"Learners are doers, not recipients."—Walter J. Ong, "McLuhan as Teacher: The Future Is a Thing of the Past"

It's high time people stopped kvetching about Wikipedia, which has long been the best encyclopedia available in English, and started figuring out what it portends instead. For one thing, Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as "doers, not recipients." If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.

It's been over five years since the landmark study in Nature that showed "few differences in accuracy" between Wikipedia and theEncyclopedia Britannica. Though the honchos at Britannica threw a big hissy at the surprising results of that study, Nature stood by its methods and results, and a number of subsequent studies have confirmed its findings; so far as general accuracy of content is concerned, Wikipedia is comparable to conventionally compiled encyclopedias, including Britannica.

There were a few dust-ups in the wake of the Nature affair, notably Middlebury College history department's banning of Wikipedia citations in student papers in 2007. The resulting debate turned out to be quite helpful as a number of librarians finally popped out of the woodwork to say hey, now wait one minute, no undergraduate paper should be citing any encyclopedia whatsoever, which, doy, and it ought to have been pointed out a lot sooner.

By 2009 the complaints had more or less faded away, and nowadays what you have is college librarians writingblog posts in which they continue to reiterate the blindingly obvious: "Wikipedia is an excellent tool for leading you to more information. It is a step along the way, and it is extremely valuable."

Read more research from the full article here from the TheAwl.com

New Internet tools create class collaboration

WHEAT RIDGE - In Alison Saylor's technology class, she teaches her students more than just computers. In fact, she says they're learning things that just might revolutionize the classroom.

"It's a fun way to do it and they really get into it. They're very engaged," Saylor, computer and technology teacher at Everitt Middle School in Wheat Ridge, said.

Saylor is using Google Apps for Education to create a virtual domain for her students. They can use word processors, spread sheets and graphic tools to create projects which are done entirely online.

For example, eighth-grader Alex Brown created his own imaginary company. His project included conceptual graphic designs, a business plan, an architectural layout and a spreadsheet containing a payroll outline for the employees.

"It was hard at first, but as soon as you get it, it's really easy," Alex said.

Google Apps for Education allowed Alex to put this all together in an online portfolio.

Saylor says it helps her trick students into learning. Right now, she has students creating their own superheroes.

Read the full article HERE

Join Tom Kuhlmann from Articulate as he presents 2 exciting sessions at DevLearn!

Rapid Instructional Design to Go with Your Rapid E-Learning

Rapid e-Learning tools make it easy to create your courses, but they don’t replace instructional design. The reality for many is that you have no money and time, so the default position is to build simple, click-and-read courses. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you want to build engaging and interactive e-Learning, there’s a way to do so, even on a limited budget and with a tight timeline. More

Virtual Villages: Cultivating a Shared Practice Community

How much of what you've learned comes from formal training – and how much comes from collaborating and idea-sharing with your network of trusted colleagues? In many industries and organizations, informal knowledge-sharing happens haphazardly and only in silos – it's typically a rich but untapped resource. Think of how much we could extend and reinforce learning if we got strategic about building shared-practice communities where learners can help and mentor one another. More

Four Useful Google Docs Tricks

Google’s translation service for Web pages is quick and usually gives a passable translation.

It’s been a year since Google formally released Google Docs, a free Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office with parallel applications to Microsoft’s Word (text editing), Excel (spreadsheets) and PowerPoint (presentations). (It had been in beta-test status.) Microsoft has since started its own in-your-browser version of Office 2010, which I’m currently testing, but Google has built some wow features in to Docs that make it worth looking into as an alternative.

Four of them stand out.

Group editing – Have you ever huddled around one coworker’s desk to group-edit a file? Have you traded attachments back and forth in e-mail while on the phone with a co-author three thousand miles away? Google lets everyone sit at his or her own computer and gang-edit the same text, spreadsheet or presentation. Everyone sees the same copy of the document, and everyone’s keystroke-by-keystroke changes appear onscreen as everyone types. Microsoft has collaborative features in Word, but right now Google’s version is the winner.

See the other 3 and finish reading the article HERE

George Siemens - Connectivism: Socializing Open Learning