Monthly Archive for October, 2010

British Kids Log On and Learn Math — in Punjab

Published on October 26, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Julie Werdigier, in The New York Times

London – Once a week, year six pupils at Ashmount Primary School in North London settle in front of their computers, put on their headsets and get ready for their math class. A few minutes later, their teachers come online thousands of kilometers away in the Indian state of Punjab.

Ashmount is one of three state schools in Britain that decided to outsource part of their teaching to India via the Internet. The service — the first of its kind in Europe — is offered by BrightSpark Education, a London-based company set up last year. BrightSpark employs and trains 100 teachers in India and puts them in touch with pupils in Britain through an interactive online tutoring program.

To read more…

For Exposure, Universities Put Courses on the Web

Published on October 20, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

university_exposureBy D.D. Guttenplan, in The New York Times

London – Until recently, if you wanted to take Professor Rebecca Henderson’s course in advanced strategy to understand the long-term roots of why some companies are unusually successful, you needed to be a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Ms. Henderson taught at the Sloan School of Management. Admission to the Sloan School is extremely selective, and tuition fees are over $50,000 a year.

For the past two years, though, anyone with an Internet connection can follow Ms. Henderson’s lectures online, where the lecture notes and course assignments are available free through M.I.T. OpenCourseWare. Why give away something with such a high market value?

To read more…

Rifts Show at Hearing on For-Profit Colleges

Published on October 11, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

education-articleinlineBy Tamar Lewin, in The New York Times

Senator John McCain did not spend long on Thursday at a committee hearing in Washington about for-profit colleges.

Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, read briefly from a lobbyist’s opinion piece supporting the colleges, then accused the committee chairman, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, of going on “ad nauseam” about the abuses at for-profits. He added that he hoped the committee would have a different agenda come January — and then walked out.

It was the latest sign that for-profit colleges have become a polarizing force in Washington. On Wednesday, hundreds of students from for-profit colleges rallied at the Capitol, many wearing T-shirts proclaiming, “My education. My job. My choice.”

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Powering Up Education

Published on October 8, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

poweringupeducationFrom 3 Quarks Daily

If you have children, you have probably noticed a fascinating and common phenomenon: seemingly without instruction or reading manuals, they know more about computers and cellphones, in fact most technology, than you do. They impatiently seize controls out of your hands saying, “Let me show you how to do it.” And then, you the parent, weary and old, with too many mundane details of life clogging up your brain say, “How do you know how to do that?” Then your child, whether they’re 5 or 15, rolls their eyes and says “Duh!” Children get technology, seemingly instinctively, and they love it.

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Please Welcome Our Journal Award Winner

Published on October 5, 2010 in Conference and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Tabitha McKenzie will be joining us in Vancouver for the 2010 Ubiquitous Learning Conference as a plenary speaker. She was also our journal award winner for 2009.

tabitha_mckenzie

Tabitha McKenzie is a lecturer in M?ori education at Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Education in New Zealand and a Programme Co-ordinator of a Ministry of Education (New Zealand) funded Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programme called Whakapiki i te Reo. The TPD programme uses blended (mobile technology and face-to-face) as well as a whole school, in-school approach to increase teacher’s proficiency of the M?ori language (the indigenous language of New Zealand). Tabitha is also enrolled in her PhD at Victoria University of Wellington. The aim of her study is to explore the challenges and opportunities of using the iPod to attain proficiency in te reo M?ori.

New Plenary Speaker Announced

Published on October 5, 2010 in Conference and Newsletter. 0 Comments

We are very pleased to welcome Professor Gary Poole as a plenary speaker for the 2010 Ubiquitous Learning Conference.

gary-poole

Gary Poole:

From 2000 to 2010, Gary Poole directed the Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth and the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UBC. From 2000 to 2004, he was the president of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and is currently the president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Gary has won an excellence in teaching award from SFU and a 3M Teaching Fellowship. In his years at UBC, he has received two teaching awards, plus a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for contributions to Higher Education and a Lifetime Achievement Award from STLHE.

He is the co-author of “Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education,” and “The Psychology of Health and Health Care: A Canadian Perspective.” Gary is also an associate professor in the School of Population and Public Health in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and Senior Scholar in the Centre for Health Education Scholarship.