I am pleased to announce the Ira Socol will be giving a publicly available presentation on Universal Design on Monday March 8/10, at 6:30 p.m. CST. This session is directed at our preservice teachers who are taking Disability Studies, but the presentation will be available to all interested attendees via this Elluminate link.

Ira is a fantastic presenter and a guru in the field. I am really looking forward to this presentation, and I hope that many of you reading this can make it. Please pass on this information to others that may be interested.

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The Faculty of Education’s new open access journal, in education, is sponsoring a free webinar with two of our authors, Jon Mott & David Wiley. The webinar is scheduled for March 3rd, 2010 at 11 a.m. (CST). The event will be facilitated using Elluminate, a web conferencing tool. You can listen and/or participate using the following link: http://moourl.com/openteaching . It is advisable to join 10-15 minutes early in the case that your computer needs to install software (which, if necessary, is usually an easy process).

Mott & Wiley will be discussing their recent paper, “Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network” found at http://ineducation.ca/article/open-learning-cms-and-open-learning-network . The conversation will likely take us to greater issues of openness and innovation in teaching & learning (especially in higher education).

About the Presenters

Dr. Jon Mott serves as the Assistant to the Academic Vice President – Academic Technology at Brigham Young University where he provides strategic guidance on academic technology issues. He is an Adjunct Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology and also teaches in the Masters in Public Policy Program. He is the former Managing Director of the Center for Instructional Design (now the Center for Teaching and Learning) at BYU. He earned a B.A. in political science from BYU in 1992 and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Oklahoma in 1998.

Dr. David Wiley is Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University. He is also the Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge and Founder and board member of the Open High School of Utah. He was formerly Associate Professor of Instructional Technology and Director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University. David has been a Nonresident Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Scholar at the Open University of the Netherlands, and a recipient of the US National Science Foundation’s CAREER grant. David is also the Founder of OpenContent.org and was recently named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. His career is dedicated to increasing access to educational opportunity for everyone around the world. David lives in Utah with his wife, Elaine, and their five children.

More information can be found at our journal site – http://ineducation.ca/participate

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Severn Cullis-Suzuki will be our guest at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina this March 4th, from 7:00-8:30 p.m. CST. The title of the talk is “Education for Sustainability: Touching All Of Our Lives”. I will be live streaming the event at my Open Thinking Ustream Channel. We invite you to attend face-to-face or virtually.

Some of you may know Cullis-Suzuki from this viral video titled “The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes”, filmed in 1992 when she was 12 years old.

More information about the event can be found here.

No related posts.

I am fascinated by PSAs. I am especially interested in what I believe to be a false assumption that the more graphic the ad, the more effective it will be in delivering its intended message to viewers. I can think of recent ads from the UK regarding txting while driving, and ads from Ontario on workplace safety that received much attention due to virality and mainstream media coverage. However, I wonder what effect such videos actually have in the end. Can anyone point to a decent study on the possible correlations?

Aside: The PSA I remember most from the 90’s was about Methamphetamine. And it was not because it was graphic, but because I found the song in the advertisement to be really, really catchy. Not a good thing.

OK, so back to my train of thought. Today I came across a brilliant PSA about seatbelt safety from Sussex Safer Roads in the UK. Wow. A beautifully constructed video with a solid, touching message that hits home. Wonderful!

So I thought, why aren’t there more examples like this? I though of the recent, bizarre political ads from New Orleans and the misdirected, personal attack ads from two of our Canadian political parties. Am I naïve to believe that positive messages can bring us forward as a society, and that all of this negativity is truly a drain on our collective spirits? Maybe this ‘relatively new parenting thing’ is just rubbing off on me, giving me crazy ideas about hope and positivity.

Or maybe we just need to turn the corner.

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Dr. Joel Westheimer is presenting a public lecture at the University of Regina on Monday, January 25th, 3:30-4:45 (CST). I will doing my best to stream the event live via this Ustream channel.

Details of the session are found below.

“No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools”
Dr. Joel Westheimer from the University of Ottawa will be delivering a free public lecture to the university and broader community on Monday, January 25th, 2010 3:30pm-4:45pm Education Auditorium (U of R) on the topic of social justice, citizenship, and democracy. His talk is provocatively entitled: “No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools” .

Dr. Westheimer’s bio:
Dr. Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in the Sociology of Education and Professor of Education at the University of Ottawa. He is co-founder and executive director of Democratic Dialogue. Westheimer teaches, researches, and writes on democratic engagement, social justice, activism, service learning, and community in education. He has published books such as Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools (2007) which Teacher Magazine called “this year’s most important education book,” What Kind of Citizen? Schools, Civic Education, and the Promise of Democracy (forthcoming, 2009), and Among Schoolteachers (1998). He also publishes widely in newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals and addresses radio and television audiences on shows such as Good Morning America, More to Life, The Agenda, NBC TV News, C-Span, NPR, and CBC radio. Westheimer has received numerous awards including:the 2009 Canadian Education Association’s Whitworth Award; an award for Education Research that honours an individual or research collaboration (research team or organization) who has made a noteworthy contribution to educational research in Canada, the Daniel E. Griffiths Award for Excellence in Education Research, the Jason Millman Award, and Outstanding Research of the Year Award from the American Political Science Association’s Division on Teaching and Learning. In 2005, he was named John Glenn Service Learning Scholar for Social Justice by theJohn Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy.

Update: The recorded session is available below.

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Dean Shareski and I are presenting at Educon 2.2 in Philadelphia, and our topic is “(Re)Imagining Social Media & Technology in Teacher Education”. We are hoping to find individuals that will help us introduce the topic. More specifically, we are looking for insight in answering the following questions regarding the role of teacher education in developing new teachers. Roughly, these questions are:

1. What are your general views on the status of teacher education in preparing teachers, especially in regards to innovative teaching? What positives, negatives, or general views can you share? Please do pull in your own experiences if applicable.
2. What is the ideal role of teacher education in developing teachers who are media literate and technologically savvy?

Using the Alan Levine Approach™, we are looking for short videos or audio bites (1-2 minutes each) that we hope to remix into our introduction to the topic. We realize that this does not give much time to answer, so feel free to focus on one or two important points.

If you are a teacher, a teacher educator, an administrator, or work with new teachers, you will likely have important ideas to share. If you are interested, please submit your video via Youtube, or through a file drop service like drop.io. You can add the link to the video in the comments here, or feel free to email me at couros@gmail.com.

The presentation is on January 31/10, but we hope to have submissions by January 22/10 at the latest.

Thanks for any help you can give.

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I truly enjoyed teaching both my graduate and undergraduate courses this past semester. There were a number of really hard-working students who produced some very meaningful work, and overall, I can say that I am increasingly excited by the quality of students I am encountering both in schools (my graduate students) and soon to be teachers (my preservice groups).

I thought I would quickly share a few of my favorite student reflections and projects over the past semester. These represent various forms of digital expression, and will help provide inspiration to my students in future semesters.

• Amy’s Final Reflection – Digital imagery, animated, and set to music.
• Anne-Marie’s Adventures in EC&I 831 – Nicely narrated reflection with imagery and music.
• Dan’s Summary of Learning – Mashup of Comics with Prezi – fun approach.
• Delise’s Final Reflection – Nicely narrated video, reflection on learning.
• Jay’s Final Blogpost - Nice final written description with video.
• Russel’s EC&I 831 Christmas – Fun, short Claymation movie.
• Story of a Girl – Bethany, Sarah, and Gabrielle’s first stab at stopmotion animation, deals with eating disorders.
• Sarah’s Reflection – Nicely reflection using video & screencasting.
• History of Technology in Education – Decent Prezi by Bradie and Kelsi
• Bradie’s Reflection – Another nice reflection, narrated slideshow.
• Erin’s Reflection – Solid reflection using Voicethread.
• A Garageband Tutorial – A series of videos showing how to create a techno song by Justin.
• The Decision Game – A decision-based game that utilizes the annotations feature in Youtube (think, choose-your-own-adventure), by Cody, Justin, Sheldon & Seanna.
• Didn’t Trip, Got a Grip, On the Basics – A song Katherine wrote & performed summarizing her course experience.

I hope these are useful and/or entertaining to you.

Oh, and seeing that it is New Year’s Eve, Happy New Year to all of you, and all the best in 2010! Thank you so much for taking the time to visit this space, and for connecting with me in other meaningful ways. I am truly a lucky person to be tied to such a caring and passionate network of individuals.

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We have just launched a new, open access journal titled in education. While the journal is set to cover various topics in the field, the first issue is a special volume focused on technology & social media. I was the guest editor of this issue, and you may want to read the editorial that gives an overview of the entire process, and outlines the contents of the issue.

I’d also like to use this opportunity to announce a second call for papers. The theme of the issue was quite popular, so we will be offering a second issue of the same theme to be published in Spring 2010. See the call for papers.

Please feel free to pass on the information. And, if you are interested in submitting a paper, please let me know. Thanks for reading.

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