Educational Technology

A friend who teaches at Umass Lowell was on campus yesterday attending the AMCOA Regional Conference. I sat in on the last session of the day and was impressed at the level of discussion around creating clear assessment standards at different Umass Cc, State and universities so that credits can be transferable. The panel I attended said that they were adopting the Value Rubric developed at American College to evaluate student writing in their English courses. For more info about AMCOA visit their web site:

http://facstaff.necc.mass.edu/

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Instructional Designers’s currently-reading book montage

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Books we’re currently reading

Understanding Digital Humanities

by David M. Berry

Start date: March 19, 2012

 

Blended Learning in Higher Education: Fr…

by D. Randy Garrison

Start date: February 19, 2012

 

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Ten years ago, Jack Valenti was at EDUCAUSE defending the rights of the Motion Picture Industry of America to step in and shut down peer-to-peer file sharing activity at universities. Yesterday many sites showed their unified opposition to new laws that are aimed at curtailing movie piracy and other violations of copyright via the Internet. Many of us noticed either the shut down of entire media sites,or sites that turned black–Google for one–as a sign of concern and disapproval of governmental oversight. Most of the sites in question are overseas. But bills like the Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy tread into some controversial territory. It just goes to show you that the media and entertainment business are still that: business.

For more, see “New, Old Media Battle Over Net Rules” in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

I listened in to this Berkman Center event yesterday, Jan 17th. The presenter examined 255 public K-12 educational wikis from pbwiki’s from 2008 to 2011 and analyzed the data evaluated with a tool that he created to examine wikis that contained content that lead to the development of 21st century skills in K-12 students and whether these wikis were from high income or low income schools.

Take aways from the study he presented include:
- Material that is shared in OER’s is more likely to be used in higher income schools. Data driven design will be driven by interests, reactions, needs of higher income folks.
- Ed tech raises demands – raises the bar on schools and teachers
- Rising Tide raises all boats – After a lag where tech is adopted in higher income schools it will eventually trickle down to lower income schools – social programs that have been successful benefit everyone rather than just one group. The first job of OER is to address the needs of the people who are likely to vote for them. A correlation is equity is a result of investing in systems that benefit all students.
- Open ed resources are not harming lowering income schools

The event was recorded and the archive is available here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2012/01/reich