As a lead-in to this year’s main conference, TCC 2019 is hosting a FREE special webinar, “Using Silly Media in Teaching & Learning,” featuring Alan Levine, longtime blogger of Cog Dog Blog.
Alan will suggest ways we can augment online teaching with memes by adding images to words, to visualize metaphors and facilitate discussions. As shortform videos, animated GIFs that loop are effective for demonstrating natural processes or illustrating techniques where repetition aids understanding. Learn what your students might accomplish by creating memes and animated GIFs.
Date & time:
Wednesday, March 20, 1400 HAST
1900 CDT, 2000 EDT; Thu Mar 21, 0900 Tokyo, Seoul Other timezones
Access information and a reminder will be sent to you a few days prior to this event. This online session will be held in Adobe Connect. The deadline to RSVP is March 13.
Entries in the International Serious Play Awards competition for digital training and educational games due Feb. 15, 2019.
Serious Play’s 11-year-old award program recognizes outstanding games designed for use for education or training in business, government/military, healthcare, museums, higher ed, K12.
Brief bio from Cambridge English: Scott Thornbury is an established author and series editor of the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers since 2004. He had his first title published in 1997: About Language: Tasks for Teachers of English. He has co-written (with Diana Slade) Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy, in the Cambridge Language Teaching Library (2006) and (with Peter Watkins) The CELTA Course (2007). More recently, he has been focussed on online learning, having overseen the writing of a five-level internet-delivered course in general English. Scott is a regular contributor to the ELT conference circuit and is widely known and respected in the ELT world. He has had involvement Cambridge ESOL accredited teacher training schemes and is an Examiner for the DELTA scheme. He is currently Associate Professor of English Language Studies at their New School University in New York, where he directs and teaches the online MA TESOL program.
21 Online Pronunciation Resources for Teaching and Learning by Lynn Henrichsen. TESOL Connections.
Henrichsen suggests that while there are a wide range of computer-assisted pronunciation teaching (CAPT) websites and apps for the English teacher and learner, not all are created equal. He offers some suggests for assessing the usefulness of websites and gives reviews of 10 sites with his recommendations.
Motivation & Language Learning in Online Contexts by L.W. Zimmerman. OLLReN.
This research review looks at learner motivation in online language learning contexts. The author found that two significant factors are online learning readiness and promoting interaction, factors that would come into play for any learning context, not just language learning.
5 Effective Uses of Mobile Technology in the Classroom by Daniel Adeboye. eLearning Industry.
In the introduction to the article, Adeboye says, “Research has shown that though mobile technology is a great tool in our teaching and learning experience, many who use it only use it to increase efficiency and not necessarily effectiveness. This article provides 5 suggestions of how to effectively use mobile technology in the classroom.”
How mobile technology can benefit learning by Elliot Gowans. ET.
Gowans contends that the familiarity of mobile devices as entertainment devices makes them a natural way to “motivate today’s digital natives through new and innovative ways of learning.”
Don’t forget to register for the first (free) presentation in our 2019 Watermark Knowledge Ambassador Webinar Series, “Leveraging Technology for General Education Learning Outcome Assessment” featuring Hawai’i Pacific University on January 31, 2019, at 3:00pm ET.
Valentina Abordonado
In this webinar, you’ll learn how Hawai’i Pacific University leverages Watermark to engage faculty in the assessment of general education and institutional learning outcomes. Dr. Valentina Abordonado, Assistant Dean for General Education, will detail how their work helps faculty present actionable data, set targets for expected performance, and analyze student achievement of outcomes. Dr. Abordonado will also share how HPU closes the loop at the program level and documents their efforts to continuously improve teaching.
Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Public Charter School Laws, January 2019, is an annual publication by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Nina Rees is the President and CEO, and Todd Ziebarth, the principal author, is Senior Vice President of State Advocacy and Support.
“From our perspective,” say Rees and Ziebart, “the point of our annual state charter school laws rankings report is to figure out which states are creating the conditions for high-quality charter schools by providing, among other things, flexibility, funding equity, non-district authorizers, facilities support, and accountability.”
Serious Play Conference is coming to the University of Central Florida (UCF) at the downtown Orlando campus Wednesday-Friday, July 24-26, 2019, hosted by the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA). (The Serious Play Conference will also be held at the University of Quebec at Montreal, July 10-12, 2019.)
Get current on the latest use of games and simulations for training, education and research in healthcare, the corporate environment, nonprofit and education. A design track will offer sessions on game and instructional design, technology and assessment. People new to serious games might like our pre-conference session.
We’re looking for speakers who will share their knowledge and experience, offering with take-aways attendees can apply immediately. Sessions are 45 min long for more lecture-based talks and panels and 90 min for participation-designed workshops.
New evidence that technology can contribute to positive learning outcomes in the school classroom emerges from the latest ‘SpeakUp’ survey of Project Tomorrow.
Project Tomorrow is a non-profit organization whose mission is to ensure that today’s students are well-prepared for the future.
SpeakUp is an annual research project that has been carried out since 2003, surveying students, teachers, librarians, principals, administrators and parents.
Its main finding is that “high school students with… access to a laptop or Chromebook are more likely to use those devices to personalize their learning process, to stay organized with their schoolwork and to leverage technology for more enhanced learning experiences than their peers with no access or only sporadic access.”
The importance of levering technology was:
to help students develop college-ready and workplace skills; and
to overcome the barriers that arise because technology resources are not always evenly distributed.
The report also notes that Internet access outside schools is critical, but there is still a digital divide. And only one-quarter of school districts allow students to take their devices home.
Click image to view the 9-page PDF.
It is interesting to see how students who do not have Internet access at home tackle the ‘homework gap’ that this creates. They go to school early, stay late, or use the facilities of libraries or even fast-food outlets. Continue reading →
By John Mark Walker
Open Source & Community Lead for Open edX
“MOOCs are dead.”
That’s quite a statement from the CEO of one of the largest MOOC (massively open online course) platforms in the world. But that’s exactly what edX’s CEO, Anant Agarwal, said in November at the edX Global Forum in Boston.
But the platforms that have powered MOOCs? They’re far from dead. Instead, they’re evolving. MOOC platforms are now being used to power complete programs, which, in the future, may look very different than they do today, thanks to the power of these e-learning systems. Because while the MOOC market may not be growing, online learning is growing rapidly. It’s already an intrinsic part of K-12 and higher education and has also been adopted for commercial purposes, such as customer training, corporate training, and even community building. By 2024, analysts predict it will grow to a more than $200 billion global industry.
The designers of MOOC platforms know they need to change to remain relevant because the one-size-fits-all model doesn’t actually really fit anyone very well. Learning must be interactive and applicable to each individual learner, responding to their needs, level of knowledge, and learning style. In response, these platforms are becoming more collaborative, and not just between teachers and students. Professors need to collaborate with course designers to tailor content and flow; instructors need to communicate with content developers to improve it for the next course. Collaboration and communication among all the stakeholders should be the norm, not the exception, and MOOC platforms are rapidly adding and improving on these capabilities. Continue reading →
TCCfx 2018 is a complimentary 1-day online conference that aims to empower the educational technology community through connection, collaboration, and the generation of innovative ideas for teaching and learning. Through this conference, the UH Manoa Dept. of Learning Design and Technology (LTEC) showcases alumni, current students and faculty, and collaborations with local and global communities.
This year’s theme is “Sustaining Education Through Innovation”; addressing sustainable learning through the integration of new ideas and technology. Program sessions include:
International Collaboration – The Kaiyama Project:
Dr. Wendy Kuntz, Dr. Kelli Goya, Dr. Kenichi Kubota, Dr. Mayumi Kubota, Mary Kimura
LTEC Alumni Panel:
Dr. Mike Travis, Grant Chartrand, Ed Lee
Keynote – Innovation in K-12 Education:
Dr. Miki Tomita, Founder of Education Incubator
Please consider submitting a paper or a general session proposal related to learning, design, and technology such as e-learning, learning communities, digital literacy, social media, online privacy, mobile and emerging technologies, gamification, faculty and staff support, and professional development.
Venue: Participation in this event is entirely online. All sessions will be delivered online in real-time. Sessions will also be recorded for later viewing.
More Info: Bert Kimura <bert@hawaii.edu> or Curtis Ho <curtis@hawaii.edu>
TCC Hawaii, LearningTimes, & the Learning Design and Technology Department, College of Education, UH-Manoa collaborate to produce this event. Numerous volunteer faculty and staff worldwide provide additional support.
This article about UX (User Experience) suggests that user experience and usability are related but not the same. According to the author, UX is about emotional engagement.
This short video from CEOP (Children Exploitation and Online Protection Center, UK) is aimed at teens to help them understand what the lack of online privacy can mean. It also aims at showing this audience that they can and should report anything that makes them uncomfortable or unsafe.
This blog focuses on the buzzword, technology integration, and explains what it is and how you, the teacher, can do it. It explains some of the theory behind technology integration, then offers a number of tools that ESL teachers (and all teachers) can use to augment their instruction.
The major take-home from a Congressional Briefing on School Safety and Technology, a little surprisingly, was that technology does not play a major role in ensuring school safety.
The briefing was arranged by the National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training (NCTET), and was held at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC, on 9 October.
Kathleen Minke
Introducing the meeting, Kathleen Minke — Executive Director of the National Association of School Psychologists — pointed out that schools are an ideal place to promote mental wellness. The main challenge that they face is a shortage of trained staff — school psychologists or counsellors.
The recommended ratio of such staff is 1 per 250 students. Nationwide, the actual level is 1 per 482 students, and in some states the ratio is much worse. Continue reading →
The real history of the Americas has been lost by trivialization and by being omitted from the textbooks. The continued misrepresentation of indigenous peoples in the media and popular culture contributes to continued settler colonization and racism toward indigenous peoples.
Yet the growing movement by the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and hundreds of other indigenous nations to protect their homelands and resources from destruction presents teachers an opportunity to introduce students to lessons based on the environment, government, history, economic, cultural studies and civics.
It is almost the month and day when people celebrate Columbus Day. The D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice, a project of Teaching for Change, offered a workshop on September 10 to provide resources for educators.
The workshop took place at the National Museum of the American Indian, in Washington, DC. It engaged with curriculum and strategies for teaching students about indigenous people’s history and life today.
Sarah Shear
The workshop started with a keynote by Dr. Sarah B. Shear, who is an assistant professor of social studies education at Penn State University, Altoona. She described her research into the way that race and settler colonialism issues are addressed in state standards and textbooks; teacher education; film; and qualitative research methodologies. Continue reading →
We gathered a panel of editors, writers, and professors to generate a comprehensive list of questions for Dr. Rory McCorkle. The panel members were: Stefanie Panke, Bert Kimura, Judith McDaniel, Leigh Dooley, and Harry Keller. Colleges around the world are developing online programs, and an invariable topic is remote test proctoring as an adjunct or alternative to on-campus testing. We hope that our questions and Dr. McCorkle’s responses will shed more light on the issues involved in reviewing and selecting a proctoring service.
Perhaps the most meaningful takeaway for us is the realization that the ultimate quality of the testing process is determined to a large extent by the participating institutions. In short, GIGO. Colleges should determine their needs prior to shopping for a proctoring service. The general services and features in the PSI Bridge™ platform tend to be standard among major providers, and it’s in the details that the critical differences begin to emerge.
Dr. Rory McCorkle
Dr. Rory McCorkle is the Senior Vice President of Certification and Education Services for PSI. He helps PSI clients meet their testing, educational and strategic goals through the suite of services offered by PSI, while leading a team of business development, account management, and consulting professionals. Dr. McCorkle has worked with over 750 testing organizations, including well-known universities and colleges, licensing bodies, and renowned certification programs.
The questions and answers below are roughly grouped into four areas: students, proctors, teachers, and PSI services.
I. STUDENTS
Bert Kimura: How do the services and data collected conform with FERPA and other privacy issues?
Rory McCorkle: PSI Services LLC (PSI) holds privacy and security as a highest priority. We require very limited personally identifiable information (PII) for students and limit access to PII to only those who require access for provision of the services. In practice, we take care to not only be secure, but non-invasive as well. Only a single login is required for users to take their tests, and PSI proctors do not require access of a user’s machine to verify test compliance. All security measures are integrated and automated to ensure proper compliance and client privacy, while simultaneously minimizing security risks and providing a smooth user experience. In addition, PSI offers a proprietary, customizable lock-down browser and self-serve check-in and authentication. PSI complies with major regulations such as FERPA and GDPR. We are also PCI compliant. Our remote proctors receive extensive training on how privacy and privacy regulations are central to their roles, which is coordinated by PSI’s Chief Compliance Officer. Continue reading →
By Gwen Sinclair
Librarian, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Library
If you had told me when I was 25 or 30 that I would run my first marathon at age 42, I would have rolled my eyes and asked, “Why would anyone want to do that?” I could not fathom running even 10 miles, much less 26.2. I had been a casual runner for many years, but I’d avoided distance events. Too hard!
I found many reasons to keep running in the watershed year of 2004. For starters, my sister was diagnosed with lymphoma and endured a whole year of grueling chemotherapy. Although I wasn’t close to her, I felt very helpless, and guilty, too, so I signed up to do the Honolulu Marathon as part of Team in Training, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s fundraising program. All you have to do is run a marathon — and raise thousands of dollars for research. It turned out to be harder for me to ask people for money than it was to get up early every weekend for the 16-mile training runs. To my surprise, the donations poured in, which of course put me in the position of absolutely, positively having to finish the marathon in December 2004.
My free time revolved around marathon training, so on Saturday, October 30, 2004, after my husband Steve and I had seen a mediocre movie at the Varsity Theatre, “What the Bleep Do We Know?” I’d gone to bed, planning to get up early the next morning for the usual Sunday training run. Continue reading →
The graduation of the latest cohort of students in the ‘Computers for Kids’ initiative, in Southwest Washington, DC, brings the total number of youngsters who have benefited from the program to 130.
‘Computers for Kids’ started in 2007 as an initiative of the Youth Activities Task Force of the Southwest Neighborhood Assembly (SWNA).
Thelma Jones, who chairs the Task Force, introduced a graduation ceremony at the James Creek Community Center on 4 August 2018.
She reminded the parents, guardians, friends and relatives who attended the event that two sessions of the program were held each year, a winter program of eight one-hour, after-school classes and a summer program of six classes lasting ninety minutes.
The students use the computer lab at the James Creek Community Center to learn the basics of computers and how to use them, and tackle studies in Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and accessing the Internet to search for visual resources. This group of students also started to study cryptology, using the resources of the Chicago-based ‘CryptoClub’ project. Continue reading →
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
All across the U.S., school districts invest in a variety of types of technology, and they want to see results from their investment. To integrate technology effectively, educators need a framework to determine if and how technology meets their students’ learning needs and what they may need in the future. Several frameworks for technology use and integration have been developed and are used to promote technology in the classroom. Two common frameworks are SAMR and TPACK.
SAMR
In the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) framework, substitution and augmentation are defined as ways to replace and enhance existing tools that the teacher might use in a learning task. Modification and redefinition transform a task in a way that would not be possible without technology. Continue reading →
The entrance to the Tham Luang cave did indeed have a prominent warning sign, and the soccer team went past it when they entered. Most of the explored underwater caves in the world have strongly worded signs telling untrained divers to turn around. My guess is that 98% of the divers passing those signs do indeed have the proper qualifications, but a small percentage do not. That small percentage accounts for roughly half of the total cave diving fatalities worldwide in the last couple decades. For that small percentage, the posted danger appears to be more of a lure than a deterrent.
Photo from Marisa Chimprabha’s “Many Worry That Coach May Blame Himself for Ordeal” (The Nation, 5 July 2018).
Eagles Nest sink in Florida provides a couple good examples. The upper basin has 70 feet of (usually) murky water, with a tiny chimney only wide enough for a couple of people to pass at the bottom. That chimney takes you about 30 feet farther down to the huge cave complex below. Eagles Nest is often called the Mount Everest of cave diving, and you are not supposed to enter it without qualifications even beyond cave diving certification. Two days ago, a 20-year old man (boy?) died there freediving (no tanks–just mask and fins) deep into the bottom chamber. He told his companions he was going to set a personal record on that dive. As I write, diving social media are ablaze with comments on the sheer stupidity of that act. Continue reading →
There is growing evidence that immersion in virtual reality can improve learning outcomes for students.
This was the main conclusion from many of the papers presented at the fourth annual conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN), which was held at the University of Montana from 25-29 June 2018.
Jonathon Richter, Executive Director of iLRN, introduced the conference as an opportunity to explore “what works” in immersive learning, drawing on high-quality research.
He proposed that the three main components of immersive learning are:
computer science,
gaming studies, and
effective learning outcomes.
The potential impact of successful immersive learning initiatives, he suggested, were good measures, good goals, and good outcomes across disciplines, cultures, and contexts. Continue reading →
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
The plight and rescue of the 12 boys and their coach from the cave in Thailand shows us once again that being an educator requires more than the enjoyment of working with children and loving the subject you teach. When you look at what an educator might face when working with students, inside and outside the classroom, it becomes evident that teachers, coaches, and school administrators do much more than teach and are expected to play many roles that they may not anticipate and may not be prepared for.
Coach Ekkapol Chantawong with some of his young players.
They may have to comfort a child whose pet died. They have to report signs of child abuse. They have to keep track of their charges when on field trips. They may even have to protect their students from an active shooter on campus. Not every educator wants to fill all these roles. Not every educator can fill these roles. However, when you are the “adult in the room,” what choice do you have? Children’s parents expect and trust that their children will be safe with an educator. The soccer coach, Ekkapol Chantawong, was trusted by the parents of the children in his charge to do the right thing, to protect them until they could be rescued.
There will be many opinions expressed and many questions asked in the coming days about this incident. However, let’s focus on teacher training. How does a teacher training program prepare teachers to handle a variety of situations, including life-threatening ones? Or should they? How do you know the teacher candidates you are preparing could step up if called upon to do so? Should they be expected to? What other resources do teachers need to handle crises, large and small? Let us know what you think.
By Harry Keller
Former ETCJ Science Editor
& President of SmartScience
The first lesson is that you don’t have to be clever or high-tech to solve this sort of problem. The final solution was straightforward, although extremely difficult to implement. It involved existing diving technology. These days, everyone seeks the high-tech or innovative solution first.
You might consider the solution used as being the “brute force” solution. A large number of air tanks had to be assembled along with a large number, around 90 as I’ve read, of highly experienced and capable divers. Divers deployed the air hose essential to survival and ferried food to the trapped soccer team. They set up a line for navigating the more difficult portions of the submerged cave. Some even stayed with the remaining few team members until the last one disappeared into the gloomy waters with his two accompanying divers.
The second lesson is that every cave of any difficulty should have prominent warning signs posted to keep out inexperienced people. What were those team members doing so deep in the cave? I have yet to see an answer to that question. Their foolishness cost one diver his life. It might have cost all 13 their lives, too. I sincerely hope that the publicity accompanying this incident keeps others from running these risks. The coach should have known better.
The third lesson is the importance of organization. I think that those in charge did essentially everything right, although they might have been able to move more rapidly had there not been so much “noise” to filter out. The noise came from the media and a great many well-meaning individuals and organizations. The volunteer divers were the good part. Continue reading →
The whole world watched in fascination as a massive international rescue team worked to pull off an unprecedented rescue of a soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand. I watched from the perspective of a cave diver, a former journalism instructor, and a diving instructor. One of the talks I have had on and off for the last few years has been to help investigate and write reports on cave diving fatalities for the National Speleological Society, and from that perspective it was refreshing to watch a scenario that ended so happily, for that is not the norm for cave diving incidents.
The result of the rescue was, of course, wonderful, but in reflecting on some of the elements I observed from afar, I believe there was a whole lot that went very well in that situation in addition to the happy ending. I saw a lot of appropriate and professional behavior on the part of a number of parties, and because of it the few bad moments stand out in stark contrast.
In the social media I followed, one of the questions that was raised on several occasions was why there was not more commentary from the true experts on cave rescues around the world. To me, that lack of commentary was a positive highlight. After my ETC article (7/4/18), I was contacted by the BBC and asked to sit for an interview. I declined. I explained that I lacked the expertise to speak on an issue of that complexity—my article about the education aspects was the limit to which I could speak with authority. Continue reading →
By Harry Keller
Former ETCJ Science Editor
& President of SmartScience
Spending two weeks in a cave that has been sealed off by water is no one’s idea of fun. There’s no food but plenty of water. This cave portion appears to be fairly large, large enough to have plenty of air for a long stay, but that air is running out.
Thirteen people, twelve of them children, are stuck and isolated under very dangerous circumstances. They face several perils: oxygen, carbon dioxide, food, and even waste treatment.
Detailed map of the Tham Luang cave system provided by BBC News.
What happens when someone seals you into a box? You use up the oxygen there, turning it one-to-one into carbon dioxide. That’s what all animals do. Even plants do it when there’s no sunlight. It’s called respiration. In that box, you will rapidly drop the oxygen level to below the 16% that we must have to function normally, and that’s 5% below the usual 21% we are used to. Continue reading →
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
Globally there is a call for learners and workers to develop 21st-century skills. Two common frameworks are from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group which has members from 35 countries worldwide, and DigComp developed by the European Union (EU).
The OECD states that “[o]ne approach to organizing 21st-century skills focuses on cognitive skills, intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, and technical skills (Ananiadou & Claro, 2009 in Geisinger, 2016).” These skills are geared toward the educational context, the work environment, and commerce. Skills such as collaboration, teamwork, and cross-cultural sensitivity are seen as key to participation and problem-solving in the global economy. Underlying all of these skills is a need for digital knowledge and proficiency.
The DigComp frameworks, now presented as DigComp 2.1, focuses on competencies related specifically to technology knowledge and skills for citizens, specifically in the workplace while DigCompEdu (Redecker, 2017) outlines educator-specific digital competences. DigComp 2.1’s eight (8) levels of competence are fitted to Bloom’s taxonomy. These range from remembering, e.g., being able to perform simple digital tasks with guidance, to creating, e.g., resolving complex problems and guiding others in high-level problem solving.
DigCompEdu presents educator-specific digital competences that are organized in six areas. These areas include educators engaging in their own growth by professional development to creating appropriate digital integration activities for their students. Continue reading →
Alan will suggest ways we can augment online teaching with memes by adding images to words, to visualize metaphors and facilitate discussions. As shortform videos, animated GIFs that loop are effective for demonstrating natural processes or illustrating techniques where repetition aids understanding. Learn what your students might accomplish by creating memes and animated GIFs.
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
