Month: June 2015

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Are MOOCs taking over

Just when I thought that everything was slowing down and there couldn’t be any more Digital MOOCs I have come up with another group that are about to start.

 

Mastering Academic Research                       Canvas Network

This is aimed at undergraduate students and those moving to Further education.  It seeks to help them understand the requirements of academic research and to give them the skills they will need.  This is very much what school and academic librarians do every day, so I look forward to seeing the methods used and what new things I can discover.

Web Accessibility MOOC for Educators

This course is also aimed at the higher education level and is for teachers.  It looks to increase their awareness of what is online and how sources can help them in their teaching.

Digital Me                                                         University of Derby

The idea behind this seems to be making members of the public aware of the digital world and how they should learn to use it safely.  I am hoping this is an extension to the Cyber security course that I undertook recently.

Parenting in the Digital Age

This one basically does what it says.  It is aimed to bring parents up to date with the digital world, so that they are aware of what their children do at school and outside of school.  It should also cover e-safety, which is a major concern for most parents,

All of these courses are from the provider called Canvas Network, although they are run by a range of universities and other academic institutions.  the first two are starting on the 6th July, then there is another later in the month and one in August.  What I have found with courses from this provider is that they really stretch the student.  The expectation is that you will take part in the discussion groups and there is a lot more in the way of assignments compared to some other providers.  I am beginning to find that MOOCs can be quite addictive.  It allows people to follow their interests and hobbies as well as giving young people the opportunity of testing whether they enjoy certain topics and if they could envisage studying it at undergraduate level.  I an sure that the concept will develop over the next few years and it will be interesting to see where it leads.

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ICT in Education

I have already discussed the growth in the number of MOOCs available for people to engage with, especially courses that link to the work within the education field.  I am currently working through some new courses that might be of Interest and they are

Web 2.0 Tools                             University of Houston       USA

ICT in  Primary Education        Institute of Education    London

Both of these can be found on the Coursera website and are aimed at teachers and librarians, as well as other interested parties.

The Web 2.0 course looks at a huge range of ‘Tools’ that you can put in your digital toolbox and divides the materials into a series of segments such as

  • Collaboration,
  • Communication,
  • Creativity and
  • Lifelong Learning.
  •  Whilst it dealt with some tools that I had come across before it also introduced me to many that I had never seen.  It also gave me ideas about how they can be used in the classroom.

With this course one of the great finds was a tool called Jing, linked with Screencast.com.  this is on my dashboard and enables me to highlight an image  or piece of text and then copy and paste to a file.  It has already proved invaluable as it is so easy to use.

The ICT in Primary Education is particularly good as it is from a UK based institution and more examples relate to our experience. Subject areas include

  • 21st century school                                                                             2015-05-07 09.21.24
  • ICT making a difference
  • Pedagogical changes through ICT
  • Technology Opportunities
  • Inspiring examples and implementation concerns

I am currently only part of the way in to this but it is proving very  useful.  What I am finding is that the more courses I do about modern technologies the more they start to overlap and I get to use a particular tool in different ways. One of the real discoveries was a package called ThingLink.  This enables you to take a picture and then pinpoint areas of interest which can have information, links to websites, video or photos attached to them.  Unfortunately  I cannot have the software on this site as it is a third party software, however there is great potential for a whole range of topics.

Futurelearn is just finishing a course on

Cyber security                 Open University

and will soon start a course on

Childhood in the Digital age, also run by the Open University.

The former was really intended for adults and there was an emphasis on personal and business security.  However the information is relevant to all of us and I think that elements would be extremely useful for teens as they start to use the web in a different way, e.g. online banking, in the workplace.

The forthcoming course look at the effects of technology on young people and asks what the benefit and dangers are.  It also looks at the world of education and how much should the digital impact on the classroom.  It should make for a fascinating follow on to the previous courses.  I am looking forward to starting in a couple of weeks.