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An Inclusive Approach to Online Learning Environments: Models and Resources (PDF)
An Inclusive Approach to Online Learning Environments: Models and Resources (PDF)
22-page article on designing for diversity in online learning. Examines how cultural differences can affect learning and shares culturally inclusive instructional design models. Table 1 on page 6 compares high-context and low-context learning (such as how formal student-teacher relationships are).
·eric.ed.gov·
An Inclusive Approach to Online Learning Environments: Models and Resources (PDF)
Designing for Diversity Within Online Learning Environments
Designing for Diversity Within Online Learning Environments

The author argues that constructivist learning environments where multiple perspectives are respected and there is no single "right "answer" are better for encouraging diversity. The ideas for instructional design for diversity are more theory-based than practice-based, but this has some interesting concepts.

"The major advantage of this learning model is that one of its key design goals is to encourage students to bring multiple perspectives to questions/cases/problems/issues and projects as part of their learning. This approach to learning views diversity as a strength to be exploited rather than a problem to be solved."

·ascilite.org.au·
Designing for Diversity Within Online Learning Environments
Social networks 'teaching tech skills' - vnunet.com
Social networks 'teaching tech skills' - vnunet.com
Brief summary of research on the educational benefits of sites like MySpace and Facebook for high schoolers. Students self-report learning 21st century skills, although the study doesn't attempt to actually measure any of that learning.
When asked what they learn by using social networking sites, the students listed 'technology skills', followed by 'creativity', being 'open to new or diverse views' and 'communication skills'.
·vnunet.com·
Social networks 'teaching tech skills' - vnunet.com
Four Letter Words - How wiki and edit are making the Internet a better teaching tool - Using Wiki in Education -
Four Letter Words - How wiki and edit are making the Internet a better teaching tool - Using Wiki in Education -
Chapter in a "wiki book" (2 chapters are free, others require payment for the book). The beginning of this chapter is a basic intro to wikis, but the graphics explaining the workflow are interesting. The author argues that when you work with wikis, you get all the logistic pieces out of the way early in the creative process, leaving more time for actual writing and collaboration. In practice, I think there are times when you have to address the logistics issues throughout the process, but it's greatly reduced with wikis.
<p>The above example demonstrates the power of the wiki to make collaboration more inclusive and knowledge construction efficient, distributed and fast. If you think about this visually, the email/Word scenario has limited periods of creativity separated by the logistical and socially sensitive task of combining edits:</p> <p></p><div align="center"><img src="/download/attachments/54/ch1-lowproductivetime.jpg" border="0"></div><p></p> <p>The wiki completely changes this by shifting logistics to the shortest possible segment of time at the outset, leaving a much greater period of time for collaborative creativity and knowledge construction:</p> <p></p><div align="center"><img src="/download/attachments/54/ch1-highproductivetime.jpg" border="0"></div>
·wikiineducation.com·
Four Letter Words - How wiki and edit are making the Internet a better teaching tool - Using Wiki in Education -
Donald Clark Plan B: Immersive games beats classroom in maths
Donald Clark Plan B: Immersive games beats classroom in maths
18-week study comparing performance of high school students who learned math in a traditional classroom or with a game. Both classroom and game learning resulted in improvement in skills, but students who played the game scored significantly higher.
According to the teachers, the games were effective teaching and learning tools because they (a) were experiential in nature, (b) offered an alternative way of teaching and learning, (c) gave the students reasons to learn mathematics to solve the game problems and progress in the games, (d) addressed students' mathematics phobias and (e) increased time on task.
·donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com·
Donald Clark Plan B: Immersive games beats classroom in maths
Learning in the Webiverse: How Do You Grade a Conversation?
Learning in the Webiverse: How Do You Grade a Conversation?
Principles for assessing online discussions and other conversations (blogs, chat, etc.) by coherence, awareness of audience, and diction. Writing for asynchronous discussion isn't the same as writing an essay, and the author argues that students who simply post essays to the discussion board should receive good grades.
·campustechnology.com·
Learning in the Webiverse: How Do You Grade a Conversation?
High Tech in Hawaii: The Real-World Relevance of Technology | Edutopia
High Tech in Hawaii: The Real-World Relevance of Technology | Edutopia
Profile of a Hawaiian school using technology and project-based learning to engage students and give them 21st century skills.
"What the animation does is it assists the children in visualizing the action," explains Mitchell, who teaches <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nuuanu.k12.hi.us/G-1/public_html/index.html" target="_blank">language arts enrichment classes</a>. "The animation is a way of them developing the picture so they relate that to the writing, to what they hear, what they see, what they feel." Technology, she adds, "gives you one more way of teaching something."
"Looking for real-world relevance has to do with students being interested in what they do, knowing that it's useful outside of school," says Kaninau. "The experiences are not contrived or in isolation, but they're a part of a larger learning activity. Without those connections, it won't be meaningful, and it'll be forgotten tomorrow."
"They love it," says sixth-grade teacher Geraldine Kajitani. "If you start with ... hands-on activities and things that are fun, their attention is focused." And once that happens, she says, it's a snap to get them to study some of the drier material because they'll relate to it and remember it.
·edutopia.org·
High Tech in Hawaii: The Real-World Relevance of Technology | Edutopia
Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom | Edutopia
Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom | Edutopia
Marc Prensky on uses of technology in the classroom, moving from simply dabbling to doing "new things in new ways."
<p>First, it helps to look at the typical process of technology adoption (keeping in mind, of course, that schools are not typical of anything.) It's typically a four-step process:</p> <ol> <li> Dabbling.</li> <li> Doing old things in old ways.</li> <li> Doing old things in new ways.</li> <li> Doing new things in new ways.</li></ol>
·edutopia.org·
Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom | Edutopia
Disabled Bodies, Able Minds: Giving Voice, Movement, and Independence to the Physically Challenged | Edutopia
Disabled Bodies, Able Minds: Giving Voice, Movement, and Independence to the Physically Challenged | Edutopia
Video and article about assistive technology for college and high school students, specifically focused on physical impairments. The euphonium player who uses a joystick to control the valves was especially intriguing to me as a former band teacher.
·edutopia.org·
Disabled Bodies, Able Minds: Giving Voice, Movement, and Independence to the Physically Challenged | Edutopia
COVERITLIVE.COM - Home
COVERITLIVE.COM - Home
Tool for liveblogging that is actually live--it works like typing an instant message. The app sits in an iframe, which means it can't be embedded in Wordpress or Edublogs, but it does work in a wiki. Also allows for reader comments--could be interesting for doing an interview or discussion and recording it for others to view.
·coveritlive.com·
COVERITLIVE.COM - Home
The Bamboo Project Blog: Using Del.icio.us to Create an Easy, Always Updated Online Portfolio
The Bamboo Project Blog: Using Del.icio.us to Create an Easy, Always Updated Online Portfolio
Create a specific tag for your portfolio and have an easy-to-update page for your content. It's not pretty, but it is easier to keep current. You could build on this idea by posting the RSS feed from your custom tag to another site where you could control the look and feel.
·michelemartin.typepad.com·
The Bamboo Project Blog: Using Del.icio.us to Create an Easy, Always Updated Online Portfolio
Half an Hour: Finding Time
Half an Hour: Finding Time
Stephen Downes, on finding the time to write online by focusing on using content from a closed environment and bringing it into the open.
The whole point isn't to *add* online writing on top of everything else you do. Nobody has time for that.<br><br>Rather, what you want to be thinking of doing is to gradually migrate to writing online *instead* of writing for those other purposes.<br><br>That doesn't mean you become a blog writer and nothing else. Rather, what you'll find is that writing for the website makes writing for all those other things a lot easier.
The idea is to take the stuff you do for private audiences and to present it (as much as you can) to public audiences.<br>
·halfanhour.blogspot.com·
Half an Hour: Finding Time
Games by GAMBIT: AudiOdyssey
Games by GAMBIT: AudiOdyssey
A game developed so that visually impaired users can play it, using either a Wiimote or keyboard. One of the goals was to create "an engaging game that relies more on high quality audio than visuals." Very interesting concept; quality accessibly game design could also help designing for other applications.
·gambit.mit.edu·
Games by GAMBIT: AudiOdyssey
From Degrading to De-Grading
From Degrading to De-Grading
Alfie Kohn on reasons to abolish the current grading system in favor of authentic assessment to focus on learning, rather than grading. Includes a number of citations that would be worth exploring.
<p class="articletext">Researchers have found three consistent effects of using – and especially, emphasizing the importance of – letter or number grades:</p> <p class="articletext">1.&nbsp; Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself.&nbsp;</p>
2.&nbsp; Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks.
3.&nbsp; Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking.
·alfiekohn.org·
From Degrading to De-Grading
The Only Net-Gen Nonsense : Ruminate
The Only Net-Gen Nonsense : Ruminate
Response to the "Net Gen Nonsense" blog and George Siemens' arguments that it's the environment changing rather than the learners. Chris Lott argues that learners have changed in response to the changing environment; the characteristics of these learners are more important than whether the changes are biological or environmental in origin. Interesting analogy to eating in times of abundance and scarcity.
I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!
The analogy I came up with a few days ago was that of eating. People eat very differently in times of abundance than scarcity. Their biology doesn’t significantly change (though it does some), but it would be foolish to look around and argue that people aren’t really eating differently, it’s just a change in their food context. It would be wiser to recognize that the socioeconomic context is an important factor to consider when it comes to nutrition and try to teach proper eating habits in an environment that is not just no longer one of hunting and gathering, but one that is very different for most of us from even 50 years ago.
·chrislott.org·
The Only Net-Gen Nonsense : Ruminate
Sandra Day O'Connor: Game Designer | Game | Life from Wired.com
Sandra Day O'Connor: Game Designer | Game | Life from Wired.com
Not what I would have guessed she would do for a career after retiring from the Supreme Court. Sanda Day O'Connor is helping develop an educational game to teach students about the legal system.
O'Connor believes that America's youth aren't learning enough about civics, and thinks that the educational power of videogames is just the thing to change that.
The game "lets students engage in real issues and real problems," O'Connor said. It will allow them to "step into the shoes of a judge, a legislator, an executive -- teach them how to think through and analyze problems, take action and voice opinions to their elected representatives."
·blog.wired.com·
Sandra Day O'Connor: Game Designer | Game | Life from Wired.com