Why music education is changing

David Reed looks a the current changes across music education and contends that it is not the internet or other technologies which are causing the change but instead the needs and desires of the students. From musician as multiple personality performer to musician as a person

Musicians play for others. A musician’s purpose is to delight audiences and impress other musicians. His success can be measured by the number of gigs he gets, the salary he earns and also the respect and fame he enjoys among other musicians. And every one of these attitudes is so thoroughly ingrained in our culture that we continue to teach music this way today even though it no longer makes any sense whatsoever.

In full

MIT’s Online Threat to the Higher Education Cartel

In this article, Bob Adelmann looks at the potential impact of MITx and how with an open learning platform that is free and online including MITx credentials, other educational institutions may follow suit with MIT offering the platform to other universities who offer massive open online courses.

Will it break down barriers?

In full

29 reasons why every child should blog

On February 29th

Stripped down blogging to its simplest form to record one special day in time across the globe. As soon as the first time zone entered Feb29th.net this blog was open to posts. By simply filling in a form, visitors were able to post onto this blog and record their words on this extra special day. As February 29th has passed by all the time zones, this blog has now closed for posting. Over the next few days, additional features will be added enabling visitors to search tag, posts and keywords. I’d like to thank the 20,000+ unique visitors that descended on this project blog. I think I can say that it was a HUGE success. Thank you!

Including an inviting 29 reasons from the class about why every child should blog

In full

Social Media still confusing and scary

In this post, Joe Prasad refers to the results of various surveys which indicate social media usage but not much social e-commerce such as providing / sharing financial information on social media sites.

He also looks at usage of social media in the workplace and employer relationships

In full

 

Promoting innovation and evidence-based approaches to building resilience and responding to humanitarian crises

By Giorgio Bertini

At the end of 2011, the United Nations called for humanitarian assistance to be both scaled up and made ‘smarter’ as global emergencies continued to expand in both frequency and complexity.  DFID has launched a new strategy to meet this challenge.  The strategy, ‘Promoting innovation and evidence-based approaches to building resilience and responding to humanitarian crises’, aims to go beyond simply responding to crises by investing in approaches that promote resilience.

It tackles directly four key problems in the global community’s current response to crisis to humanitarian crises: First, that decision-makers do not have routine access to good information about risk; second that we don’t really know which interventions are most effective in reducing risk, saving lives and rebuilding livelihoods after crises; third, that there is insufficient capacity to build resilience or mount responses when disaster strikes; and forth, that decision-makers are not always using available evidence to inform their decisions.

Getting to know you: Introducing Teresa Penedo

Contributed by Liz Renshaw

I teach in two places – e-learning with adults and children’s dance and gymnastics.

My name is Teresa. I am MSc. in Human Movement, and live in Brazil.

2. Why did you decide to participate Change11?

I thank my friend Daisy Grisolia who told me about the course. I immediately accepted and was very happy.

3.What were a couple of highlights so far in Mooc?

I learn a lot in the Mooc each week. The CCK11 was shorter than the Change 11 Mooc.

4. How do you deal with the abundance of information on Mooc?

I am not afraid of the flow of information. I take what immediately catches my attention. I am happy in this tangle of information. I like the chaos because it represents numerous possibilities and freedom.

5. How are you going to build and sustain your Personal Learning Network?

I love blogs, and I intend to build a blogroll to continue reading.

6. Do you see any disadvantages with any social networking tools?

I do not know any social networks that do not have friends! I like to experiment to see whether they are good or bad.

7. Did some presenters really resonated with you?

They all leave their share of knowledge. Some of the subjects were very new to me.

8. Anything else at all!

I love MOOCs.

15 Inspiring Examples of Free Online Education

This list provides links to videos, open courseware, webcasts, wikis and more from a variety of institutions

All 15

And a useful overview of the thinking behind massive open online education, see also from George Siemens on Moocs for the Win and Stephen Downes on Education as Platform and the Mooc Experience:

Go Figure: Young People Measure World Differently

Robert M. Thorson reflects on how he felt old as a pre-teen, he had completed some surveying work of his local area with a variety of objects, but how his son had connected his digital watch to his laptop and mapped showing GPS locations.

In full

Questions of creativity

David White reviews the Berkman Center ‘Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality’ report looking at interaction, information and context. He situates it within the Digital Visitors and Residents JISC project, noting that higher education should be analysing reports of engagement and learning behaviours amongst learners from schools and whether learning practices are changing as they enter university

In full

Learning for the future

Phil Race describes the difference in the roles of educators as information has become more accessible, available and technologies have developed. He outlines what he believes are factors of successful learning and touches on what is being measured.

“We need to modernise our assessment tactics to be more online, more digital, more virtual, more face-to-face, more use of social media technologies, and more interactive. We know that assessment drives learning – just ask students. But as long as assessment is predominantly (hand)written, learning in higher education will continue to lag behind other aspects of our advancing civilisation.”

In full

And speaking of measuring learning, registration available for Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2012 in Vancouver, Canada – 29th April – 2nd May