Easton, Denise

McCord, Alan

NSU Works

Innovate: Journal of Online EducationVolume 5Issue 3 February/March 2009 Article 63-1-2009Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students toLeverage LearningAlan McCordDenise EastonFollow this and additional works at: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovatePart of the Education CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Abraham S. Fischler College of Education at NSUWorks. It has been accepted forinclusion in Innovate: Journal of Online Education by an authorized administrator of NSUWorks. For more information, please contactnsuworks@nova.edu.Recommended APA CitationMcCord, Alan and Easton, Denise (2009) "Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students to Leverage Learning," Innovate: Journal of OnlineEducation: Vol. 5: Iss. 3, Article 6.Available at: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol5/iss3/6Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students to Leverage LearningAll exhibits, tables and figures that have remained available have been included as additional content withtheir respective articles to be downloaded separately. Click here to return to the article page on NSUWorksand view the supplemental files.Unfortunately, not all the supplemental files have survived until 2015 and some will be missing from thearticle pages. If you are an author in Innovate and would like to have your supplemental content included,please email the NSUWorks repository administrator at nsuworks@nova.edu.This article is available in Innovate: Journal of Online Education: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol5/iss3/6Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students to Leverage Learningby Alan McCord and Denise EastonThe Innovate-Ideagora community now boasts 330 members, and we are truly an international endeavor.Participants hail from 17 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, SouthAfrica, the United Kingdom (including Scotland!), India, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Argentina,Finland, Venezuela, Republic of Korea, Germany, Norway, France, and Poland. If you have not yet checkedout Innovate-Ideagora, please do so by visiting http://innovate-ideagora.ning.com. We also encouragemembers to share the invitation with colleagues and associates. It only takes a few minutes to establish yourprofile and begin connecting!Interviews and Gatherings: Connecting Students to Leverage LearningThree recent live events highlighted ongoing efforts to use technology to improve learning and collaboration.The first two, interviews with Ed Gehringer and Tim DiScipio, focused on projects designed to connectstudents for course-related peer review and for cross-cultural exploration. Ed Gehringer, associate professor of electronic and computer engineering and computer science at NorthCarolina State University (NCSU), discussed his Expertiza project, which uses Web 2.0 tools to facilitate peerreview of student work and then creates reusable learning objects. Gehringer described Expertiza in a 2007Innovate article. (View the interview at http://breeze.uliveandlearn.com/p84785847/.) With Expertiza, studentssubmit completed assignments; the best work in each category is then identified through a peer-reviewprocess, and the Expertiza system assembles that work to create a single learning unit. Ed has produced anumber of publications documenting Expertiza's usefulness. In our interview, Ed described the project and shared resources with the audience including a paper on thesystem. Participants were interested in where and how Expertiza was being implemented. Verne Morlandspeculated about how this model could be adapted to the business community.Tim DiScipio, cofounder of ePals, joined us in a live webcast interview to discuss this unique social andacademic networking environment for global education. (View the interview athttp://breeze.uliveandlearn.com/p27689137/.) Drawing on principles of authentic learning, ePals allowsschool- and district-level communication and collaboration across cultural and national lines as studentsdevelop verbal and visual literacy through dialogue and storytelling. ePals's classroom match feature takesonline learning to a new level by linking classrooms across the world to form the largest and fastest growinginteractive, Web-based learning community. Tim provided a comprehensive overview of ePals whilehighlighting specific examples of how students were connecting around issues ranging from global warmingto sports. In conjunction with Tim's interview, we featured in our favorite tools section a custom widget that showcasesstudent responses to ePals's Students Speak! program. Students from all over the world submittedone-minute videos, audio recordings, and presentations expressing their views to the new president and hisadministration. ePals compiled the best responses and has shared them with the president, his transitionteam, and members of the ePals global community. http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=709 1McCord and Easton: Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students to Leverage LearningPublished by NSUWorks, 2009http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=709 2Innovate: Journal of Online Education, Vol. 5, Iss. 3 [2009], Art. 6http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol5/iss3/6We have initiated follow-up discussions on both of these topics in Innovate-Ideagora. Listen to the archivedinterviews and join us for more energizing conversation about ePals or Expertiza. In our third live event, we hosted an informal gathering of Innovate-Ideagora members to discuss emergingissues related to technology and learning. The hour-long discussion via live webcast allowed the audience toparticipate with both audio and text chat. We are experimenting with different opportunities for the communityto discuss exciting individual work, projects, and trends and to identify topics and venues for Ideagora activity.We did not record the discussion, but several participants suggested we do so in the future. We plan tocontinue hosting informal live webcasts to identify future topics and plan improvements to theInnovate-Ideagora community. The Forums: Edutainment and Teacher TrainingMany Innovate-Ideagora members contributed interesting and provocative discussion topics to thecommunity. Greg, impressed by a game that introduced his young son to the complex working of the humanimmune system, challenged the community to speculate about the value of using "edutainment"technologies—game-based learning or what Greg called "stealth learning"—at a curricular level. Al McCordsuggested that this kind of learning has affinities with other student-centered paradigms, such as case-basedlearning. Denise Easton raised a related topic, quoting from a recent MacArthur Foundation white paper onyouth and new media to suggest that technological developments may be changing the way we think ofeducation as well as how and where learning takes place. She posted a video of Sir Ken Robinson's TEDconference presentation "Do schools kill creativity?" to add another dimension to the debate. Patrick requested suggestions for addressing the significant challenge of training teachers in the use oftechnology when they will teach in countries with uneven levels of technology infrastructure and services. JimShimabukuro suggested Paolo Freire as a theoretical starting point, arguing that part of the problem may beour own notions of what constitutes "school," which focus on institutional models that may not be replicable,or desirable, in these contexts. Other participants offered specific resources that teachers in areas withunreliable technology infrastructures may find useful. And Innovate editor-in-chief Jim Morrison is still facilitating an active discussion about addressing facultyresistance to the use of IT tools in active learning instructional strategies stemming from his initial post on thetopic in July 2008. This ongoing dialogue underscores the value of the community for developing in-depthexplorations of important issues in educational technology.These and other discussions can be found on Innovate-Ideagora; please join us and contribute yourthoughts! Coming Up on Innovate-Ideagora We have an exciting line-up of expert guests for future Innovate-Ideagora interviews; details about theseinterviews will be announced as they become available:Clifford Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information ( CNI ). CNI, jointly sponsored by theAssociation of Research Libraries ( ARL) and EDUCAUSE , includes about 200 member organizationsdedicated to improving the use of information technology and networked information to enhance scholarshipand intellectual productivity. Lynch will undoubtedly provide a compelling discussion about the role oftechnology in creating scholarship.  Tim McLain and Adam Blackwell from ProQuest , which provideselectronic access to information from periodicals, newspapers, multimedia and image collections, out-of-printbooks, dissertations, and scholarly collections. ProQuest's family of brands provides information products andservices to academic, school, public, corporate, and government libraries around the world.  • Ross Kimbarovsky, cofounder of crowdSPRING  new eco omy company developing an open marketplacehttp://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=709 3McCord and Easton: Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students to Leverage LearningPublished by NSUWorks, 2009for creative services. crowdSpring's corporate philosophy emphasizes the creative process and the protectionof intellectual property. How can crowdSPRING's model be leveraged for academic services? Ross will sharehow crowdSPRING is creating a flexible model for matching available skills with employer needs.• Miriam Scurrah, e-learning coordinator at Kmart Australia Limited, which is using iClone software foravatar-based training. Scurrah will describe how Kmart Australia intends to integrate virtual, three-dimensionalscenario-based training into employee development programs, including new employee training and customerservice simulations. We need your input for these interviews! Let us know what you'd like us to ask our guests by posting yourquestions to the Major Topics thread on the Ideagora discussion forum. To find out when specific interviewsare scheduled or to participate in the live sessions, please check the Innovate-Live schedule. As a marketplace for ideas, Innovate-Ideagora lets us all participate directly in wide-ranging conversationsabout education and information technology. Ideagora represents an important step in Innovate's ongoingmission to spotlight the latest innovations in technology and explore their implications for education in all itsforms. Membership is open to all and registration is easy and free. We hope you will join us in ourexperiment. Visit http://innovate-ideagora.ning.com to establish your profile and join the conversation!COPYRIGHT AND CITATION INFORMATION FOR THIS ARTICLEThis article may be reproduced and distributed for educational purposes if the following attribution is included in the document:  Note: This article was originally published in Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/) as: McCord, A., and D. Easton. 2009.Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting students to leverage learning. Innovate 5 (3).http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=709 (accessed January 30, 2009). The article is reprinted here withpermission of the publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.To find related articles, view the webcast, or comment publically on this article in the discussion forums, please goto http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=709  and select the appropriate function from thesidebar. http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=709 4Innovate: Journal of Online Education, Vol. 5, Iss. 3 [2009], Art. 6http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol5/iss3/6

Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students to Leverage Learning

http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=innovate

Innovate-Ideagora: Connecting Students to Leverage Learning

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

NSU Works