creating original material that exploits the unique characteristics of video is time-consuming, and still relatively expensive, because it usually needs professional video production

the availability of free material for educational use is improving all the time

many instructors and teachers have no knowledge or experience in using video other than for recording lecturing

attention must be paid to ensuring opportunities for student practice and feedback

In such contexts, composed textual responses, such as essays or written reports, are likely to be necessary, rather than multiple-choice questions or multimedia reports.

Having the whole book gives readers more freedom to interpret and add their own conclusions than just having a summary chapter

The move towards more interactive communications media and away from broadcast media then has profound implications for education (as for society at large).

cMOOC

students can interrupt the lecture to ask questions which can lead to a more narrow, targeted discussion

in-person lectures or seminars were considered the gold standard

taking part in the events described.

The key educational significance of recorded media is that a student can access the same learning material an unlimited number of times, and at times that are convenient for the learner.

learning styles

When I started analyzing the questionnaires, I was struck particularly by the ‘open-ended’ comments in response to the television and radio broadcasts. Responses to the printed components tended to be ‘cool’: rational, calm, critical, constructive. The responses to the broadcasts were the opposite: ‘hot’, emotional, strongly supportive or strongly critical or even hostile, and rarely critically constructive.

who is in charge of using technology for teaching? Who makes the decisions about the design of a MOOC or the use of an animation?

In particular we need to know how best to design and apply media (rather than technology) to facilitate learning.

They just sit there until commanded to do something or until they are activated or until a person starts to interact with the technology, or until a teacher and students fill the room.

whiteboards, pencils, chalk, computers, software programs such as a learning management system, or a transmission or communications network, are all technologies.

Social media are strongly associated with young people and ‘millenials’ – in other words, many of the students in post-secondary education.

mobile devices such as phones and tablets

George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier in Canada were using web technology to create the first ‘connectivist’ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

Despite large investments of research in AI for teaching over the last 30 years, the results generally have been disappointing.

Lecture capture on the other hand required no changes to the standard lecture model

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started making its recorded lectures available to the public, free of charge, via its OpenCourseWare project, in 2002.  YouTube started in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006. YouTube is increasingly being used for short educational clips that can be downloaded and integrated into online courses. The Khan Academy started using YouTube in 2006 for recorded voice-over lectures using a digital blackboard for equations and illustrations.

triumph of reason and science over superstition and beliefs

has a long history

The earliest generally accepted examples of Chinese writing

oral

context and values and beliefs

Yet learning is also a fundamental human activity that can function quite well (some would say better) without any technological intervention

a laggard in technology adoption

there is likely to be a single, ‘natural’ position on each dimension, subject to good design, in terms of exploiting the educational affordances of the medium

Technologies are merely tools that can be used in a variety of ways. What matters more is how technologies are applied.

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making knowledge more accessible; sharing stories; inspiring others; connecting audiences; preserving knowledge for future generations; disseminating information and cultur

Caring for and preserving this memory and heritage is a formidable task

And while some people want to reserve all of their rights, many want to share their work with the public more freely.

Copyright is automatic, whether you want it or not.

Persuading large land owners to give up some of their holding to landless peasants; Persuading small land owners to give up their individual ownership for common cooperative ownership by the villages; Encouraging farmers and villagers to spin and weave the cloth for their own clothes during their spare time from their agricultural pursuits.

virtual community

engaging content and interactive team building activities

People will say [education is] brainwashing

Saying brightly vague things (aka bullshitting) in a traditional “term paper” format just won’t cut it when one is responsible for making a reliable, verifiable public contribution to the world’s knowledge.

The belief that humans are essentially active, free and strive for meaning in personal terms

Some people will insist that technology is neutral — “it’s just a tool,” they’ll say. “What matters is how you use it.” But a technology always has a history, and it has a politics. A technology likely has a pedagogical bent as well — how it trains people to use it, if nothing else — and even if one tries to use a tool for a radically different task than it was built for, there are always remnants of those political and historical and pedagogical designs. Technologies are never “just tools.” They are, to borrow from the physicist Ursula Franklin, practices. Technologies are systems. Technology “entails far more than its individual material components,” Franklin wrote in The Real World of Technology. “Technology involves organizations, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset.”

openness means allowing access to all or a significant portion of a course without registration.

Online Learning: a Manifesto