New Forms of College Access

21 May 2013

Public forum at Stanford School of Education, part of a seminar on "Education's Digital Future".

http://edf.stanford.edu/course/may-21-public-forum-new-forms-college-access

Interesting panel including Brian Murphy, President of De Anza. Chancellor Linda Thor was in attendance, and she said she wanted to meet with me about MOOCs.

MOOCs are seen as the new library; you may or may not read the book you check out.

Self credentialling with eportfolios.

Do we know how to engage working class students online?

Some colleges aspire to produce networks of students, I like this idea.

If we think of co-presence as a treatment, how do we dose it? It is expensive, so what value does it bring?

So far we've shown that online courses can facilitate only mastery of content.
We need to provide access to valuable learning.

Exercise: Give a hard question and take vote, then do small group discussion and vote again; everyone gets closer to the right answer. This happens even when no one votes for the right answer the first time. This shows that small group discussion promotes learning.

Murphy emphasized that we want democratically engaged students who are empowered as participants in the economy.

Google I/O 2013

15, 16, 17 May 2013

I am always so excited to attend this event. I feel privileged to receive an early invitation when it is such a difficult ticket to get and people come from all over the world to attend. It's always fun to meet former students there and catch up on what they are doing now.

The gift this year is a Chromebook Pixel laptop that has:

-a touch screen,

-the highest pixel density of any laptop,

-Chrome browser only, no desktop computation (no Word, etc),

-two years of free Verizon cell service.

http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/

Google technologies that I learned about:

Cross platform single sign on (e.g. Sign on from your ipad and your laptop is automatically signed on too.)

Android Studio IDE built on IntelliJ

All access music service for $8 / month

Web GL on Chrome for graphics (they made maps with it.)

C++ to Javascript compiler via ASM.js

webP image format which is 30% smaller than jpg

Google play for education (developer.android.com/edu)

Hangouts app

Google search app for iphone – has "Google now" built in

Gamestorming: a great way to solve problems, especially in teams.

           bit.ly/gamestorming-cheatsheet

I need to review the following collaboration tools as alternatives to CCC Confer:

Scoot & Doodle

http://scootdoodle.com/

Google hangouts

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/

5-12 ideal number for a hangout

Students need to know: etiquette, agenda, silence OK, prompt arrival, experiment!

Finding: Students want to participate in, but not start, hangouts

User interface design was a popular topic here. I especially liked this session on "Cognitive Science and Design"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2exxj4COhU

Foothill Professional Development Day

10 May 2013

1) Flipping the Classroom with Morriss and Martinez

They are doing radical stuff in their math classes, including using qualitative assessment for final grades. But the students still need to sit alone and absorb content outside of any context (online, not in the classroom.) I believe that the real learning actually takes place when the students are in groups doing problem sets. I think that this learning would be deeper if it took place while solving a larger, real world problem.

New idea from Martinez: You need to assess groupwork or the students won't buy in.

2) Active Learning with Stefonik

"Creating Significant Learning Experiences" by L. Dee Fink