CMIS Evaluation Technology Focus » Professional Reading

Bridging the Divide

janning — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:30:43 +0000

The K-12 Online Conference invites you to join with educators from around the world to explore how Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. The FREE conference is run by volunteers and is open to everyone.

The 2009 conference theme is Bridging the Divide.

This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote by classroom teacher and international educator Kim Cofino the week of November 30, 2009. Use the CMIS vodpod collection at the right to view Maria Knee and the PR Committee’s conference video teaser.

During the two weeks, December 7-11 and December 14-17, over fifty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog and conference Ning for participants to view, download, and discuss.

The Getting Started pages on the K-12 Online Conference wiki provide all the information you need to participate in this world-wide event.

Australian contibutors to the event include Chris Betcher – watch his conference teaser below – and view others on the K-12 Conference ning video page [This link requires you to log in to ning]

Check out the full list of presentations which are organized into four strands.

WEEK 1: December 7-11, 2009

Getting Started (13 presentations)

Leading the Change (14 presentations)

WEEK 2: December 14-17, 2009

In the Classroom (13 presentations)

Kicking It Up a Notch (14presentations)

I’m planning to participate as part of my professional learning. Stop and say hello if you see me online – janning

Horizon Report: Australia New Zealand 2009

janning — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:46:01 +0000

Horizon Report 2009

The 2009 Horizon Report for Australia and New Zealand was released on September 25th, 2009 at the National Broadband Network Symposium at Griffith University.

The report is part of ongoing research by the New Media Consortium and aims to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry within education around the globe over a five-year time period

The report is available in web format and as a downloadable pdf [1.29MB]

The report describes six areas of emerging technologies that will impact eduction in Australia and New Zealand over the next one to five years.

These technologies are expected to have a penetration rate greater than 16-20% within:

The next year
- Moblie Internet devices
- Private Clouds
Two to three years
- Open content
- Virtual and alternate realities
Four to five years
- Location-based learning
- Smart objects

Permission is granted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license to replicate and distribute this report freely for non-commercial purposes provided that it is distributed only in its entirety.

This post from the Bright Ideas blog summarizes the salient points of the 102 page document.

Did you know?

janning — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:59:55 +0000

Take five minutes to consider the pace of change…It’s happening now.

Thanks to Kathryn Greenhill for the heads-up.

Cyberbullying in schools

mjmidolo — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:44:15 +0000

Cyberbullying has become more high profile in the community in the last few years as technology such as mobile phones and the Internet become more pervasive.

Funding from the Australian Government is producing new research, such as this done locally at Edith Cowan University. How to deal with the problem of the bullying from a school perspective is under discussion with the Cyber Bullying Intervention program, also under way at ECU.

For a range of Australian and international information and research, the CMIS Cyberbullying webpage provides links to some of the major work currently underway.

We have also started a Cyberbullying list in Delicious and will add new resources as they come to our attention. If you have access to an RSS reader or make yourself an igoogle page, you can subscribe to this Delicious list and get an alert as we add new items.

ICT Research

mjmidolo — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:53:48 +0000

A new edition of the WA College of Teaching (WACOT) Research Digest examines the use of ICT in schools, including the ICT literacy of Australian students.

It is one of a series of periodic digests produced by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) for the College.

Topics include:

Successful uses of ICT in schools
What do we know about the ICT literacy of Australian school students?
Is ICT availability and use associated with student performance?
What is the evidence of the impact of ICT on learning?
ICTs in Science classrooms
Interactive whiteboards
[see also the CMIS Interactive Whiteboards page]
Exploring impact on learning
Comment: ICTs and learning
Useful websites
References [2001-2008]

CMIS has an extensive section of our website that provides information for teachers on ICT in the Curriculum.

Technologies to Watch

janning — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:47:34 +0000

The 2009 Horizon Report, co-published by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) was released on 20 January, 2009.

The Horizon Report seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.

Each edition of the Horizon Report:

introduces six emerging technologies or practices that are likely to enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years

One Year or Less: Mobiles

One Year or Less: Cloud Computing

Two to Three Years: Geo-Everything

Two to Three Years: The Personal Web

Four to Five Years: Semantic-Aware Applications

Four to Five Years: Smart Objects

identifies and ranks key trends affecting the practice of teaching, learning, research, and creative expression according to how significant an impact they are likely to have on education in the next five years.

Increasing globalization continues to affect the way we work, collaborate, and communicate.

The notion of collective intelligence is redefining how we think about ambiguity and imprecision.

Experience with and affinity for games as learning tools is an increasingly universal characteristic among those entering higher education and the workforce.

Visualization tools are making information more meaningful and insights more intuitive.

As more than one billion phones are produced each year, mobile phones are benefiting from unprecedented innovation, driven by global competition.

The report is available for download as a pdf or you may view a web version.

Apologies: The audio/video comment option for this blog has been disabled due to inappropriate third-party advertising on the site.

Australia & NZ – Horizon 2008 Report

janning — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:45:01 +0000

‘The 2008 Horizon Report Australia – New Zealand Edition is the first in a series of regional reports (that) examines emerging technologies as they appear in and affect higher education in Australia and New Zealand.‘

The 34 page report identifies 4 Key Trends and 4 Critical Challenges likely to have significant impact in education in Australia and New Zealand in the next 5 years.

The body of the report presents the 6 Technologies to Watch in a time frame for their likelihood of broad adoption.

Key Trends	Critical Challenges
Movement away from desktop to mobile technologies Valuing of hands-on, purpose-driven, authentic active learning approaches Increasing connectedness; Reduced cost of collaboration Ubiquitous tools and lower entry costs areopening new e-learning/technology mediated learning	Protectionism limiting access to materials, ideas and collaborative opportunities Technical skills of teachers out of step with those of their students. Assessment as a barrier to adopting new tools and approaches Poor quality broadband limits school and home options
Technologies to Watch
Time to Adoption – One Year or Less Virtual Worlds and other Immersive Environments Cloud based Applications Time to Adoption – Two to Three Years Geolocation Alternative Input devices Time to Adoption – Four to Five Years Deep Tagging Next Generation Mobile

In this video Garry Putland (Education.au’s General Manager and Horizon Report advisory board member) discusses the future of technology in education with Education.au Chief Executive Officer, Greg Black.

Greg Black provides an Australian perspective on the four emerging technologies identified in the 2008 Horizon Report as being likely to enter the mainstream within the next few years.

UK report shows benefits of Web 2.0 in the classroom

mjmidolo — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:25:51 +0000

Becta is the UK government agency leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning. The agency has just published major new research into the use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs and social networking, by children between the ages of 11-16, both in and out of the school environment.

The purpose of the research was to inform policymakers and schools on the potential benefits of Web 2.0 technologies and how their use can be effectively and safely realised. It shows that young people are attracted to many of the Web 2.0 developments, some of which may also be appropriate to use in schools. It also found that, when used effectively, Web 2.0 technologies had “a positive impact on motivation and engagement through involving students in more participatory learning.”

Online, R U Really Reading?

mjmidolo — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:38:19 +0000

This interesting article in The New York Times focuses on the many positive and negative outcomes that are being seen as a new generation of students spend more of their time reading online. It is the first in a series that will look at how technology such as the Internet is changing the way we read.

If you’d like to follow up by continuing to use the Internet to read some of the research, try The New York Times Web Extra: Further Reading on Reading. And as a thought to ponder: “What do we as teachers need be doing to teach our students how to read online resources?”

Media and Communications report

janning — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:18:41 +0000

View a presentation on the
Media and Communications in Australian Families 2007 (4MB)
Once open, to bring up a new element on a page – just click somewhere on the body of that slide (not the arrow). Clicking on the arrows will take you to the next (or previous) slide.

Published on 17 December 2007 this report looks at how children use media and how parents mediate that use. It examines the use of the internet, free-to-air and subscription television, radio, mobile phones and games in the lives of Australian young people and families.

Available for download

Full report [PDF, 3.8 Mb] 369 pages
Overview [PDF, 248 Kb] 22 pages
Community research [PDF, 2.6 Mb] 186 pages
Review of research literature [PDF, 913 Kb] 154 pages
Also available from the ACMA page in Word format

Previously published on open the door…