Jeff Bradbury is a high school music teacher and the orchestra conductor from North Brunsiwck Twp. High School (NJ). Jeff is also the founder of TeacherCast.net and the TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network. Mr. Bradbury shares his insight on technology in the music classroom and his thoughts on education technology and technology integration.   Follow Jeff http://twitter.com/teachercast   House of #EdTech is sponsored by Audible.com. There are over 150,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or other mp3 player. http://www.audibletrial.com/houseofedtech   All links and shownotes at http://www.chrisnesi.com/2014/08/houseofedtech18.html   FEEDBACK Call: (732) 903-4869 Voxer: cnesi4602 Email: feedback@chrisnesi.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/mrnesi Send a voice message from http://www.chrisnesi.com

Summer is fast approaching. Looking for fun learning activities for the whole family? Science Near You is a terrific, free service that helps you find science-based activities in your local area. Just enter your address or ZIP code and start searching. Each record found has clickable details like this: What could be easier? Hope this helps! Mr. Jarrett

I spent last week (March 22-26) at the Hilton Hotel at Walt Disney World for the eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions 2010 conference in the company of many of my fellow elearning professionals. Cammy Bean described the scene as "spring break...

When I was in the 5th grade, I had a teacher who thought it would be cool if the girls in his class got excited about science.  I remember vividly the discussion we had one day about sugar in water.  "Will the sugar dissolve faster in the hot water or the cold water?"  My hand […]

Higher education is digitizing. All aspects of it, including administration, teaching/learning, and research. The process of becoming digital has important implications for how learning occurs and how research happens and how it is shared. I’m happy to announce the formation of the digital Learning Research Network (dLRN), funded by a $1.6m grant from the Gates Foundation - more info here. From a broad overview, the goal of the grant is to improve the depth and quality of research in digital learning. I’m defining digital learning as anything that has a technology component: online, blended, and in classroom with use of technology. Additionally, this learning may be formal, self-regulated, structured/unstructured, and "lifelong". Much of this research is already ongoing - a quick skim of conferences such as LAK, ICLS, IEDMS and others confirms this. An important challenge exists, however, in that existing research stays in journals and conference proceedings and often doesn’t make it into practice as quickly or with as much impact as is needed. With dLRN, our goals are to: Increase the impact of existing research in solving complex organizational and systems-level learning challenges Work in cross-disciplinary and multi-lens research teams to ensure nuanced solutions are generated for real, intractable problems Connect and amplify existing research Promote research as practice and practice as research mindsets in college and university systems engaged in researching digital learning and teaching Model openness in research activity and data Increase the speed of the research cycle and adoption of effective practices with a particular emphasis on under-represented students Build on existing research in learning sciences, online, blended, and distance learning, as well as data mining and learning analytics Evaluate the broader organizational influences of digital learning, teaching, and research More specifically, dLRN will do the following: Foster Innovation, specifically in increasing the capacity of member universities to transition to the digital environment. The past several years of activity in MOOCs and online learning have pushed thinking about teaching and learning (and also hype and nonsense!). An important opportunity now exists to evaluate how existing universities are rethinking on-campus and in classroom learning based on MOOCs. Specifically, what are the lessons that campuses are learning based on MOOC experimentation? Additionally, how are universities position online and blended learning in relation to on-campus learning? A second aspect of innovation for this grant will result in the development of a network of partner universities who are focused on increasing participation from sectors of society that currently are not entering higher education. These sectors include first-in-family degree completers, learners who have some university experience but discontinued, and individuals who are returning to education to re-skill to prepare for a new job market. Internationalize the research network to include global partners to advance exploration of research topics and pursue research funding internationally. This work will not be funded by this grant as international universities will be responsible for developing resources required for their participation. However, the inclusion of international research systems will ensure that the work being conducted as part of this proposal reflects the diversity of international audiences. We expect these partners will amplify the value of this research and increase application and impact both nationally and internationally. Develop Personal Knowledge Graphs. I’ve been whining about this for a while. The focus on higher education has to date been centered on course content and curriculum. Moving forward, in order to develop personalized and adaptive learning, universities will need to develop personal knowledge graphs (PKG) and profiles. PKG would involve collecting and mapping what an individual knows - based on formal learning, workplace learning, and informal learning - and using that graph as a base for providing focused learning materials to address knowledge gaps in order to achieve a qualification or degree. In a workforce defined by rapid changes, PKG will enable learners to more rapidly reskill and upgrade in order to participate in the knowledge economy. Universities/organizations and people involved: Carnegie Mellon University (Carolyn Rose) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Stephanie Teasley) Stanford University (Candace Thille) SRI (Barbara Means) Teachers College, Columbia University (Ryan Baker) University of Arkansas System (Michael Moore) California Community Colleges (Pat James) University System of Georgia (Myk Garn) Smithsonian Institution (Chris Liedel/Jacquie Moen) Getting involved: An important aspect of this is involving international universities. I’ve had several conversations with universities in UK, Australia, and Canada. While we don’t have funds to support these systems, if your institution is interested and able to self-fund involvement, please let me know: gsiemens at gmail. At minimum, I expect that international partners will be able to translate their work into regional and national grants in their own jurisdiction. We will also be looking to work with doctoral students who are interested in digital learning. For this, I’m looking more at students that are interested in this research area and are willing to devote time to participating in research and connecting with other researchers. (We will be announcing three post-doc positions at LINK Lab soon for those that want to get more deeply involved in research). Finally, we expect to have a full slate of open online events including research discussions and case studies starting early 2015. As much as possible, we will be sharing research openly.

Since things have finally quieted down in my academic universe, I’m starting to play around with some tech tools.  I have always wanted to flip my classroom, so the month of November is dedicated to finding tools I can use to create flipped lessons. This week I’m looking at Educreations. There are several Ipad apps […]

Coming soon!

Patricia J. Brown is a technology integration coach at Ladue (MO) School District, an adjunct professor at Lindenwood University, and an edtech consultant. She shares insight about integrating technology in elementary education.   Follow Patricia http://twitter.com/msEdtechie   House of #EdTech is sponsored by Audible.com. There are over 150,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or other mp3 player. http://www.audibletrial.com/houseofedtech   All links and shownotes at http://www.chrisnesi.com/2014/09/19-elementary-edtech-with-msedtechie.html   FEEDBACK Call: (732) 903-4869 Voxer: cnesi4602 Email: feedback@chrisnesi.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/mrnesi Send a voice message from http://www.chrisnesi.com  

CTIA is the international association for the wireless telecommunications industry, dedicated to expanding the wireless frontier. Its most recent annual conference was held in Las Vegas March 23-25. It is considered a leading industry trade show and premiere marketplace for...

Thanks to a generous scholarship from Raytheon Corporation, I will be travelling to Boston in August for a two-day workshop entitled "Everyone Engineers," an intensive, hands-on exploration of the Engineering is Elementary (EiE) program. NCS received $3,000 for workshop expenses and to purchase instructional materials for our K4 STEMLAB. We’re very excited about the EiE program, which is currently in use in Margate. The video below provides an overview. A longer version is available here. Special thanks to Mrs. Amy Hughes, K-4 Technology Teacher and Northfield mom, for telling us about the program!