Online Learning Set for Explosive Growth as Traditional Classrooms Decline

By 2015, 25 million post-secondary students in the United States will be taking classes online. And as that happens, the number of students who take classes exclusively on physical campuses will plummet, from 14.4 million in 2010 to just 4.1 million five years later, according to a new forecast released by market research firm Ambient Insight. More...

World Library of Science

See post by Sir John Daniel on the "World Library of Science," a joint venture between UNESCO and Nature Publishing Group.

...launch of a partnership between UNESCO and the Nature Publishing Group to create the World Library of Science, which will be the first open online learning resource covering the entire life and physical science curriculum at the secondary and post-secondary level. Nature Publishing is the world's premier scientific publisher. As well as its flagship journals Nature and Scientific American, it publishes 70 other leading science journals.

The Library will offer high-quality material drawn from Nature Publishing Group's publications as well as new instructional materials developed specifically for the World Library of Science.

It will contain 2500-3000 learning modules in all concepts of life and physical sciences arranged into standard curricula but capable of full customization by all institutions; and a robust web-based and mobile-based delivery system providing access to materials, tutors, and academic information to any faculty or student with basic connectivity.

This is an ambitious project, which claims that it "is intended to transform global science education by creating a common ground of current, research-oriented, vetted information and curriculum for all".

Content will be licensed with CC-BY-SA

There's an App for That

A group of K-12 educators has put together a list of apps for education. Find the list at: http://theresanappforthat.wikispaces.com/.

eLearning Community Online Learning Sessions

This Wednesday the 19^th at 3 PM there will be the first in a series of online sessions in Elluminate, planned for faculty who use or are interested in online learning technologies and associated teaching and learning best practices. The topics will cover use of ANGEL, Elluminate, Tegrity and other core technologies supported by the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges and/or in common use in our system. These sessions are open to anyone wanting to attend and will be facilitated by eLearning professionals from system colleges and state board, eLearning staff. The list of topics is determined by the group of presenters and by suggestions to be made by attendees.

Also, beginning this week and continuing for the foreseeable future, there will also now be open office hours in Elluminate, every Wednesday at ten AM. These sessions, which will be without topic or agenda, are for any staff member or instructor who wants to come ask questions or get help using ANGEL, Elluminate, or Tegrity. The sessions will be attended by the same eLearning personnel who will make the weekly presentations.

Participants may log into Elluminate for all sessions and open office hours via this link:

Participant Link:

http://goo.gl/JpmfU

All sessions will be recorded and available via this link:

http://goo.gl/wi2Ab

To view the session schedule, follow this link:

http://goo.gl/cr2R5

If you have suggestions for how to improve the format of these sessions or a suggestion for a future topic, please fill in this form:

http://goo.gl/i6OGF

JFK library opens first online presidential archive

In a move that will make primary-source documents more accessible for students, Caroline Kennedy unveiled the nation’s first online presidential archive on Jan. 13, a $10 million project to digitize the most important papers, photographs, and recordings of President John F. Kennedy’s days in office. More...

Free Access to Educational Tools

Teachers are faced with daily challenges like: What standards am I required to teach? Where can I find quality education resources? How do I implement these resources in my classroom? And, given the current economic climate and numerous budget cutbacks, how can I find resources at no cost?

The Gateway to 21st Century Skills website provides a wealth of educational materials like lesson plans, instructional units, and classroom activities right at your fingertips. Teachers can discover resources that meet their needs can see how each resource is mapped to their specific state standards or the Common Core Standards. All the 50,000 plus educational resources are made available for free from the National Education Association sponsorship.http://www.TheGateway.org

Education in the Palm of Your Hand: 5 Questions with Brent Williams

For the last decade, according to futurist Brent Williams, schools have been doing a disservice to students by failing to give them access to the most advanced technologies that budgets will allow. More...

State of Washington to Offer Online Materials as Texts

It's a question that students, and a growing number of their professors, are asking: Why require students to buy expensive textbooks every year, when the Internet is awash in information, much of it free? After all, the words of Plato have not changed in the past 2,000 years, nor has basic algebra. More...

Email Isn't Dead Yet

College technologists and email providers say that, in the campus context, reports of the death of email have been exaggerated. More...

The 10 biggest ed-tech stories of 2010

STEM education gets a boost amid concerns about U.S. competitiveness ... States embrace cloud computing with large-scale school software projects... Assessments get a 21st-century makeover with the help of technology: These are among the many.. More

How to find a quality online degree

While online degrees were once largely seen as being second-rate, recent studies have reported that employers are not only more open to, but are even showing a favorable sentiment toward candidates with online degrees these days, reports AOL Jobs. One such study, conducted by Excelsior College/Zogby International, found that 61 percent of CEOs and small-business owners were familiar with online degree programs–and 83 percent of those considered online degrees equivalent to those earned in a traditional classroom… More...