Educational Technology and Change Journal

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

The conclusion of Pew’s Digital Life in 2025 (3/11/14) report¹ is a simple one. In the next eleven years, the internet will become ubiquitous. A few tiny voices disagree, claiming governments will shut it down or balkanize it, turning it into a virtual reflection of the planet’s jigsaw geography. But the overwhelming prediction is the internet will be more of everything² that we currently associate with it. The 61-page document is devoted to explaining the how and the implications, split between mostly optimism and some pessimism.

Click image to view the full 61-page report.

The ubiquity of the internet is already a reality so projecting more of the same is not surprising. Echoing words and phrases abound throughout the report: pervasive, connected, global connectivity, ubernet, and “world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.” The phrase “like electricity” is incorporated into the subtitle, and it serves as the starting point for the rest of the discussion: “Information sharing over the Internet will be so effortlessly interwoven into daily life that it will become invisible, flowing like electricity [through our lives].”

This simile lends itself to a vision of humans as altered or transformed³, as wired to participate in an “augmented reality,”⁴ a reality that is no longer defined by time and geographical boundaries. Perhaps the most profound implication is the irrelevance of national borders in the ubernet. This is how David Hughes puts it:

All 7-plus billion humans on this planet will sooner or later be ‘connected’ to each other and fixed destinations, via the Uber(not inter)Net. That can lead to the diminished power over people’s lives within nation-states. When every person on this planet can reach, and communicate two-way, with every other person on this planet, the power of nation-states to control every human inside its geographic boundaries may start to diminish. Being replaced — over another 50 or more years — by self-organizing, trans-border people-groups. Nations will still have military and police forces, but increasingly these will become less capable of controlling populations.

Again, this trend is already in motion. Today, the fact that websites are hit daily by people from around the world, attracted by mutual interest rather than shared nationality, is a given. No one gives it a second thought.  Continue reading →

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Online Universities 2.0: Taking Education to the Next Level — Worldwide by Dominik Knoll in Huff Post Impact 3/12/14
The author expresses his opinion that free and accessible university education is just around the corner for anyone who wants it via the Internet. A commenter to the article says that most MOOCs are merely replicating the face-to-face classroom and not using the technology to its fullest extent.

Five Ways that 21st and 20th Century Learning Will Differ by Steven Mintz from Inside Higher Ed 3/5/14
Mintz proposes 5 ways that education is changing. He suggests it will move more toward 100% proficiency and mastery of skills and competencies; based in the science of learning; be data-driven; be personalized; and take advantage of technology in ways that truly enhance the learning experience.

Will classroom technology help English Language Learners? From Reflejos 3/16/14
With advent of Common Core and computer-based testing, schools are increasing online connectivity. Pilar Carmina Gonzalez, a researcher for the Education Development Center, a leading expert on children and technology and a former ESL teacher, says technology will open new avenues of learning for English language Learners (ELL students).

11 key questions on standardized testing for Congress to answer by Valerie Strauss from The Washington Post 3/9/14
The Network for Public Education, which includes among its member education historian Diane Ravitch, has asked congress to look into the what they see as the overuse of standardized tests.

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By Vic Sutton

Geographic Information System (GIS) technology has the potential to transform learning, argued long-experienced teacher Bonnie Bracey Sutton at a workshop at the conference of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE), Jacksonville (FL), March 17-21, 2014.

Bonnie Bracey Sutton

Geography is presently a low priority in U.S. school curricula, partly because of the emphasis that the ‘No Child Left Behind’ law places on reading and math. The result is that American children’s awareness of where they live, and where their country is in the world, is at an all-time low.

Yet the ability to know where you are, and where you are going, is crucial in life. And mapping is the way that we record what we know about where we are, and where we are going.

Workshop participant Ray Rose recalled that the earliest maps in America were made by people standing on tall hills and drawing what they saw below them.

There was also discussion about map projections. Most of us know the world from Mercator’s projection, which – as one participant argued – is ‘culturally biased’. Just look, for example, at the size of the African continent on a traditional map, and then compare the size of Africa to other countries or regions.

Other map projections correct this, and provide other perspectives. But as another person commented, “the Mercator projections are what we carry around in our head.”

Bracey Sutton presented a wealth of resources that educators can use, in the classroom or in informal education, to provide children with tools to map their immediate environment, or to explore wider environments, from their community to their state, country or region.

Nowadays we tend to take GIS for granted, for example when using a GPS to guide us to a destination. But for students to understand it they still have to tackle the basics of latitude and longitude.

And there are any number of alternative map projections. See for example the Gall stereographic projection, which long predated the better-known Peters projection.

But the conclusion is that depicting the earth on a flat surface almost inevitably leads to distortions. GIS can help students to understand how they arise, and – sometimes — how to compensate for them.

Some Resources:

Do you know the true size of Africa?
Does size matter? US vs Russia
What is GIS?

• ESRI ~ A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer-based tool for mapping and analyzing things that exist and events that happen on earth. GIS technology integrates common database operations such as query and statistical analysis with the unique visualization and geographic analysis benefits offered by maps.”
• 20 Minute Video on GIS

Participatory Event 2014: GIS DAY

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MOOCs for Penn State Credits — A Shift with Radical Implications

Good ideas don’t fade away. They have a habit of sticking around, and in time, they become great ideas. MOOCs are like that. The stumbling block was bucks: “Is there money in this thing?” It took a while, but name brand universities are beginning to see the green. You have to wonder why it took so long since the idea has been around from day one. Regardless, the business model that’s been hiding in plain sight is the multi-track option, and it will soon be featured in Penn State’s MOOC on Coursera, “Presumed Innocent? Social Science and Wrongful Conviction.”¹ It will offer two options: free and for credit. Here’s a description: “The course…will be open to University students and the public with two track options. The free track will function much like Penn State’s previous MOOCs, while the for-credit portion will require a heavier workload and offer instructor and TA feedback and assessment on completed work in exchange for a fee less than that for an average college course.”

The fascinating part of this is what appears to be a waiving of standard admission procedures. I haven’t read the details on how this will all work out, but it seems anyone anywhere can register for the credit version, and if successful, earn Penn State credits. The only requirement is a fee that’s described as lower than average for a college course. If this is indeed what’s planned, then they’re setting a precedent that could ultimately change the higher ed landscape. Students will soon be able to earn college credits from top universities around the world from the comfort of their home and for a price that many if not most will be able to afford.

The impact on higher ed will be immense. Colleges and universities will need to open up their policies for granting degrees, and their emphasis will probably shift from primarily instruction to include large scale certification options, and this may mean a realignment of staff, with many leaving the classroom for duty as advisors.

Multimedia Web Skills — A Coming Crisis for Teachers

Paul Beaudoin, in “Six Ways to Be a Better Online Teacher,”² explains how Shoba Bandi-Rao, an assistant professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY, has “her students combine e-text, audio, images and video to create their digital stories.” They use “free software such as Wevideo and Window’s Movie Maker.” According to Bandi-Rao, “They shared their projects in class and had the opportunity to comment and receive feedback from their peers.”

This ability to create video presentations and share them online is the 21st century equivalent of posters and term papers. The question is, are our teachers prepared to demonstrate and teach these skills? If not, how do we get them there?

I believe this trend toward multimedia is a matter of when and not if. In preparation, colleges have two basic options: (1) Build up their IT service departments or (2) encourage and insist on teacher competency. The first is probably where most colleges will end up by default since it’s the path of least decisiveness. But the problem is cost, which will mushroom and quickly become prohibitive. The second, teacher competency, is the most sustainable in the long run. The key is to design and fund plans that will not only reward teachers who become skilled in the use of technology but to actively recruit new faculty who are technically adept.

Anant Agarwal: A Massive Contradiction?

Anant Agarwal, founder and president of edX, continues to push the value of on-campus learning as he touts the power of MOOCs³. For Agarwal, MOOCs are part of a blend, an enhancement for F2F courses. But he also sees MOOCs as vital beyond the campus experience. He says, “We also envision the world shifting toward a continuous education system — one that doesn’t stop after four years of college.” When pressed for examples of invaluable on-campus experiences, he offered two: “Universities provide…a space for students to learn how to work collaboratively with each other and gain those critical soft skills, and close interaction with faculty and senior students on research.”

Agarwal is probably representative of most leaders in higher ed when it comes to MOOCs. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. The fundamental contradiction is between the concept of open and closed. Unfortunately, they don’t blend very well. A closed course with an open module (MOOC) is still a closed course. Similarly, an open course with a closed module is also still closed. In the MOOC game, the only ultimate winner is an open course with no closed modules.

Returning to Agarwal’s two examples above, I don’t think it takes much imagination to see how collaboration and interaction are already integral parts of the online learning experience. Examples abound.
__________
¹ Katie Jacobs, “Digital learning technologies enable students to become better rounded,” Penn State News, 3/25/14.
² Campus Technology, 3/26/14.
³ Hayleigh Colombo, “EdX founder – sheer numbers means MOOCs will stay relevant,” Boilerstation, 3/25/14.

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

(Note: Earlier this month, we published an announcement of Lynn Zimmerman‘s Jewish Studies and Holocaust Education in Poland [McFarland, 2014]. As a follow-up, I planned to publish an interview with Lynn. However, after reading excerpts, I realized that she had answered all my questions in the introduction of her book. I asked for permission to publish the introduction, and she gracefully consented. Lynn’s focus “is the educational function and value of a Jewish studies program, of teaching young people about the Holocaust, of going to a cultural festival. How effective is each as an educational tool?…Are they perpetuating stereotypes or breaking them down?…How does each reflect current trends in identity politics?…Can these issues be the foundation for teaching about human rights in general?” Lynn’s probing style takes the issues beyond the covers of her book. -Editor)

Introduction by Lynn Zimmerman

Lynn Zimmerman

One evening in 2002 I was listening to This American Life, a public radio program in the United States. A young American woman who was Jewish was talking to Ira Glass, the host, about living in Krakow, Poland. She talked about Polish interest in Jewish culture and the Jewish cultural festival, which has been hosted in Krakow since the early 1990s. This young woman said that she had mixed feelings about the interest in Jewish life and about this festival. She told him that on one hand she was happy that people in Poland were recognizing the contributions of Jews to their culture, history, and society. However, she was also slightly disturbed and even offended by it. She said she felt uncomfortable because at times she felt like she was watching outsiders reenact a romanticized version of culture that no longer existed (Glass, 2002).

Her story piqued my interest. Even though I had been to Krakow several times, I had never been to the festival, partly for the reasons she had mentioned. I thought that it would feel odd going to see other people celebrating a culture that was not theirs and that no longer existed in their country. I have never been to one of the popular American Indian festivals in the United States for the same reason. I had been to Kazimierz, the former Jewish quarter in Krakow, on several occasions, and I felt that I was in a museum or in a place whose past and present did not match. Like this young woman, I felt some discomfort. I knew from reading and talking to others that most of the residents and shop and restaurant owners were not Jewish. However, Judaica and Jewish souvenirs were being sold, and there were several restaurants featuring “Jewish” food.

I did finally attend the festival in 2005. I had similar mixed feelings as the young woman whose story I had heard. The unease started with the Friday Shabbat service at the Tempel Synagogue. This formerly “progressive” synagogue has a women’s balcony so that men and women could sit separately during services, women upstairs and men below in the main sanctuary. This arrangement is more in line today with traditional and Orthodox branches of Judaism, so I assume that the Friday evening service I attended was organized with the requirements of the more orthodox Jews in mind. As a modern Conservative Jewish woman, it was strange to have to sit in the women’s balcony since I am accustomed to egalitarian services in which men and women sit together and participate equally in the services. Not only was being segregated in this way strange for me, the set-up of the balcony was not comfortable. The panel on the front of the women’s balcony in Tempel Synagogue is over a meter high, so although you can hear quite well while sitting, you can see nothing of what is going on down below. To see what is happening in the main sanctuary below, one must stand and look over the rail. Therefore, during the service — and it was a religious service, not a show — there were quite a number of women in the balcony, some sitting, but most standing looking over the rail. Although I was sitting with some Jewish women from the United States, most of the people were Poles who came to see what the service was like. Think about how you would feel if you were attending mass in your church or services in your mosque and there was a group of people there as curiosity-seekers — not just to see the building, but to see what you were doing. It is a disquieting feeling. The other American women I spoke to expressed that same feeling. Not only was I participating in a service in a way that was strange to me, but I also felt as if I was part of a spectacle.

Warsaw Festival of Jewish Culture, “Singer’s Warsaw“; photo by Radeksz, 9/2/09. Click image to enlarge.

Continue reading →

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Every once in a while, a book comes along that puts a grin on your face, and the more you think about it, the wider your grin becomes. Invasion of the MOOCs: The Promises and Perils of Massive Open Online Courses (Parlor Press, 2014), by Steven D. Krause and Charles Lowe, is such a book. And for all the right reasons.

The sources are right: “Unlike accounts in the mainstream media and educational press, Invasion of the MOOCs is not written from the perspective of removed administrators, would-be education entrepreneurs/venture capitalists, or political pundits. Rather, this collection of essays comes from faculty who developed and taught MOOCs in 2012 and 2013, students who participated in those MOOCs, and academics and observers who have first hand experience with MOOCs and higher education.”

And the price is right. Free. Or you can choose to pay $30.00.

Contents

“Introduction: Building on the Tradition of CCK08” by Charles Lowe
“MOOCology 1.0” by Glenna L. Decker
“Framing Questions about MOOCs and Writing Courses” by James E. Porter
“A MOOC or Not a MOOC: ds106 Questions the Form” by Alan Levine
“Why We Are Thinking About MOOC” by Jeffrey T. Grabill
“The Hidden Costs of MOOCs” by Karen Head
“Coursera: Fifty Ways to Fix the Software (with apologies to Paul Simon)” by Laura Gibbs
“Being Present in a University Writing Course: A Case Against MOOCs” by Bob Samuels
“Another Colonialist Tool?” by Aaron Barlow
“MOOCversations: Commonplaces as Argument” by Jeff Rice
“MOOC Feedback: Pleasing All the People?” by Jeremy Knox, Jen Ross, Christine Sinclair, Hamish Macleod, and Siân Bayne
“More Questions than Answers: Scratching at the Surface of MOOCs in Higher Educatio” by Jacqueline Kauza
“Those Moot MOOCs: My MOOC Experience” by Melissa Syapin
“MOOC Assigned” by Steven D. Krause
“Learning How to Teach … Differently: Extracts from a MOOC Instructor’s Journal” by Denise K. Comer
“MOOC as Threat and Promise” by Edward M. White
“A MOOC With a View: How MOOCs Encourage Us to Reexamine Pedagogical Doxa” by Kay Halasek, Ben McCorkle, Cynthia L. Selfe, Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Susan Delagrange, Jennifer Michaels, and Kaitlin Clinnin
“Putting the U in MOOCs: The Importance of Usability in Course Design” by Heather Noel Young
“’I open at the close’: A Post-MOOC Meta-Happening Reflection and What I’m Going to Do About That” by Elizabeth D. Woodworth
“Here a MOOC, There a MOOC” by Nick Carbone
“Writing and Learning with Feedback Machines” by Alexander Reid
“Learning Many-to-Many: The Best Case for Writing in Digital Environments” by Bill Hart-Davidson
“After the Invasion: What’s Next for MOOCs?” by Steven D. Krause

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By Allan C. Jones

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” (John Dewey)

Every child deserves an excellent education. This statement is supported by an impressive collection of studies, reports, articles, and comments by national leaders. If you believe that a person’s intellectual capacity is racially, ethnically, or culturally predetermined, you may as well stop reading at this point. If you don’t believe it, then you can’t be in favor of a program that tacitly accepts some schools will be better than others and seeks equity by balancing access instead of raising quality.

If you believe that everyone has the potential for greatness, then you must also want to ensure that every child is nurtured to achieve that greatness. And you should not only want it on moral or ethical grounds; you should also want it on economic grounds. There are many reports on the economic and social benefits of providing equitable access to quality K-12 education. America has some excellent public schools, but that is not enough. America’s future is at risk as long as we continue to allow poor schools to exist.

The news programs and business publications constantly remind us that we are increasingly competing in a global economy. Our ability to compete is directly related to how well we prepare each individual citizen to participate. America’s K-12 public education system is the most important single factor in preparing citizens to compete. The personal costs of a poor education are the first manifestations of the problem of educational inequity. But, as the McKinsey report demonstrates, the issue is much more than a collection of individual, personal costs. The lack of quality education for large numbers of our population has a previously hidden cumulative national cost that is staggering.  Continue reading →

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Dorothy M. Chun and Mark Warschauer, editors, Language Learning & Technology.

“Using Peer Computer-Mediated Corrective Feedback to Support EFL Learners’ Writing,” by Ali AbuSeileek and Awatif Abualsha’r, is available in Volume 18, Number 1 of Language Learning & Technology. LLT, edited by Dorothy Chun and Mark Warschauer, is a refereed ejournal that disseminates research to foreign and second language educators worldwide on issues related to technology and language education. It is available online, free.

Sign up here to receive your free subscription if you have not already done so. LLT welcomes contributions for future issues. Submission guidelines can be found here.

FEATURE ARTICLES

Fostering Foreign Language Learning Through Technology-Enhanced Intercultural Projects
by Jen Jun Chen & Shu Ching Yang

Using Peer Computer-Mediated Corrective Feedback to Support EFL Learners’ Writing
by Ali AbuSeileek and Awatif Abualsha’r

Direct and Indirect Access to Corpora: An Exploratory Case Study Comparing Students’ Error Correction and Learning Strategy Use in L2 Writing
by Hyunsook Yoon and JungWon Jo

Effects of Captioning on Video Comprehension and Incidental Vocabulary Learning
by Maribel Montero Perez, Elke Peters, Geraldine Clarebout, and Piet Desmet

Ecological Affordance and Anxiety in an Oral Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Environment
by Levi McNeil

Use of Wikis to Promote Collaborative Writing in EF
by Zelilha Aydin and Senem Yildiz

Continue reading →

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I was trained by NASA. Let me be clear that I personally don’t want to colonize space, but I thought that thinking futuristically was a great idea for children, and science fiction is an interesting topic. We started with Space Science Education.

First, we did the NASA thing, that is, learning and creating mock colonies on the moon, on Mars, and fussing about which would be the better place. The Challenger Center created programs that let us think really hard about landing on the moon. Here is a song we used to sing:

Mission Control, can you hear me? Think of this with kids’ lovely voices, not this one single voice.

Then, NASA had a series of projects: Marsville, then Mars, City Alpha.

I live in Washington, DC, so there is of course the National Air and Space Museum, and we have had programs there, small programs and overnight programs. I love the study of space, astronomy, astrophysics. Now we have Cosmos. I welcome it. In case you missed it, click here for a link to the discussion following the presentation. We have those who debate the issue of how, where, when and why.  Continue reading →

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Aloha,

Registration for TCC 2014 is now open.

http://2014.tcconlineconference.org/

General information about the conference is also available at this web site.

The conference fee is $99 USD for individuals prior to April 1. There are also special registration rates for graduate students and a group rate for unlimited participation by an entire campus.

For your information, we will hold a special pre-conference event (Pre-Con) on March 26 from 2:00-3:15 PM Hawaii time. For other time zones see:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=TCC+2014+Pre-Con&iso=20140325T14&p1=103&ah=1&am=15

This FREE event (RSVP required) will feature presentations about social media in education and an orientation to the conference schedule and activities.

http://2014.tcconlineconference.org/precon/

We look forward to seeing you online on April 22-24.

Warm regards,
Bert Kimura
For the TCC Conference Team

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I am still waking up at 4 in the morning. I have not been out of the house. There has been a big snowstorm. I did go to the grocery store, but I have been lazing around. In Samara, we had about four to five meetings a day. We flew back on a 23 hour trip, three hours in Frankfurt, and came home.

Vic treated me to caviar and champagne. For a couple of days after, I cooked. (Hint. You don’t have to cook it.) We had that for two days, but the first day I did cook. Did lamb rib chops, stuffed potatoes and sliced tomatoes, and crashed. I have a terrible cold and have been in bed most days.

Bonnie and Vic, 2nd and 3rd from the right, at Peterhof Palace.

We had a mountain of mail, email and mail to go through, and my bags are still not unpacked. Well, the technology has been unpacked, and I have done a few online meetings. There was a bit of stress in working with 20 somethings, gifted and talented ones who spoke fluent Russian but who did not want to spend any money. They often ate ramen noodles in the hotel. Breakfast was free and huge, so they could survive on little or nothing for dinner.

Russia was not as scary as I was told. The hardest part is the language. I learned some of it, but I was with fluent speakers. Sadly, cab drivers don’t care how well you speak. They are out to get you, so we spent a lot of time in the Metro.  Continue reading →

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Updated 3/26/14
The Dell Latitude 13 Education Series is scheduled for launch tomorrow, 6 March 2014, at 9am EST. It starts at $539 USD. Non-touch models are available in red and blue. Touch and non-touch models are available in black.

The Dell Latitude 13 Education Series opens 180 degrees, offers an optional touchscreen, and is durable enough to withstand bumps, drops and spills.

 The Latitude 13:

• has a large 13.3-inch display, powerful processors, and a full-size keyboard
• is durable enough to withstand bumps, drops and spills
• is subject to military-standard testing
• boasts an exclusive fully-sealed keyboard and touchpad for the industry’s best spill protection
• has superb scratch resistance with Corning® Gorilla® Glass NBT™ on touchscreens
• opens 180 degrees to reduce hinge stress when carried by students in unconventional ways

This is a partial but impressive list of features. Its toughness stands out, but the feature that catches my eye and imagination is the last, the 180-degree screen hinge, which allows you to open and carry it flat, almost like a tablet.

The possibilities for flat laptops (flaptops?) are intriguing. A tablet with a light keyboard that swings down and allows for input with one hand while being held with the other would bridge the laptop-tablet gap. Weight would be a factor, but the Surface Pro 2 proves that a full-blown Windows computer can be squeezed into a tablet, and its optional magnetic keyboard covers demonstrate that keyboards can be very light. The Latitude 13 is an open invitation to designers to explore the potential for flaptops.

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Updated 3/26/14
We look at clouds and see data and apps, and we forget that they’re a medium and not just an archive or platform. In the same way, we look at online courses and MOOCs and see courses, forgetting that they’re also a medium. This is an oversight that higher ed can ill afford since the message in this medium is that learning is rising, inexorably and rapidly, from the ground to the clouds.

Photo from the Cluster Balloon Flight Page.

This is not only a switch in medium from campus to online but a quantum shift in approaches to meeting employer needs in the 21st century. Add Microsoft, EMC Corporation, Adobe, and Amazon to this path less traveled and we suddenly have a freeway.

This is what Apollo Lightspeed’s Balloon is all about. In their November 2013 survey “of approximately 300 IT and technology hiring managers,” they learned that “73 percent have a hard time finding qualified applicants in IT/technology.”¹ Reading between the lines, the implication is that colleges aren’t delivering. No one should be surprised. The increasingly rapid pace of change coupled with a titanic academic tradition has left the gates wide open for Balloon and similar services that are sure to follow.

Balloon, launched today, is “an online career skills and learning marketplace featuring many of the world’s leading technology companies and education providers. Balloon addresses the growing gap between career-seekers’ skills and employers’ talent needs by helping users identify customized career paths, understand the knowledge and skills required by employers along that path, and, then learn from the right courses to improve their chances in a competitive labor market.”

Suddenly, with a single stroke, we’re looking past our vaunted colleges and universities toward a swifter, simpler path to jobs and security. In this cloud scenario, higher ed, as is, will continue to play a part, but the outlook for their dominance is deflating.

In the coming months, it will be interesting to see how education leaders respond to this new trend in which employers, employees, job seekers, and students look to balloons for qualified workers, professional development, jobs, and certification.

__________
¹ “The New Path from Education to Employment: Apollo Lightspeed Launches Balloon to Connect Revolutionary Online Learning Skills and Courses with In-Demand, Career-Relevant Skills,” press release, 3/4/14.

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Click image for details.

Jewish Studies and Holocaust Education in Poland (McFarland, 2014), examines how people in Poland learn about Jewish life, culture and history, including the Holocaust. The main text provides background on concepts such as culture, identity and stereotypes, as well as on specific topics such as Holocaust education as curriculum, various educational institutions, and the connection of arts and cultural festivals to identity and culture. It also gives a brief overview of Polish history and Jewish history in Poland, as well as providing insight into how the Holocaust and Jewish life and culture are viewed and taught in present-day Poland. This background material is supported by essays by Poles who have been active in the changes that have taken place in Poland since 1989. A young Jewish-Polish man gives insight into what it is like to grow up in contemporary Poland, and a Jewish-Polish woman who was musical director and conductor of the Jewish choir, Tslil, gives her view of learning through the arts. Essays by Polish scholars active in Holocaust education and curriculum design give past, present and future perspectives of learning about Jewish history and culture.

The author and editor, Lynn W. Zimmerman, is a professor of Education at Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, Indiana, and of Applied Linguistics at Tischner European University, Krakow, Poland. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland, 1992-1994, and as a Fulbright Scholar, University Wroclaw, Poland, in 2009. She also serves as associate editor on Educational Technology & Change Journal, specializing in teacher education. Click here for a preview of her book.

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Animate Your Course Book with Engaging Activities
Submitted by Shelly Terrell on 19 Feb. 2014, British Council
Thirteen out of the 20 ideas for activities for English language learners in this article are dependent on technology. Most of the remaining ideas also have a technology component. Some definitely look worth checking out.

Multilingual MOOCs Expand Reach of U.S. Idea: U.S. Phenomenon Becomes International
By Nick Clunn, Tech Page One, 24 Feb. 2014
Coursera and the Carlos Slim Foundation have joined forces “to deliver more courses in Spanish to Mexico and” throughout Latin American. edX is planning “to use its platform to host a MOOC portal for the Arabic-speaking world” through a partnership with a group in Jordan. This group will offer courses in several languages besides Arabic.

Top 10 Tools for Creating Teaching Materials
From Talk2me English
This English Language Teaching blog for students and teachers was awarded the “Blog Award for Innovative Teaching Ideas” by Teaching English British Council in February 2014. The blog offers a wide variety of tools and tips for the English language learner and teacher.  Continue reading →

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By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

As if Bas Lansdorp didn’t have enough problems, a group of Muslim imams have issued a fatwa declaring that Muslims cannot volunteer for the one-way trip to Mars. The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the UAE issued the statement, one of many they issue. According to the site, www.awqaf.ae, over 337,000 fatwas were issued last year alone.

With over 1,000 candidates remaining after the initial cut, you can be rather certain that some are Muslim. Will they withdraw in the face of the fatwa? The Kaleej Times tells us that the rationale for the fatwa has to do with risk. After all, the Holy Quran tells us, “Do not kill yourselves or one another.”

It’s extremely unlikely that more than one of the initial crew of four will be Muslim. We cannot read the minds of those issuing the fatwa. Their reasons could be preservation of life or preservation of faith or something else entirely.

Let’s face it, however. Any ancient ritual or observance can run into problems in an expanding universe. These concepts were established when people were ignorant of the full extent of the world and even that there were other worlds out there in space. They had not flown high or delved deep. They were unaware of some continents on Earth and of microscopic life and much more.  Continue reading →

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Updated 3/26/14
Jennifer Wing¹ describes University of Washington professor Matt McGarrity’s public speaking MOOC as “wildly-popular.” Students “post their speeches on Facebook and YouTube, often talking to a camera, alone in a room.” This simple video approach has implications for courses in other fields that require observable performance. In the not too distant future, I’m certain teachers and students will be posting videos of their comments in online discussion forums, adding a dimension that’s missing in text-only forums. Taken a step further, I can imagine how students will routinely submit video versions of their essays and research papers.

Just how important is ICT² skills? “Technology is now so central to education,” says Michele Koh Morollo³, “that students who are denied it are being actively disadvantaged. Not only will their ICT skills be lower, their language skills and academic performance will suffer relative to their counterparts who do have access to technology.” Morollo’s second point is a warning: “Once a student has left university, no employer is going to look at them unless they have basic ICT skills.”

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By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

Interested in creating simple, interactive e-learning content? Meet Oppia, Google’s new open source tool that allows anyone to create basic, free, interactive learning experiences in an easy to use web-based environment.

Google’s approach sounds exciting and is likely to foster open learning and collaborative authoring: “No trial periods, no freemium plans, no advertisements. Writing, editing, or learning from explorations on oppia.org is 100% free of charge! Additionally, all lessons on oppia.org are licensed CC-BY-SA, which means that you are allowed to copy, modify, and reuse lesson content. Want to host an Oppia instance yourself, or make modifications to it? The code behind oppia.org is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.”

The web environment features a gallery with — at this point — a fairly limited number of brief interactive lessons. The content comprises quizzes, images, text and videos. What I like about the lessons that I have seen so far is that they follow an exploratory “storytelling approach.” Starting with a simple scenario, they encourage learners to try and guess, rather than drill and practice, the correct solution.

Here is an example that introduces the concept of declination in latin.

Figuring out the authoring part of Oppia was a lot more challenging. As far as I can tell at this point, one can create new lessons by copying and editing existing content. Lessons, which are called “explorations,” are initially private, that is, they can only be viewed by the author and invited users. Once an author decides to publish, the exploration achieves “beta status” and is retrievable by anyone. To be featured in the lesson gallery, the learning unit has to be approved by moderators.

Unfortunately, the only interactive experience I gained was watching the “Loading” message on the otherwise blank screen for several minutes. On a sunny note, this probably signals a large interest from the educational technology community :-)

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Updated 3/3/14, 3/26/14
StarAfrica predicts that “by 2015, Africa will be the land of the MOOCs” (2/28/14). This prediction is interesting, but what caught my attention is the awareness that MOOCs are not only related to but an extension of online learning in general: “Universities around the continent are taking hard deep looks at the way to use online courses for the betterment of their students, of their fellow citizens and of the rest of the world” (emphasis added). Perception is critical. As long as we’re blinded by the Coursera/edX glare, we can’t see the full potential of MOOCs. View them as extensions of online learning less some of the restrictions that have carried over from traditional onground courses and possibilities suddenly loom limitless.

This prediction also confirms disruption theory — that it’s an external force that acts on a different population. Disruption is relative. MOOCs are not disruptive within traditional campus-defined cultures. They’re disruptive when viewed on the outside. Thus, to understand the potential of MOOCs, we ought to be looking outward at how they’re changing the lives of non-traditional students.

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