Flexknowlogy – Jared Stein

Nixty.com is billed as “a truly disruptive educational platform”, a free, public LMS aimed at delivering both traditional and informal, open educational experiences. Seth Gurell and I reviewed Nixty pretty thoroughly this week, then co-wrote this review. Michael Feldstein, Alan Levine, and others[1],[2],[3] have already provided some insights and serious commentary on the idea of Nixty and its claims. Our review neglects that side of the discussion and focuses on the basic features, usability, and feasibility of the system from a designer and a user perspective (more…)

University of Wisconsin – Extension hosts what I think is a pretty thorough introduction to evaluation logic models, a topic that grabbed my attention when first encountered in the Fitzpatrick, Sanders, and Worthen textbook “Program Evaluation”. In addition to resources and examples, the UWEX site includes a complete lesson module on logic models. Unfortunately the materials are not open licensed.

I’ve written very briefly and meekly shared with a few close colleagues my interest in the role of solitude in learning–especially in context of modern networked communication media–i.e. the web. Recently I’ve begun to consider how metacognitive strategies figure into a view of the learner as a necessarily solitary figure and as a (even occasional) member of a learning community). I read an article this week past weekend that sparked some ideas (more…)

I traveled to Denver this week for WCET 2009, and though I was sunk with a cold on the second day, so far I’ve enjoyed participating in the conference, and, as always, have found the Twitter backchannel (#wcet09) a great way to connect with more ideas, and more people (more…)

Those of you who know me personally probably know I’m into skateboarding. The following 4 minute video highlights some efforts to bring skateboarding into K-12 physical education, and even using skating as a gateway to learning about physics and construction. Au-then-tic!

• Watch Video: Skateboarding in Education

In my Web Essentials online course I facilitate a discussion on the future of internet technologies. One student focused on how education is, and, as you’ll see here, should be affected:

The internet is a rebel and a bully, threatening to destroy the established system of education that dictates how we learn. Shocked? Well, this is a good thing any way you look at it (more…)

The UVU campus is nearly uninhabited today as we swing into spring break. There’s no spring break at BYU, though, so I took advantage of my lightened workload to make it up to David Wiley’s IPT 692r – Intro to Open Ed course early, motivated in part by the fact that Russ Carlson, President of Blackboard, would be joining us in a discussion of the future of the learning management system (LMS) with respect to open education (more…)

Ron Hammond sent me this interesting introductory interview with Shai Reshef, founder of University of the People. University of the People is a free, open-access online university that relies on social networking, self-directed learning, and self-forming online communities:

• ABC Interview: Shai Reshef, University of the People

These notes pertain to Brian Lamb’s keynote on Feb 23, 2009 in Portland, Oregon at the ITC 2009 e-Learning conference. Resource/pres page: http://blogs.ubc.ca/open/open-up/ (more…)

This week I ventured to explore a number of OER projects and conduct a preliminary assessment of the reusability and remixability of the OER hosted in each. Based on earlier (albeit shallow) familiarity with some of these OER initiatives I am able to presume that the structure and technology of a selected sample OER from each is generally representative of all or most OER in the given project (more…)