Critical Thinking and Computer Conferencing: A Model and Tool to Assess Cognitive Presence

The adoption of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in higher education has far out-paced our understanding of how this medium should be used so as to best promote higher-order learning. This medium is substantively different, in several important ways, from face-to-face classroom teaching. A number of other scholars are now trying to remedy this deficiency in our understanding by studying various aspects of the use of CMC in this educational environment. --
DR Garrison, T Anderson, W Archer, T Context - American Journal of Distance Education, 2001

On the Concepts of Knowledge and Learning...

A research paper about the diversity of concepts of learning and knowledge and the variety of ideas about definitions. It studies the meaning of Socratic methods in the knowledge society and analyses some examples of knowledge creation from Plato and Dewey as it focuses on the seven arts of reasoning and rhetoric of inquiry from the point of view of learning and knowledge.

Michigan Considers Requiring High-School Students to Take at Least One Online Course

The Michigan State Board of Education is set to approve a new graduation requirement today that would make every high-school student in the state take at least one online course before receiving a diploma.

International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences Announced the Winners for 2005

On May 1st, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences announced the winners of the eighth annual Webby Awards. http://www.webbyawards.com/ . I encourage you to look at these sites and see how instructional design methods, format and layout were used in development.

Many of these winners used interaction methods to convey a message, information and promote education for their audiences. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is dedicated to the creative, technical, and professional progress of the Internet and evolving forms of interactive media for effective transference of information and learning. The Webby Awards is the leading international honors for web sites. Nominees are judged on their content, structure and navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and overall experience.

This Years Educational Winners are:

Education Webby Award Winner: Knowing Poe http://knowingpoe.thinkingport.org/

PeopleÂ’s Voice Winner: Monterey Bay Aquarium http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/

Other Educational Nominees are:

· BBC Worldwide Interactive Learning http://www.open2.net/

· 24 Hour Museum http://www.show.me.uk/

· Traditions of the Sun: Chaco Culture National Historical Park http://www.traditionsofthesun.org/

And Last Year's Winner for Education include:

· Webby Award Winner BBC-Human Body http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody

· People's Voice Winner NationalGeographic.com Education www.nationalgeographic.com/education

Other Education Nominees were:

· BBC - Human Body http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody

· Halifax Explosion http://www.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion

· NationalGeographic.com Education http://www.nationalgeographic.com/education

· Newseum - The Interactive Museum of News http://www.newseum.org

· Shakespeare: Subject to Change http://www.ciconline.org/bdp1/

Other - Honorable Mention Winners were:

Two of the world's leading public broadcasting networks won multiple awards.

· PBS.org won for Best Television and its P.O.V. Borders won for Best Broadband. http://www.pbs.org/pov/borders/index_flash.html

· BBC-affiliated web sites received three awards: BBC Human Body (Best Education)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody

· BBC News (Best News) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

· BBC Sport (Best Sports) http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport

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A taxonomy for instructional design: Levels of teaching

The presenters will focus on a pragmatic and effective taxonomy to inform the selection of educational methods and guide instructional design and the use of technology. Levels of the taxonomy are defined by how questions are used.

Animated Pedagogical Agent to Assist Learners

This paper examines the use of a pedagogical agent to help learners develop their electronic portfolio. Contribution to the current literature is twofold. First, the rising use of electronic portfolios demands tools to support and motivate learners. Second, the use of pedagogical agents may prove beneficial in the development of electronic portfolios, but has not yet been exploited.

American Sign Language Digitalized

Avenue ASL, an integrated software environment to capture, evaluate, self-assess, and manage American Sign Language (ASL) performance, is being developed at the University of Minnesota to improve student language learning and increase the efficiency of existing assessment/instructional processes. The software enables students to capture videos of several signlanguage assessment tasks and submit them via a computer network for assessment based on research.

Fair Use Policies Revisited

We should periodically look at Fair Use policies, especially for the electronic environment. Copyright is very much in a state of flux at the moment, with rules being reconsidered at both national levels and at the international level through bodies such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It is arguable and demonstrable that the rights enjoyed by publishers are currently being addressed. The copyright protections that we normally associate with print also govern the use of audio, video, images, and text on the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW). The intuitive interface of the WWW makes it easy for the computer user to copy and use images, text, video and other graphics that are likely to be protected by copyright. The University of Maryland University College provides educators with fair use guidelines to avoid copyright violations and legally use copyrighted materials to enrich their learning environment.

For more, check Stanford University Library &/or a synopsis of "Copyright in an Electronic Environment, " the Copyright Law in the Electronic Environment and a new section 512 of the Copyright Act provides greater certainty that educational institutions providing network access for faculty, staff, and students will not, merely by doing so, become liable for infringing material transmitted over the network. ."In addition, review the Government's contribution to academic learning for enrolled students in DL.

True Believers: Digital Game-Based Learning in the Military

Business people are slowly “getting it.” Schools “get it” here and there. But the U.S. Military “gets it” big time. The Military has embraced Digital Game-Based Learning with all the fervor of true believers. Why? Because it works for them. And trust me; the guys in charge of training at the Pentagon are a very sharp group. They have seen and evaluated everything.

Do They Really Think Differently? by Marc Prensky

In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part II, Marc Prensky suggests our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing video games, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen—all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading. These are today’s “Digital Native” students.

In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, he discusses how the differences between our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great many of today’s educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives’ brains are likely physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up. And I submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their “native language.”

The Wikiversity Project

As the Blogging and "WIKI" worlds expand and evolve, this site is proving to be most interesting to those focused on the educational environment. The purpose of the Wikiversity project, which will ultimately reside at www.wikiversity.org, is to build an electronic institution of learning that will be used to test the limits of the wiki model both for developing electronic learning resources as well as for teaching and for conducting research and publishing results (within a policy framework developed by the community).

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