They say a house is only as good as its foundation, and we believe the same holds true for web applications like Google Docs. With our old foundation, we could continue delivering most features you wanted quickly, but over time it became clear that some just weren’t possible. So we decided to rebuild the underlying infrastructure of Docs to give us greater flexibility, improved performance and a better platform for developing new features quickly.
Jennifer Raymond (Stanford University) is building a “wiring diagram” for the brain. By bridging the gap between individual synapses and whole-brain learning & memory, Raymond’s research offers new insights and strategies for medical rehabilitation and K-12 education.
Watch it on Academic Earth
———–Catatan saya: Video di atas adalah salah satu bahan dari ratusan bahan-bahan yang terdapat di Academic Earth yang menghimpunkan “online degrees and videos from leading universities“. Pembelajaran di alam maya seolah-olah percuma dan mengangkat konsep pendemokrasian pendidikan. Nanti saya kongsikan sebuah universiti yang menawarkan ijazah secara online dengan percuma. Saya telah mendaftar, sedang menunggu pengesahan dari pentadbir universiti berkenaan….
Ready to get your hands dirty? Now that you’re an honorary member of the Education Labs team, you can start exploring our prototypes. Remember, these projects are concept tests with no current plans to be included in any shipped product, so roll up your sleeves, because they may be a little rough around the edges. We hope you’ll give them a try and tell us what you think.
Microsoft Education Labs – menyediakan peluang dan ruang untuk pendidik meneroka dan menguji kaji sekurang-kurangnya enam perkara:
- Enabling Microsoft Office SharePoint Server as the File System for Moodle
Learn how to hook up your Moodle to SharePoint to take advantage of versioning and other file management features.
- Chemistry Add-in for Word
This Add-in enables you to easily author documents that include chemistry symbols and notations. It even has a 2D molecule editor!
- Office Add-in for Moodle
Uploading files to Moodle has never been easier. You can save documents directly to Moodle courses from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Microsoft Add-in for Moodle eliminates the need to save a document on your PC and the tedious browse and upload steps to upload to Moodle. Open Moodle documents from within Office applications, change them and save them. That’s all there is to it.
- Math Worksheet Generator
This tool makes it easy to create a printable worksheet of practice problems. Just type in a sample expression, and the tool will create a worksheet of more problems just like it.
- Microsoft Live Services Plug-in for Moodle
Tired of having to leave Moodle to check your e-mail and chat with a friend? Now Moodle administrators can add Live Services to Moodle sites with the Microsoft Live Services Plug-in. Students and teachers can then use their Windows Live IDs to sign into Moodle and access their Live Services, such as e-mail, instant messenger, and calendar without leaving Moodle.
- Flashcards is a Silverlight web application where you can create, share, and study online flashcards. Find a deck in the community, or create your own. Decks can have up to 300 cards, and each card can have any combination of text, image, and sound on the front and the back. Start with Review mode if you don’t know the content at all. Otherwise, skip ahead to Study or Type It In modes. Study mode is based on the honor system, and Type It In checks the correct answer with what you typed in. Want a challenge? Try swapping fronts and backs then studying again.
———- Catatan saya: Diharapkan rakan-rakan dalam kalangan pendidik guru / pendidik yang bersedia untuk menyingsing lengan dan mengotorkan tangan untuk menjalankan eksperimen tentang perkara-perkara di atas. InsyaAllah, pada kesempatan mendatang kita boleh kongsikan laporan eksperimen masing-masing.
(CNN) — In a move likely to earn him few Facebook friend requests from tweens, a New Jersey middle school principal is calling for parents to yank their children from all social-networking sites.
Anthony Orsini sent an e-mail blast to the Benjamin Franklin Middle School community in Ridgewood, New Jersey, on Wednesday, urging parents to take down their children’s online profiles on Facebook and elsewhere.
“There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!,” he wrote. “Let me repeat that – there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!”
——————————-Catatan: Ada asasnya kebimbangan Guru Besar, Anthony Orsini, jika ibubapa tidak memantau atau membimbing anak-anak yang terlibat dengan rangkaian sosial ini. Peranan baru ibubapa di abad ke-21 ini.
Rakan-rakan yang telah membaca buku-buku Stephen Covey tentu berminat untuk terlibat dengan projek terkini beliau – the Covey Community. Pelbagai kemudahan disediakan seperti panduan melalui video, alat menyediakan matlamat, soal jawab dengan Covey, dan berkongsi idea dengan 129,688 ahli yang telah mendaftar (sehingga tarikh posting ini ditulis). Pendaftaran adalah percuma …..
————————Catatan: Selamat mencuba dan jangan lupa berkongsi pengalaman anda.
URL: http://www.stephencovey.com
Pepatah menyatakan:
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”
Pepatah ini relevan dalam pelbagai konteks, dan pelbagai bidang. Tumpuan diberikan untuk bina upaya (capacity building) dan mengembangkan potensi diri. Bagaimana mengaplikasikannya dalam bilik darjah?
——————-Catatan saya:
Idea ini tercetus semasa meneliti tulisan Larry Sanger dalam majalah terkini Educause Review bertajuk “Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age” membincangkan sama ada kehadiran Internet boleh mengantikan usaha dan ketelitian membangunkan minda …. jika berkesempatan memang berbaloi menghadamkan artikel ini. Larry Sanger adalah pengasas Wikipedia, beliau kini terlibat dalam projek WatchKnow (sila lihat posting terdahulu).
Biodata Larry Sanger:
WatchKnow setakat ini telah mengumpulkan 16,661 video dan jumlahnya bertambah dari semasa ke semasa. Semua video pendidikan disusun berdasarkan kategori oleh editor dan pembantu terlatih sebagai pendidik untuk memudahkan carian dan capaian. Project ini dicetuskan oleh Dr. Larry Sanger yang kenali sebagai pengasas Wikipedia. Video berikut menerangkan idea beliau terhadap WatchKnow.
Renungan:
More than one-third of the world’s population is under 20. There are over 30 million people today qualified to enter a university who have no place to go. During the next decade, this 30 million will grow to 100 million. To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week.
—Sir John Daniel, 1996
Semua insan berhak untuk mendapat pendidikan untuk hidup dengan bermakna dan bermatlamat. Pendidikan berkualiti menjadikan manusia itu manusia, insan itu insan, dan lebih dari itu ilmu diperlukan untuk melaksanakan amanah dan tanggungjawab kewujudannya. Mungkin inilah fokus pendidikan yang sebenarnya, “learning to be..” bukannya hanya “learning about..”. Tentu ada bezanya ‘belajar menjadi guru’ dengan ‘belajar tentang keguruan’…
Apapun, artikel bertajuk “Minds On Fire” tulisan John Seely dan Richard P. Adler, menarik perhatian saya tentang kepentingan untuk meneroka potensi ICT dalam profesion keguruan ini. Tanpa menyampingkan kepentingan kualiti guru (‘art of teaching’ dan ‘science of teaching’ – lihat lontaran idea sebelum ini..) keupayaan meratakan pendidikan berkualiti boleh direalisasikan dengan berkesan sekiranya potensi ICT dimanfaatkan seoptimum mungkin.
—————–Artikel tersebut boleh dimuat turun dari URL berikut:
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf. Selamat menghadamkan artikel menarik ini.
Berdasarkan laporan Commonsensemedia terhadap tingkah laku rangkaian sosial remaja dan ibubapa melalui tinjauan kendalian The Benenson Strategy Group dapatan berikut boleh dijadikan bahan renungan kepada ibubapa dan pendidik:
- 22% of teens check social networking sites more than 10 times a day, while only 4% of parents believe kids are checking that much
- 51% of teens check social networking sites more than once a day, while only 23% of parents say their kids check more than once a day
- 28% have shared personal information that they normally wouldn’t have shared in public
- 25% have shared a profile with a false identity
- 39% have posted something they regretted
- 26% have pretended to be someone else online
- 54% have joined an online community or Facebook/MySpace group in support of a cause
- 34% have volunteered for a campaign, nonprofit, or charity
URL: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/teen-social-media
Walaupun tinjauan ini dilakukan di USA, namun ia boleh dijadikan pedoman kepada kita dengan meningkatnya kecenderungan remaja di negara ini menggunakan rangkaian sosial. Kemungkinan ibubapa dan pendidik yang tidak berpeluang memantau kegiatan anak-anak dengan alasan kesuntukan masa atau kejahilan tentang aplikasi rangkaian sosial tersebut. Bukan semua dapatan di atas memberi kesan negatif, tetapi bagaimana semua itu boleh membantu proses pembelajaran dan pembinaan sahsiah generasi akan datang.
Mungkin tulisan Don Tapscott dalam buku terkininya yang menarik, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, boleh membantu kita menghadamkan isu-isu tersebut. Video berikut merumuskan kandungan buku tersebut oleh penulisnya sendiri:
———————Catatan saya:
Manusia adalah manusia, fitrahnya tetap sama. Bagaimana membina fitrah dalam persekitaran dan lingkungan yang berubah? Mencabar?
Menelaah buku yang dikatakan telah begitu laris di pasaran, Classroom Instruction that Works (Reseach-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement) tulisan Robert J.Marzano, Debra J.Pickering, dan Jane E.Pollock, terbitan ASCD (2001) memang mengasyikkan. Dikongsikan dapatan pengkaji William Sanders et al.(1997) yang diungkapkan dari buku ini (halaman 3) betapa besarnya pengaruh guru terhadap pencapaian pelajar melalui sampel lebih 100,000 pelajar dari ratusan buah sekolah:
The result of this study will document that the most important factor affecting student learning is teacher. In addition, the results show wide variation in effectiveness among teachers. The immediate and clear implication of this finding is that seemingly more can be done to improve education by improving the effectiveness of teachers by any other single factor. Effective teachers appear to be effective with students of all achievement levels, regardless of the level of heterogeneity in their classroom. If the teacher is ineffective, student under the teacher’s tutelage will show inadequate progress academically regardless of how similar or different they are regarding their achievement (Wright et al., 1997, p.63)
———-Catatan: Untuk mengetahui lebih lanjut peranan guru yang berkesan dan bagaimana menggunakan strategi berdasarkan kajian-kajian, sila dapatkan buku ini. Berikut saya serta kandungan buku ini untuk renungan dan rujukan.
—————————————————————-Rumusan kandungan:
