MOOC Sightings 001: UNC and Cornell

MOOC Sightings2

Despite wholesale announcements by powerful academic leaders throughout the U.S. that MOOCs are dead, sightings continue to pour in from around the country and the rest of the world. For skeptics, the problem is physical evidence. People can offer them and take them, but no one seems to know what a MOOC looks like. Some point to Coursera and edX, but in the opinion of most MOOC experts, who are primarily from Canada and the UK, these are hoaxes.

So, in the interest of determining once and for all whether MOOCs are fo’ real, I’ll be opening Project White Book to publish promising sightings and photos of MOOCs. In this inaugural post, I’m sharing the photo, below, of what appears to be one person’s conception of a MOOC. I recently found it in the ETC spam queue. It was posted anonymously with the header “Da MOOC!” I’ll post photos as I receive them, so if you have one, email it to me (jamess@hawaii.edu) and I’ll publish the most interesting.

Is this a MOOC, a hoax, or just another weather-related phenomenon?

Is this a MOOC, a hoax, or just another weather-related phenomenon?

I’m also sharing promising sightings by Sarah Kaylan Butler, “50,000 Enroll in UNC Online Course” (Daily Tarheel, 2/19/15), and Blaine Friedlander, “Cornell Sinks Teeth into Four New MOOCs” (Cornell Chronicle, 2/19/15).

Butler reports that “almost 50,000 students have enrolled in a massive open online course on positive psychology taught by UNC professor Barbara Fredrickson.” Evidence that this Coursera-based course might be a real MOOC is very strong. It’s six weeks long, a departure from the usual quarter or semester time frame. It’s comfortably aimed at interest rather than college credit. According to Fredrickson, “Most people that are enrolled — 95 percent of them — say that they’re interested out of their own curiosity.” And the professor is on firm MOOC footing, looking for pedagogical guidance from the future rather than the past. She says, “I’ve written a couple of books for general audience and one of the things that’s clear about our changing audience is that people don’t necessarily want to read books, but they like ideas.”

Another promising sighting is from Cornell. Friedlander reports that “Cornell will offer four new [MOOCs] in 2016: shark biodiversity and conservation, the science and politics of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), an introduction to engineering simulations, and how deals get done – mergers and acquisitions principles.” They’re still in the planning stages, so I’ll keep an eye out for more details as they become available.

Are MOOCs fo’ real? In this series, I’ll be looking at the evidence through a lens that’s forged from constructivist and disruptive theory as well as a dash of whimsy. In this process, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please share them in the discussion below. If you’re logging in from an address that has been previously approved, your reply will be posted automatically. If not, your first reply will be published within 24-48 hours. Subsequent replies from your address will be published immediately.

New Exoplanets Very Old

picture of Harry KellerBy Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

With all of the hoopla over exoplanet discoveries in recent years, it’s a big surprise that this one did not receive more attention. Kepler-444 is a small star, about 25% smaller than ours, and is 11.2 billion years old. According to measurements made by the 600-million dollar Kepler space telescope, it has five rocky planets ranging in size from Mercury to Venus.

Artist's concept of the 11.2-billion-year-old star Kepler-444, which hosts five known rocky planets. Credit: Tiago Campante/Peter Devine.

Artist’s conception of Kepler-444, an 11.2-billion-year-old star, and its five orbiting rocky planets. By Tiago Campante/Peter Devine.

The above information is sufficient to generate great excitement. When you realize that the universe is only about 13.6 billion years old, you know that this star and its planets formed in the early days of a very young, only about 2.5 billions years old, universe. Our own star is less than half as old at 4.6 billion years and has an expected lifespan of around 10 billion years.  Continue reading

Blood Red Moon Over Honolulu – 8 Oct. 2014 at 1:28am

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

I stayed up past 1:30 this morning to get this shot of the blood red moon over Honolulu. The light from the moon, once eclipsed, was very poor. Most of my earlier shots were turning out completely black with no images. I started at 1/200 sec. and worked all the way down the click stops to 1/3 sec. before I was finally able to get a halfway decent image. I had the aperture open all the way to f5.6 the whole time as I walked the shutter speed down.

Blood red moon taken in Honolulu on 10/8/14 at 1:28am. Nikon D5100, f5.6, 1/3 sec., ISO 250, 300mm.

Blood red moon over Honolulu on 10/8/14 at 1:28am. Nikon D5100, f5.6, 1/3 sec., ISO 250, 300mm.

I was using a 300mm zoom, too, so the slow shutter was a problem. I tried to steady the camera by lying back in a beach chair on the south balcony and shooting almost straight up, in the narrow bit of sky between the overhang from the apartment above and the railing. The lens has built-in IS (image stabilization), but most of the photos still ended up with visible blurring around the edges. Anyway, I didn’t futz with the colors in Photoshop. This is the actual red of the moon. However, I did brighten the image a bit to bring out more detail.

Geography? T3G…ESRI in Education

VicSutton80By Vic Sutton

While at a recent workshop at the Redlands, CA, headquarters of the Environmental Science Research Institute (ESRI), I heard the most concise definition of geography yet: “What where? Why there? Why care?”

vic063014 1

My wife, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, had been accepted for a week-long workshop in ESRI’s T3G Institute. I traveled with her, thinking I was heading for a holiday in Southern California – maybe visit the beach and chill out in wine country.

No such luck. As soon as he saw me, Charlie Fitzpatrick said, “I’ll get you a badge.”

Charlie Fitzpatrick is the K-12 education manager at ESRI. Before joining ESRI in 1992, Charlie taught social studies in grades 7-12 for 15 years.

vic063014 2

“T3G” is ESRI’s acronym for “teachers teaching teachers GIS.” So the goal of the workshop was to give a group of some 90 educators the knowledge and hands-on skills to be able to teach other colleagues how to use geographic information system information in their work.  Continue reading

What Does Cyberlearning Mean to You? Cyberlearning Summit 2014

By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Associate Editor

(Note: See Vic Sutton’s report on this conference. -Editor)

Teachers working in classrooms need ideas and frameworks and support for initiatives beyond the ideas that have been classified as regular education. Sometimes funding is a problem. Powerful partners get you permission to do wonderful things in the classroom.

My first involvement with a network of powerful people, learning ideas and new technologies was with Cilt. You can tell that it was some time ago. We called STEM, SMET. Here is a look at what we started with:

bonnie 062514 01

We investigated, learned, shared and promoted ideas. Concord has wonderful free resources to share, and here is a summary:

The Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) was founded in October 1997 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to stimulate the development and study of important, technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) learning. Four “theme teams” focused the efforts in areas of highest promise. CILT events, often workshops organized by theme, provided a collaborative forum in which people in the learning science community met to assess the progress of the field, define research agendas, and initiate new collaborations. Many of these collaborations form seed grants funded by CILT. In addition to these successful CILT programs, CILT has generated many resources for the learning science community, including tools, publications, and NetCourses.

In this day and time, people sometimes do not think that meeting people and sharing in conferences is necessary. But the leaders of Cyberinfrastructure have better ideas. They do a conference and put the ideas online. You have a choice. There are pieces of brilliant ideas, presentations and demonstrations, and even poster sessions for you online.  Continue reading

Cyberlearning Summit 2014: A Quick Recap

VicSutton80By Vic Sutton

[Note: See Bonnie Bracey Sutton’s report. -Editor]

There is reportedly a wealth of research being conducted unto cyberlearning, but there are no clear views about how to translate research results into action in the community context, in particular for schools or informal education.

This emerged from the recent Cyberlearning Summit held in Madison, Wisconsin, on 9-10 June 2014, which brought together some 200 participants — mostly academics, plus some educators, industry representatives and grant makers — to highlight “advances in the design of technology-mediated learning environments, how people learn with technology, and how to use cyberlearning technologies to effectively shed light on learning.”

Bonnie's photos

There was no discussion about quite what cyberlearning is, but it appears to be a fancy name for on-line learning.

The meeting was organized by the Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and featured a number of eminently qualified speakers.

Yasmin Kafai, from the University of Pennsylvania, reminded participants of the remark by the late Steve Jobs that “everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.”  Continue reading