MIT: Connecting STEM Topics to Real World

http://tll.mit.edu/help/stem-concept-videos

MIT has gone into the movie-making business to help engineering students understand how the concepts they're learning about in class apply to the real world. The university's Teaching & Learning Laboratory has produced 47 "STEM Concept Videos," all of which have Creative Commons licenses and are freely available on the school's Web site as well as through its OpenCourseWare site.

The videos cover themes in the courses that are part of first- and second-year engineering curricula, such as problem solving, communications, probability and statistics, equilibrium and nine other broad categories.

The Big Mistake in eLearning?

Thanks to Padraig McDonagh for suggesting this video:

Some talking points:

- eLearning spans both training and teaching, and sometimes all the customer wants is information-level training, they need to figure this out with the instructional designers' help.

- oftentimes Instructional Designers are told that something has to be done yesterday, so they fall back on the old favorites

- eLearning development can be any two of the following three criteria, but never the third: GOOD, CHEAP and QUICK. So if you want it GOOD and CHEAP it won't be QUICK. So if you want it GOOD and QUICK it won't be CHEAP. So if you want it CHEAP and QUICK it won't be GOOD

- We need to champion examples of excellent eLearning,and make all managers aware of how excellent eLearning looks so that crappy (manual on a CD) eLearning is no longer acceptable

- This is a knowledge management problem,instead of _asking_ the organisation what they want, we  have_elicit_ their requirements from them using things like repertory grids and triadic elicitation to fully understand their need, and built what they need as opposed to what they want.

15 Free Online Learning Sites Every Entrepreneur Should Visit by Sujan Patel

Thanks to Aleksandra Szczecinska for suggesting this link:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238908

================================================

Being a successful entrepreneur means you have to wear a lot of hats, especially when your company is just starting out and you don’t have enough employees to cover all the areas you need.

Learning the new skills necessary to start a new business can be expensive, but fortunately the initiative for free, high-quality, educational resources online has only continued to grow in the past few years. Below are some of the resources available to learn more about marketing, entrepreneurship, business management and more.

1. CodeAcademy

This great resource offers free interactive programming sessions to help you learn programming languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. You can save your progress as you go with a free account. Learning to code can help entrepreneurs fix bugs if they don’t have a developer, or even go down the road of building their own website or products (such as apps).

2. HubSpot Academy 

The free certification program offers courses on inbound marketing, including website optimization, landing pages and lead nurturing. These skills are a must for business owners as they try to grow their business and online presence.

Related: 21 Resources to Make You a Better Entrepreneur

3. Moz

If you want to learn search-engine optimization to make sure your website is as visible as possible, check out this treasure trove of resources from SEO leader, Moz. Besides having the free Moz Academy, there are also webinars (live and recorded), and beginner’s guides to SEO, social media and link building.

4. LearnVest

The most successful entrepreneurs know how to manage their money both on a business and personal side. In addition to having extremely affordable finance classes, LearnVest also offers some of its classes for free, such as “Building Better Money Habits” and “How to Budget.”

5. Niche consultant courses

The Internet has made for a coaching boom, which is extremely helpful to entrepreneurs who want to learn how to start or better a business in a specific niche. Some great coaches and organizations that routinely have free courses and ebooks on building a business include Natalie MacNeil and MyOwnBusiness. Try searching “niche keyword” + “business course” to find one most applicable to you.

6. edX

This free site currently has over 300 courses on a variety of topics, including “Financial Analysis and Decision Making” and “Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer?” These courses not only cover business in general, but can also you help learn more skills that are applicable to your industry, such as big data or environmental conservation.

7. Khan Academy

This free learning resource was created to give everyone access to education in math, science, art, technology and more. There are over 100,000 interactive exercises to put your education to practical use. Even though many of the courses are geared toward high school students, there are several courses that would be good for anyone to have a refresher on, such as taxes and accounting.

8. MIT Open Courseware

These are actual courses taught at MIT and offered for free on the sitefor viewing and reading at your discretion. The school put together anentrepreneurship page that lists available courses that are beneficial to new business owners. Courses include “Early State Capital” and “The Software Business.”

9. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

This university has almost 100 free on-demand college courses that are extremely applicable to entrepreneurs, including ones that cover business planning, operations and management and small-business tax.  

Related: Listen and Learn From These 9 Emerging Entrepreneurial Podcasters

10. Coursera

Much like MIT’s Open Courseware, this site has 114 educational partners that provide free courses to almost 10 million users. One benefit toCoursera is that there are very specific courses that fit perfectly into particular niches, such as “Data Management for Clinical Research” from Vanderbilt University and “Innovation for Entrepreneurs: From Idea to Marketplace” from the University of Maryland. Its wide network of partners allows for a greater selection.

11. OpenCulture

This site isn’t an educational platform on its own, but rather collects and shares free resources from around the web. Its list of 150 free online business courses is a great resource because it offers classes from iTunes U and other lessons on video and audio. The site also has lists of free audiobooks, certificate courses and other online courses.

12. YouTube

It’s probably unsurprising to most users that YouTube is one of the world’s largest search engines, as there are literally videos on just about anything you can imagine. From TED talks to recorded presentations on building a business, it’s a great free resource on just about any topic.

13. Alison

This platform offers free online courses from some of the most well-known names on the internet today, including Google, Microsoft, and Macmillan. With over 4 million users and over 600 courses already, it covers topics such as economic literacy, personal development and business/enterprise skills.

14. Saylor

The Saylor Foundation offers tuition-free courses and also works with accredited colleges and universities to offer affordable credentials. Its course offerings are similar to what you’d see when working toward a bachelor’s degree.

15. Podcasts

Even though it’s not an official course, podcasts are an amazing (and easily digestible) way to become a better entrepreneur. Podcasts can be listened to via streaming on your computer (if that certain podcast offers it) or via iTunes for iOS and apps such as Podcast Republic for Android. Podcasts such as Entrepreneur of Fire already garner thousands of listeners every episode and are a great way to learn the most up-to-date information and strategies possible. Another good list of entrepreneur podcasts include Think Entrepreneurship's.

Whether you learn best by audio, video or text, this list of 15 learning resources for entrepreneurs can help you learn more about building a business, accounting and getting customers.

The 12 apps of Christmas

The 12 apps of Christmas is being offered by the Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre at DIT, and facilitated by Frances Boylan. Based on a similar programme led by Chris Rowell at Regent's University London. Starting on Monday 1st December, and continuing for 12 working days until Tuesday 16th December, an app will be considered each day. A short demonstration of how the app might be used in a teaching and learning context, and there will be an optional exercise.

Already there is an active twitter stream using the hashtag #12appsDIT.

Like an advent calendar, there is a sense of excitement about what might be behind the next door!

GlobalEdCon: Connecting Educators and Organizations Worldwide

http://www.globaleducationconference.com/page/2014-conference-recordings

The fifth annual Global Education Conference is a free week-long online event bringing together educators and innovators from around the world. This event will be held on Monday, November 17 through Friday, November 21, 2014. The entire conference is virtual and will take place online in webinar format. Sessions are held around the clock to accommodate participant time zones. The Global Education Conference is a collaborative, inclusive, world-wide community initiative involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels. It is designed to significantly increase opportunities for connecting classrooms while supporting cultural awareness and recognition of diversity and educational access for all. 

As conference sessions conclude, the links below will begin to take you to the recordings. No results for a link could indicate the session has not been held yet, the recording has not processed yet, or the session was cancelled. The first recordings to appear will be the full Blackboard Collaborate recordings -- in a few days the .mp3 and .mp4 recordings will then appear.

Check out the GlobalEdCon Keynote sessions on YouTube.

Listings are alphabetical by the last name of the primary presenter. Use Ctrl+F/Cmd+F to search.

1,000 Years of Scientific Texts From The Islamic World Are Now Online

Between the 9th and 19th centuries, Arabic-speaking scholars translated Greek, Latin and even Sanskrit texts on topics such as medicine, mathematics and astronomy, fostering a vibrant scientific culture within the Islamic world. Some of the most influential texts are now available at the Qatar Digital Library.

The library, a joint project of the British Library and the Qatar Foundation, offers free access to 25,000 pages of medieval Islamic manuscripts. Among some of the most significant texts are The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (1206 A.D.), which was inspired by an earlier, 9th-century translation of Archimedes' writings on water clocks. Devices such as the "Elephant Clock" (pictured below) were the most accurate time-keeping pieces before the first pendulum clocks were built in the 17th century by the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens.

The Guardian: Doctor Who's new web game aims to teach children programming skills

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/20/doctor-who-web-game-bbc-programming-coding

Latest attempt to make coding fun for kids involves rescuing a Dalek and exploring the unscreened world of Sontar.

Doctor Who’s latest adventure sees him teaming up with a Dalek and trying to save the universe, but also teaching children some early computer programming skills.

This isn’t a TV show, however: it’s a game due to launch on Wednesday 22 October on the broadcaster’s CBBC website. The Doctor and the Dalek includes voice narration from current Doctor Peter Capaldi, and a new story by Phil Ford, who has written for the TV show.

The free web game is aimed at 6-12 year-olds, and involves freeing a battered Dalek from a ship of Cybermen, then building it back up to full strength through puzzles based on the programming elements of the new English computing curriculum.

Children will be combining instructions to accomplish a given goal, using variables to alter behaviour, exploring repetition and loops, and using their logical reasoning skills in order to rebuild the Dalek.

More at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/20/doctor-who-web-game-bbc-programming-coding

STEM Metrics Interactive Website

The Outlier Research Group at the University of Chicago have identified eight variables that are at work in inclusive STEM high schools. Those variables include: 

• staff foundations, 
• personalization of learning, 
• problem based learning, 
• rigorous learning, 
• school community and belonging, 
• career technology and life skills, 
• external community, and 
• essential factors. 

All of these variables can be explored further at their interactive website.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics free online

Caltech and The Feynman Lectures Website are pleased to present this online edition of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Now, anyone with internet access and a web browser can enjoy reading a high quality up-to-date copy of Feynman's legendary lectures.

However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose.

This edition has been designed for ease of reading on devices of any size or shape; text, figures and equations can all be zoomed without degradation.

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/

The Ultimate Directory Of Free Image Sources by Dan Leeman

The Edublogger spent some time categorizing our favorite sources for free images and organizing them in such a way as to help you find what you’re looking for. 

http://www.theedublogger.com/2014/07/09/the-ultimate-directory-of-free-image-sources/

Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2014)

*******************************************************************

Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2014)
April 28-30, 2014, Dublin, Ireland
www.iicedu.org

*******************************************************************
The IICE is an international refereed conference dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practices in education. The IICE promotes collaborative excellence between academicians and professionals from Education.

The aim of IICE is to provide an opportunity for academicians and professionals from various educational fields with cross-disciplinary interests to bridge the knowledge gap, promote research esteem and the evolution of pedagogy. The IICE 2014 invites research papers that encompass conceptual analysis, design implementation and performance evaluation. All the accepted papers will appear in the proceedings and modified version of selected papers will be published in special issues peer reviewed journals.

The topics in IICE-2014 include but are not confined to the
following areas:
*Academic Advising and Counselling
*Art Education
*Adult Education
*APD/Listening and Acoustics in Education Environment
*Business Education
*Counsellor Education
*Curriculum, Research and Development
*Competitive Skills
*Continuing Education
*Distance Education
*Early Childhood Education
*Educational Administration
*Educational Foundations
*Educational Psychology
*Educational Technology
*Education Policy and Leadership
*Elementary Education
*E-Learning
*E-Manufacturing
*ESL/TESL
*E-Society
*Geographical Education
*Geographic information systems
*Health Education
*Higher Education
*History
*Home Education
*Human Computer Interaction
*Human Resource Development
*Indigenous Education
*ICT Education
*Internet technologies
*Imaginative Education
*Kinesiology & Leisure Science
*K12
*Language Education
*Mathematics Education
*Mobile Applications
*Multi-Virtual Environment
*Music Education
*Pedagogy
*Physical Education (PE)
*Reading Education
*Writing Education
*Religion and Education Studies
*Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
*Rural Education
*Science Education
*Secondary Education
*Second life Educators
*Social Studies Education
*Special Education
*Student Affairs
*Teacher Education
*Cross-disciplinary areas of Education
*Ubiquitous Computing
*Virtual Reality
*Wireless applications
*Other Areas of Education
- You can submit your research paper at http://www.iicedu.org/IICE-2014%20April/Paper%20Submission.html

or email it to papers-2014@iicedu.org


Important Dates:
*Research Paper, Student Paper, Case Study, Report Submission Date: January 30, 2014
*Extended Abstract (Work in Progress) Submission Date:  January 25, 2014
*Proposal for Workshops Submission Date:  January 20, 2014
*Notification of Workshop Acceptance/Rejection:  January 31, 2014
*Posters Proposal Submission Date: January 25, 2014
*Notification of Posters Acceptance/Rejection: January 30, 2014
*Notification of Extended Abstract (Work in Progress) Acceptance/Rejection: February 01, 2014
*Notification of Research Paper, Student Paper, Case Study, Report Acceptance/Rejection: February 10, 2014
*Camera Ready Paper Due: February 28, 2014
*Early Bird Registration (Authors and Participants): December 30, 2013 - March 15, 2014
*Late Bird Registration Deadline (Authors only): March 16, 2014 - March 30, 2014
*Late Bird Registration Deadline (Participants only): March 16, 2014 - April 14, 2014
*Conference Dates: April 28-30, 2014

For further information please visit IICE-2014 at www.iicedu.org