Learning In a Flat World

I discussed the first week in the Coursera course, E-Learning and Digital Cultures, in my last post.  Now, four days later, it has been interesting to see the social side of this massive open online course unfold. Friday, I attended the Google Hangout session for the class.  Bud Deihl joined me in my office as [...]

I have just finished reading (and enjoying)  Linda Harasim‘s book, Learning Theory and Online Technology (Routledge Publishing, 2011).  She postulates that the learning theories of the past centuries need updating for the networked learning era in which we find ourselves.  Linda frames a new theory by taking us on a historical journey through the development [...]

Over the past month or so, we have taken our students in GRAD 602 on a carefully scaffolded journey through web technology to support teaching and learning.  With Jeff Nugent and our graduate fellow, David McLeod, we have laid out how the web is impacting the landscape of learning, suggested the use of Chickering and [...]

During the past spring in the course I co-taught with Jeffrey Nugent, we asked our graduate students in the Preparing Future Faculty program to create a personal teaching project.  Many chose to develop a teaching philosophy.  Several good ones are here and here and here. It occurred to me that I have not updated my [...]

The Fall semester wrapped up mid-December with my departure for two weeks to visit family in New England, so I never really had the opportunity to reflect on my first use of blogging as a mode for instruction and class communication.  Three grandkids have a way of prioritizing your time!  Now that I have returned [...]

Our team from the CTE at Virginia Commonwealth University, Jeffrey Nugent, Bud Deihl, and myself, head down to North Carolina tomorrow to present at the 2010 Elon University Teaching and Learning Conference: Connectivity in Higher Education.  Jeff is leading a presentation with me on new opportunities afforded by networked learning, while I am teaming with [...]

Over the weekend, I finished reading Bill Kist’s book The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age. Of course, given my past posts, this book really resonated with me.  But I think it is a good resource for any faculty exploring the use of social media in instruction.  One of the things I [...]

I am currently reading Bill Kist’s new book, The Socially Networked Classroom. While written for all levels of education from elementary through postsecondary, he focuses on the use of social media in classes from middle school and above.  As I continue to work with K-12 teachers in my graduate course, this book addresses many of [...]

I am about one-third the way through Charlene Li‘s and Josh Bernoff‘s 2008 book, Groundswell.  The groundswell that these two analysts from Forrester Research discuss is the impact of social media on businesses. Striking a similar theme to that espoused by Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody and David Weinberger in Everything is Miscellaneous, Groundswell [...]

. For the third year in a row, I had the opportunity to attend the University of Mary Washington‘s annual Faculty Academy with my colleagues Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl.  This was the fifteenth year in which UMW faculty have shared their creative ways of using technology in teaching and learning.  It has been interesting [...]