The Ohana

Posted on February 21, 2016 by JimS

Hannah Kinsolving Sp16-80By Hannah Kinsolving
Student, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

For a short time in my first year on this island, I lived in a dorm in Waikiki. The experience was bittersweet. I was miserable in my environment, but I also learned things about myself that ideal situations wouldn’t necessarily have revealed.

I had a small lanai. According to the house rules, we weren’t allowed to leave anything — furniture, clothing, towels, accessories — out there. Still, shortly after moving in, I began to dry my laundry on a rack on the lanai because the laundry room was constantly busy and at least three of the six dryers were regularly labeled with a handwritten “Out of Order” note.

OhanaDorm

I knew that a resident assistant would eventually come knocking on my door to inform me of my rule violation, so before answering the door I pulled my laundry off the lanai and hid it in the closet. When she asked if I had anything on my lanai, I would dutifully show her my empty lanai. In this way, I avoided all citations and fines concerning unapproved objects on the lanai. It was a small triumph, but a necessary one for my spirit at the time.

My version of squalor began the moment I landed on O’ahu and was taken to my new home. I looked out of the shuttle window in wide-eyed wonder at the streets of Waikiki. Kalakaua Avenue was bursting at the seams at every corner, tourists spilling out into the four-way intersections. Designer shops lined the hand-laid stone sidewalks, and street entertainers loudly announced their feats to the passersby, hoping to attract a crowd that would fill their hats sitting expectantly on the sidewalks.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Higher Education, International Students | Leave a comment »

To Belong

Posted on February 20, 2016 by JimS

Glen Luecke Sp16c 80By Glen Luecke
Student at Kapi’olani Community College
University of Hawai’i

Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I realize I’m comfortable with who I am and, more importantly, where I came from. I didn’t always feel this way. At the age of nine, to quote C.K. Williams, “Weightfully upon me was the world.” I had just started to accept that my father, who had left a few years prior, was not coming back. My mother, burdened with the task of raising four kids, did her best to provide for us. School had become my sanctuary, the one constant that I grew to love.

Over the previous four years I had built up a cadre of trusted friends, and, when needed, I discovered that I could pick up a book and be transported to places that I knew I would never see in person. That changed in 1974 when, in the fourth grade, I was accepted to attend the school on the hill. Not knowing how I would fit in with the privileged few, I tried my best to remain invisible, pretending to belong.

Kam Kapalama

I screwed up. I knew it the moment I heard the crack and felt the snap in my pocket. I kept my anger in check and remained seated, not wanting to draw attention. I slowly lifted my white shirt away from my waist, hoping no one would notice my movement. The dark blue dot stared back at me and began to spread on my khaki pants. A wave of shame started in my gut and slowly crept toward my chest. I reached into my pocket and with two fingers gingerly extracted the broken pen. The tip had snapped and was barely attached by a sliver of sharp plastic. Thick blue ink coated the barrel. I ripped out a piece of folder paper to hide the evidence. The stain on my khakis had grown to the size of a quarter.  Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Private School | Leave a comment »

TCC 2016 : Special Pre-conference Interactive Webinar Feb. 25

Posted on February 16, 2016 by JimS
Bert Kimura

Bert Kimura

Aloha,

Ahead of this year’s main conference, TCC 2016 is hosting a FREE special interactive webinar featuring Dr. Cynthia Calongne (aka LyrLobo).

Make the Future!

~ Create a virtual makerspace ~

During this session, Dr. Calongne explains and discusses makerspaces and how to leverage the maker movement in online education. Share your ideas and creations by sharing your links, favorite tools, and wonderful stories.

Date & time:
February 25, 2:00 PM Hawaii; 5:00 PM Mountain; 7:00 PM Eastern
February 26, 9:00 AM Tokyo & Seoul; 11:00 AM Melbourne, Feb. 26

Other timezones:
http://bit.ly/tcc16precon-makerspaces

Full information:
http://go.hawaii.edu/L1

Register now for this FREE session!
If you wish to participate, please RSVP. Access information will be sent to you a few days prior to this event.

http://go.hawaii.edu/p1

SAVE this date for the main event!
TCC 2016 Online Conference, 21st edition
April 19-21, 2016
Registration and additional information soon will be available!

– Bert Kimura, Curtis Ho & Sharon Fowler
TCC 2016 Online Conference coordinators

To join our mailing list — http://tcchawaii.org/tccohana-l/

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, Online Conference, Professional Development, Trends & Issues, Webinar | Leave a comment »

Creating Community in an Online Classroom: Part 1 – Getting to Know You

Posted on February 9, 2016 by JimS

Judith_McDaniel2_80By Judith McDaniel with Tim Fraser-Bumatay, Daniel Herrera, and Ryan Kelly1

Is it possible to get a “real education” from an online class? Several years ago a professor from the University of Virginia published an opinion piece about online education in the New York Times and insisted that it was impossible. “You can get knowledge,” he continued, “from an Internet course if you’re highly motivated to learn. But in real courses the students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning.”2

I teach literature in a fully online Master’s program. My students enroll from all over the United States and from overseas. Our asynchronous discussion forums give students an opportunity to interact, to be thoughtful in their responses to my discussion prompts and to one another. I find the online classroom to be stimulating, diverse, and creative. It is different from a face-to-face class experience, but it can be different in ways that enhance student learning through the creation of an online community.

Herrera Kelly Bumatay

Daniel Herrera, Ryan Kelly, and Tim Fraser-Bumatay

I am joined in writing this article by three of the students who have just completed their Masters degree in Literature and Writing in this online program. We have created an article that has two parts. In the first we talk about building community and how that happens, how students from very different backgrounds begin to interact, enjoy one another, challenge one another. In the second part of the article, we recreate some of the conversations we had about difficult subjects and difficult texts. We talked about race extensively when we read Othello and Heart of Darkness.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, Online Learning, Professional Development, Teacher Training, Theory, Trends & Issues | 8 Comments »

Got a Technology Question? Ask a Librarian

Posted on January 18, 2016 by JimS

Lynn ZimmermannBy Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education

When is the last time you went to the library? When is the last time you went to check out a book?

Maybe your library offers e-books you can check out on your Kindle or iPad, so you don’t even really need to go. If you haven’t been in a while, you may be in for a surprise.

IMG_0883C-1K

Since the advent of personal computers and the growth of the Internet, library services have changed and continue to evolve. If you have been in a library recently, you probably noticed that the day of the spinsterish librarian shushing everyone has pretty much disappeared. Modern libraries have quiet corners for those who want to read or study.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Library, Support Services, Technology, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Smartphones, Tablets & Subtitles for Language Learning

Posted on December 30, 2015 by JimS

lynnz_col2

NY program uses phone calls, text messages to teach English by Deepti Hajela, Associated Press, 30 Nov. 2015.

Using basic phone technology, New York state has created lessons for English language learners that are flexible and free.

Tablet use can benefit bilingual preschoolers by Elin Bäckström at Phys.org, 10 Nov. 2015.

The author reports on the result of a study done in Sweden that shows the value of tablets as teaching tools for preschoolers whose first language is not Swedish.

Spain considers ban on dubbing in bid to boost English language skills in The Local, 4 Dec. 2015.

Spain’s Popular Party wants to eliminate dubbing of TV shows and movies and retain original sound-tracks with subtitles in an effort to boost English language learning.

Filed under: Language Learning, Mobile Technology, Online Learning, Smartphone, Tablet, Trends & Issues, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Alert: Watch Out for a Password Hijacking Virus

Posted on December 17, 2015 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Updated 12/18/15

To log in to my Netflix account, I normally don’t need to key in more than the first letter of my email address since I’ve authorized my browser to remember my username and password.

However, about an hour ago, when I tried to log in to Netflix via Internet Explorer, a slightly different pop-up appeared. It asked for my username and password as usual, but when I began to type, it didn’t remember my full name/password. Also, it continued to reject the ones I typed in as errors. After several attempts, I realized that this was not the usual Netflix sign-in page.

It was similar yet oddly different. Suspecting that this might have been a password hijacking virus, I immediately logged out and logged back in to Netflix via Firefox, making sure that I used the correct sign-in page. Once in, I changed my Netflix password.

My browser of choice is Firefox, but I had decided to use IE because of some script-handling problems in Firefox. I don’t recall an experience exactly like this in Firefox.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Virus | Leave a comment »

TCC 2016: Extended Deadline for Proposals (23 Dec)

Posted on December 15, 2015 by JimS
Bert Kimura

Bert Kimura

Season’s Greetings.

We continue to accept your proposals for presentations at TCC 2016 (April 19–21, 2016) and have extended the deadline until 23 December 2015.

Registration details to be announced in January. Stay tuned!

Full details are posted here.
Submit your proposal here.
Keep informed about TCC 2016 here or join our mailing list.

Happy holidays from the TCC conference team!

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Review of ‘Towards a European Perspective on Massive Open Online Courses’

Posted on December 4, 2015 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

I was drawn to some of the articles in this special issue1 and found insights that I feel are worth mentioning. One that stands out is in Schuwer et al.’s article,2 in a summary attributed to Fairclough3: “MOOCs are perhaps best understood as ‘imaginary’… a prefiguring of possible and desired realities rather than a unified and coherent domain around which clear boundaries exist.”

Fairclough’s observation takes us a step closer to unravelling the MOOC conundrum. The expanding list of acronyms for different MOOC constructs should tip us to the fact that MOOCs are reifications, figments of our imagination or, more accurately, a specific set of ideas bundled in different ways. In short, MOOCs don’t exist.

By “don’t exist,” I mean they’re not a separate or unique specie. They’re simply a class in the genus online course. Add openness to a traditional online course, and you end up with a MOOC. By “openness,” I mean removing most of the formal trappings that we associate with college courses: capacity limits, traditional registration and pre-requisite requirements, tuition and fees, semester or quarter time frames, required textbooks, and grades and credits.

In other words, MOOCs are projected variations of standard online courses. As such, they represent the outer limits of what online courses could be. The point is that the issue isn’t MOOCs themselves but the innovative features that they present for possible incorporation in online courses.

In this context, Schuwer et al.’s warning that, “in the long run, a threat to MOOCs may manifest, if they are not well-integrated in broader university strategies and do not establish their own role within the university offerings” is only half correct. That is, for the open features of MOOCs to evolve, they must be integrated into existing online course policies and procedures. However, establishing “their own role within the university offerings” may not only be redundant but a costly failure in terms of the growth of 21st century practices.  Continue reading →

Filed under: MOOC, Review, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

‘Towards a European Perspective on Massive Open Online Courses’

Posted on December 4, 2015 by JimS

Bert Kimura By Bert Kimura

The following is a brief description of “Special Issue: Towards a European Perspective on Massive Open Online Courses” (International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 16.6, 2015):

We are pleased to bring you this special issue of IRRODL, edited by guest editors Markus Deimann and Sebastian Vogt. Deimann and Vogt have chosen a timely topic for scrutiny, that of a European perspective of the past, present, and future state of MOOCs. (Dianne Conrad, IRRODL co-editor)

IRRODL was started by Terry Anderson at Athabasca University (“Canada’s Open University”) and, in my opinion, is one of the better (or best) academic OER publications. Dr. Anderson is a leading researcher in distance learning and has been at it for about 30 years.

Here’s a peek at the table of contents:

Editorial
Editorial – Volume 16, Issue Number 6
Markus Deimann, Sebastian Vogt
Research Articles
Matthias Rohs, Mario Ganz
Robert Schuwer, Ines Gil Jaurena, Cengiz Hakan Aydin, Eamon Costello, Christian Dalsgaard, Mark Brown, Darco Jansen, Antonio Teixeira
Abram Anders
Marco Kalz, Karel Kreijns, Jaap Walhout, Jonatan Castaño-Munoz, Anna Espasa, Edmundo Tovar
Christian Dalsgaard, Klaus Thestrup
Mark Brown, Eamon Costello, Enda Donlon, Mairead Nic Giolla-Mhichil
Darco Jansen, Robert Schuwer, Antonio Teixeira, Cengiz Hakan Aydin
Anders Norberg, Åsa Händel, Per Ödling
Vitor Rocio, José Coelho, Sandra Caeiro, Paula Nicolau, António Teixeira
Marta Ruiz Costa-jussà, Lluis Formiga, Oriol Torrillas, Jordi Petit, José Adrián Rodríguez Fonollosa

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Respondus and Sakai: The Answer to Online Quizzes

Posted on November 24, 2015 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

You’ve been using a course management system (CMS) for your courses, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re completely online, completely onground, or somewhere in between. The CMS has some advantages, and you’re making use of them. If you’re like me, then you’ve also toyed with the idea of putting quizzes online.

It makes sense. It frees you from the drudgery and loss of class time associated with paper ‘n’ pencil tests. Students can take the quizzes on their own time, 24/7, as long as they complete them by a specified date. You can set it up for mastery learning so they can take it as many times as they need to before the deadline, with only the highest score being recorded.

Scoring is done automatically, instantly, and the scores are recorded in the gradebook automatically, too. Students can log in to check their scores. You can log in, too, to look at their scores. Sounds great – until you actually tried to set up a simple quiz and found the klutziest interface in the world. So you remained with paper ‘n’ pencil or did away with quizzes altogether and replaced them with discussion forums geared to readings.

But the problem of students refusing to complete required readings unless there’s a quiz attached to them persists. The top third of the class will do the readings, but the rest will wing it. It hurts their performance, but they can’t or won’t make the connection. For these students, reading is a means to avoid the pain of flunked tests, not a means to learn, to improve performance.

So I returned to the testing function built into our Sakai CMS. It’d been a few years since I last tried it. Maybe it’d gotten better. But after a few minutes of poking around in it, I found it was just as klunky as ever. After rooting around for a bit in our university’s IT help files looking for a miracle, I found something called Respondus.

Respondus is an app. Our university system provides it free to all faculty. Yours probably does, too. The IT help page provides a click-here trail that leads to the site, followed by a download and set up on your computer’s desktop. Click the new icon, and, voilà, your test and quiz creation woes are over.

Respondus is a relatively simple to use test development app. It allowed me to create a ten-question multiple-choice quiz quickly and, dare I say it, naturally. This is done outside the CMS — which at once explains the ease of use and highlights the shortcomings of CMS environments.

After you’re done, the next step is to get the test into the CMS so your students can take it. The process is logical. You need to convert the quiz into a format (QTI) that Sakai can understand. Respondus does this for you when you click on the button to “Preview & Publish.” It walks you through a few steps and creates a folder where you want it. I chose the desktop. In the folder is the quiz file in the required QTI format.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Online Learning, Professional Development, Reading, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

CFE 2015 Faculty Showcase at UNC: ‘Teaching Less in More Depth’

Posted on November 22, 2015 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 5th annual Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) Faculty Showcase at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This event is indispensible for those who want to gain a concise overview of emerging trends, proven approaches, best practices and innovative experiments in Carolina. CFE organizes the gathering to offer faculty an opportunity to learn more about specific instructional techniques or technology from their peers. For many attendees, showcase talks are the spark that ignites interest in considering changes for courses they teach. It also serves as a reminder for faculty to make use of the many instructional design and pedagogical consulting services the campus has to offer.

The day provided a chance to hear firsthand about the capabilities of the University’s Makerspaces, how teachers use Google Earth’s Liquid Galaxy display and Lightboard, which is currently being built on campus. What makes the showcase an exceptional learning opportunity for instructional designers is the mix of cutting edge technological innovation and low- or no-tech tips and tricks – be it gender neutral language, better writing assignments, role-play or reflective teaching practices and course evaluation. The showcase event closed with a presentation format I particularly enjoyed: Five-minute-long introductions to a variety of topics and projects with the explicit invitation, “Steal my idea!”

mary-huber 2The keynote speaker, Mary Taylor Huber, consultant at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, characterized the CFE event as the “greatest illustration possible” for the theme of her talk, “Building an Academic Commons Through SoTL.” Huber stated that the relationship between teaching and the institutional environment has changed noticeably over the past decade. Teaching is increasingly recognized as a valued academic activity in both general public debates and in the scientific communities. “Teaching is on a fast train,” explained Huber, and pointed out several catalysts for change: diversity, technology, new pedagogies (i.e., undergraduate research, service learning), authentic participation and educational research. Throughout the day, many examples of exceptional teaching brought these concepts to life.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Games, Higher Education, Professional Development, Reading, Technology, Trends & Issues, Writing | Leave a comment »

Michael Akuchie

Posted on November 6, 2015 by JimS

Michael Akuchie
English Composition Instructor
Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Michael Akuchie is studying for an MFA in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where he also teaches English Composition. He’s a huge fan of video games and won’t stop talking about them.

ETC Publications

Play to Read: Teaching Rhetorical and Identity Analysis Through Narrative-Based Video Games

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Online Charter Schools Failing According to National Study

Posted on November 4, 2015 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

According to a study released on 27 Oct. 2015, online charter schools are failing in comparisons with traditional and blended schools. The findings are reported in three separate volumes, which are available online as PDF files. The following are links to the introduction, with a brief summary, and the three volumes.

Introductory Press Release [with brief summary], 27 Oct. 2015

Volume I – Inside Online Charter Schools by Mathematica Policy Research [“Describes the universe of online charter schools, the students they serve, and their operations.”]
Brian Gill, Lucas Walsh, Claire Smither Wulsin, Holly Matulewicz, Veronica Severn, Eric Grau, Amanda Lee, Tess Kerwin
October 2015

Volume II- The Policy Framework for Online Charter Schools by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) [“Describes the policy environments of online charter schools and provides recommendations to state policymakers.”]
Rosa Pazhouh, Robin Lake, and Larry Miller
October 2015

Volume III- Online Charter School Study by CREDO (Center for Research on Education Outcomes) at Stanford University [“Describes the achievement effects of online charter schools.”]
James L. Woodworth, Margaret E. Raymond, Kurt Chirbas, Maribel Gonzalez, Yohannes Negassi, Will Snow, Christine Van Donge
2015

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

New Instructional Design Association in Higher Ed: An Interview with Camille Funk

Posted on November 4, 2015 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

The newly founded Higher Education eDesign Association (HEeD) targets higher education instructional designers, multimedia teams and administrators. The group’s vision is to foster networking and collaboration, offer professional development opportunities, support research, and create publication opportunities. On April 7-8, 2016, the first annual HEeD conference will be hosted by George Washington University in Washington.

I spoke to Camille Funk, founder and president of HEeD, about the niche that the organization is trying to fill, the idea behind it and its current initiatives.

Camille Funk, founder and president of Higher Education eDesign Association (HEeD)

Camille Funk, founder and president of Higher Education eDesign Association (HEeD)

Camille, you are director of eDesign Shop at George Washington University. Please describe your current work environment as an instructional designer.

We are a newly organized course production shop. The team consists of four instructional designers, a video producer, videographer, animator, and a team of five student employees. Currently, our shop has two production cycles (six months each) and produces an average of 30 courses a year.

What was your personal journey to the instructional design profession?

I came into the field, as many do, by happenstance. I received a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and master’s in International Educational Development. My intent was to pursue educational administration with a global reach. I chose to teach elementary school for a few years in preparation for an administrative role. I then took a position with Brigham Young University, Independent Study, as an administrator. In this role, I was introduced to instructional design. BYU Independent Study had a team of about ten instructional designers and a large multimedia shop to facilitate high-level course design.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Higher Education | Leave a comment »

Language Learning: Games, Social Media, and Apps

Posted on November 4, 2015 by JimS

lynnz_col2

Memorize a list of vocabulary words or do a crossword puzzle? Which is more engaging? In “Try this game in your next vocabulary lesson” (Multi Briefs: Exclusive, 14 Oct. 2015), Debra Abrams refers to some recent research that shows the importance of using games and puzzles in the classroom. She goes on to explain a strategy she uses with her English language learners where they identify words they want to learn and create their own crossword puzzles.

In “Getting Started With Game-Based Language Learning” (Edutopia, 16 Oct. 2015), David Dodgson points out that, while GBL (game-based learning) has been receiving quite a bit of attention, little has been written about how it can be used with English language learners. He recommends four resources for GBL with a focus on language learning.

In “New app connects Valley high school students to English learners” (KPHO, 11 Oct. 2015), Erika Flore describes an app that is being used by students at Desert Vista High School to connect with students in other parts of the world to help them learn or improve their English. The Desert High students are volunteers who use a website, mobile app, and/or social media to connect mostly with students in China.

In “New ISU software helps students learn english” (Iowa State Daily, 12 Oct. 2015), Jake Dalbey describes CyWrite, a program “developed by students and professors” that gives specific feedback on writing errors. He explains that this program works better than others like it because the developers started with English linguistics and developed the program around it, unlike most other programs that start with the software and plug linguistic features into it.

Filed under: Games | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Poverty, Reading, and Technology

Posted on October 28, 2015 by JimS

Lynn ZimmermannBy Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education

In his article “Technology Holds Promise for Students With Poor Vocabulary Skills” (Education Week, 23 July 2015), Steven L. Miller argues that technology offers one solution for creating individualized learning experiences for students to develop better literacy skills.

Miller’s premise is that children, especially from impoverished backgrounds, also come to school with impoverished language skills. He asserts that “children with lower vocabulary skills are often poor readers, so they continue to fall further and further behind in academic language and cognitive skills.”

While Miller’s article offers an effective solution to the problem of building vocabulary and consequently literacy skills, we have to be careful about generalizations regarding students from low-income or poverty situations. He bases his argument on research demonstrating that they hear more negative communication while students from professional families hear more positive and encouraging communications.

However, there is a broader range of research on the impact of poverty on learning, showing that while communication may be one aspect of literacy development, there are other factors such as poor nutrition and inadequate healthcare.

Regardless of the causes, education and educational technology can, as Miller states, help students with poor vocabulary skills. For example, he says:

Using speech-recognition software … students receive one-on-one guidance and real-time feedback from an unbiased listener as they read aloud. Using this approach, students can improve their reading grade level by up to 50 percent more than the students who only receive classroom instruction in the same time period.

Miller’s article is based on Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley’s 1995 study Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. For a summary, see Hart and Risley’s “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3”  (American Educator, spring 2003).

Filed under: Early Learning, Literacy, Reading, Technology | 3 Comments »

TCCfx: Free Online Mini-Conference for Students & Faculty 28 Oct 2015

Posted on October 19, 2015 by JimS

Aloha,

This fall, TCC Hawaii, in collaboration with graduate students from Learning Design & Technology (LTEC) at the University of Hawaii College of Education, will sponsor a FREE mini-conference, TCCfx, for graduate students and interested faculty. Undergraduate students are invited to participate as well.

Please share this information with your colleagues or interested students.

Bert Kimura

University of Hawaii-Manoa College of Education

University of Hawaii-Manoa College of Education

TCCfx 2015: Come Together, Engage & Learn

October 28, 2015
5:00 pm–9:00 pm Hawaii Time
Online (Join.me)

Complementary Registration
https://tccfx2015.eventbrite.com

View other timezones 

TCCfx 2015 is a complimentary mini-online conference that serves as a platform for the growing learning design and technology (LTEC) community. This online conference aims to connect, collaborate, create, and improve teaching and learning in the 21st century by empowering current and prospective LTEC (or educational technology) students and others to prepare for success in their graduate programs and their future professions. Interested educators are invited to attend as well.

This event is sponsored by the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Learning Design & Technology Department, College of Education; and AECT-HI (Hawaii Chapter) in collaboration with TCCHawaii.org .

For more information, contact conference chair Kimberly Suwa <suwak@hawaii.edu>.

Filed under: Ed Tech, Online Conference | Leave a comment »

MIT’s MOOC-based Micro-Master’s Degree: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

Posted on October 8, 2015 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

MIT’s decision to grant credit for MOOC courses in their supply-chain management master’s program1 is the long awaited breakthrough to the next step in online education. With this move, they’re distancing themselves from the pack, creating a huge vacuum that’s sure to suck the others in.

This decision of a top-tier university to recognize MOOCs as a viable alternative for delivering college credit courses was inevitable. It was going to happen, sooner or later. Given the fact that colleges in the U.S. and around the world have been offering completely online credit courses for years, the only question is, what took so long?

Hats off to the MIT administration and faculty for extending the promise of traditional online courses to MOOCs. MOOCs will cover the first half of the course work required for the master’s, and those who do well and are accepted into the program will then be required to register for the remaining half in on-campus classes. Despite this blended approach, this is a gutsy move in more ways than one. It spotlights the first “O” in MOOC, which is the most critical feature in massive open online courses. It also opens the door to the inevitable next step, a proliferation of full undergraduate and graduate degree programs delivered completely online via MOOCs at a fraction of the cost of MIT’s proposed blended model.2

Once that credibility door is opened by an institution such as MIT, which is among the handful of defacto higher ed leaders in online education, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the entire wall between online and onground will crumble.

We’re probably going to see leapfrogging in the coming weeks and months, with the rest of the field scrambling to one up MIT. The intriguing question is, what forms will credit MOOCs take?

Considering the formless elasticity of MOOCs, options are wide open, limited only by imagination. The most imaginative and creative institutions will, as a first step, take a long hard look at the wealth of possibilities for innovation inherent in the MOOC structure and design courses that will shake up our ages-old model for college courses.

In this last quarter of 2015, we, the world, can begin to look forward to some massive surprises in online college degree options in spring 2016.
__________
1Jeffrey R. Young, “MIT Master’s Program to Use MOOCs as ‘Admissions Test’” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 Oct. 2015).
2This paragraph was expanded on 10/8/15 at 19:13 to clarify the blended nature of the pilot program.

Filed under: MOOC | 1 Comment »

MOOCs: A Toolbox for Course Designers?

Posted on September 29, 2015 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

In a video interview, Jonathan Moules1 asks Simon Nelson, CEO of FutureLearn, some tough questions about the current state of MOOCs. Noules’ Moules’ questions caught my attention:

  • “How much of an issue is it that most of the people signed up for FutureLearn and other online education platforms already have a degree?”
  • “What’s more important, is it broadening access to millions of people across the planet to education or is it about making money?”
  • “How do you make money from online education?”
  • “A criticism of online education has been that a lot of people signing up for these courses don’t complete them. Do you see that as a challenge?”Simon Nelson CEO FutureLearn2

And I found Nelson’s responses succinct, clear, practical, and informed.

As much as these questions and responses are enlightening, however, I can’t help but feel that they continue to pigeonhole MOOCs as fascinating but peripheral, impractical and ineffective counterparts to standard college courses. As long as this perception persists, MOOCs will remain outside the circle of serious discussion in higher ed, and this alienation will prolong the wait for the next step in course design.

In my mind, MOOCs are much more than a far-out platform for free courses with almost limitless seating capacity. If we can  get past the idea that they are a specific course type, built in stone, we can begin to explore the endless possibilities that they represent as a tabula rasa for envisioning the shape of courses to come in the 21st century. In other words, MOOCs have expanded our conception of what a course can be, offering us a whole view that takes into account the latest technological breakthroughs. Continue reading →

Filed under: MOOC | 10 Comments »

TCC Worldwide Online Conference 2016 Apr 19-21 – Call for Proposals

Posted on September 28, 2015 by JimS

Aloha everyone,

It’s that time of year again. Hope you are enjoying the start of fall (or spring).

Below is the first announcement of our call for proposals for TCC 2016.

The full description is available online at: http://tcchawaii.org/call-for-proposals-2016

Please share with colleagues, students and interested friends.

Warm regards,
Bert, Curtis & Sharon

DSCF0663R-TCC

21st Annual

TCC WORLDWIDE ONLINE CONFERENCE

April 19-21, 2016
E-Learning: The More We Get Together

Submission deadline: December 15, 2015
Submission form: http://bit.ly/tcc2016-proposal

Homepage: tcchawaii.org

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Please consider submitting a proposal for a paper or general session relating to all aspects of online learning, networking & collaboration, including but not limited to e-learning, open education, ICT, virtual communities, social media, augmented reality, educational gaming, faculty & student support, Web 2.0 tools, international education, mobile learning and professional development.

FULL DETAILS
http://tcchawaii.org/call-for-proposals-2016

SUBMISSIONS
http://bit.ly/tcc2016-proposal

VENUE
Participation in this conference 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, and 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.

To join our mailing list, see: http://tcchawaii.org/tccohana-l/

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

What’s With Our Educators and Police?

Posted on September 18, 2015 by JimS

Harry Keller 80By Harry Keller
Former ETCJ Science Editor and Frequent Contributor

All right, they aren’t the only ones who might have made this error, but they are in the spotlight since they freaked out over a homemade electronic clock. Yes, that’s the one Ahmed Mohamed brought to school. Somehow one or more teachers and some police thought it looked like a bomb.

Now, what’s the most essential part of any bomb? Is it a clock? Nope. How about a circuit board? Not that either. What about a bunch of colored wires? Those are traditional fodder in TV shows. Not a chance. You can make a bomb with just a fuse, a blasting cap, and some dynamite, plastic explosive, or some mixture of oil and fertilizer.

The essential ingredient here is, you guessed it, explosives.

Without something explosive, no bomb. A circuit board hardly qualifies no matter how much electronics are on it. It only takes a moment to look and see the lack of explosives inside of the satchel that Ahmed carried his clock in, I assume to protect it.

What’s really going on here? I see two important issues. The first is the racial profiling that is obvious despite protests from school and law enforcement. The extreme reaction, including handcuffs, would not have happened to a blond kid. His satchel may have been inspected. He may have been questioned. But, it all would have been handled with much more restraint.

Then, there’s the damper that these incidents place on student creativity. Sure, we don’t like students experimenting with anything truly dangerous, especially in schools. This is a case where there was absolutely no danger — no chemicals, no high voltages, nothing explosive, nothing even sharp. The clock was completely benign.

Within reasonable guidelines, students should be encouraged to explore and be creative. Having two grandchildren in elementary school right now, I am very concerned about the future of education. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, sort of a science Common Core) tell us to add more inquiry to our curricula. This reaction is exactly opposite to that spirit.

Our teachers and school administrators are acting as though they fear their own shadows. In this atmosphere, how can creative talent develop, let alone thrive? Must enlightened parents have ongoing battles with schools merely to ensure that their children have the opportunity to realize their potentials?

Now, imagine if Ahmed were taking an online course in engineering instead of the one in his physical high school. He might video his clock functioning and show its various parts through Instagram or YouTube. He could share his step-by-step construction experience, including mistakes, though Twitter and Facebook. The class could gather on Skype to share in real time. There would be no ignorant administrator or teacher to call the cops and no clueless police to terrorize this young student.

I have always believed that physical schools play an important role in helping our children to develop. Now, I’m not so certain.

Filed under: Science Education | 3 Comments »

Making Literacy More Personal for Kids

Posted on September 17, 2015 by JimS

Lynn ZimmermannBy Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education

Research has shown that a key to developing language skills, for the native speaker and for the English language learner, is reading. A home filled with books is a home filled with readers. That was certainly the case in my experience. My first “literacy” memories are the favorite stories that my father, very patiently, told me over and over and over. One of my earliest “reading” memories is going to the library with him and selecting my own book to read, Horton Hears a Who. Of course, I couldn’t read it myself, but it was “my” book. As I became a reader, I started acquiring books, some of them through a children’s book club. I remember how excited I was when “my” book arrived in the mail.

Susan Frey, in “Study Says Reading Aloud to Children, More Than Talking, Builds Literacy” (EdSource, 8 July 2015), focuses on a research project by Dominic Massaro at the University of California. Massaro says that “[r]eading aloud is the best way to help children develop word mastery and grammatical understanding” because the written word tends to follow these conventions more closely than speech. He goes on to say that we tend to be lazy when we speak using simplified forms and vocabulary.

Then, in “Making Reading Your Own” (Language Magazine, Sep. 2015), Todd Brekhus makes the point about the importance of “making literacy more personal to kids.” For the 21st century reader, he encourages the development of a digital library. He points out that one advantage of a digital library is the technological tools that are not available with hard-copy books, including opportunities for collaboration. He supports the use of interactive digital texts with English Language Learners, which can build literacy skills and reader confidence.

How do you use books and digital texts with your students, or even your children?

Filed under: Literacy, Reading | 1 Comment »

How GIS Improves the Process of Citizen Science

Posted on September 17, 2015 by JimS

By Jim Baumann
Esri Writer

Researchers, Artists, and Technologies Engage with Local Groups Using Computer Mapping

Citizen science is an increasingly popular activity among a broad cross section of the population. Because the number and variety of opportunities for participation continue to grow, it is appealing to those in a widening range of age and physical ability. Participants have joined diverse scientific monitoring projects, including migratory bird studies and personal weather station observations, as well as provided their unused computer time for interstellar space exploration. Citizen science has even stimulated growth in the ecotourism industry.

Patrick Rickles at al 2“Regardless of their background or level of skill, citizen science provides people with a powerful platform that allows them to get involved in science and their environment,” says Patrick Rickles, research associate for the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group at University College London (UCL). “However, as valuable as this is, these programs often see the citizen as a passive participant that simply collects information and then hands it over to the researcher. At that point, their involvement in the project is considered complete.”

Recognizing the potential for change provided by greater engagement with citizen scientists, Muki Haklay, UCL professor of geographical information science (GISC), and Jerome Lewis, a UCL lecturer of anthropology, formed ExCiteS. This is an interdisciplinary group composed of researchers, artists, and information and communication technology specialists that work with local groups to better engage them in the process of citizen science through participatory action.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Science | 1 Comment »

Who Are Your Tech-Sperts?

Posted on September 3, 2015 by JimS

Lynn ZimmermannBy Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education

With school starting back in many places, teachers are thinking about what they are going to do in the coming year and who their students will be. It is also a good time to think about how you and your students are going to use technology effectively in the classroom.

One question to consider is how you will identify the the “tech-sperts” in your classes. In many classes the real tech-sperts are the students. I don’t know if Kriscia Cabral (Digital Organization Tips and Tricks) coined this phrase, but it certainly fits, and these tech-sperts are a resource that teachers shouldn’t ignore. In Jim’s article, Zen and the Art of IT, he looks at some of the IT knowledge and skills that teachers need. However, Cabral thinks teachers should give over some of the responsibility to students.

First, recognizing that everyone has something to offer removes the burden from the teacher of having to know everything about technology, a field which can change from one day to the next. In her classes Cabral’s students help one another with devices, apps, websites, or whatever other types of technology they need assistance with. Utilizing students’ expertise has several advantages for the teacher and the students, and she asserts that the greater benefits are for the students.

Because different students are knowledgeable about different aspects of technology, everyone has a chance to be the tech-spert about something. This ability to help and support one another builds confidence in individual students as well as a collaborative environment among all students in the class.

What experiences have you had with using your students’ knowledge and expertise about technology as a classroom resource?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »