(iverson's) currentbuzz

From a short article by John Orlando, PhD, from “Faculty Focus” newsletter (I added the boldface.)

But few colleges have a social media strategy. The assumption is still that all content must be housed within the LMS. Systems such as Blackboard are adding social media modules like blogs and wikis, but moving them into the locked-down LMS removes the very openness which gives these media value. The better approach is to understand that the LMS is just one tool among many for delivering online learning, and just like a carpenter, use the tool that best suits the job.

Here are some ways to incorporate social media into your course:

• Faculty members who want to create a hybrid course should use social media systems such as blogs or wikis rather than an LMS. An LMS is good for a fully online course, but requires needless administrative time for a hybrid course.
• Many faculty are teaching fully online courses though a combination of social media and LMS systems. … At Norwich University, I’ve added blogs, wikis and webinars outside of our LMS to provide students with an opportunity to explore issues within the profession that interests them.
• Schools are starting to attach social media “shells” to their LMS. … [provide]  students with a “personal learning space” where they can create a blog, share sites, and collaborate in a variety of ways with like-minded students. It also allows clubs and departments to create Facebook-like sites to share information.
• Schools are changing to an LMS built on social media principles, such as Drupal. An open source platform, Drupal gives faculty the flexibility to make student blogs the homepage of their course, rather than administrative functions, encouraging collaboration. Better yet, any part of a course can be made public so that students can engage in conversations with other students, faculty, or professionals in the field.

Education is changing, and social media is presenting a world of opportunity to improve learning outcomes.

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• How to get started with social media [Tamara Baranova] (ecademy.com)
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It’s about time. When was the last time your boss asked you to lock yourself away from all resources and your colleagues, and solve a problem in 3 hours? Ditto when you are on your own and something goes wrong. Do you go to a quiet room and sit alone or grab the nearest connection device and jump on the internet?

Memory has its place, but whether we like it or not, today that place is in our handheld, not our heads…

“unless an instructor officially informs the Registrar by the end of the first week of the term” of the intention to end a course with a formal, seated exam, “the assumption shall be that the instructor will not be giving a three-hour final examination” and no slot will be reserved for it in the schedule. Previously, the faculty members’ handbook specified that courses were assumed to end with examinations unless instructors petitioned for an exemption

via Are final examinations on the way out at Harvard? | Harvard Magazine Jul-Aug 2010.

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City Room: Episode 1 from WBEZ on Vimeo.

the middle childhood cohort, those who spent a median of 3.86 hours in front of a screen had an odds ratio for developing attention problems of 1.81 (95% CI, 1.56 to 2.11). Among the sample of late adolescents and young adults, those with a median of 4.36 hours of total screen time, the odds ratio for attention problems was 2.04 (95% CI, 1.45 to 2.88).

The findings suggest that the risk of attention problems could be reduced if parents limited children’s viewing and video game time to a total of two hours a day, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Swing and colleagues said.

via Medical News: Attention Problems Traced to Time Spent Gaming – in Pediatrics, ADHD/ADD from MedPage Today.

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• Video games threaten kids’ attention span (cbc.ca)
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Map: Where Americans Are Moving – Forbes.com.

Here is a social network that is shows economic and social information in a glance. I wish you could look at inward migration separate from out migration. You can roll over the lines and see the exact numbers for various paths.

Here is Chicago‘s map:

A real map of social networking from Forbes

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• Cook County’s Comings And Goings (chicagoist.com)