Elearnspace

There are a few people in educational technology that serve a critical role for me in tracking trends and making sense of what’s happening. Stephen Downes is one such node. Audrey Watters is another. I assume most people in our field are familiar with Downes. Audrey has been in my Reader for about 18 months or so. I absolutely love her work and ability to succinctly capture important technologies that are influencing education – as I’ve frequently declared on Twitter, FB, G+, and this blog.

And, yet another presentation from UNISA, this one on open online courses:

I’m continuing my presentation marathon at UNISA. I’ve posted slides below from my session today on Sensemaking and Wayfinding:

If educators want to move away from broadcast models of teaching, the obvious questions arises “how are we supposed to teach and how will students learn?”. One particularly valuable benefit of traditional design and teaching models is the creation of a central platform or cohesive view of knowledge in a particular domain. We need some degree of centering in order to gain coherence in a topic. We (mistakenly) assume that if the educator provides that coherence in the form of a course, students will acquire it.

Educational datamining and learning analytics are getting substantial attention in education. With learning analytics in particular, the term has come to mean anything and everything that involves data in learning. The term needs to be broken down so it can be meaningfully used. I’ve attached a presentation below that I’m delivering Monday to UNISA in Pretoria. It reviews some analytics trends broadly, implications for education, a research project on developing an open learning analytics platform, and finally, what analytics have to do with connectivism.

The field of education (primary, secondary, higher) needs to embrace itself for an onslaught of technology startups. Where educators have failed, entrepreneurs see opportunity. Seb Schmoller points to an “educational technology startup” and comments:

After a very successful conference on learning analytics in Banff, planning has begun for next year’s conference in Vancouver. The call for papers is out – due Oct 15. Key dates are also available.

When I first started my phd, I wanted to research the future of higher education – what is changing in the world that will impact education. I spent a fair bit of looking at university models around the world, change pressures they were facing, and the (potentially significant) peripheral trends that had the potential to drive systemic change. It’s a rich area of inquiry and one that I somewhat regret shifting away from.

Stephen Downes, partly in response to Anya Kamenetz DIY U report and her critique of the readability of his works by the general public (“I’ve never read anything you’ve written (and yes, I’ve read plenty of your writing) that would be particularly useful, comprehensible or interesting to a bright 19 year old like Weezie, much less a 64 year old trying to ea

Alan Levine has a habit of being ahead of the curve on technology and how to use technology for connecting with people. This isn’t terribly surprising, considering his work on NMC’s Horizon Report. Right now, Alan is in the middle of a cross-Canada/US tour, connecting with friends and colleagues, many who he has met online.
Why?
Well, I guess because he can. The journey is being chronicled at CogDogBlog.