Assessment isn’t really my thing. That doesn’t mean I do not see it as important. I am interested in learning. Assessment for learning should help teachers and learners alike in developing their learning. But all too often assessment has little to do with learning. Indeed assessment has emerged as a barrier to the development of effective teaching and learning strategies especially collaborative learning using web 2.0 and social software tools.
This presentation by Luis Tinoca follows the present trend of adding 2.0 on the end of everything but is a useful exploration of how we can use technologies to support assessment for learning
In a blog post about the BETT show in London I complained that there was little evidence about using technology for teaching and learning. And that is why I like this presentation by Helen Keegan. Whilst she looks at a whole series of web and social networking tools the whole focus is on real life use. I particularly like her advice on slide 32 – “Leave space in the course to allow space for play, emergent curricula, serendipity and opportunity.”
This is a very neat piece of video editing by Luca Agnani highlighting the use of digital lighting and art. A good way to sart the New Year đ (via Mariarosa di Nublia).
Posted in Multimedia, Video | Comments Off on Digital Showcase
In one of those curious cultural quirks, thousands of Germans will settle down this evening to watch the annual new years eve showing of ‘Dinner for One’, a 1963 comedy starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden. Why, no-one quite seems to know.
But now there is a remake The 90th Euro Rescue Summit â or Euros for No One by satirist Udo Eling who, according to the Daily Telegraph, “teamed up with state broadcaster ARD to rework the original, putting the French president’s head on butler James’ body, and the German Chancellor’s head onto the body of Miss Sophie.”
Unlike the original which is broadcast in English, the new version is in German. And for those of you whose German is not quite up to scratch the Daily Teegrapgh provides a helpful summary.
“Mrs Merkel follows the original Miss Sophie in assuming that her long-dead friends are there â whose drinks are all supped by the butler â and talks of former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
She also reprimands an absent British Prime Minister David Cameron that “German will be spoken at the dinner.”
True to the original, Mr Sarkozy, the butler, drinks for all his mistress’ guests and gets increasingly inebriated, prompting Mrs Merkel to say: “Nicolas, think of your credit rating!” – a reference to the downgrades looming over France from international ratings agencies.
At the end he helps her upstairs for what in the original is referred to as “the same procedure as every year” and in the satirical version would be conducted without Eurobonds. The butler says to Miss Sophie he will do his best as ever, promising to give Merkel his “Triple A”.”
OK….this is a techy video. But it is important. In an age when large software companies are increasingly controlling the internet, YaCy has been developed as a free search engine that anyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet or to help search the public internet. YaCy developers say:Â “When contributing to the world-wide peer network, the scale of YaCy is limited only by the number of users in the world and can index billions of web pages. It is fully decentralized, all users of the search engine network are equal, the network does not store user search requests and it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index. We want to achieve freedom of information through a free, distributed web search which is powered by the world’s users.”
I stumbled on thie excellent Art Threat web site featuring 10 documentary films on capitalism and economics. Art Threat says “With the Occupy Wall Street manifestations taking up much of our social and political imaginations these days, we thought weâd highlight a few great films that bring context to the current uprising and related issues.”
The first to be featured is The American Ruling Class, described as “An imaginative hybrid film (a dramatic documentary musical no less!) that follows the former editor of Harperâs magazine, Louis Lapham, as he encounters and provokes the haves of American society while giving due time to the have-nots and their rascally resistance tactics.”
Posted in Multimedia, politics, Video | Comments Off on 10 documentary films on capitalism and economics
I’ve been working on a series of webquests on the use of the internet far careers guidance and counselling. And I stumbled on this great blog by Elle Dyson. Elle is making a a mini cartoon series following the journey of ‘Jenny Jobseeker’ as she battles through the unemployment jungle. As she says there are limitations to the free version of Go animate (the online tool she used to make the cartoon) but, she says, “it serves as (I think) a rather nifty tool for engagement – providing a little bit of advice, giving them a bit of a laugh, and most importantly engaging them in the service, encouraging them to access support from us, and in accessing local opportunities.”
No apologies for featuring another video from the Occupy movement. The Tent City University blog reports that on Wednesday we have Tristan McCowan, Rosie Peppin Vaughan and Elaine Unterhalter (all of Institute of Education, London) who will be looking at how universities can and have connected to social movements and on Thursday we have Ken Jones, Clare Kelly and Maggie Pitfield (all of Goldsmiths, London) hosting a discussion on the âThe School and the Streetâ.
They have a great programme and its a lot cheaper than most other English universities!
As Geoff Cain says, “I was at the Open Education 2011 conference this week and David Wiley had the good sense to invite Jim Groom in to rattle cages and shake the chains. I have been reading his stuff for sometime. You can follow him on twitter here and his blog is always worth reading, but it is really a whole other experience to meet him in person. As a distance education director, I almost never say that. He is the favorite exuberant uncle who occasionally breaks the furniture. His mind is clear but his soul is mad. and here he is at his Dionysian best.”
The sound quality is sometimes a bit ropey but don’t let that put you off. Watch it all!
This is interesting stuff from Nancy White taken from a presentation on the #Change11 Massive Open Online Course. The Contents are well worth a watch. But why I have linked to it is the process. I guess this presentation was using Elluminate. And most presenters in Elluminate – or for that matter other online conferencing applications – struggle to involve participants. Nancy has no such problems!
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a âconversational chatbot of a specific personâ created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.
This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points â including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isnât the only platform struggling with its algorithm â YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.
Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years
The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).
Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups â 18.8 percentage points â is the widest itâs been since 2006/07.
The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.
Quality Training
From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.
We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.
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