Author, teacher and commentator Howard Rheingold has made available a four-year collection of bookmarks in educational technology via the social bookmarking service delicious.
From Tricia Wang’s blog cultural bytes:
Google announced on its company blog that Chinese hackers had attacked its users and as a result Google.CN may leave China due to the security breaches.
While unfortunate that Google.CN may be shutting down, my ethnographic work in China revealed five things that aren’t being told in the current story:
- Many Chinese internet users don’t find Google to be very useful. Therefore, a Google withdrawal would not have any immediate impact on the daily Chinese internet user because most people search with Baidu, the reigning search engine in China.
- Many Chinese internet users prefer Baidu over Google because using Baidu makes them feel more “Chinese.” Baidu does an excellent job at tapping into nationalistic fervor to promote itself as being the most superior search engine for Chinese users.
- Chinese internet users don’t know how to get to the Google site. While they may “know” of Google, it’s a whole other matter when it comes to typing or saying Google’s name.
- Google is primarily used by highly educated netizens. And even these users prefer Google.COM over Google.CN.
- Google is not successful at reaching the mobile internet market.
From Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal:
What if you could collect, in one well-organized, searchable, private digital repository, all the notes you create, clips from Web pages and emails you want to recall, dictated audio memos, photos, key documents, and more? And what if that repository was constantly synchronized, so it was accessible through a Web browser and through apps on your various computers and smart phones?
Well, such a service exists. And it’s free. It’s called Evernote. I’ve been testing it for about a week on a multiplicity of computers and phones, and found that it works very well. Evernote is an excellent example of hybrid computing—using the “cloud” online to store data and perform tasks, while still taking advantage of the power and offline ability of local devices.
The idea behind Evernote is to be a sort of digital file cabinet. It allows you to create “notebooks” containing items called notes. These notes can range from text to photos to many kinds of attached files. You can locate, group and peruse them quickly, without having to dig through a computer’s file system. When I first reviewed the product, back in 2005, Evernote was a Windows-only, purely local information organizer. Now it’s a multi-platform, Internet-savvy, synchronized place for your ideas.
From Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning.
New software developed at MIT takes advantage of the GPS technology in mobile phones to inject new adventures into the traditional science lab. The technology creates learning games that can track players’ real world locations and send a stream of virtual information to them as they track environmental spills or solve science mysteries. Teachers and students can also build their own games to share with others.
For more on MIT’s learning games that teach science and math read Spotlight’s Think Like a Mathematician, Save the World from Monsters.
From Andrew Flanagin in Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning
Select findings from a new study by Andrew J. Flanagin, Professor in the Department of Communication, and Miriam Metzger, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara.
The results are based on a web-based survey of a representative sample of 2,747 children (age 11 to 18) with internet access in the United States, and one parent of each child.
The full report will be available in early 2010 as part of the MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning, published by MIT Press.
Read Spotlight’s interview with Flanagin about the findings. Below are some of the study’s highlights:
- Most kids begin using the internet between Grades 2 and 6.
- Nearly all kids surveyed (97%) are online by eighth grade.
Jenna Wortham and Nick Bilton write in the New York Times,
An online attack Friday morning on Twitter was the result of the simplest of security breaches: someone got the password to enter the master directory of Twitter’s Internet addresses and then redirected users to an alternate site instead.
No user information appears to have been stolen in the attack. But the security breach — the third major one at Twitter this year — underscores the continuing weakness of the company’s systems as its micro-blogging service is becoming more important to business and even global politics.
The incident also highlights a basic vulnerability in the way life is lived as it becomes increasingly digital: With so much vital information stored on the Web, people are only as safe as their passwords.
Jon Udell’s recent blog post begins,
One of the themes I’ve been exploring for the past few years is computational thinking. It’s an evocative phrase that has led me in a few different directions. One is my intentional use of tagging and syndication as key strategies for social information management. Another is my growing interest in the kinds of uses of WolframAlpha outlined in Kill-A-Watt, WolframAlpha, and the itemized electric bill.
A lot of what I’ve read and heard about WolframAlpha seems to focus on its encyclopedic nature. But it aims to be a compendium of computable knowledge, and as such I think its highest and best use will be to enable computational thinking.
From Andreas Kluth, in The Hannibal Blog
Facebook just “updated” its privacy settings, and I almost did not notice. That’s because I’m (Facebook founder) Mark Zuckerberg’s nightmare: I don’t “share” anything on Facebook to begin with, so my Facebook profile contains little to be private about.
But some of those who do share things on Facebook “came close to killing [their] account this week”, as Danny Sullivan did, when they paid attention to the details of the change.
A year ago I predicted in our (The Economist’s) sister publication, The World in 2009, that this brave new culture of “sharing” would cause discontent. Maybe that point is now nigh. For me personally, it arrived long ago.
Because I used to cover the internet in my previous beat at The Economist, I had to be one of the first to try new things like Facebook, and I usually was. But from the start I made a pact with myself:
- No pictures of, or (indexable, Googlable) information about, my loved ones.
- No names, birthdays, diaper photos etc.
- No drive-by shootings (photo, video, status update) of third parties
In particular, my wife and children should, in effect, not be on the internet at all unless they themselves later choose to put themselves there. You may have noticed that their names do not appear on The Hannibal Blog, even though I share my ideas here quite liberally. Yes, you may know me very intimately by now in an intellectual way–as I feel I know some of you quite intimately through your comments even though I only see your pseudonym and avatar. But you do not know me biographically beyond what I choose to divulge. I practice Platonic sharing.
In this seven and a half-minute video Howard Rheingold discusses technology and education. Those who attended the recent Ubiquitous Learning Conference may find what he says resonating with much of what was presented and discussed at the meeting.
Howard Rheingold has something to say about new literacy:
Popular discourses about the technologies that have been built on the microchip have focused primarily on the hardware, the software, the industries, the economics of computer games, PCs, dotcoms. My experiences have convinced me that the most important focus for public attention right now should shift to the literacies that bring power to those who possess them and leave behind those who don’t know how to use their telephone as a medical instrument, educational medium, social radar, political organizing tool. Chip fabrication plants, teenage personal computer wizards and moguls, networks of fiber optics and satellites, have played and will continue to play their parts in the distribution of computing and communication power to every human on Earth. But now that devices with such enormous untapped power are in the hands of so many, the factor that will most powerfully shape the resulting social institutions is literacy. My definition of “literacy” builds on the thinking of Neal Postman: I mean the inward-looking skill that enables an individual to read and write, to decode and encode messages with a medium, and I also refer to the external community to which this skill provides entrance.
From Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, in Ubiquitous Learning
Exploring the anywhere/anytime possibilities for learning in the age of digital media
This collection seeks to define the emerging field of “ubiquitous learning,” an educational paradigm made possible in part by the omnipresence of digital media, supporting new modes of knowledge creation, communication, and access. As new media empower practically anyone to produce and disseminate knowledge, learning can now occur at any time and any place. The essays in this volume present key concepts, contextual factors, and current practices in this new field.
Contributors are Simon J. Appleford, Patrick Berry, Jack Brighton, Bertram C. Bruce, Amber Buck, Nicholas C. Burbules, Orville Vernon Burton, Timothy Cash, Bill Cope, Alan Craig, Elizabeth M. Delacruz, Lisa Bouillion Diaz, Steve Downey, Guy Garnett, Steven E. Gump, Gail E. Hawisher, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Cory Holding, Wenhao David Huang, Eric Jakobsson, Tristan E. Johnson, Mary Kalantzis, Samuel Kamin, Karrie G. Karahalios, Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, Hannah Lee, Faye L. Lesht, Maria Lovett, Cheryl McFadden, Robert E. McGrath, James D. Myers, Christa Olson, James Onderdonk, Michael A. Peters, Evangeline S. Pianfetti, Paul Prior, Fazal Rizvi, Mei-Li Shih, Janine Solberg, Joseph Squier, Kona Taylor, Sharon Tettegah, Michael Twidale, Edee Norman Wiziecki, and Hanna Zhong.
Bill Cope is a research professor in educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is coeditor of The Future of the Book in the Digital Age. Mary Kalantzis is the dean of the College of Education and professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is coauthor of Cultures of Schooling: Pedagogies for Cultural Difference and Social Access.
“This book taps directly into seismic shifts occurring in what it means to go about one’s everyday life when access to information and ideas are so readily at hand. The contributors move well beyond the speculative to afford readers a rich range of substantive definitions and concrete examples of ubiquitous learning.”–Michele Knobel, coauthor of New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning
From Linda, in Learning Through Blogging.
Do you ever wonder why the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) might be more memorable than other technological schools? To become memorable, a school must reach out to people in ways that seem beneficial. Alumni organizations can help spread the word about their alma mater. Great sports teams and debate teams also can help boost a school’s standing. But, another fork to take in the marketing path is through the Internet, as MIT and other schools have done in sharing courses online and without charge.
MIT and other schools are up front about these open source offerings – no one can earn credits from taking the courses, nor can they use the courses to claim a degree. But, when MIT and other colleges opened their virtual gates to allow the average person to get a glimpse behind their ivory towers, these colleges became well known for their altruism and transparency. Open Courseware has become a marketing tool, as it helps schools that use this option to become more well known in a local and global community.
That said, the following list represents a handful of hundreds of open courseware initiatives that now exist. The following fifty collections are from English-speaking universities and colleges, located across the U.S. to England, Canada and Australia. Additionally, the list points to open courseware projects such as directories and primary source projects offered by various universities and colleges.
The list is divided into categories and each link is listed in alphabetical order within those categories. This method shows our readers that we do not favor one collection over another.
From Josh Karp, in “Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning.”
When University of California-Irvine associate project scientist Heather Horst and her colleagues at the Digital Youth Project set out to study how children, their parents and families interact with digital media, others thought they would probably come away with a set of “do’s and don’ts” for parents.
That, it turned out, was not the case. There was a lot of variety in how parents were dealing with the situation. Parents’ comfort or confusion depended on their own sense of expertise with new media.
Parents’ Involvement Depends on Their Digital Know-How
Parents with greater technological sophistication (a significant number of Silicon Valley families were interviewed for the study) didn’t view their children as digital natives, nor did they necessarily see themselves as outsiders.
“They knew their kids interests were different [from their own],” Horst says. “But, they weren’t afraid of the technology.”
For these families, the battles were the familiar battles. “[The arguments] weren’t about the media itself,” Horst says. “But, the kind of control debates that go on with adolescents in the U.S.”
But, in other less privileged families, and particularly those where English was not the primary language, the comfort with new media was markedly less, and the fear of online dangers much greater.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
6:00-7:00 PM • Reception and displays of digital work
7:00-8:00 PM • Panel Discussion and Forum
The Academy of Natural Sciences • Auditorium
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway • Philadelphia
This forum is free and open to the public. You may attend this forum in person
or follow the event online. Registration is required.
Al Weiss, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
Al Weiss is a Computer Assisted Instruction Specialist at the University of Illinois where he coordinates the instructional development and faculty support programs for campus-wide e-learning platforms and instructional technologies. Al has been engaged in teaching with technology since 1992 when he used a simple spreadsheet program to help teach math and science skills to seventh and eighth graders. More…
Join us for a Conference Dinner at Turner Fisheries.
Turner Fisheries Restaurant is conveniently located on the first level of the Copley Place Mall, & connected to the Westin Lobby. This venue provides a beautiful setting with a floor to ceiling window and a view of the heart of Copley Square. Every item on the menu is created especially by the Executive Chef and is inspired by the freshest New England ingredients. Validate valet parking is available outside the restaurant or at the Westin Hotel for a fee.
For more information please see the Conference website.
Accommodation for the 2009 Ubiquitous Learning Conference in Massachusetts, USA may now be booked. Please see the Conference Accommodation webpage for more information.
Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal has been accepted for inclusion in Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory.
Ulrichs is an authoritative knowledgebase of information about more than 300,000 serials of all types from around the world—academic and scholarly journals, peer-reviewed titles, online publications, newspapers and other resources. Bibliographic records provide details such as ISSN and title, publisher, online availability, language, subject area, abstracting & indexing coverage, searchable tables of contents, and full-text reviews.
The final issue of Volume 1 of Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal has now been published.
Volume 1, Number 4 contains:
- Online Education in Higher Education: What Factors Facilitate and Inhibit it? by Faye L. Lesht.
- The Master’s Degree: Can It Be Transformative? by Rhonda Rabbitt, Harold Hiebert and Patricia Markos.
- Community of Practice: A Multicultural Classroom at the Graduate Level by Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalon.
- Making Computer-supported Collaborative Learning Inclusive to Improve Student’s Mathematical Problem-solving Skills by Ricardo Abad Barros Castro.
- The World Wide Web as a Stimulant for the Use of Technology: Using Technology to Teach Law by Michael William Blissenden.
- The Comparison of Language Events between SMS and Virtual Communication from the Aspect to Ethnography Communication by Rosli Ab Rahman, Ahmad Mahmood Musanif, Normaliza Abd Rahim and Zaitul Azma Zainon Hamzah
- Language Events and Virtual Communication from the Aspect of Ethnography Communication by Rosli Ab Rahman, Ahmad Mahmood Musanif, Normaliza Abd Rahim and Zaitul Azma Zainon Hamzah
- Collaborative Writing Communities by Katherine Schutte.
- The Fieldtrip Project: An Online Community Featuring Teens’ Cellcam Films Sparked Substantive Peer Discussion by Lee Boot, Linda Baker, Susan Sonnenschein, David Gurzick and Colleen Sullivan.
Common Ground Publishing has launched a new imprint, Ubiquitous Learning.
You can now submit proposals or completed manuscript submissions of:
- individually and jointly authored books;
- edited collections addressing a clear, intellectually challenging theme;
- collections of papers published in Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal.
Books should be between 30,000 words to 150,000 words in length. They will be published simultaneously in print and electronic formats.
Larry Shane Taylor, Appalachian State University, Boone, USA
www.ULConference.com
Larry Shane Taylor is a journalism instructor in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, USA. His teaching specialties include journalism, print media design, and web media. He received his BA and MA in English Literature from Western Carolina University, USA, and his PhD from the University of Tennessee, USA. He is the winner of the Common Ground Publishing Award for Excellence in the area of Learning and Education. More…
Allan Collins, Professor Emeritus, Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA.
Allan Collins is Professor Emeritus of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is a member of the National Academy of Education, and a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the Cognitive Science Society, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as a founding editor of the journal Cognitive Science and as first chair of the Cognitive Science Society. He has studied teaching and learning for over 30 years, and written extensively on related topics. He is best known in psychology for his work on how people answer questions, in artificial intelligence for his work on reasoning and intelligent tutoring systems, and in education for his work on situated learning, inquiry teaching, design research, and cognitive apprenticeship. More…
Congratulations to all of the Award Winner finalists:
- Iván M. Jorrín-Abellán and Robert E. Stake
Does Ubiquitous Learning Call for Ubiquitous Forms of Formal Evaluation? An Evaluand Oriented Responsive Evaluation Model - Adel Al-Bataineh, Michael Lorber, Gary S. O’Malley and Douglas D. Hatch
Alternative Certification: Coming Soon to a Classroom Near Yours - Li-Mei Hung, Mei-Ling Chen and Ju-Feng Shen
Influence of the Service Quality of the Self- Access Language Learning Center on College Students? Perceived English Improvement - Faye L. Lesht
Online Education in Higher Education: What Factors Facilitate and Inhibit It?
To be published in an upcoming issue - Barbara Marinak, Martha Strickland and Jane Keat
Using Cameras to Stimulate the Conversation of Native-Born and Immigrant Preschoolers - Jeffrey Mok
Studying a Ubiquitous Learning and Computing Environment - Rosli Ab Rahman, Ahmad Mahmood Musanif, Normaliza Abd Rahim and Zaitul Azma Zainon Hamzah
The Comparison of Language Events between SMS and Virtual Communication from the Aspect of Ethnography Communication
To be published in an upcoming issue - Michael Skoumios and Vassilia Hatzinikita
Improving the Level of Pupils? Grounds Included in their Dialogic Argumentation During the Didactic Elaboration of Obstacles in Science - Dimitrios Vlachopoulos
The Challenges of Introducing New Technologies in Humanities: A Case Study of the Perceptions of Academic Staff of Classics
Congratulations to Larry Taylor, the winner of the International Award for Excellence in the area of learning and education for his paper Tech Pushers: Making Administrators into Tech Integration Facilitators
Abstract: Current research suggests that students are more technology savvy than previously understood and may even be “dumbing down” for school. This coupled with strong evidence that technology integration into everyday life is growing in both volume and level of sophistication suggests that teaching students to engage technology by making it a common component of their learning environment is not just appropriate, but critical. Nevertheless, current top-down models for technology integration do not seem to be facilitating integration. Current research on motivation strongly suggests that adoption motivation is linked to perceived outcome value. This paper explores these issues en route to a discussion of how education might make use of a current popular business model for integration. This model can be utilized to empower and place greater responsibility on local administrators to facilitate integration of technology into education.
5-6 December 2009
Northeastern University, Boston, USA
www.ULConference.com
Jiangping Chen and Yu Bao have an article, Cross-language search: The case of Google Language Tools, in the latest issue of the journal First Monday. This is the abstract:
This paper presents a case study of Google Language Tools, especially its cross–language search service. Cross–language search integrates machine translation (MT) and cross–language information retrieval (CLIR) technologies and allows Web users to search and read pages written in languages different from their search terms. In addition to cross–language search, Google Language Tools provides various language support services to multilingual information access. Our study examines the functions of Google Language Tools and the performance of its cross–language search. The results and analysis show that Google Language Tools are useful for Web users. Its cross–language search service provides quality query translation while the automatic translation of result pages needs further improvement. The paper suggests that cross–language search could be used by different types of Web users. The authors also discuss the strategies and important issues with regard to implementing multilingual information access services for information systems.
The Ubiquitous Learning Conference and Journal set out to define an emerging field. Ubiquitous learning is a new educational paradigm made possible in part by the affordances of digital media. The Journal investigates the affordances for learning in the digital media, in school and throughout everyday life.
The first issue of the first volume is now in the final stages of production and will be released shortly.