2014 rundown of the best posts #1

#Santa's selfie

credits : Kainulainen/Lehtikuva Oy/SIPA

http://referentiel.nouvelobs.com/

Looking back at 2014 I've come up with a my roundup of what's been most-read on the G-Souto's Blog.

Below you’ll see the top posts along the first semester 2014 containing edtech, historical, linguistic, scientific, artistic, and social themes or resources I have relied for teaching and learning.

The selection is based on page views but also based on pedagogical relevance of the most read posts.

I kept the order of the most viewed, but eliminated the posts that seemed less relevant. The main reason is that sometimes certain posts acquire too much visibility, not for their value but for the keywords that the search engines "like" indexing.

Je suis ravie de partager avec vous le Top des posts les plus lus du 1er semestre 2014. Vous êtes de plus en plus nombreux à me suivre au quotidien.

Je vous remercie, chers enseignants, chers lecteurs, de votre intérêt et m’efforce d’être toujours au plus proche des événements concernant des idées pédagogiques pour vous offrir les dernières actualités en éducation et numérique. Bien sûr le numérique est essentiel.  Les technologies donnent aux jeunes des possibilités que les générations précédentes ne pouvaient pas avoir au même âge." 

Mais aussi aux grandes thématiques historiques, linguistiques, culturelles et sociales, des ressources en ligne, et de nombreuses observations personnelles sur la pédagogie de façon à faciliter à tous les élèves des chances égales de réussite.

Here are the 1st semester's most popular posts of 2014 :

Le Top 17 des posts du 1er semestre 2014 :

Éducation : Centenaire 1ere guerre mondiale

International Children's Book Day 2014 in school 

Education : Disconnect & Safer Internet 2014 

Langue Française : Larousse et Petit Robert 2015 

Exploring Animated Movies in Education 

Reading at school : Happy birthday Stephen Hawking 

Education : Dian Fossey, a great woman in the mist 

To mooc or not to mooc ! And what abou SPOCs

Education : Girls in ICT Day 2014

D-Day 70 in School : Resources 

Éducation : On parle films d'animation en français? 

Education : World Book & Copyright Day 2014 

Pluie d'étoiles : Sciences & Education

Global Action week on Education & Disability 

Spring equinox in school 

Apps for education : Touch Van Gogh 

Ler nas aulas de Português : Vasco Graça Moura

My crush of the #1st semester? The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Absolutely! A lovely Japanese folk tailer by  Isao Takahata (Studio Ghibli).

I hope there's something that looks of interest to you.  If it does, check it out. If you’re inspired use one of the icons to share it with others. And why noit to leave a comment?

May the coming year be a successful one for all those educators who love teach and see children as creative individuals. Preparing learners for the future should therefore be a prime function of all schools.

G-Souto

29.12.2014

Copyright © 2014G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

2014 rundown of the best posts #1 by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

January rundown of the best posts

Porto | Lighthouse Atlantic ocean

photo: Veselin Malinov

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/

Hello again from Porto, Portugal where I am months away from anything resembling warm weather. Rain, fast winds and huge storms on Atlantic ocean. 

Yes, Porto is a city open to the Atlantic ocean and huge storms are happening on the sea as you can see on the photo above.

http://www.nationallibrariesday.org.uk/

Before January  most popular posts, I would like to point the National Libraries Day 2014.

Tomorrow, Saturday 8 February 2014, is National Libraries Day. It rounds off a week’s worth of celebrations in school, college, university, workplace and public libraries across the UK

National Libraries Day shines a light on the people that provide access to knowledge in UK communities, workplaces, schools, colleges and Universities; librarians and information professionals. 

Every day they are improving literacy rates, connecting people with the information they need to succeed and helping to build a fair and prosperous society. 

So, get involved on National Libraries Day. Use the library events map to find out what libraries in your area are doing to celebrate National Libraries Day. Simply click on its Google Map to see what’s happening at a library near you.

And now, here are January's most popular posts:

To MOOC or not to MOOC! And what about SPOCs?

Apps for Educatipn: Touch Van Gogh

Comics in Education

First inGenious Competition for Schools : STEM

Éducation: Appli BnF

Education: Sciences on Mars

Education: Dian Fossey, a great woman in the mist

Education: The Book Thief and the Holocaust

I kept the order of the most viewed, but eliminated the posts that seemed less relevant. The main reason is that sometimes certain posts acquire too much visibility, not for their value but for the keywords that the search engines "like" indexing. 

As the last post of the selection is about books, I would like to finish this post, returning on libraries. I love libraries. 

Did you know that Portugal have two of the most beautiful libraries in the word?

University of Coimbra, General Libary

http://www.bestvalueschools.com/

The University of Coimbra General Library, Coimbra, Portugal and Mafra National Palace Library, Mafra, Portugal

Mafra National Palace Library

http://www.bestvalueschools.com/

“In the 21st century libraries are more necessary than ever. We are in the middle of an information revolution and librarians and information professionals are central to it. Their contribution to society is immense and wide-ranging and includes helping people to find work, supporting the government’s digital by default agenda, improving literacy and encouraging reading for pleasure."

Phil Bradley, CLIP President

G-Souto

07.02.2014
Copyright © 2014G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®


January rundown of the best posts by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

To MOOC or not to MOOC ! And what about SPOCs?

MOOCs & SPOCs

http://www.topmba.com/

2013 was the year od the MOOCs, remember? MOOCs were the big 'a-ha'*  at Higher Education at all the best universities in the world. 

In September 30, 2013, UCSD Jacobs (School of Engineering) published the article Is Massive Open Online Research the Next Frontier to Education?

Prof. Peter Struck (Université de Pennsylvanie)

photo: Mark Rourke|AP|SIPA

http://referentiel.nouvelobs.com/

On November 8th, 2013 the Nouvel Observateur (French journal) published an article MOOC ou pas MOOC, telle est la question. 

As 2013 came to a close, another proclamation about MOOCs arrived in this front-page Times headline: After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought. It was published on December 10th, 2013, in the New York Times.

Prof. Sebastian Thrun

photo:  Stephen Lam/Reuters

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/

“I care about education for everyone, not just the elite,” (...) “We want to bring high-quality education to everyone, and set up everyone for success. My commitment is unchanged.”

Sebastian Thrun

On my blog, I wrote some posts about MOOCs along 2013. MOOCs in a simple way (May 2013) and MOOCs, again ! (October 2013). On this last post, I shared two Infographics showing the impact of MOOCs in Europe and in the world. Impressive !

Yesterday, January 13th 2014, The Chronicle of Higher Education published two interesting articles: 

Innovation in 2014 : Welcome to the Evolution (Opinions & ideas)

"The concept behind the first MOOCs was to connect large groups of people in an online open forum rather than have a set of recorded lectures simply broadcast to the masses. At the research conference on MOOCs last month in Arlington, many of the MOOC pioneers noted that the next frontier will be the combination of that initial vision with the scale of teaching hundreds of thousands of students at once."

Jeffrey Selingo, Prof. Arizona Sate University

http://www.moocresearch.com/

And George Siemens Gets Connected (Technology).

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put George Siemens in charge of the project MOOC Research Initiative, a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that evaluates MOOCs' impact on teaching and learning. 

George Siemens presentation MOOCs: How did we get here at the Open Education Conference in November 6th 2013 (slides an video) is published on his website.
The focus is on his early experiences with MOOCs, their current state, and future directions (as well as some angst and hope).

He led a December conference at UT Arlington during which researchers and educators from the United States, Canada, and Europe shared information about MOOCs, their successes and shortcomings.

"Prominent during the conference was the recognition that educators need to start thinking about “what happens after MOOCs”. No clear consensus arose from the conversations that I participated in, but the general tone was one of expecting higher education to continue subsuming MOOCs under umbrellas of marketing and recruitment, alumni outreach, online/blended learning, and broadening the role of universities in a knowledge economy."

George Siemens

There are two good experts and critical thinkers, as well, that I would suggest to read: Tony Bates, and Stephen Downes.

On Tony Bates's website you will have the best thoughts about MOOCs. I can choose MOOCs MIT and Magic for example, but it's up to you to search on Bates' website other posts.

On Stephen Downes' blog, you can read some important thoughts about MOOCs as well. For example, Seminar on MOOCs, Lyon, France, day 2.

Don't miss his slides "MOOC, Diversity and Community in Online Learning" presented at Lyon Seminar.

And now, the Infographic below: "To MOOC or not to MOOC : MOOCs are hot, but is the sizzle about to fizzle?"

Source: TopCollegesOnline.org

"My understanding of the term ‘MOOC’ is a bit different; it is derived from a theory of learning based on engagement and interaction within a community of practitioners, without predetermined outcomes, and without a body of knowledge that we can simply ‘transfer’ to the learner.

And my understanding of the term ‘MOOC’ is based on five years of experience developing and offering MOOCs, from the very first MOOC, “CCK08”, created by George Siemens and myself in 2008, and run a total of four time in the years following, to MOOCs in personal learning environments, critical literacies, and more."

Stephen Downes, MOOC, Diversity and Community in Online Learning, slide 2

Questions still remain about the effectiveness of the assessment mechanisms associated with MOOCs, with many relying on peer reviews.

To date, the impact of MOOCs has been largely disseminated through press releases and university reports. The peer-reviewed research on MOOCs has been minimal. The proliferation of MOOCs in higher education requires a concerted and urgent research agenda.

The MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) will begin to address this research gap by evaluating MOOCs and how they impact teaching, learning, and education in general.

"The evolution of MOOCs provides a road map of how the larger debate over innovation in higher education might play out in 2014. In just five years, massive online courses evolved from those early experiments to the offerings from Coursera and edX to who knows what is ahead. This much, though, is certain: Many more front-page proclamations about the future of higher education may be proved wrong in the coming year, but without these early experiments, we can't ever evolve to what comes next."

Jeffrey Selingo, Prof. Arizona Sate University

And now there are SPOCs: Small Private Online Courses...

Let's see! The year just began !

G-Souto

14.01.2014
Copyright © 2014G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®


To MOOC or not to MOOC ! And what about SPOCs ? by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

2013 rundown of the best posts #2

Good morning from G-Souto's Blog, in chilled and rainy Porto, Portugal. How chilled is it? On New Year's Eve rainy & rainy day. That will complicate tomorrow evening social gatherings and fireworks around midnight to mark the new year. It's a tradition with a fascinating past.

I hope that everyone is enjoying a little time-out. Judging by the numbers of "page views" on G-Souto's Blog, many of you are using some vacation time to explore resources to use in your classroom in 2014. But if you've ignored school-related things during vacation week, that's great too. We all need some free time to do different activities.

On this post I'm re-running the most popular posts of the 2nd semester 2013. The selection is based on page views but also based on pedagogical relevance of the most read post.

I kept the order of the most viewed, but eliminated the posts that seemed less relevant. The main reason is that sometimes certain posts acquire too much visibility, not for their value but for the keywords that the search engines "like" indexing. 

Je suis ravie de partager avec vous le Top des posts les plus lus du 2e semestre 2013. Vous êtes de plus en plus nombreux à me suivre au quotidien. Je vous remercie, chers enseignants, chers lecteurs, pour votre intérêt et m’efforce d’être toujours au plus proche des événements concernant des idées pédagogiques pour vous offrir les dernières actualités.

Here are the 2nd semester's most popular posts:

Le Top 16 des posts du 2eme semestre 2013 :

Éducation: Parole aux enfants victimes d'exclusion

Visiokids: learning sciences in 3D TV

Musique au collège: Debussy & Google Doodle

Let's code at school: Europe Code Week

Albert Camus: littérature/philosophie au lycée

Education for Peace: International Peace Day

Visual learning in school: Stephen Hawking

Education: Stop natural disasters! Resources

Allez! On y est! Rentrée 2013

MOOCs again!

The digital divide? PISA survey 2012

Going Pink at School: Let's do it!

A propos d'école numérique

Parents & Teachers: The Smartest Kids in the World

Education: Time for Vitamine 'N'

Great Lx Conference 2013

My crush of the 2nd semester? Jack et la mécanique du coeur. Absolutely!

Surtout, n’hésitez pas à me faire part de vos commentaires, ou questions. Ce blog a pour but de favoriser les échanges et provoquer le débat. Alors, à bientôt j’espère sur le blog G-Souto's Blog!

Above all, do not hesitate to share your comments or send me your questions. This blog aims to promote communication, and induce some good debate about Education & ICT. So, I hope to see you soon again on G-Souto's Blog.

Find me on Twitter, or on Google+

I wish everyone the best! Happy New Year to all educators in the world!

Let's continue our beautiful work in 2014 with joy and creativity!

Happy New Year !

G-Souto

30.12.2013

Copyright © 2013G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

2013: rundown of the best posts #2 by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.