Understanding the Digital Generation

A lively, entertaining presentation from uLearn by Lee Crocket - a man after my own heart who believes in really visual presentations :-)!! Well worth watching if you are wondering if learners of today are "wired differently".

The description from the EdTalks site reads: "Lee Crockett is an award winning designer, marketing consultant, speaker, and co-author of Understanding the Digital Generation. Lee's keynote presentation at ULearn10 is an intelligent and humorous look at the differences between digital learners and those that are educating them. Lee believes that we need to provide students with a fundamentally different set of skills; "We don’t need four year degrees any more, we need 40 years of learning and relearning."

Listening to Student Voice: Thinking about ways of improving schools

Image by hazelowendmc via FlickrIn this Slidecast Nick Rate gives a brief overview of student voice in four areas:

• student voice in reflections on learning
• student voice in student led conferences
• student voice in learning and school design
• student voice in a democratic curriculum

Nick uses the following quote to sum up:

"What pupils say about teaching, learning, and schooling is not only worth listening to but provides an important – perhaps the most important – foundation for thinking about ways of improving schools." Rudduck, Chaplain & Wallace (1996).

You can visit Nick's blog post and read his thoughts and ideas about his presentation, and the topics covered there.

Student Voice

View more webinars from Nick Rate.

Related articles

• Children 'must be given a say in the running of schools' (telegraph.co.uk)
• Presenting: The K12 Online Conference! (123elearning.blogspot.com)

Feedback and Feedforward: Assessment for enhancing learning in an online environment

Image by hazelowendmc via Flickr

A clear, well-explained video that talks about the role of the teacher (transmission to facilitation / mediation) and the student (novice to expert) on a journey from acquisition of content to participation and reflection. One of the really useful things about this video is that it provides a framework which can be used to map assessments, and suggests which tools in Moodle may be used at which points along the learning journey (in both online and face-to-face courses).

The term 'feedback is defined as assessment of learning, and 'feedforward' as assessment for learning.

One thing I found enlightening was hearing the students who had been involved in the piloting of the framework and course, speak about their experiences.

Feedback and Feedforward: Assessment for enhancing learning in an online environment from Ako Aotearoa on Vimeo.

Related articles

• Rubric for assessing student created learning (macictinteraction.wordpress.com)
• Mark Reed: What is Social Learning? (peopleandplace.net)
• Great student project examples, lesson ideas and links integrating media #learning2cn (speedofcreativity.org)

Steve Wheeler speaks about Open Educational Resources and academic publishing

Image via Wikipedia

Steve Wheeler made this video recording for Core Ed while he was at the Ulearn conference in New Zealand in October 2010. In it he speaks about Open Educational Practices, (including Open Educational Resources and Open Scholarship).

An excerpt from his blog reads "OEP requires everything to be open - for access, scrutiny and repurposing. So whether it's licensing agreements such as Copyleft or Creative Commons, or open access journals, or even massively online open courses, the open educational practices are gaining ground and influence in the academic world". He gives some examples of free courses, where students only pay once they want to become accredited, advising that this is a flexible way of learning that fits in with lifestyle and personal preferences.

Steve closes by asking of this the beginning of the end for traditional academic publishing. Watch the video and see if you agree with him.

E-pilot - Enhancing students' literacy with ICT

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThis Voicethread provides an overview of an e-Pilot  project with eight primary and secondary teachers that focussed on how digital content might assist in meeting the diverse literacy needs of their students.

The Voicethread gives and overview of all the initiatives being implemented by the teachers, the impact on their students' learning, and reflections from the teachers on their experience of being involved in this type of Professional Learning and Development.

The organisers and teachers would welcome your comments and responses recorded directly onto this Voicethread.

Playing to Learn? How to get fun back into education

Image by Getty Images via @daylife A rich and engaging resource created in Prezi by Maria Andersen (which really models some of the potential of the platform, and adds a certain texture to the 'message'). You could skip through this presentation, or spend hours exploring the multimedia (look out in particular for the Pirates of the Caribbean / Bloom's Taxonomy).

The focus is maths, but the relevance is obvious for any discipline, and the age group is adult...but, again, well worth re-visiting what is happening with younger learners.

The description from the site reads: "Playing to Learn? - Children love to learn, but at some point they lose that and become adults that don't like formal learning. Let's explore why "play" has gotten such a bad rap and figure out how to get it back in education."

Playing to Learn? on Prezi

Related articles

• Questions I'm no Longer Asking (downes.ca)
• What Are Teachers Learning? (huffingtonpost.com)