?
Tipping Points for Change: Are We There Yet?
Totally Online: iPad – Breakthrough or Misstep?
Headphones, Computers, and the Web
Sloan-C Survey 2009 – 25% of College Students Are Taking Online Classe
‘Digital_Nation’ – A Digital_Dud
Totally Online: Reading Ability As a ‘New’ Challenge for Online Students
Totally Online: Immediacy and Presence in Online Learning
Totally Online: College Prepared to Go Online When Disaster Strikes
The Education Budget Crisis: Is It Necessary?
Interview: Steve Cooper of TechUofA
‘Jam on the American Graduation Initiative’ on Sep. 16
Are Full Teaching Loads the Answer to the Recession?
‘The College of 2020: Students’ – A Chronicle Report
Are Online Programs Growing or Dying?
Interview with Bert Kimura: TCC 2009 April 14-16
End of the Computer Era
Michelle Rhee – What’s Really at Stake?
What Is the 21st Century Model for Education?

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

[Posted 2.2.12]

Marketing Specialist with ChinesePod

Michael Hurwitz was born and raised in Washington, DC, USA. He lived in Australia and New Zealand before settling in Shanghai, China, in 2009. His passions include music, language, and complaining about the sorry state of Washington sports teams.

ETC Publications

Language Learning in the 21st Century: Part III – Chinese As the Language of the Future
Language Learning in the 21st Century: Part II – Technology Makes English the Global Language
Language Learning in the 21st Century: Part I – Technology Is a Game Changer

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

[First published 5.16.11]
Frank B. Withrow, Ph.D.
President
Able Learning Company
A Better Learning Experience Company
108 High Ridge Drive
Stafford, VA 22554
540-659-3722; 202-270-7148
FrankWithrow@FrankWithrow.com

Dr. Withrow has been a classroom teacher, elementary supervisor, researcher, and an educational administrator. As the Director of Research and Clinical Services in The Department of Children and Family Services in the State of Illinois he developed a parent pupil program for deaf infants and their parents. His research includes electro-physiological testing of hearing in infants, paired associate learning, immediate visual memory spans, and the uses of programmed 3-D computer generated lessons.

Dr. Withrow was the Director of Development  for the NASA Classroom of the Future from 1996 to 1998. He served in the U.S. Department of Education from 1966 to 1992 as the Senior Learning Technologist. He administered technology programs for the disabled including Captioned Films for the Deaf where he developed captioning techniques for television. In addition he funded the development of reading machines for blind people. He was the Executive Director of the President’s National Advisory Committee for Handicapped in 1975 at the time P.L. 94-142 was passed. He served as the Secretary’s Liaison for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute for Technology, Gallaudet University, and the Model Secondary School for the Deaf.

As a Senior Battelle Memorial Fellow he studied the influence of electronic media on child growth and development. He developed a demonstration of interactive cable television programs and edited a book on the influence of television on child growth and development.

He was the program manager for the U. S.Department of Education’s television series including Sesame Street, Footsteps a series on child growth and development for parents and The Voyages of the Mimi, a multiple media elementary science and mathematics series. He also directed bilingual television programming that included Hispanics, French, Native Americans, Asians, and Afro-Americans themes. All programs included captions.

He was the Director of Technology for the Young Astronaut Council where he developed an on-line series of lessons for students and teachers.

He developed and managed the Star School distance-learning program for the U. S. Department of Education. He represented the United States of America as a learning technologist at a number of world conferences, i.e. OECD, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe.

Dr. Withrow has worked as an adjunct professor at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, IL, and Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

He has received many honors and awards including the United States Distance Learning Associations Leadership award. He is a member of USDLA’s Hall of Fame. He has edited several books and written more than 300 professional articles. He has made numerous presentations and speeches including keynote addresses at professional conferences. He has more than 200 video and film credits.

He was on the Board of the Northern Panhandle Head Start Program, Wheeling, WV. He was a member of the National Board for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at the Rochester Institute for Technology. He was a Board member of the Consortium on School Networking (CoSN). The CoSN annual educator award is named the Frank Withrow Award for Excellence.

He was the Program Manager for two one-hour television specials on the “World of Work” which were designed to help youth and other people seeking employment understand the modern clusters of jobs and the training required to obtain such jobs. He was an advisory to the District of Columbia Public Schools multimedia project on developing employability skills for youth. He served as an advisor to a District of Columbia School Board Member.He is the Chairman of the Board of the Total :earning Research Institute.

He received his BS in Education of the Deaf, MS in Speech and Hearing and a Ph.D. in Audiology from Washington University in St. Louis. He holds Advanced Clinical Certification in both Speech and Hearing from the American Speech and Hearing Association.

ETC Publications

Review: ‘The New Digital Age’ by Schmidt & Cohen
To Teachers — From a Grateful Nation
Public Education Raises the Quality of Life for the Entire Nation
Talk With Your Children
Can Technology Expand the Reach of Great Teachers?
Language Is the Key to Community
Technological Advances for the Disabled Benefit Everyone
Retirement of Your Elementary School Students: Keeping in Touch with Facebook
My Vision for the 21st Century School
‘For Each and Every Child’ – A Strategy for Yesterday’s Child
Impact of Facebook on Deaf Language Users?
What Can a Mind Do?
What the Deaf Blind Have Taught Us About Thinking and Communicating
The Future Is in Team Learning
Congressman Miller’s Tech Legislation Misses the Mark
What Happens to Schools and Teachers in the Digital Age?
Are Schools Ready for Today’s Five-Year Olds?
Education in the 21st Century: The World Is Our Classroom
Technology Has a Long History in Learning — and It’s Getting Even Better
Year-Round Schooling for the 21st Century: We Can’t Afford to Waste Summers
Learning and Teaching in the 21st Century: The Potential for Social Media Such as Facebook
Education for All Children: An Imperative for the 21st Century
A Radical Rethinking of What Learning Can Be
The Huge Void in Quality Multiple Media Programs for Upper Grade Levels
Visions of Greatness
A Proposal for a Digital Braille Decoder of Spoken Speech for Deaf-Blind Students
A 21st Century Scenario for Project-based Learning
The US Needs a Federal Learning Technology Program
Seniors and Mobile Devices Cruise Together
Longer Lives and Questions of Quality
Thoughts on Thinking in the Digital Age
The Digital Promise: Bringing People Together to Ensure Learning for All
The Digital Promise Must Be a Total Learning Experience
The Emphasis on 21st Century Schools Will Be on Teamwork
It Still Takes a Village: Social Media
Challenges for Schools in the Digital Age
Profiles of Inspiration for All of Us
Tactile Learning: Italian and US Experiences
Technology Makes Home Schooling a Viable Alternative
A Vision of Blended Learning in 2013
How the Non-Disabled View the Disabled
Computers Can Help Language-Disabled Learners
Distance Learning Gives Many Students a New Lease on Learning
The Need for High DL Standards Will Raise Standards Across America
Mildred A. McGinnis: A Pioneer in the Treatment of Aphasia
Skeptical About Left- and Right-Brain Learning
The Arts Engage Students and Encourage Learning in Other Subjects
Diversity and Cultural Heritage via Technology
Captioning Films and TV: A Brief History
The Arts and Digital Technology
A Multimedia Standard for Educational Videos
Technology Is the Magic That Changes Our Lives
The Digital Challenge for Educators
Technology Can Help Deaf-Blind Infants
Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr. – Setting a Standard for Educational Media
A Proposal for a U.N. Global Internet School
The Creative Use of Technology Can End Hunger and Illiteracy
Judah Schwartz: Through the Lens of the Computer
Social Media for Imaginative Solutions to Exciting Problems
An Isolated World of His Own Creation
The White House Is Calling
Excellent Teachers Engage, Inspire, and Empower
Dale’s Three-Legged Stool: The Power of Rewards
Social Media Should Not Be Banned from Classrooms
Technology As a Prosthetic: Opening New Educational Doors for Disabled Children
A Vision of Education in the Next Ten to Twenty Years
21st Century Schools: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Digital Learning Resources

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

First published April 4, 2011

Allan C. Jones
President
Emaginos Inc.– Customizing education for every child in America

Allan Jones is a career technology leader and educator with a history for management and innovation. Allan has designed and implemented education programs that received national recognition and validation by the U.S. Department of Education. He was one of the founders of an online high school that at one point was providing more than 80% of the State of New Mexico’s distance learning content. He has taught high school math, established and managed a district Information Technology infrastructure, taught college courses, served on a school board, and consulted with schools, districts and states on their technology planning and implementation. He also worked in corporate research for Digital Equipment Corporation and built knowledge transfer relationships between Digital and strategic university researchers. He brings a unique combination of talent and experience to his leadership role.

ETC Publications

Why Educational Equity Is Important
Straight Talk About K-12 Public Education

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

[Published 1 Apr. 2011]

Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D., is the director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. She is the author of two books, Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Cruelty, Threats, and Distress (Research Press) and Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens, Helping Young People Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly (Jossey Bass). A new book, Cyber Savvy: Embracing Digital Safety and Citizenship, will be published later 2011 by Corwin Press.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

[Published 1 Apr. 2011]
Rose & Smith Associates, Inc.

I’ve been involved in online education since the mid ’90s when I first began defining and building a method of creating online learning communities online. I helped envision, create, and administer the first virtual high school in the country. I had been a pioneer in the use of computers in education and raised concerns about equity in technology use early in the education technology movement. I work with college and university programs, policy-makers, and leaders in online learning from non-profit organizations and institutions. I have helped shape the nature of e-learning efforts in the country. I support the radical transformation of US education.

ETC Publications

Computational Thinking, Computational Science and High Performance Computing in K-12 Education: White Paper on 21st Century Education with Henry Neeman, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, and Vic Sutton

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »