MOOCs in a simple way !

http://www.wired.com/

We all know that MOOCs are the new 'a-ha'*  at Higher Education at all the best universities in the world. 

Since MOOCs first made waves in the fall of 2011, when then-Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun opened his graduate-level artificial intelligence course up to any student anywhere and 160,000 students in more than 190 countries signed up.

The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free and a challenge experience for professors and students.

In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and others, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a global community for the students, professors, and TAs. 

MOOCs are a recent development in distance education and often use open educational resources. 

More top colleges are offering free massive open online courses, but companies and universities still need to figure out a way to monetize them.

Now, those students who want to go for credit without going to college will have the opportunity to take a free massive open online course in every university of the world.

Questions still remain about the effectiveness of the assessment mechanisms associated with MOOCs, with many relying on peer review or on tests that can be marked by computers.

However, this is an increadible experience! I can say it to you!

Here MOOCs explanation in a simple way for those who are still sceptical. I hope it will be convincing.


G-Souto

07.05.2013

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

MOOCs in a simple way! by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Credits:

Video New York Times | Education

World Open Educational Resources Congress 2012

Photos: UNESCO

http://www.unesco.org/

The 2nd World Open Educational Resources Congress took place June 20-22, 2012 in the UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France. It was organized by UNESCO in full partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (USA).

"UNESCO believes that universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue. Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building."

Over 500 delegates including representatives of Government, educators, NGOs, and universities attended the Congress.

Photo: CC BY UNESCO (Paris)

http://www.unesco.org/

Abel Caine, Programm Specialist Communication and Information Sector (UNESCO) who managed the interface OER Congress was the unwearying host.

The agenda was complete and full of wonderful key-speakers. Many of the speakers highlighted the ways in which OERs are being used to innovate and improve local communities.

The conference was a two-part event that included the official Congress, with a negotiation component by UNESCO Member States (Room XI), and an Open Seminar that featured cutting-edge examples of OER practices through numerous workshops and seminars (Room XII).

Photo: CC BY UNESCO

Neil Butcher (South Africa)

http://www.unesco.org/

It is impossible to speak about all the speakers and workshops. We were divided between two rooms.
So, I decided to share with you some considerations about OERs and some ideas of two or three speakers that impressed me the most. 

The 20 June, during the Pre-Congress event, Neil Butcher, OER Strategist (South Africa) was a splendid speaker introducing to OER concept: "Beginners guide to OER, an introduction to OER and some of the keys issues to think about when exploring the use of OER". The introduction was followed by an open debate in the room and on Twitter.

I am not a beginner on OERs (Secondary Education - High School) but I really liked this debate that clarified some important issues for some of the participants.

Later, June 22, Neil Butcher took his place as "a realist" on the interesting debate "Idealists versus Realists" on the Future of Open Edicational Resources (OER) - Mainstreamiing and Partneeships" in a group of four.

"By being adaptable and accessible, OERs have the potential to solve the global education crisis and contribute to sustainable economic growth - if governments are prepared to act."

The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was coined at the 2002 UNESCO Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education.

OER Logo 2012

J. Mello, used under a Creative Commons license CC-BY

http://www.unesco.org/

"Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation."

UNESCO

"The open  nature of these materials represents a powerful opportunity for learners, teachers, Ministries of Education, and higher education and research institutions to increase the quality of and access to education."

Irina Bolkova, Director-General UNESCO
(message, June 20 2012)

For students, OERs offer free access to some of the world’s best courses and even degree programs. They can also offer huge cost savings as alternatives to expensive textbooks.

For teachers, ministries of education and governments, OERs provide free and legal access to some of the world’s best courses. Educators can then adapt them to local languages and cultures and use them as a basis for innovation.

But you don’t have to be a teacher or a student to understand the importance of OERs. Free information is a fundamental human right, and OERs make it possible for people of all ages and backgrounds to learn more about the world around them and access the tools they need to improve their lives and livelihoods.

 Photo: CC BY UNESCO

Dr Lawrence Lessig (Harvard USA)

http://www.unesco.org/

Dr Lawrence Lessig, Director of Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harward University (USA), delivering his keynote speech Peace at the opening of the 2012 World OER Congress was one of the best speakers, in my opinion. Incredible and spontaneous communicator that presented his approach to Open License and Ethics (a subject that divides a lot of academics). Really liked his speach. Very clear, positive and practical though pragmatic.

Starting June 21, Open Seminar and Exhibition showcases innovative OER projects from universities around the world, as well as from organizations such as Creative Commons and the SAIDE/OER Africa initiative.

Friday 22 June, Robert Schuwer Associate Professor and OER Expert presented the Wikiwijs: the Dutch National OER Strategie (2009-2013). To understand it, watch the video below:

Wikiwijs is commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to mainstream OER in The Netherlands. The platform is being created by the Open Universiteit and Kennisnet.

For the "2012 World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress", UNESCO called on OER experts worldwide to set-up an Open Exhibition of artful posters that could insightfully explain OER. 

http://www.unesco.org/

Over 45 posters and 100 publications, brochures, and other OER promotional materials were exhibited.

The posters demonstrate a very high level of talent and dedication to the cause of promoting Open Education. Posters are openly licensed and many have been contributed to UNESCO to set-up a permanent display. The gallery only displays a selection of posters opened licensed. 

I wrote a Poster about the use of OERs in Secondary Education, following the academic rules, not a promotional poster. So, I chose  not to display it on the virtual gallery because all the posters were promotional. 

Mr Abel Caine kindly suggested me that it would be a pity to display an academic Poster in a gallery with promotional posters. He was right.
He invited me to write something informal and to sent it to Unesco to be displayed. For the moment, I had no time. Perhaps later. I'm writing a scientific article to submit at a different conference. 

But, my Poster was shown in small format at the Exhibition for a day during the UNESCO OER Congress. June 21-22 2012.

Finally, on Friday 22 June, the "World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress" released the 2012 Paris OER Declaration which calls on Governments to openly license publicly funded educational materials. 

UNESCO World Open Educational Resources Congress sees Open Educational Resources (OER) as the key not only to solving the global education crisis but to unlocking sustainable global growth in the 21st century-that is, if governments are ready to seize on their potential.

http://www.unesco.org/

The Congress was organized as an open multi-stakeholder event. Presencial and virtual participants were able to follow and participate in the sessions and directly contribute to Paris OER Declaration via live-webstreaming or through Twitter.

I think, most of  all, as an individual researcher in Education that Millenials young people brought a fantastic new vision to schools and Education (all levels now) with their visual spatial skills - screen-generation - non verbal intelligence and multi-tasking attitude into the classroom.

As a "pioneer" educator in the use of OERs in school curricula (Secondary Education) and author of some OERs to captivate my students (in and around curriculum) and in and out school to increase their skills and competencies, motivating them to go further "in order to be effective workers and responsible citizens in the social-knowledge society of the 21st century" 

G-Souto

09.07.2012
Copyright © 2012G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

UNESCO World Open Educational Resources Congress 2012 by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

References:

Credits: Photos CC BY Mariana Bittencourt, CC-BY Davide Storti

Open Educational Resources
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/

What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)?

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/what-are-open-educational-resources-oers/

Speakers and Presentations | Seminar & Exhibition

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/events/calendar-of-events/events-websites/world-open-educational-resources-congress/open-seminar-and-exhibition/speakers-and-presentations/

UNESCO champions at 2012 OERs World Congress

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/news-and-in-focus-articles/all-news/news/unesco_champions_oers_at_2012_world_congress/

Fukushima: social media in the classroom

Yuriko Nakao/Reuters

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/

Millions of people in Japan have paid tribute, yesterday March 11, to the thousands of victims of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's north-east coast one year ago and sparked the world's worst nuclear crisis for 25 years.

"At 2.46pm local time (5.46am GMT), a year on from the moment the magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck, people across Japan bowed their heads and observed a minute's silence, while sirens sounded in the dozens of coastal communities still in mourning for the 15,800 people confirmed dead and 3,300 others still missing."

 Toru Yamanak/ AFP

http://referentiel.nouvelobs.com/

But, March 11 was also a day of protest against nuclear in Japan.

"The sense of loss was tinged with bitterness at the slow pace of reconstruction and the government's handling of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant."

It is difficult to write something about Fukushima. The newspapers and televisons of all over the world did it.

Fukushima was a terrible and courageous live-stream history fact that teachers and students followed on TV and news last year. 

Kyodo News/AP

http://static.guim.co.uk/

Education:

For those of us working in education, we need to make the most of this opportunity. 

We need to be digitally literate, and more than that, we need to find ways of doing our work in the classroom and online, to become open practitioners and digital scholars.

Schools across the world must consider to help their students observe the 1st anniversary of the 3/11 events. 

I know it is a delicate subject, as September 11 is, but young people make questions, they like to be informed and discuss all it happens around the world. And they have a conscious idea on it.

There are so many stories and so many lessons that can be taught! 

• Themes: Global warming, Natural disasters, Nuclear. It seems clear that nuclear facilities will be vulnerable to the effects of global warming;

• Curriculum: Geopgraphy, Sciences, Civics (values), Literature;

• Levels: all levels (primary to secondary education).

Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

http://static.guim.co.uk/

"So many stories are ultimately about how small acts of kindness could bring a little humanity, even in a tragedy that defies all imagination" that we can share with students about Fukushima disaster!

Open resources are a most value for school curriculum. Open education goes across the boundaries of formal and informal, children and adults, across academic disciplines.

In their comments, students are very enthusiastic and encouraging of the notion of open educational resources.

Learners can access a curriculum which is more flexible, visible, blended and integrated with real life experience, which allows them to integrate learning and life and which can provide a bridge into school from informal learning.

If you need, here some important links of social media that can be integrated and explored in school curricula as open educational resources (English and French):

English language:

Japan marks  first anniversary of eartquake and tsunami

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/11/japan-earthquake-disaster-tsunami-anniversary

Japan disaster one year on: earthquake and tsunami victims remembered - video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/mar/11/japan-earthquake-one-year-on-video

Japan earthquake and tsunami anniversary - in pictures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2012/mar/11/japan-earthquake-tsunami-disaster-anniversary

In the Wake of Disaster

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/11/world/asia/in-wake-of-disaster.html?ref=asia

Pictures: Japan Tsunami, Then and Now
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/pictures/120309-japan-tsunami-earthquake-anniversary-fukushima/#/japan-earthquake-tsunami-before-after-wave-after_49808_600x450.jpg 

French language:

Un an après Fukushima, le Japon contre le nucléaire

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/tsunami-un-an-apres/20120311.OBS3484/un-an-apres-fukushima-le-japon-manifeste-contre-le-nucleaire.html

Fukushima en six leçons

http://planete.blogs.nouvelobs.com/archive/2012/03/09/fukushima-en-six-lecons.html

Japon: la vie volée des enfants de Fukushima

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/tsunami-un-an-apres/20120309.OBS3429/japon-la-vie-volee-des-enfants-de-fukushima.html

Les japonais, la nature et l'apocalypse
http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/actualites/20110322.OBS0101/les-japonais-la-nature-et-l-apocalypse.html 

Japon: "Récits de Fukushima": une web-série d'Arte

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/tsunami-un-an-apres/20120308.OBS3337/japon-recits-de-fukushima-une-web-serie-d-arte.html

"En huit épisodes, le réalisateur belge Alain de Halleux part à la rencontre de familles de Japonais et d'expatriés, confrontés au quotidien à la radioactivité. Un "ennemi invisible" qui a bouleversé leurs vies. Mesurer la radioactivité de son environnement, de sa nourriture, tenter d'obtenir des informations fiables... Et finalement, quitter Fukushima ?

Alain de Halleux poursuit son travail documentaire sur les enjeux et les risques du nucléaire. Il est notamment l'auteur de "RAS nucléaire, rien à signaler" (2009) et de "Tchernobyl for ever" (2011)." 

Un mannequin, dans la zone interdite de Fukushima, peu après la catastrophe. (Sipa)

http://referentiel.nouvelobs.com/

Côtè littéraire:

Fukushima mon amour

http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/essais/20120309.OBS3382/fukushima-mon-amour.html

Nucléaire: les écrvains japonais se rebiffent
http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/actualites/20120228.OBS2503/nucleaire-les-ecrivains-japonais-se-rebiffent.html


Some conclusions:

Each practitioner must adapt the theme and media information for students they are teaching.

"Openness to ideas, recognition of contextual differences, negotiation of meanings and co-creation of materials are central to learning and teaching in the subject areas of school curriculum."

Reading & writing:

After the exploration of the digital resources, and other documents from  research homeworking (individual or in group), and an open discussion in the classroom or online,  ask your students to write:

• essay

• new

• story

• poetry

Final activity (cross-curricula) : a school newspaper.

Ask your students to think of the papers available. Make their different from all the others.This is a great way to learn how to make a0 newspapaper.

It means sharing moments of significant learning and collaborative, socializing, creativity and productivity as reflected in the valuation of individual talents.

Students love this activity. They can show entirely their creativity. You will see!


"We shall not let our memory of the disasters fade, pay attention to disaster prevention and continue our effort to make this land an even safer place to live."

Emperor Akihito 


G-Souto

12.03.2012

copyright © 2012G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Fukushima: social media in the classroom by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

'Dinosaurs of the Lost Continent' in the classroom!

Image: Illustration by James Gurney

"Herd of Kosmoceratopsdinosaurs grazes among the cypress trees 76 million years ago in a primeval swamp in what is now southern Utah."

http://www.scientificamerican.com

• Scientific American published a feature article in the March issue. This article and the video spport that can be very useful for teachers and students: Dinosaurs of the Lost Continent.

"The American West once harbored multiple communities of dinosaurs simultaneously - a revelation that has scientists scrambling to understand how the land could have supported so many behemoths."

James Gurney paleoartist

Image: Scientific American

http://www.scientificamerican.com/

• Between 90 million and 70 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period, a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, subdividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses. Scientists refer to the western landmass as Laramidia.
• In the 1980s a researcher proposed that distinct dinosaur communities inhabited the northern and southern regions of Laramidia for several million years. Critics doubted that so many large animals could have shared this relatively small chunk of land, however.
• But over the past decade discoveries in southern Utah have bolstered the notion of distinct dinosaur communities in the north and south, revealing a host of species new to science—including many giant varieties.
• Exactly what enabled so many behemoths to coexist in such a small area remains unclear, but it may be that dinosaurs had lower energy requirements than today’s large terrestrial animals do or that plants during the Late Cretaceous provided more food than their modern-day counterparts. Read more here
• Watch the video below where the paleoartist James Gurney is creating the illustrations for "Dinosaurs of the Lost Continent".

"We are continually trying to illuminate things from the past, present and future. For this feature, we needed to depict rarely illustrated dinosaur species. We turned to James Gurney because he is adept at constructing lost worlds. Here is a short "how-to" lesson on how he went about re-creating long-extinct dinosaurs, making them come to life on our pages.

Education: 

The power of interactive exercises in the classroom is ubiquitous. Video lectures to watch in the classroom with the teacher available to help give students the possibility to interact more easily with the school curriculum. Remember Salman Khan and Let's use videos to reinvent education.

This is a fantastic video! A high quality teaching video that gives a good resource to improve Geography, History or Sciences curriculum. 

Students are fascinated by dinosaurs. And watching the video, they will be able to understand the evolution of the world.

Today there are many teachers who use videos in the classroom and other digital resources to enrich the school curriculum thus flipping the traditional classroom script. 

The students love to evolve in their skills using different data. They are excited and work better in school time.

And why not inviting your students to explore the making of a video?

A teacher’s value is not in the information stored in their head, I'm always  writing that. Teachers must have the ability to pull together the best learning resources to produce a desired outcome. 

"Creativity is not some exotic, optional extra. It's a strategic issue."

Sir Ken Robinson

G-Souto

03.03.2012

Copyright © 2012G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Dinosaurs of the Lost Continent  in the classroom by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

References:

Credits: video Scientific American

Scientific American: Illustrating the Lost Continent

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dinosaurs-paleoartist-illustrates-dinosaurs~

Dinosaurs of the Lost Continent

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dinosaurs-of-the-lost-continenthttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dinosaurs-paleoartist-illustrates-dinosaurs