Thursday, October 31, 2013

Socrates warns us about the dangers of new media



"I can­not help feel­ing, Phae­drus, that writ­ing is unfor­tu­nately like paint­ing; for the cre­ations of the painter have the atti­tude of life, and yet if you ask them a ques­tion they pre­serve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imag­ine that they had intel­li­gence, but if you want to know any­thing and put a ques­tion to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvary­ing answer. And when they have been once writ­ten down they are tum­bled about any­where among those who may or may not under­stand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are mal­treated or abused, they have no par­ent to pro­tect them; and they can­not pro­tect or defend them­selves."

- From Pheadrus

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Article on using Peerwise - learners generate, answer and rate MCQs

 Describes using Peerwise and developing a related community of practice

Biologists Discover Tiny Neural Computers in the Brain by George Dvorsky

http://io9.com/biologists-discover-tiny-neural-computers-in-the-brain-1453512218


Neuroscientists have learned that dendrites do more than just provide passive wiring in the brain. These nerve cell connectors also process information, essentially functioning as tiny computers. Our brains, it would appear, pack more computing power than we assumed. 

Dendrites are those branch-like extensions at the beginning of neurons that increase the surface area of cell bodies, or soma. These tiny outgrowths receive information from other neurons and transmit electrical stimulation to the soma.

You can’t read just one: Reproducibility and multiple sources By Bonnie Swoger

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2013/10/29/you-cant-read-just-one-reproducibility-and-multiple-sources/

There are lots of ways to mess with the heads of undergraduate students. Giving them a research assignment and failing to specify a minimum number of references needed is just one example.
“Include as many sources as you need to make your point and illustrate your thesis.”
For students, finding one scholarly article on their topic often seems to be enough. Researchers did an experiment, got some results, and answered the research question the student started with. All done, all set, time for dinner.
But science doesn’t work that way. One experiment may suggest something interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything. In fact, it is quite easy to point to many examples of intriguing scientific studies that were either proved false or that couldn’t be reproduced later on. Scientific ideas that are true should be reproducible: other researchers should be able to repeat the experiments and get similar results or use other methods to arrive at the same conclusions. You can’t say that you discovered something new if someone else can’t reproduce your result.

This fundamental scientific idea, reproducibility, may be in crisis. A recent article by Vasilevsky et al. in the journal PeerJ suggested that many scientific journal articles don’t provide the information that other scientists would need in order to replicate their results. Key information about chemicals, reactants or model organisms is often missing, despite journal requirements to include such information (Vasilevsky et al., 2013). And a recent item in The Economist suggests that this might not matter that much. The emphasis placed on new research (by funding agencies and tenure and promotion committees) means that few scientists even attempt to replicate the work of others (“Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab,” 2013).

All of this means trouble from the very beginning of a research project, before an experiment is even designed, when scientists start to do background research on their topics. In the same way that experimental scientists can’t rely on the results of just one experiment to prove something, relying on just one information source for knowledge is a sure way to end up with unreliable information. Journalists look for corroborating sources, wikipedia flags articles that need a wider variety of citations, and scholars need to find multiple scholarly articles to support their ideas.

Some innovative people, companies and publishers are trying to sort this mess out. A collaboration between PLOS ONE, Mendeley, Figshare and the Science Exchange will be attempting to replicate the results of selected projects as a part of the Reproducibility Initiative. The Reproducibility Project is a crowdsourced effort to evaluate the reproducibility of experimental results in psychology. And the Reproducible Science project aims to make the results of computational experiments reproducible by ensuring the sharing of code and data and by making that information available to reviewers who can test the results described in a manuscript they are reviewing.
Unfortunately, these innovative programs are just a drop in the bucket of modern science. Funding agencies, publishers and tenure and promotion committees still value original work more highly than verification work. Scientists who concentrated on replicating the work of others would risk their careers.
As a result it is important for students and scholars to be aware of the challenges facing the reproducibility of science. We teach students in introductory science classes that reproducibility is one of the hallmarks of science. As they learn more about their disciplines, they need to be aware of the practical challenges involved in reproducing the work of others, and the importance of finding multiple sources about a topic needs to be emphasized.

As a librarian, part of my job is to help students find additional sources related to their research topics, even if there isn’t a published reproduction of an original source. This isn’t about which database to use or whether to put quotes around a phrase. It is about getting them to think critically about their topics. For example, while there might not be a second study that repeated the experiment of the first, students can look for:
  • Studies that examined the same topic in a different way
  • Studies that used the same methodology on a different species, geographic area, etc.
  • Background studies on individual aspects of their research question, including the statistical analyses used
  • Studies that cite the original study (even if no one has tried to reproduce the results, other scholars might express doubts about their conclusions when they cite the original).
The issues surrounding reproducibility in science won’t be solved overnight, and it will take a concerted effort from scientists at all levels of the modern scientific enterprise to steer this very big ship. In the meantime, students and scholars can make special efforts to ensure that they are using the highest quality information available as the basis of their original studies.

Works Cited:
Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab.” (2013, October 19). The Economist, 409(8858), 26-30.
Vasilevsky, N. a, Brush, M. H., Paddock, H., Ponting, L., Tripathy, S. J., Larocca, G. M., & Haendel, M. A. (2013). On the reproducibility of science: unique identification of research resources in the biomedical literature. PeerJ, 1, e148. doi:10.7717/peerj.148.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Learning Object Repositories

Open Educational Resources
http://www.oercommons.org/

Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO) 
http://www.ucalgary.ca/commons/careo/CAREOrepo.htm

MERLOT 
http://www.merlot.org

JORUM  
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/

Education Network Australia (EdNA)
http://apps-new.edna.edu.au/edna_retired/edna/go.html

MIT Open Course Ware  
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Connexions Project at Rice University 
http://cnx.org/

National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS) 
http://www.needs.org/needs/

EducaNext 
http://www.educanext.org

Association learning technology  (ALT)
http://repository.alt.ac.uk/

INTUTE 
http://www.intute.ac.uk/

Bubl Information Service 
http://bubl.ac.uk/

Howard Gardner explains Multiple Intelligences

Behind The Scenes In The Making Of A MOOC by Michael Horn

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2013/10/14/behind-the-scenes-in-the-making-of-a-mooc/


The emerging world of K–12 blended learning remains a young field full of promise for personalizing learning and boosting outcomes for all students. More and more bright spots are emerging every day.

But there are also challenges. With the buzz surrounding 1:1 device programs and new classroom apps, there are risks that people might just take education technologies and layer it over the existing monolithic classroom processes and not fundamentally change the way students learn. The hype around and cramming of technology remains a serious risk to the field.

To help educators make the shift to blended learning that truly moves the needle for students, we’ve been working for the past few months with Silicon Schools Fund and the New Teacher Center to create a MOOC on Coursera about high-quality blended learning. The free course launches Tuesday.

Diving into the online-learning revolution about which I’ve written and spoken so much for the last seven years by actually creating an online learning experience has been a fascinating and humbling experience. Without the hard work of an entire team—from our team at the Clayton Christensen Institute to our partners and friends at the Silicon Schools Fund and New Teacher Center and from our videographer Eric L. Wong to The Learning Accelerator, which provided support—it’s been clear to me that we could not have pulled this off. This has made me appreciate so much more the hard work of those instructional designers who work to create high-quality online learning experiences for their full-time job—as well as how early we are still in the emergence of the newer MOOC platforms. It also makes me further wonder about the quality of much of what has been placed on the MOOC platforms to date. Below are a few behind-the-scenes shots of the making of the MOOC.

Continued at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2013/10/14/behind-the-scenes-in-the-making-of-a-mooc/

Bloom's Taxonomy According to Seinfeld

Why we need instructional design more than ever

David Merrill on Instructional Design

Free InDesign Annual Report

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Some Previous Assignments

Below are a selection of the resources designed and developed each year by participants working in small groups.

MSc Applied eLearning 2016-17
------------------------------
How to Compost
http://www.gerardkilkenny.ie/compost/

D'Northsiders: Famous places, and the people that make it.
https://dnorthsiders.wordpress.com

Emotional Learning
http://valerieconnor.wixsite.com/emotionelearning
Password: Emotion

MSc Applied eLearning 2014-15
------------------------------
Writing Academic Papers using APA
http://auraecommerce.co.uk/breda/story_html5.html

The Good Life
http://www.reelgood.com/moodle2211
Username: student1 Password: M0unta1n#
Guide to Automated Assessment
http://assessment.lucalongo.eu

Free Online Learner Online Assessment Tools
http://floatdit.zohosites.com


MSc Applied eLearning 2014-15
------------------------------
E-Learning Assessment for Successful Teaching
https://eastmsc.wordpress.com/

College Assignment Writing - An Introduction
http://joanhughes.wix.com/project-hashtag

The Fellowship School - Anti-Cyberbullying
http://fellowshipschool.net/


MSc Applied eLearning 2013-14
------------------------------
E-Toolbox - Mapping Technologies to Learning
http://elearnit.pbworks.com/w/page/70578191/eToolbox%3A%20Mapping%20Technologies%20to%20Learning

Team Woof - Online Resource for Puppy Training
http://hughmclain.ie/WOOF/

The BRAT Pack - Blended Resource for Academic Teaching
http://bratpack3.wordpress.com/evaluate/?preview=true&preview_id=29&preview_nonce=e9743edc8a

MSc Applied eLearning 2012-13
------------------------------
The Zoomable Microscope
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35330863/cystic_fibrosis_explorer/player.html

Child Obesity: A Guide for Parents
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7254603/child%20obesity%20-%20a%20guide%20for%20parents%20%28combined%20course%29/player.html

MSc Applied eLearning 2011-12
------------------------------
Study skills for students
http://studyskillsdit.yolasite.com

An elearning resource on the topic of Social Media Marketing
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5045823/Successful%20Social%20Media%20Marketing_Final_Jan6/player.html

MSc Applied eLearning 2010-11
------------------------------
Teaching resource for lecturers who want to use group work in their teaching  (as a zip file)
http://ditportfolios.learnonline.ie/view/view.php?id=932

MSc Applied eLearning 2009-10
------------------------------
Academic Writing for the New 3rd Level Student
http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2815

Becoming an eTeacher
https://sites.google.com/site/becominganeteacher/

Genealogy History Resource Finder
http://www.nialldixon.utvinternet.com/player.html

Resource on using wikis for learning
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Wikiresources

MSc Applied eLearning 2008-09
------------------------------
The Wizard of Oz movie
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Research/MScArtefacts/MSceLearning/2009/index.html

MSc Applied eLearning 2007-08
------------------------------
A Guide to Dublin
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Research/MScArtefacts/MSceLearning/2008/Group%20index.html