MIT Educational Technology Fair - Tuesday, Nov. 2

Come see what your colleagues at MIT are doing with educational technologies at the 2004 Ed Tech Fair which will be held Tuesday, November 2 from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. in Lobby 13.

The theme of this year's fair is From Innovation to Impact and the focus is on projects that are influencing teaching and learning at MIT and beyond. There will be 11 faculty projects showcasing technologies from simulations and handhelds to tools that enable the "paperless classroom" and self-assessment.

Educational technology service providers will also be present with information about their offerings. The fair is sponsored by IS&T Academic Computing and the MIT Council on Educational Technology (MITCET).

For more information see the Ed Tech Fair web site.

New Lessons in Course Management

By Jean Marie Angelo
(FromUniversity Business magazine.)

A group of universities have banded together to offer a low-cost course management software alternative; commercial vendors compete with new applications.

In mid-July, just one week before college and university leaders were to launch into their summer season of conferences, a nonprofit group known as The Sakai Project (www.sakaiproject.org) introduced software for higher education providers to use for course management. Sakai's project leaders timed the announcement right.

Sakai's goal of providing open source software that may someday save academic computing departments significant amounts of money was the subject of casual commentary during the week that followed. Hallway conversations at the annual conference of the Society of College and University Planning, held in Toronto, speculated about this new set of tools for creating course Web sites, posting homework, creating e-mail threads and bulletin boards, archiving lectures, and uploading lectures.

Continue reading this article in the " University Business magazine.

Death of the Classroom? And, Thank You—It’s Been Great Fun

By Phillip D. Long

In 1999 Roger Schank, then at Northwestern University, said,“Classrooms are out! No more classrooms! Don’t build them!” Prof. Schank, now at Carnegie Mellon University West, was making the point that learning through active engagement and failure—learning by doing—connects our affective and intellectual experiences in a way that’s essential for effective learning. This doesn’t happen often enough in the contemporary classroom. At that time he advocated the “rule of 1/3”—children (and adults) should spend a third of their time talking with each other in face-to face-interaction, a third of their time doing something (building things), and a third of their time engaged in computer-based instruction.

Traditional classrooms don’t necessarily prohibit building things or doing technology-supported inquiry, but they have not exactly facilitated the flexible transition from one learning mode to another. Some 10 years ago, the Great One (that’s Wayne Gretsky, for all you non-sports fans) attributed his skill on the ice by saying, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” So where are the classrooms going, and are we building them to what we currently “know,” based on our past and current experiences, or for tomorrow?

Continue reading this article in the Campus Technology Magazine