The Next Disruption
I always tell my students this…and some may even believe it – but one reason I love teaching in this digital age is that being a teacher is less about expertise as it is about facilitating learning…and that includes my own learning. So I tell my students that I learn as much from them as […]
Teaching Over the Waterfall
I unplugged a bit this past week. My wife and I were celebrating our 46th wedding anniversary with a trip through western Pennsylvania, visiting two of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses – Kentuck Knob and FallingWater. Both houses were interesting in that they pushed the boundaries of what typical houses were. One of Wright’s core beliefs […]
Tools Retrograde
For the 12th year in a row, Jane Hart is once again asking professionals to vote on their own top tools for learning. I always look forward to Jane’s call for votes…as it provides an opportunity for me to reflect on my own use. Last year’s compilation can be found here. My post last year […]
Learning Centered Questions for ELearning Design
Two days ago, Faculty Focus posted an excellent article on Is My Teaching Learning Centered?. One aspect of this post that really resonated with me was that it was question-driven. My good friend Enoch Hale has said in the past that: “…the questions we ask drive the thinking we do. Conversely, the questions we fail […]
Defining Online: Ask the Machines?
Dave Weinberger had a very interesting post on Backchannel last week that suggest AI now has knowledge we will never understand. Dave noted: “We are increasingly relying on machines that derive conclusions from models that they themselves created, models that are often beyond human comprehension, models that “think” about the world differently than we do.” […]
Should Students Blog?
During the second week of EDU 6323 – Technology as a Medium for Learning, I had my graduate students examine blogging for learning. In addition to starting Michelle Miller’s Minds Online, they read Stephen Downes’ Educational Blogging, Henry Jenkins‘ Why Academics Should Blog, Steve Wheeler’s Seven Reasons Teachers Should Blog, Sue Waters‘ Top 10 Ways […]
Seminal Books on Online Learning
Monty Jones at VCU emailed several of us today with an interesting thought query from Brianne Adams: What are the seminal texts in online education? Given how fast the field has evolved, are there any? I have been evolved with online education for two decades, and along the way, there were books that had a […]
First Week in EDU6323
It has been awhile since I blogged…but as I move into retirement from faculty development and spend more time teaching adjunct, my blog offers a place to reflect on my online teaching. I am currently teaching a graduate course for Northeastern University – Technology as a Medium for Learning (EDU6323). I was asked to completely […]
Blimage Challenge: The Rock Arch
A new blogging challenge has emerged called blimage – a “blog image” challenge: You must use an image sent to you and “incorporate it into your blog, and write a post about learning based on it…Then pass an image of your choice on to someone else so they can do their own #blimage challenge.” Read […]
Direct Instruction and Learning Science
Kristi Bronkey had a nice article in Faculty Focus yesterday entitled “Re-Thinking Direct Instruction in Online Learning.” She noted that while direct instruction had a bad reputation associated with passive learning, it did not have to reflect passivity. She suggested a model framed around the notions of “I Do, We Do, and You Do.” I […]
