Best Practice 3: Discovery Educator Network

What is Discovery Educator Network?

The Discovery Educator Network (DEN) is a global community of educators who are passionate about teaching with digital media, sharing resources, collaboration and networking. With over 100,000 members, DEN provide professional development to educators worldwide. DEN also have exclusive access to wide rang of resources, professional development and networking opportunities which connects teachers both on-line and in person.

Basically at DEN, educators are able to read blogs and discussion boards as well as to search for content by grade level of a particular subject area. At the same time, the DEN streaming library contains hundreds of speeches with transcripts and encyclopedia articles. On the other hand, students also benefited from the DEN where they can access targeted streaming media content, assignments and quizzes. What is more interesting is that the DEN streaming media can be incorporated into WEB 2.0 applications to allow students to express their learning through different mobalities.

Success Story

The Discovery Educator Network (DEN) is a global community of educators passionate about teaching with digital media, sharing resources, collaborating, and networking. The DEN 4500+ STAR Discovery Educators have provided professional development to over 1 million educators worldwide, both on-line and in-person. Discovery Educators have exclusive access to a wide range of resources, professional development activities, networking opportunities and exclusive Discovery.

An online survey was done in March 2011 at Harvard Graduate School of Education to determine how the DEN has affected the school's professional development and their use of technology. The result found out that around 90% of educators said that the DEN has tremendously contributed to their professional growth. Nearly all reported that their use of technology had improved as a result of their involvement. The DEN clearly meets the needs among educators through providing an opportunity for them to share successes and receive meaningful and relevant support from each other. Not to mention keeping them keep abreast of current educational advances.

At the same time the respondents said that the DEN had helped them to professionally grow in their field. Educators are having access to great resources, getting new ideas about how to integrate technology and being able to keep up with current trends. Nearly all respondents reported that their technology use had improved and increased in some way as a result of their involvement with the DEN

Source: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com

Best Practice 2: Online Discussion Groups

What is Online Discussion Groups..?

Many universities operate their own software solutions to facilitate e-learning. However, such institutions has to meet the cost of acquisition, modification and operation of the software. Therefore, these higher learning institutions have another options which is to opt for a free software solution which hosted by several internet companies such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

With these free software solutions, the interactive group of learning can become more superior towards individual performance. This is because of the group's ability to pool their resources, to correct errors and to use qualitatively different learning strategies. As long as students have computers and are connected to the internet, they can have a 24-hour access to the service. And of course, what is more interesting is that the service is FREE!

Success Story
Monash University is Australia's largest university with 58,000 student and 7,000 staff. The research university is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and has a strong international focus. It has campuses in Malaysia and South Africa Malaysia, South Africa and Italy and over 250,000 alumni around the world.

In November 2009, Monash University has gone Google. The university set to offer customised “Google Apps for Education” to all of its students. Monash University Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Byrne said adopting Google and applications was a clever solution to the ongoing challenge of providing accessible, user-friendly and cost-effective e-communication tools to a growing Monash community. Professor Bayrne also stated that online communication is one of the dominant mediums through which their students and staff exchange information, build knowledge and interact with the global community. The university was also aiming to provide students with the best online tools in order to boost their communication and information sharing capabilities.

Monash University Vice-President (Administration) Peter Marshall said the move reflected the University's commitment to using the best technology available and to continually find better ways to facilitate quick, efficient and versatile communication and information-sharing capabilities.Among the advantages of switching to "Google Apps" from the current in-house email system included increased storage capacity which is up to 7GB from the current 40MB for each user. Also instant chat functionality, the integration of email with online calendar and the ability to work collaboratively on shared documents.

A By July 2010 all students were on Google Apps. Between June 2010 and December 2010 the university has migrated over 20,000 staff from 3 systems. Going Google also has helped the university to turn nine campuses across four countries into one University by providing a platform of greater opportunities for active engagement between students, staff and researchers in order to produce ‘world and work ready’ graduates.

Source: http://www.monash.edu.au

Best Practice 1: Microblogging

What is Microblogging...?

Microblogging is a broadcast medium in the from of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in  terms if its content which is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size. Microblog allows users to exchange small elements of contents such as short sentences, individual images and video links. Twitter is the most popular microblog system. It was launched in 2006 which considered to be robust, elegant and simple. There are currently more than 90 million users of Twitter worldwide. 

Microblog such as Twitter is an increasingly important tool in higher education. The use of Twitter enable scholars to communicate informally on subject of shared interests. At the same time, it opens windows into student project as well as to sparks interest and discovery among peers. Some universities use microblogging in the curriculum. The use of microblog in curriculum will emphasize timeliness, student engagement and aggregation of artifacts relevant to the course content.

Success Story

This video shows a summary of a research conducted at Lock Haven University which is located in north central of Pennsylvania, USA. The research describes a semester-long experimental study to determine whether microblogging and social networking platform (such as Twitter) can enhance students activity, participation and interaction within the university. At the same time it also to empirically evaluate if using Twitter in education can impact college student engagement and grades.

A total of 125 students taking a first year seminar course for pre-health professional majors participated in this study. With the experimental group, Twitter was used for various types of academic and co-curricular discussions. The university also conducted content analyses of samples of Twitter exchanges.

According to Dr. Rey Junco, the results showed that the experimental group had a significantly greater increase in engagement than the control group, as well as higher semester grade point averages. Analyses of Twitter communications showed that students and faculty were both highly engaged in the learning process in ways that transcended traditional classroom activities. This study provides experimental evidence that Twitter can be used as an educational tool to help engage students and to mobilize faculty into a more active and participatory role.


Source: http://blog.reyjunco.com/about

Summary of Opener #10:

We are all living in the world where “We-All-Learn”. In this chapter Curtis J. Bonk shows how technology has transformed educational opportunities for learners.

Firstly, Bonk mentioned that online social networking services such as Facebook and MySpace can enhance the process of learning. These social networks focus on building and reflecting of social relations among people. Members are connected together and share common interests and activities. These online social networking providers also allow users to share ideas, activities, events and interests within their individual networks.

At the same time, Bonks also stated that Blogs will provide a communication space in education. A blog is a website that acts as an online journal, a place to post information and a way to keep in touch with others. Bonks also agrees that some blogs function as online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images and links to other blogs, web pages as well as other media. In terms of education, a blog can be used as an important tool for networking and sharing tips between students and teachers. It also allows the dispersing of information to students as well as keeping parents abreast of what is happening in the classroom. Students can utilize blogs whenever there is a curriculum need to develop writing, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken in the classroom. 

According to Bonk,  the social networking tools has merged with the language learning tools. Some of the best examples are Livemocha, Mixxer and FriendsAbroad. These commercial online language learning communities provide instructional materials on languages and serve as a platform for speakers to interact and help each other to learn new languages. In other words and many ways, they operates like a social networking site. The main advantages of this new web-based educational approach include easy and convenient access to native speakers. It will also increase the motivation and confidence levels among students through social contacts and the creation of a massive pool of expertise on a wide variety of languages.

At the same time, the emergence of online tutoring and mentoring is parallel towards the explosion of online language learning. Companies such as Menor.Net, SMARTTHINKING, TutorVista and Growing StarsOnline are in the business which allows volunteers to work with young people, especially the students, over the Internet. The mentors are within electronic reach.  Online mentoring and tutoring is believed to spark learning growth and mutual support and creativity in leadership. At the same time it embraces technology as the leading edge.  

As a conclusion, Bonk states that in the future years these learning options will boost our learning environment more deeply. At certain stages in the future, we are no longer see personalized learning as the ideal, but as standard and acceptable practice. As such, we will be living in a world where “We-All-Learn”.