The midden

These 2 posts (Part 1 and Part 2) by Tony Bates, consider the need for change in Higher Education and the role that technology has in supporting that change.
In reading Part 1, the current 19th Century industrial model of education that universities still cling on to is all too familiar.  While many will see what [...]

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One of the highlights of ALT-C this year.

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Billed as “a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities”, this handbook written by George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger at the University of Manitoba,  is a lot more than this. It starts from the premise that Higher Education, whether individual institutions know it or not, is in the midst [...]

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This article in ZDNet Technology News looks at some of the claims being made about Cloud Computing and also gives a good update on where this technology is up to.
There is also a good review of MobileMe, Apple’s successor to .Mac, for those considering Apple’s cloud offering.

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Just been listening to an interesting presentation by Andy Ramsden from Bath University on QR codes – Quick Response codes. These are like bar codes in that they contain information that can be read by a scanner, but they are different in that they have information in 2-dimensions so can store a lot more than [...]

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While this handbook from futurelab is aimed at promoting discussion around the nature and purpose of innovation in schools, much of the evidence, ideas and recommendations it presents are equally valid for HE.
Transformative innovation is radical and challenging. It is the kind of innovation that challenges our assumptions about how we do things and causes [...]

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Half an Hour: The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On

This posting by Stephen Downes provides a useful summary of where we are at now and how we got here. He re-visits a previous article written in 1998, noting that many of his earlier predictions have been remarkably accurate. The main areas he discusses include:

new [...]

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Mike Wesch’s latest Youtube video, A Portal to Media Literacy, is essential viewing for all educators. He describes so clearly why we have to change and challenge the present system of educating our young people. He is clearly a passionate teacher and someone who understands the world in which his students move.
His dismantling of the [...]

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This is a video of my presentation to the JISC Regional Support Centre for Yorkshire & Humber on June 10th at Bradford University. The sub-title of the presentation was Beyond “no significant difference”, on the basis that, in education, we use technology to do things the same way as we have always done rather than [...]

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This book gives a detailed and comprehensive coverage of how digital technologies can be used to transform our present, outdated, industrial model of education. Co-published by BC Campus and the Commonwealth of Learning, it is available as a free download. As we are aware, despite the widespread availability of new technologies, their impact on teaching [...]

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