Academic Earth Goes Live

 

 

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Academic Earth Goes Live

via Open Culture by Dan Colman on 1/27/09

The open education movement got a little stronger this week with the launch of Academic Earth. Run by Richard Ludlow, a new social entrepreneur only a couple of years out of Yale, Academic Earth brings video lectures from leading universities into a centralized user-friendly site. What you'll see here is an impressive early implementation of where Academic Earth plans to go. Take content-rich videos from universities, organize the videos well, make the visual experience attractive, add personal customization functionality and the ability to engage with the content, and you have a very useful service to bring to the world. I first started talking with Richard back in the fall and am really glad to see his site now ready for show time. Check it out in beta and watch it grow.

 

 

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Fwd: SEDA WORKSHOP

PLACES STILL AVAILABLE ON SEDA WORKSHOP:

ENHANCING THE EXPERIENCE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS, THURSDAY 5TH FEBRUARY 2009

Just read - Zull

The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning
by James Zull

Stylus Publishing (Oct 3, 2002)
Paperback – 263 pages
ISBN-10: 1579220541
ISBN-13: 9781579220549

Interesting book - very much in the American Scholarship of L&T model - enthusiastic etc.

I found the combination of Kolb's learning cycle and neurophysiology a bit forced at times and still have problems with reflection as a stage - although at least Zull does try to define it.

Having been around when left/right brain stuff was popular and now being totally confused about its status having understood that it was invalid - but then seeing a you-tube video of a neuro-scientist analysing their experience of a stroke using it - I have been left with a suspicion of its use - how do I know that current models are not going to go the same way.

One specific intersting analysis is what Zull talks about re changing students false models and how you can't just dismiss them but have to help create a route from their false model to where they need to be.

Professional Development Event

Pedagogic Research in the Biosciences

Tuesday, 24 March 2009

University of Leicester

The day will explore different methodologies and provide you with the
opportuntity to meet like-minded colleagues and promote pedagogy in the
biosciences. This event is targetted at bioscientists with some
experience of pedagogic evaluation and research. On registrating for
the event you will be asked for a topic area you would like to see
discussed: these will form the groupings of the afternoon session. If
you wish to lead discussion on your topic area then please tick the
appropirate box on the registration form.

Register for this event

LLAS Subject Centre e-Learning Symposium, 29-30 January

Registration is still open for the 4th annual e-Learning Symposium,
organised by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area
Studies (LLAS).



Date: 29 January (pre Symposium workshops) / 30 January 2009 (Symposium)

Venue: University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

Full programme and registration: http://www.llas.ac.uk/events/2985

The e-Assessment-Question 2009

The e-Assessment-Question 2009 Conference and Exhibition London,

18th/19th March 2009

Shaw Theatre and Novotel St Pancras London

www.e-assessment-question.co.uk



Now in its seventh year, The e-Assessment Question is the Conference and

Exhibition examining the practical aspects of e-Assessment and Computer

Based Testing and Assessment, and it’s use from the classroom to the

workplace.

"Stepping Into Science" Second life conference

Alliance Library System and LearningTimes are pleased to announce an
exciting conference featuring science and virtual worlds.  On January
30th we are "Stepping Into Science" and taking the day to explore the
possibilities of using virtual worlds to learn about and teach science.
 The conference will be taking place entirely in Second Life and will
feature a keynote and panel discussion as well as small breakout
sessions, field trips and an opportunity participate in "Science
Friday", NPR's live broadcast from Second Life.



For more information and to register, click here:



http://www.steppingintovirtualworlds.org/



Speakers and field trips will include:



- Troy McConaghy (Scientist and Educator who has been involved with Second Life for over three years)

- Dr. George Djorgovski (Caltech and Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA))

- Joanna Scott (Writer for Nature and manages Second Nature on Second Life)

- Adrienne J. Gauthier, M.Ed. (Instructional Technology Specialist, Steward Observatory)

- Tony Crider (Elon University)



This online conference provides a great opportunity for anyone
interested in exploring the latest in science education using 3D,
immersive, virtual worlds.



It is ideal for anyone who might be at any stage of implementing education projects using virtual worlds.



There will be many opportunities to ask questions and discuss ideas
with our speakers and guides as well as others attending the conference.



Those new to Second Life are encouraged to attend!  We'll even be
offering Second Life orientations before the 30th so if you've been
meaning to check out Second Life, but haven't quite gotten around to it
this is a great and structured opportunity to learn about some
fantastic projects and also take Second Life for a spin.



The conference will be held live online in Second Life on January 30th.
 The registration fee is $65 per person. (Group rates are available.)



For more information on the conference, please visit:



http://www.steppingintovirtualworlds.org/

Shock of the Old 8

This is the final call for proposals for our annual educational technology

conference Shock of the Old 8, which is on the 2nd April 2009. This year's

conference theme is "Digital literacy: the place of new media in higher

education".



We currently have an open "Call for Papers and Posters" for the conference

and the deadline for submission is Friday 9th January 2009 with notification

to authors on 19th January 2009. Full details on submission are available

via the web site at

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/shock2009

--------



First call - Bookings for Shock and Beyond are now open at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GAE7brd_2buDmnNTIw6qdevw_3d_3d

or http://tinyurl.com/8nlzgq



------------------------------

--------

Beyond Walls - Making a University portable? April 3rd 2009

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/beyond2009/

This year's Beyond conference will gather together experts in the field of

multimedia and educational video to discuss issues surrounding the growth

and expansion of institutional audio-visual work.



Issues covered will include :

* Institutional audio-visual initiatives

* Podcasting and webcasting

* Sustainable infrastructure and processes

* Making lectures portable

* Getting to No.1 in iTunes U

* Adding pedagogical value to assets

* Open Content



We hope that you will find this information of interest and hope to see you

again at the conferences.



Kind regards



Everett Sharp

Conference Organiser

Whats going on with web2.0

An old colleague emailed me, in response to a friend request on Twitter, asking what was going on with web2.0 and education - my quick response was -

Twitter is interesting but you need a community and I voyeuristically
watch a group of tech people I vaguely know rather than being part of a
community - sad but you can't just create one!



Some people are using Twitter for education - short quizzes and polls -
haven't seen it in action myself but some good reports - you have to
get students to use hash signs to get it to work well for indexing.



Micro-blogging - either using Twitter or a dedicated service lit Coveritlive.com is
being used a lot in some conferences etc and could be used for
simultaneous discussion in lectures. Audience response systems are
being looked at by a number of places to make lectures interactive -
you can either get a dedicated system or people can use their mobile
phones with a system like http://www.polleverywhere.com/ - immediate quizzes and you
can display the results immediately.



Web 2.0 stuff generally - there seems to be lot going on around
podcasts and people using them like you did/do your blog - there are a
couple of automatic tools which will turn your blog into a podcast if
you don't fancy doing both. For collaborative student projects people
are using Google documents or google sites or the Zoho tools.
Wesminster University are going into Google applications on an
institutional level which is interesting.