I was in China recently, and towards the end of the trip a Chinese a teacher shared these example of Chinese MOOCs with me. I cannot speak for the quality of the courses, but here they are:
The Call for Proposals is now open for the Distance Teaching & Learning Conference that takes place Madison, Wisconsin from August 11-13, 2015.
The deadline to submit your Call for Proposal is: Monday, January 26, 2015 at 4pm CST
The Distance Teaching & Learning Conference welcomes hundreds of distance education and online learning professionals every year to share effective practices, research, strategies, and new tools/techniques.
Some suggested topics include: New course design models, mobile & social learning, learning analytics,
competency-based learning, gamification & badges, open educational resources
More information can be found at:
If using Open-Sankoré, don’t make the mistake I made and update to OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I learnt this the hard way. The Open-Sankoré website does not post this prominently, but Open-Sankoré will not run on Yosemite (there are some discussions hidden away on the support boards). According to their Open-Sankoré Facebook page, Open-Sankoré will be updated in late November and should work again. The Facebook message reads as follows:
Unfortunately we know this problem for a few weeks with the beta version. Apple changed several important elements that prevents QT to work correctly in Yosemite. We will work to correct this problem as soon as possible (probably late November). Thank you for your patience.
Only workaround at the moment is to rollback to OS X Mavericks. This can be done, but might be a tad painful.
Looks like January of 2015 is when Open-Sankoré is most likely to be updated (according to this post) to work with OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
I have just finished teaching the 29th version of Practical Internet Marketing. As usual, I enjoyed the experience and getting to see how everyone planned to market using the Internet. However, as Chicago gets a little colder I am looking forward to getting home at a decent hour Monday nights.
One of the students shared a picture of her cat presenting the Practical Internet Marketing certificate. Reposting here…
Looking forward to the next class.
A colleague at work shared a link to some meta-analysis of research on online learning. The study is from several years ago, and was conducted for the U.S. Department of Education.
Some interesting findings, and generally supportive of online learning:
The overall finding of the meta-analysis is that classes with online learning (whether taught completely online or blended) on average produce stronger student learning outcomes than do classes with solely face-to-face instruction. The mean effect size for all 50 contrasts was +0.20, p < .001.
However, the student featured on the front page of the report needs to find a more ergonomic way to study…
Scopia is one of the systems we have been using at work. When I am unsure of how to get something to work, this is where I go for documentation. Saving this here, just in case my book link gets lost.
I experienced my first Chicago Geekfest Meetup yesterday. The meetups take place every Tuesday at the local Groupon offices. Yesterday’s session was a series of lightning talks:
Video recordings of the presentations should be up soon on Vimeo.
E-ZPass Phishing Email
This has to be my phishing email of the day. The “here” link obviously goes somewhere you don’t want to follow, but the email is targeted well for the unwary.
Shindig
I (and two of my work colleagues) got a chance to see Shindig in practice last Friday. Shindig is a video collaboration service that is currently in beta. The user interface is particularly impressive – at work we use tools like this on a regular basis, and typically students and faculty need significant assistance to collaborate. Shindig was something that “just worked.”
However, Shindig is still in beta. I get the impression that the company is still trying to find its way, and work out the best way to make money. Thus, the company is now reaching out to education. This could be a tough sell – education does not have money to spare. There a some important features that Shindig does not have just yet, such as:
Additionally, some of the ways that the company markets itself via the website and YouTube sends the wrong message. I get the impression that the company is in a somewhat precarious position.
I hope they make it. I really liked the user interface and basic functionality. Shindig felt like a product where I did not need to crack open the manual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JwZoQYnnKc&list=PLRhWiq5YAdTtyuCgLxq0-08jxrm1To-NM
http://youtu.be/ICsNKttfsOE
I am presenting an Information Session (iPad Lecture Capture: Information Session I-3) at the 30th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. The presentation will take place on Wednesday 13th August from 10:30-11:15 a.m. This will be part of the Technology, Tools, and Media track.
The presentation notes, hyperlinks, and PDF can be accessed here: http://condor.depaul.edu/jmoore/ipad-capture/