TL Infobits - January 2009
Issue 31
ISSN: 1931-3144
2009 Horizon Report on Emerging Technologies
Learning with Customized Networks
Teaching and Learning Challenges for the Coming Year
Principles for Excellence in Online Teaching
Teaching in Virtual Environments
Recommended Reading
Infobits Subscribers -- Where Were We in 2008?
2009 HORIZON REPORT ON EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
The 2009 Horizon Report is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). Each year the report "describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years." Some of the technologies to watch this year include:
Cloud Computing: "Cloud computing . . . has emerged as the unifying technology supporting grassroots video, collaboration webs, and social operating systems . .. has the potential to change the way we think about computing . . ."
The Personal Web: "Armed with tools for tagging, aggregating, updating, and keeping track of content, today's learners create and navigate a web that is increasingly tailored to their own needs and interests: this is the personal web."
Semantic-Aware Applications: "Tools that can simply gather the context in which information is couched, and that use that context to extract imbedded meaning are providing rich new ways of finding and aggregating content."
Critical challenges identified in the report include:
"There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy."
"Schools are still using materials developed decades ago, but today's students come to school with very difference experiences than those of 20 or 30 years ago, and think and work very differently as well."
"A challenge cited as critical now for several years running, academic review and faculty rewards are out of sync with the practice of scholarship."
"Higher education is facing a growing expectation to make use of and to deliver services, content, and media to mobile devices."
The 32-page 2009 Horizon Report is available at no charge and has been released with a Creative Commons license to facilitate its widespread use, easy duplication, and broad distribution. It can be accessed at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report.pdf or http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/2009HorizonReport/48003.
NMC is an "international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of nearly 200 leading colleges, universities, museums, corporations, and other learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies." For more information, go to http://www.nmc.org/.
ELI is a "strategic initiative of EDUCAUSE. While EDUCAUSE serves those interested in advancing higher education through technology, ELI specifically explores innovative technologies and practices that advance learning." For more information, go to http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?Section_ID=86.
LEARNING WITH CUSTOMIZED NETWORKS
"The idea that digital environments should be customized to suit the user is now the expected norm of the digital world. Users instantly expect to have their own view of whatever the context is fully represented and sustained. Indeed, having to plough through irrelevant and unnecessary information not only discourages the user from the environment but immediately disassociates the user from the environment, which results in a decision to not return. Therefore customization means relevancy for the user. Taking this idea and transferring the implications to a learning environment, educators should be challenged with the same reality."
In "Communities of Learners Redefined: Customized Networks That Impact Learning" (T.H.E. Journal, January 2009), Ruth Reynard writes that by tailoring the learning experience to the student, educators could expect to see "a higher level of learning from the learner." She argues that, rather than viewing students' social networking activities disrupting the learning environment, instructors should harness these tools to help students "develop skills of negotiation, debate (an almost forgotten academic skill), critical inquiry, and cognitive positioning--all of which are essential in becoming successful lifelong learners as well as developing expertise in their discipline."
The article is available online at http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23837_2.
T.H.E. (Technology Horizons in Education) Journal [ISSN 0192-592X] is a monthly magazine that is "dedicated to informing and educating K-12 senior-level district and school administrators, technologists, and tech-savvy educators within districts, schools, and classrooms to improve and advance the learning process through the use of technology. Launched in 1972, T.H.E. Journal was the first magazine to cover education technology." For more information, contact: T.H.E. Journal, 16261 Laguna Canyon Road, Suite 130, Irvine, CA 92618 USA; tel: 949-265-1520; fax: 949-265-1528; Web: http://www.thejournal.com/.
TEACHING AND LEARNING CHALLENGES FOR THE COMING YEAR
The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) sponsored "Challenges 2009" -- a discussion in the teaching and learning community that began with brainstorming at the 2008 EDUCAUSE annual meeting and continued online. The goal was to formulate and rank by popularity a list of the top teaching and learning challenges of 2009. The resulting top five are:
1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation.
2. Developing 21st-century literacies among students and faculty (information, digital, and visual).
3. Reaching and engaging today's learner.
4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT.
5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts.
For more details, visit the Challenges 2009 wiki at http://connect.educause.edu/wiki/TLChallenges09?time=1232111967.
ELI is a "strategic initiative of EDUCAUSE. While EDUCAUSE serves those interested in advancing higher education through technology, ELI specifically explores innovative technologies and practices that advance learning." For more information, go to http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?Section_ID=86.
PRINCIPLES FOR EXCELLENCE IN ONLINE TEACHING
For teaching online "[i]t is not sufficient to be a content expert. Nor is it sufficient to be 'tech-savvy.' It is not even sufficient to be an excellent traditional classroom teacher. Because the online world is a categorically different environment[,] a particular blend of skills and knowledge is necessary if success is to be found in this domain."
Authors Jim Henry and Jeff Meadows, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, draw upon their own online teaching experience and that of others in the field to compile a list of principles to guide new online instructors and course developers. Some of their principles include:
Technology is a vehicle, not a destination.
Great online courses are defined by teaching, not technology.
A great web interface will not save a poor course; but a poor web interface will destroy a potentially great course.
Excellence comes from ongoing assessment and refinement.
The paper, "Absolutely Riveting Online Course: Nine Principles for Excellence in Web-Based Teaching" (Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, vol. 34, no. 1, Winter 2008), is available at http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/179/177.
The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology [ISSN: 1499-6685], published by the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education, is a peer-reviewed journal that welcomes papers on all aspects of educational technology and learning. For more information, contact CNIE/RCIE, 260 Dalhousie Street, Suite 204, Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1N 7E4; email: cjlt@ucalgary.ca; Web: http://www.cjlt.ca/.
TEACHING IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS
"In the past two years, over 300 colleges and universities have claimed virtual land in Second Life and in other virtual environments in an attempt to enhance content delivery, raise institutional profiles, and explore new frontiers in education." The latest issue of Innovate (vol. 5, no. 2, December 2008/January 2009) explores how virtual environments provide opportunities and challenges for educators and their institutions. Papers include:
"Hacking Say and Reviving ELIZA: Lessons from Virtual Environments"
By Rochelle Mazar and Jason Nolan
http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=547
"Using Second Life with Learning-Disabled Students in Higher Education"
By Stephanie McKinney, et al.
http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=573
"Knowledge-Driven Design of Virtual Patient Simulations"
By Victor Vergara, et al.
http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=579
The entire issue is available at http://innovateonline.info/.
Registration is required to access the complete articles; registration is free.
Innovate: Journal of Online Education [ISSN 1552-3233], an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal, is published bimonthly by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and governmental settings. For more information, contact James L. Morrison, Editor-in-Chief; email: innovate@nova.edu; Web: http://innovateonline.info/.
Recommended Reading
"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to kotlas@email.unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
By Lawrence Lessig
New York: Penguin Group, 2008
ISBN 9781594201721
"For more than a decade, we've been waging a war on our kids in the name of the 20th Century's model of 'copyright law.' In this, the last of his books about copyright, Lawrence Lessig maps both a way back to the 19th century, and to the promise of the 21st. Our past teaches us about the value in 'remix.' We need to relearn the lesson. The present teaches us about the potential in a new 'hybrid economy' -- one where commercial entities leverage value from sharing economies. That future will benefit both commerce and community. If the lawyers could get out of the way, it could be a future we could celebrate."
An interview podcast with Lessig discussing his new book is available from the journal First Monday at http://www.firstmondaypodcast.org/audio/lessig_final.mp3.
A transcript of the podcast is also available at http://www.firstmondaypodcast.org/transcript_nov08.htm.
INFOBITS SUBSCRIBERS -- WHERE WERE WE IN 2008?
Each January issue of Infobits includes an annual subscriber tally listing the countries represented by our subscribers. At the end of January 2009, there were 7,577 subscribers (an increase of 44 subscribers since last year's count). Here are some brief statistics about our current subscribers.
The majority of the subscribers we could identify by country are in the United States (3,581) and other English-speaking countries: Canada (441), Australia (279), and the United Kingdom (167).
Each of the following countries has between ten and forty-five subscribers: Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden.
Each of the following countries has fewer than 10 subscribers: Bolivia, Argentina, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, International, Kuwait, Macedonia, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia.
In addition to subscribers whom we can positively identify by a geographic location, the following sites don't have a geographic designation: 1,746 subscribers from commercial (.com) sites, 194 subscribers from .org sites, and 633 subscribers from .net sites.
Many thanks to all the subscribers for your support in 2008!
