Open Education Handbook 2014

creation of an OER culture among faculty

While the thinkers are arguing, textbook publishers are acting. With their traditional business models under pressure, they’ve begun to reinvent themselves as educational technology companies. They’re selling schools and colleges on a new generation of digital courseware—ALEKS is just one example—that takes on much of the work that teachers used to do. The software isn’t meant to replace teachers, they insist. Rather, it’s meant to free them to focus on the sort of high-level, conceptual instruction that only a human can provide.

Justin Reich argues in a blog post for Education Week, computers “are good at assessing the kinds of things—quantitative things, computational things—that computers are good at doing. Which is to say that they are good at assessing things that we no longer need humans to do anymore.” The implication is that adaptive software might prove effective at training children to pass standardized tests. But it won’t teach them the underlying skills that they’ll need to tackle complex, real-world problems. And it won’t prepare them for a future in which rote jobs are increasingly automated.

But the collaboration between university and for-profit startup raised some troubling questions about just who owned all the data that flowed from students’ use of the software—and what they might ultimately do with it. Knewton’s Ferreira says he envisions a future in which students’ educational records added up to much more than a series of letter grades that make up traditional transcripts. By tracking everything they read, every problem they solve, every concept they master, Knewton could compile a “psychometric profile” on each student that includes not only what she learned but how readily she learned it, and at what sorts of problem-solving she struggled and exceled. That sort of data could be of great interest to admission committees and employers. It could also, in theory, erode the privacy that has traditionally surrounded young people’s schoolwork.

“Adaptive technologies presume that knowledge can be modularized and sequenced,” says Watters, the education writer. “This isn’t about the construction of knowledge. It’s still hierarchical, top-down, goal-driven.”

They found that, more than any particular type of activity, achieving flow was determined by the mix of challenge and support teachers provide: Engagement was high when students were appropriately challenged by complex goals and high teacher expectations but also supported through positive interactions with their teacher.

They found that students were most engaged in school while taking tests, doing individual work, and doing group work, and less so when listening to lectures or watching videos. In addition, the students were most engaged and reported being in a better mood when they felt that their activities were under their own control and relevant to their lives. The researchers conclude that teachers can encourage more flow in their classrooms through lessons that offer choice, are connected to students’ goals, and provide both challenges and opportunities for success that are appropriate to students’ level of skill.

But one place where we might not find too much flow these days, sadly, is in American schools. For years, the learning conditions in classrooms have been practically antithetical to the conditions people need to achieve flow and all the benefits that come with it. Especially in the era of No Child Left Behind and high-stakes testing, schools have often favored regimentation over self-directed learning, making it harder for students to get deeply engaged with topics that interest them. Paradoxically, these trends might be undermining the kind of student achievement they were designed to promote, and could even be causing student burnout.

The positive response to the program was almost immediate. “In one classroom, the children went from having the most behavioral problems in the school—as measured by number of visits to the principal’s office—to having zero behavioral problems, after only two to three weeks of instruction,” says Schonert-Reichl.

Technology is the only way to dramatically expand access to knowledge. Why should students be limited to a textbook that was printed two years ago, and maybe designed 10 years ago, when they could have access to the world's best and most up-to-date textbook?

He gave the example of digital textbooks which can be updated as an example of how online technology could be better than traditional methods.

Still, it’s reasonably certain that in the late eleventh century a group of students in Bologna got together and decided to pool their resources—financial, intellectual, and spiritual—in order to learn.

dissatisfaction with curricula offered by commercial providers

OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.

taking advantage of free, "open source" textbooks.

Unlike many of my peers, I do think that there are direct and relevant connections between efforts by progressive students to regulate content Look: I have already said more about trigger warnings than I want to. I will simply note that every trigger warning necessarily contains ideological presumptions and political baggage. Someone I know said “I don’t want to ban American Sniper on campus, but I do want it to carry a trigger warning as war propaganda and Islamaphobia.” That trigger warning preempts the very critical conversation that we should be having about it! It’s a classic “when did you stop beating your wife?” tactic. It’s tautological; it presumes precisely the issue in question. Clint Eastwood, who made the damn movie, called it an antiwar film. I disagree with him; I quite despised it, actually, and for political reasons most of all. But I don’t pretend that my opinion on this question amounts to proof positive. Every trigger warning ever devised makes presumptions about the nature of trauma, the treatment of PTSD, and which kinds of content are potentially offensive. You would think that a bunch of close-reading academics would recognize that.

Flexibility

Shared information

So, rather than an exploration of a work in which instructor and student collaborate on meaning-making, Education Genius maintains a hierarchical divide between teacher and learner.

The TLA components align with 4 key concepts: experience tracking, learner profiles, content brokering and understanding, and competency networks.

The Training and Learning Architecture (TLA) encompasses a set of standardized Web service specifications and Open Source Software (OSS) designed to create a rich environment for connected training and learning.

The student account option provides a greater privacy for the user

Teacher Console, where the teacher can create and manage student accounts, with student email addresses being optional)

what labor, whose labor is saved, is replaced in this, an age of economic precarity, adjunct-ification, anti-unionism, automation?

“I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.”

All available evidence suggests that over 60% of new Ph.D.s in science in the United States will not have careers in academic research, yet graduate training in science has followed the same basic format for almost 100 years, heavily focused on producing academic researchers.

the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free

Slentz, Kristine

Krogh, Suzanne

Teachers Know Best is a multi-year research effort to better understand how teachers use digital instructional tools and how these tools can be improved to foster personalized learning.

to interact and collaborate with others.

Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources,

The focus on "decoding" should send shivers down the spine of every English teacher who has ever had a student demand they just tell them what the poem means.

he greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way.

I first discovered the power of collaborative annotation

Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

words and phrases

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including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

Read closely

If you want to help low-income students succeed, it’s not enough to deal with their academic and financial obstacles. You also need to address their doubts and misconceptions and fears. To solve the problem of college completion, you first need to get inside the mind of a college student.

For our purposes as educators, Hypothesis is an easy-to-use tool for collaboratively studying web resources.

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle. FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO BERNARDO Who's there? FRANCISCO Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

Mission: Build an entry level (under $500) EDM machine for making carbide/HSS tooling and/or lead screws.

The computer science taught in colleges still focusses more on theory than on commercial application; the business of teaching practical coding skills has the whiff of trade school. So-called coding “boot camps,” such as General Assembly, founded in 2010, are trying to fill the gap, teaching crash courses in how to design Web sites and write code. But Jake Schwartz, the co-founder and C.E.O. of General Assembly, told me, “There’s simply not enough senior people in the system.”

Britain’s Coalition government is rushing through an anti-terrorism bill that would require universities to take action to stop students and staff from being drawn into terrorist activity. According to Home Secretary Theresa May, this would require higher education institutions to ban extremists from speaking on campus.

If we can’t keep raising costs for students (we can’t) and if no one is coming to save us (they aren’t), then the only remaining way to help these students is to make a cheaper version of higher education for the new student majority.

The federal government already spends enough on student aid to cover tuition for every public college student in America. Maybe it's time to try.

Audrey Watters, hackeducation.com Education APIs: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I wish I had not known the wretched-ness of wasting so much of my youth in this way. I wish that the scholars of rhetoric and dialectic would heed my advice and would sometimes think of the truth and usefulness of their subjects instead of tenaciously and obstinately quarreling over matters which they have naively accepted at a first hearing, without ever giving them proper consideration

the rules which are laid down in the art of oratory could not have been observed, and noted, and reduced to system, if they had not first had their birth in the genius of orators

For it is because they are eloquent that they exemplify these rules; it is not that they use them in order to be eloquent.

For even the art of grammar, which teaches correctness of speech, need not be learnt by boys, if they have the advantage of growing up and living among men who speak correctly.

But the other sort of speakers call that force which ought rather to be called violence.

But there are some things concerning this point that very naturally deceive the unskilful; for division, though it is of great consequence in pleadings, diminishes the appearance of strength; what is rough is imagined more bulky than what is polished; and objects when scattered are thought more numerous than when they are ranged in order.

Still it must be allowed that learning does take away something, as the file takes something from rough metal, the whetstone from blunt instruments, and age from wine; but it takes away what is faulty, and that which learning has polished is less only because it is better.

That mere boys should sit mixed with young men, I do not approve; for though such a man as ought to preside over their studies and conduct may keep even the eldest of his pupils under control, yet the more tender ought to be separate from the more mature, and they should all be kept free, not merely from the guilt of licentiousness, but even from the suspicion of it

Of these professors the morals must first be ascertained, a point of which I proceed to treat in this part of my work, not because I do not think that the same examination is to be made, and with the utmost care, in regard also to other teachers (as indeed I have shown in the preceding book), but because the very age of the pupils makes attention to the matter still more necessary. 3. For boys are consigned to these professors when almost grown up and continue their studies under them even after they are become men. Greater care must in consequence be adopted with regard to them in order that the purity of the master may secure their more tender years from corruption and that his authority deter their bolder age from licentiousness. 4. Nor is it enough that he give, in himself, an example of the strictest morality, unless he regulate also, by severity of discipline, the conduct of those who come to receive his instructions.

For minds, before they are hardened are more ready to learn, as is proved by the fact that children, within two years after they can fairly pronounce words, speak almost the whole language, though no one incites them to learn; but for how many years does the Latin tongue resist the efforts of our purchased slaves! You may well understand, if you attempt to teach a grown up person to read, that those who do everything in their own art with excellence are not without reason called παιδομαθεῖς (paidomatheis), that is, "instructed from boyhood." 10. The temper of boys is better able to bear labor than that of men, for as neither the falls of children, with which they are so often thrown on the ground, nor their crawling on hands and knees, nor, soon after, constant play and running all day hither and thither, inconvenience their bodies so much as those of adults, because they are of little weight and no burden to themselves, so their minds likewise, I conceive, suffer less from fatigue, because they exert themselves with less effort and do not apply to study by putting any force upon themselves, but merely yield themselves to others to be formed. 11. Moreover, in addition to the other pliancy of that age, they follow their teachers, as it were, with greater confidence and do not set themselves to measure what they have already done. Consideration about labor is as yet unknown to them, and as we ourselves have frequently experienced, toil has less effect upon the powers than thought.

Do not players on the harp, for example, exert their memory and attend to the sound of their voice and the various inflections of it, while at the same time they strike part of the strings with their right hand and pull, stop, or let loose others with their left, while not even their foot is idle, but beats time to their playing, all these acts being done simultaneously

The teacher will he cautious, likewise, that concluding syllables be not lost; that his pupil's speech be all of a similar character; that whenever he has to raise his voice, the effort may be that of his lungs, and not of his head; and that his gesture may be suited to his voice, and his looks to his gesture. 9

SOME TIME is also to be devoted to the actor, but only so far as the future orator requires the art of delivery, for I do not wish the boy whom I educate for this pursuit either to be broken to the shrillness of a woman's voice or to repeat the tremulous tones of an old man's. 2. Neither let him imitate the vices of the drunkard nor adapt himself to the baseness of the slave; nor let him learn to display the feelings of love, or avarice, or fear: acquirements which are not at all necessary to the orator and which corrupt the mind, especially while it is yet tender and uninformed in early youth, for frequent imitation settles into habit.

At present, the negligence of paedagogi seems to be made amends for in such a way that boys are not obliged to do what is right, but are punished whenever they have not done it. Besides, after you have coerced a boy with stripes, how will you treat him when he becomes a young man, to whom such terror cannot be held out, and by whom more difficult studies must be pursued? 16. Add to these considerations that many things unpleasant to be mentioned, and likely afterwards to cause shame, often happen to boys while being whipped, under the influence of pain or fear. Such shame enervates and depresses the mind, and makes them shun people's sight and feel a constant uneasiness. 17. If, moreover, there has been too little care in choosing governors and tutors of reputable character, I am ashamed to say how scandalously unworthy men may abuse their privilege of punishing, and what opportunity also the terror of the unhappy children may sometimes accord to others. I will not dwell upon this point; what is already understood is more than enough. It will be sufficient, therefore, to intimate that no man should be allowed too much authority over an age so weak and so unable to resist ill treatment.

Therefore, a child is to be admonished, as early as possible, that he must do nothing too eagerly, nothing dishonestly, nothing without self-control, and we must always keep in mind the maxim of Virgil, Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est, "of so much importance is the acquirement of habit in the young."

But supposing that either interest, or friendship, or money, should secure to any parent a domestic tutor of the highest learning, and in every respect unrivalled, will he, however, spend the whole day on one pupil? Or can the application of any pupil be so constant as not to be sometimes wearied, like the sight of the eyes, by continued direction to one object, especially as study requires the far greater portion of time to be solitary.

People think that morals are corrupted in schools; indeed they are at times corrupted, but such may be the case even at home.

et it is not to be concealed that there are some, who from certain notions of their own, disapprove of this almost public mode of instruction.

I do not disapprove, however, the practice, which is well known, of giving children, for the sake of stimulating them to learn, ivory figures of letters to play with, or whatever else can be invented, in which that infantine age may take delight, and which may be pleasing to handle, look at, or name.

Nor let those parents, who have not had the fortune to get learning themselves, bestow the less care on the instruction of their children, but let them, on this very account, be more solicitous as to other particulars.

The study of Latin ought, therefore, to follow at no long interval, and soon after to keep pace with the Greek; thus it will happen that when we have begun to attend to both tongues with equal care, neither will impede the other.

And let no one suppose that I claim that just living can be taught;(25) for, in a word, I hold that there does not exist an art of the kind which can implant sobriety and justice in depraved natures. Nevertheless, I do think that the study of political discourse can help more than any other thing to stimulate and form such qualities of character.

For ability, whether in speech or in any other activity, is found in those who are well endowed by nature and have been schooled by practical experience

practical experience or to the native ability of the student, but undertake to transmit the science of discourse as simply as they would teach the letters of the alphabet, not having taken trouble to examine into the nature of each kind of knowledge

charging that I corrupt young men

I beg you, then, neither to credit nor to discredit what has been said to you until you have heard to the end what I also have to say, bearing it in mind that there would have been no need of granting to the accused the right of making a defense, had it been possible to reach a just verdict from the arguments of the accuser.

For men who have been gifted with eloquence by nature and by fortune, are governed in what they say by chance, and not by any standard of what is best, whereas those who have gained this power by the study of philosophy and by the exercise of reason never speak without weighing their words, and so are less often in error as to a course of action. Therefore, it behoves all men to want to have many of their youth engaged in training to become speakers

Please, then, to remember that there are two processes of training all things, including body and soul; in the one, as we said, we treat them with a view to pleasure, and in the other with a view to the highest good, and then we do not indulge but resist them: was not that the distinction which we drew? CALLICLES: Very true. SOCRATES: And the one which had pleasure in view was just a vulgar flattery:—was not that another of our conclusions? CALLICLES: Be it so, if you will have it. SOCRATES: And the other had in view the greatest improvement of that which was ministered to, whether body or soul? CALLICLES: Quite true. SOCRATES: And must we not have the same end in view in the treatment of our city and citizens? Must we not try and make them as good as possible?

还记得小时候的《思想品德》课么？它是道德教育的一种，但不是道德教育的全部。转型期的中国需要怎样的道德教育？全球化的时代是否需要全球普世道德？本周中国教育论坛邀请到了哈佛大学资深科学家和研究员魏毅先生来与我们共同探讨道德教育的话题。