Learning and Teaching at BCIT: February 2012

February 27, 2012

Treating Higher Ed's 'Cost Disease' With Supersize Online Courses - Technology

"Professors should move away from designing foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the basis of "intuition," she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses."

February 23, 2012

OnLive Desktop Plus Puts Windows 7 on the iPad in Blazing Speed

"It's a tiny app — about 5 megabytes. When you open it, you see a standard Windows 7 desktop, right there on your iPad. The full, latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader are set up and ready to use — no installation, no serial numbers, no pop-up balloons nagging you to update this or that. It may be the least annoying version of Windows you've ever used."

Ever wonder where tweeting will take you next? How about live tweeting an open-heart surgery

"Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, TX live tweeted an open heart double bypass surgery from beginning to end on February 21st, 2012. These are the tweets, pictures and videos of the #MHopenheart procedure."

Note: the surgeon was not doing the tweeting! Have a look in normal Storify mode or in slide-show format.

Storify was used to make this story. Storify is a blogging tool that allows you to embed tweets and Facebook posts in addition to photos, videos, etc.

Having edited perfusionist and other health sciences course materials with case studies woven throughout, I could see this kind of resource used to bring to life the step-by-step of a medical procedure.

Ontario universities urged to move more classes online

"A report before the Ontario government is calling for universities and colleges to move a third of their courses online — a proposal that's received a failing grade from a prominent students' organization."

February 21, 2012

Strategies for innovation in post-secondary education

Tony Bates writes:
"to move an innovation from an isolated pocket to a scale that works, often investment and extra resources are needed, for instance, to ensure the software application is robust enough to scale, or to improve its usability. There should be a set of criteria to asses the success of an innovation.
Above all, innovation in teaching and learning should be a strategic goal of the institution, and as such should determine priorities, budgets, reward systems, and include a set of policies and actions to support innovation. Improving learning outcomes or improving the quality of learning (however defined) should be in there somewhere, as should cost benefits."
Read more....
http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/02/21/strategies-for-innovation-in-post-secondary-education/

iPad Screencasting: Educreations and Explain Everything

"One academic task the iPad lends itself towards is screencasting. After all, the iPad is portable, powerful, and has been used with other presentation mediums (Keynote,PowerPoint, and Prezi) since its release because users have the option to create, save, and share all in one compact and visually-robust device. However, it's been less obvious how to find screencasting software for the iPad. Screencasting is not a new phenomenon; previous ProfHacker and Chronicle posts have included a Screencasting 101 primer, a how-to guide on whiteboard screencasts and some lessons in screencasting, among other tutorials. The intersection of these two teaching tools—iPads and screencasts—has been largely absent from these discussions, yet this combination has the ability to create great learning material for a variety of disciplines and classroom formats (face-to-face, mixed mode, and distance learning alike)."

February 17, 2012

Going Digital

American entrepreneur, author and public speaker Seth Godin shares his thought on the end of paper.

http://bit.ly/wnQPeu

In a related info graphic OnlineUniversities.com illustrates how higher education is going digital.

http://on.mash.to/AdxuFk

Both posts tie back to organizations that stand to benefit from these trends (Amazon and OnlineUniversities.com) so there could be a touch of bias in these reports but interesting none the less.

February 10, 2012

NMC Horizon Report > 2012 Higher Ed Edition just released

"This ninth edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning."
http://www.nmc.org/publications/horizon-report-2012-higher-ed-edition

Encouraging Distraction? Classroom Experiments with Mobile Media

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/encouraging-distraction-classroom-experiments-with-mobile-media/38454

February 7, 2012

Harvard Seeks to Jolt University Teaching

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"A growing body of evidence from the classroom, coupled with emerging research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is lending insight into how people learn, but teaching on most college campuses has not changed much, several speakers said here at Harvard University at a daylong conference dedicated to teaching and learning...."
http://chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Seeks-to-Jolt/130683

5 Ideas to Support Innovation in Higher Ed | Inside Higher Ed

From Inside Higher Education:
"What would you say if you were asked to list the 5 principles, ideas, actions, steps, or investments you would make to support and catalyze innovation in learning and scholarship at your institution?
Here are my 5 ideas, and I'm hoping that they will be improved, changed, deleted, re-written, and evolved by our discussion.
1. Embrace that the Smartest Person on Campus is the Campus
2. Develop a Common Language Around Innovation
3. Support the Core While Running Lots of Experiments
4. Practice Collaboration by Difference
5. Invest in a Continued Conversation"
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/5-ideas-support-innovation-higher-ed

February 6, 2012

Trends that impact learning and education

This communique from the Horizon Report Retreat highlights 10 megratrends that impact learning and education worldwide, which will be the focus of the next Horizon Report. Albeit some of these may not be a surprise to most educators, I like to compare these trends with my own worldview as it related to learning and teaching.

February 3, 2012

A glimpse into the future?

Corning Glassware is used as a display on many of today's smartphones and tablets. One year ago the company produced a short YouTube video called "Day of Glass" on how we might interact with technology in the future. The video went viral and has since received 17M hits.

"A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked." is the sequel to the company's popular first projection. Despite its corporate feel, we get an interesting perspective on how this company envisions the classroom and medical clinic of the future.

One thing is clear: the private sector has the resources to drive innovation and influence our course.