Saturday, March 17, 2007

EPAC March 2007 Chat: The Reflection Fad. Kicking off the EPAC online chats again, 11 community members discussed a piece from the New York Times, "Upon Further Reflection, A Few Random Thoughts," that reports on critiques within the educational research community of the lack of rigor in definitions and methods associated with "reflection." Reflection in practice, according to the author, is simply a way of added fancy theoretical labels to common sense and an excuse for failing to act on genuine research on how to teach well. Are electronic portfolios susceptible to a similar critique? View the chat transcript below and as an Elluminate recording at https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.44263AE97E3E490A1463C315C9F0D9 [Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research blogs] 9:39:23 PM      Google It!.

VideoLectures.Net. The stated goal of theVideo Lectures site is to provide "free video lectures from the world's leading and prominent scientists." The site is searchable by key words and also displays a browsable listing of the most popular and latest lectures. The site currently contains 1238 lectures by 1042 authors. ____JH [EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online] 9:38:28 PM      Google It!.

US University Dumps Windows to go All Mac. MacKeyser passed us a link to a MacWorld article about a University doing things a little differently. Instead of sticking with their inefficient mix of Apple and PC systems, the college is doing a 'total technology refresh', and adopting an all-Mac policy on the campus. Previously, a class at Wilkes University would be outfitted with something like 20 Macs and 20 PCs, to allow for individual preferences in software and OS use. With Boot Camp students at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college will be able to switch between Windows and OSX, choosing which applications and OS to use at any given time. "[Scott Byers, vice president for finance and the head of campus IT said] 'We think it will save $150,000 directly, in buying fewer units - even though the Macs cost more per unit than PCs.' The school, which enrolls about 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students, will reduce its inventory from nearly 1,700 computers to around 1,450 after the change over. Other costs savings, however, will be harder to measure. 'By standardizing, the IT department should be more productive,' Byers said."[Slashdot] 11:15:10 AM      Google It!.

EDUCAUSE2006 Podcast: Using CMS as Early Warning System. In this 41-minute recording from the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, we'll hear from John Campbell, Lukas Leftwich, and Stephen Wanger in a session entitled Student Persistence: Using the CMS as an Early Warning and Intervention System. They share an analysis of data collected from the institution's course management system and explain how it was used to construct highly accurate models for predicting student success in CMS courses. Attachments Title ( file name ) Size EDUCAUSE2006_Student_Persistence.mp3 ( EDUCAUSE2006_Student_Persistence.mp3 ) 38.16 MB [EDUCAUSE CONNECT blogs] 11:11:18 AM      Google It!.