These Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) create “a strange paradox: these professors are simultaneously the most and least accessible teachers in history. And it’s not the only tension inherent in MOOCs,” writes A. J. Jacobs in the Sunday Review. Jacobs recently signed up for 11 courses (of which he completed 2), and graded his experience:

• B+ for the professors, who tended to be charming and theatrical, trying to make the best of the virtual environment. There’s no patience for crummy professors, as in a math course canceled in 2012 by Udacity.
• A for convenience, which is unmatched as students can learn from home, while commuting, worldwide. Start and stop anytime.
• D for student-teacher interaction, which is virtually nonexistent. It’s one-way delivery from pop-star teachers, a virtual lottery to get a professor to answer a specific question.
• B- for student-student interaction, which is vital for cementing the newly-learned knowledge, but even the best online discussions lack the immediacy of real life. There’s also a signal-to-noise problem, as well as trolling.
• B- for assignments, which are heavily multiple-choice quizzes (great for computers to grade, bad for measuring learning), rampant with cheating, and lackluster when peer-review is used for essays.
• B overall, which a generally positive experience, but minimal practical application when taking diverse subjects, and the courses don’t convey any credentials.

The hot air surrounding the rise of MOOCs is beginning to subside, and the ideas will percolate other fields.

On the academic end of the spectrum, traditional academia must and will respond to the pressures that are disrupting their industry. MOOCs are different in many ways from the “distance education” of the last few decades. How will universities compete with free? How will they justify being on-campus as the virtual experience improves? How much can the traditional, intimate classroom model of learning be bastardized before it looses all meaningful value, reduced to little more than watching TV?

This 18 minute TEDx talk by Michele Pistone discusses the future of higher education, and its historical origins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsiQ6-JTOWM

(Read more comments on Pistone’s talk.)

Of greater interest to this blog, is informal and professional learning. This is the opposite situation, as MOOCs have much to teach us. If you are involved you outreach, take inspiration from MOOCs about:

• Approaches to improving online learning (adding assessment, interactivity and community)
• Adding social aspects (online forums, exploring peer review, and seeing what formats prod students to engage)
• Implementation (user interfaces, software, marketing angles)

It’s all about packaging. The underlying elements (articles, videos, forums, etc.) have been on the internet for some time, and many organizations already have these ingredients at hand. What differentiates an ”online course” is how it’s all combined, the outcomes (both learning objectives and certification), and the overall cohesiveness of the package.

How can you deliver learning with online courses? (And do you want to?)

For some more background, see also our articles on “What is an online course?” (Jan 2012), “Online courses for learning skills: MoMA, NYT & knitting” (Jan 2012; BTW: NYT recently canceled their online courses),  ”Higher-ed courses with massive enrollments: A revolution starts” (Jan 2012), and ”Online college courses, with and without the degree” (Feb 2011).

Here’s an overview of several facets of crowdsourcing.

Motivations

Competition vs. collaboration are two common frameworks for projects. A competition can draw dozens or or thousands of participants who seek a prize. Unlike grant solicitations, these competitions are based on objective results, not on resumes, prior work or personal history. A collaboration typically involves a participant working on a small piece of a larger project.  

The Walker Art Center ran a crowdsourced video festival & awards competition (First International Cat Video Festival) attracting 10,000 entries and over 10,000 attendees.

Fundraising

Crowd funding is when educational projects are funded by individual, online contributors or investors.  Most crowdfunding is done via web sites which list projects, and provide a means for donors to commit. Typically, project funding is all-or-nothing.

One of the leading sites is Kickstarter, which since their launch in spring 2009, has funded over $417 million, funding over 36,000 creative projects. The “Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum” crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo, another major crowdfunding site, enable a nonprofit group to buy Tesla’s old lab, which was threatened with development. The group raised over $1,370,511, reaching their original $800k goal in under a week.

Crowd funding tends to work best for a hip projects, on average, a third of projects are funded.

Crowdfunding is distinct from traditional, online fundraising, in that it is focused on projects, not general operations. In the traditional realm, in Q2 2012, charities reported $204-million in total online gifts (10.9% growth over Q2 2011) and $180.9-million for Q3 2012 (8.9% over Q3 2011), with an average gift of $77, according to data provided to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. More people are giving online, albeit in smaller amounts, than in past years.

See a prior blog post on crowdfunding virtual exhibits.

Workers

Cloud Labor is hiring a distributed virtual labor pool, available on-demand, to fulfull a range of tasks from simple to complex. With enticing projects, this can mean a ton of volunteers …

• The New York Public Library is developing a citizen cartography tool that lets the public take information archived on digitized historical maps and use the data to tag a searchable interface built with Open Street Map. The goal: a larger, more detailed database that will help future researchers.
• The National Library of Finland created the digitalkoot project to help digitize millions of pages of archival material. Visitors to the site transcribe old books one word at a time while playing a video game. Think CAPTCHA meets Angry Birds.
• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (in partnership with the private company Ancestry.com) has recruited “citizen historians” to research historical documents from WWII. The Children of the Lodz Ghetto project is designed to teach historical skills while “restor[ing] names and stories to those whose identities were nearly silenced by a force that nearly succeeded in making them disappear completely from history.”
• Many natural history museums coordinate “citizen science” projects that enlist public help to tackle large research challenges, like collecting and identifying ants, transcribing data from the labels on century-old cicadas or spotting celestial phenomena.
• Many other citizen science projects have elements of crowdsourcing. See SciStarter for more citizen science projects.

In addition, administrative work can sometimes be done. Fansourcing involves recruiting fans to do administrative tasks which are more interesting to enthusiastic fans (brand advocates) than low-level staff. It can connect volunteer fans with potential visitors via live chat, or moderating online discussions and answering customer service questions. The volunteers offer their genuine enthusiasm, not necessarily a deep professional expertise.

Aside from volunteer engagement, the majority of cloud labor is paid. Simple tasks are often paid at hourly rates below $5/hour. See a prior blog post on outsourcing some outreach tasks to freelancers. It tends to drive towards the lowest common denominator, so it’s best for tasks that are suitable for non-professionals. Quality control is often maintained by double and triple-checking work through redundancy. For example, if the task was to write tags describing a painting, the same painting could be tagged by 5 workers, with software to detect spammy responses, and look for tags common to multiple workers.

Politics

Civic Engagement is collective actions that address issues of public concern. This works on both local and national levels. The White House could collect ideas on how to change the manufacturing industry from those who work in it. It asks people which technologies they think are the most important to the industry, as well as what sort of future regulation they believe would be beneficial. Soliciting responses via the internet, in public, eliminates barriers to participation.

Knowledge of the crowd

Collective Knowledge  is development of knowledge assets or information resources from a distributed pool of contributors. This type of mass collaboration is best showcased by the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Here are some smaller projects which collected votes from their community:

• The Smithsonian American Art Museum invited the public to vote via the Web on which examples of video games to include in its “Art of Video Games” exhibit.
• In 2010, the Walker had 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection, in which visitors cast over a quarter million votes about which of 183 paper artworks should go into an upcoming exhibition.
• In 2008, the Brooklyn Museum invited visitors to help choose the best photos for an exhibition.

Talent of the crowd

Collective Creativity  taps into creative talent pools to design and develop original art, media or content. This can mean new creative works by professionals, or non-professionals.

• Several museums, including the Smithsonian, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and the British Museum, have established positions for “Wikipedians in Residence.” The Wikipedians push museum data and images into the Wikipedia universe, as well as soliciting and managing content from the wiki-editing crowd. (See my blog post on reaching the public using Wikipedia.)
• RunCoCo is advice on how to run a community collection online (see PDF).
• New Zealand was looking to revitalize their tourism campaign, and hosted a contest for young filmmakers. Their reward was the opportunity to screen their work in front of famous filmmaker Peter Jackson, plus a trip to New Zealand to shoot and produce a 3-minute film.
• In 2007, World Without Oil, was a crowdsourced public media narrative which invited players to participate in a collaborative simulation of a global oil shortage by playing an online mystery game, and later generating their own stories about the crisis and strategizing ways to manage it.

Open Sourcing is a philosophy and approach that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details. It’s the opposite of keeping secrets or paid licensing. Key benefits are broader use and publicity. Some popular projects are also able to foster a community where people outside the organization also contribute. Typically, revenue comes from selling related services, or grants. For example, Omeka is a web-publishing platform for library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions.

Communities

Community Building  is developing communities through active engagement of individuals who share common passions, beliefs or interests.

Preserapedia is an open encyclopedia for heritage conservation with over 1 thousand articles.

In business

The term was popularized by journalist Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” about outsourcing labor to the “crowd,” but the concept rapidly broadened beyond labor. In business, crowdsourcing now means obtaining services, ideas, content, or money from a large group of people. “Crowdsourcing has become a very successful business model for many startups such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, Threadless and Kickstarter – to name only a few. But so far, its usage by big companies has been sporadic and experimental,” notes François Pétavy, CEO of eYeka, a crowdsourcing platform. Pétavye says that use in the business world is growing, and that crowdsourcing now solves a variety of real world problems, have a demonstrable return on investment.

It is related to other evolving concepts. For example, Open Innovation is using of sources outside of the entity of group to generate, develop and implement ideas.

Tools are applications and platforms that support collaboration, communication, and sharing among distributed groups of people.

Source: The categories above, and the lede illustration, are adapted from Crowdsourcing.org. Several projects from AAM TrendsWatch 2012 (PDF).

Trekker is a wearable backpack outfitted with a camera system on top. It’s portability enables Google to gather images while maneuvering through tight, narrow spaces or locations only accessible by foot. The Trekker is operated by an Android device and consists of 15 lenses angled in a different direction so the images can be stitched together into 360-degree panoramic views. As the operator walks, photos are taken roughly every 2.5 seconds. See a view of the Bright Angel Trail. Read more at Google’s blog announcement.

Trolley goes into museums. Google developed a push-cart system that could easily fit through museum doorways and navigate around sculptures. Here are views of several museums Google has covered.

Snowmobile was another hack, put together over the course of a few weekends (they say) using some 2x4s, duct tape, and extra hard drives wrapped in ski jackets to last through the freezing conditions. Motivated by the 2010 Winter Olympics, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada — the snowmobile mapped slopes and trails which fans would be seeing during the games.

Trike is a three-wheel bicycle developed in 2009 for recording from parks and trails, university campuses, theme parks, zoos, monuments, sports stadiums, and the like. For these locations, which are often private land, Google signs a deal with the location. They have a submission form for new locations, which is highly overbooked.

Cars were Google’s first step into street views, launching in 2007 with 5 U.S. cities, and now delivering 360° panoramic views from locations worldwide. Starting with an SUV, then a van, Google settled on a fleet of cars. The latest car has 15 lenses taking 360 degrees of photos. It also has motion sensors to track its position, a hard drive to store data, a small computer running the system, and lasers to capture 3D data to determine distances within the Street View imagery.

A related project takes underwater panoramas, such as a view of Lady Elliot Island, QLD, Australia.

Check out Google’s gallery of some of their best street view collections. Hopefully they will continue to connect more of our world.

Here’s a list of ten apps that computer nerds turn to when they want to engage their young kids in math and science…

Dragonbox – “My 3.5 year olds were doing algebra with fractions without realizing it” said a user. “I’ve personally seen a 4 year old get an elementary understanding of algebra from this app,” said another user, Thwyx. And “fascinatingly friendly and effective way to teach symbolic arithmetic to children,” said stonecypher. “Awesome and I highly recommend it, even to adults. It’s basically a series of algebraic puzzles, using cards that start off not as numbers,” said Roogna. This app was favored by several parents.

Isaac Newton’s Gravity — “You try to solve mazes by putting blocks in the righ place to let the ball roll down. My nephew has played that game since he was 3,” said codegen. Though user fermion notes that most kids need to be a little older.

Cut the Rope — “physics engine in it is a nice introduction to the likes of gravity, elasticity, etc.” said Kergan.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox — loved by the 4.5 year old of Thorrablot. “Definitely geared more for pre school aged like 2-4,” said iTunes reviewer jteyer.

Feed Me Oil – “The first levels are easy enough for a young child, and our little girl loves it. With the fans, boards, and other mechanisms its a good introduction to gravity and other forces,” said myxiplx.

Algebra Touch – “Amazing app that demonstrates how variables work in algebraic equations, highly recommended. Maybe too high level for a 3 year old but it’s about as mathy as iOS can get,” said mewsenews. This is not a game; it’s a simple drag-and-drop equation solver.

Monster Physics – “Both my 4 and 7 year olds love Monster Physics. And by the same author, Stack the States and Stack the Countries are excellent for geography,” said MojoRilla. A game creating and controlling inventions.

Intro to Math – “she got a huge amount of use from, which while just basic as the names would imply was good around that age,” said Roogna.

Nova Elements – “When she got curious about elements, we picked up the Nova Elements app, which answered her questions at the time pretty well,” said Roogna. This was a complimentary app to a NOVA broadcast.

SkyView — “I have a very smart and curious 3-year-old daughter… She has a wonderfully curious mind, and really likes SkyView already,” said Timothy.

And a bonus recommendation for older kids:

Numbers League – targeting older kids, “covers math down to simple addition and subtraction and up to multiplication, division and simple fractions,” says rreay. The app is based on a card game. “M three children love to play against each other and their Mom and Dad to see who can make the highest point captures,” says iTunes reviewer Sarah Chase.

Other slashdot users also recommended: Tesla Toy and Angry Birds Space to develop an intuitive sense of orbits and attraction/repulsions.

Located east of Detroit, on the shore of Lake St. Clair, near the Milk River (photo below), the Ford house is involved with water quality monitoring as part of the worldwide GLOBE hands-on, school-based science and education program. The science part of the picture involves having students input water quality results into a global database. Shires notes, “Many groups who are engaged in ongoing testing come back for history tours of the house.”  Student visitors also learn about history of the family, including their love and respect for the water.

The Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio has a successful program for 9th grade students from the local ‘Science’ High School. The students do two days of experiential learning activities on the 70 acre estate during a summer program before starting school. During the tours, the students learn about architecture, landscape design and technology, and they also assess primary source materials including archival blueprints, letters and historic photos. One of the science teachers remarked, “To be in their community and creating something that someone could really use–that is the motivation.”

Read more about both programs in Shires’ blog post at AASLH, “Bringing in Other Disciplines to Your Historic Site.”

Another cool example of multidisciplinary outreach school programs is at the Roberson Museum and Science Center (Binghamton, NY):

• Hands-on science, history and art. Students discover animal adaptations by studying taxidermy specimens, participate in magical science experiences, build steampunk scultptures, or explore antique objects and create a new use for them;
• School receives a mysterious artifact once a month (September-May) for your classroom. Artifacts range from tools to toys and relate to American History;
• Discover the Iroquois, their culture, their relationship with the land and how European culture has impacted native peoples. Students create pinch pots and learn Native American constellation legends in the Planetarium.

The print dictionary lasted for two and a half centuries, tracing back to 1755, when Samuel Johnson published A Dictionary of the English Language, the first comprehensive, reliable English-language dictionary. Johnson’s dictionary was used by the few wealthy, literate individuals and institutions who owned books, and was the standard for over 150 years. The consumer market for dictionaries expanded with the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century, when paper and books became generally affordable. Despite the importance of dictionaries to literacy and communication, there have only been a handful of major dictionaries.

Although a few dictionaries become commonly accepted as standards, there is no grand authority in charge of the English language.

Dictionaries are creative works which describe the ever-changing way a society uses language. Thus, if you start reading dictionaries, you find a cacophony of subtly-different definitions. For example, a “crosswalk” could be:

• a path marked off on a street to indicate where pedestrians should cross (American Heritage)
• a crossing lane marked off for pedestrians (Collins)
• a specially marked place for people to walk across a street (Longman)
• a specially paved or marked path for pedestrians crossinga street or road (Merriam-Webster)
• a marked part of a road where pedestrians have right of way to cross (Oxford)
• a place where pedestrians can cross a street (Wiktionary)

Why the variety of definitions? For one thing, copyright law necessitates that publishers find new ways to say the same thing. But also, language evolves over time, and publishers seek to serve consumers by hiring dictionary editors to invent new approaches to their craft of dictionary writing.

Unfortunately, even for the publishers like Bullon, who get digital, the economics of dictionary publishing is unsustainable. Dictionaries have a simple, obsolete, business model: A huge up-front investment, recouped over years (or decades) of book sales.

Depending on the publisher’s budget and marketing priorities, they hire lexicographers to create definitions from scratch, or paraphrase existing dictionaries. The Webster’s Third New International Dictionary took a decade to create. Finally published in September 1961, the team of lexicographers led by  Philip Babcock Gove spent 757 editor-years and $3.5 million ($26 million in today’s dollars) to build their unabridged dictionary with 450,000 entries. To create a new, medium-sized dictionary with 35,000 words would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (for paraphrasing) to tens of millions of dollars (for new definitions based on examining real-world usages).

Sadly for dictionaries, in this digital age, it’s impossible to earn much money from subscriptions and advertising, and unrealistic to earn millions from dictionary-type apps. There’s a stagnation of the older dictionaries — and new approaches brewing which use crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence.

The following is an overview of most major dictionaries currently available, and their online/mobile offerings.

Free dictionaries:

• Wikimedia Foundation — Wiktionary — Wiktionary is a free web site, and a data source for many dictionary web sites and apps. — Started in 2002, Wiktionary has over 3.1 million entries in English. Similar to Wikipedia, it’s a collaborative project that anyone can edit, aiming to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English. Many of the entries are either based on the other three free sources below, or paraphrased from existing dictionaries. Many of the entries were automatically generated, adapted from commercial dictionaries. It can be used freely, as long as it is credited.
• Princeton University — WordNet — WordNet is a data source for many thesaurus-type web sites and apps. — WordNet is a different kind of dictionary. Instead of a dictionary of words (where each word has one or more senses), it is a dictionary of “word senses.” It contains 117 thousand sets of synonyms, each for a specific meaning (e.g. “a sudden brief burst of bright light”). It can be used as a dictionary by listing all the meanings in which a word appears. WordNet also contains semantic relations. It can be used freely, as long as it is credited.
• Public domain — A Dictionary of the English Language — Scanned pages available from Internet Archive, with error-prone OCR. — Published in April 1755, and written by Samuel Johnson, ‘A Dictionary of the English Language,’ also known as ‘Johnson’s Dictionary,’ was influential. Prior to the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, 173 years later, Johnson’s was the pre-eminent English dictionary. Funded in 1746 by a consortium of London’s most successful publishers, including Robert Dodsley and Thomas Longman.
• Public domain — Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia — Available in full-text form at Wordnik, or Global Language Resources. — The largest, out-of-copyright dictionary. One of the largest encyclopedic dictionaries of the English language. Published from by The Century Company of New York, in multivolume versions, with 7,046 pages. Last updated 1914.

Provides an API:

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow web sites and apps to access dictionary information in realtime. This is a great way to get information used in a variety of ways, inviting other developers to create innovative web sites and apps that use the dictionary data.

1) Scan the UPCs from your books. The UPC code is  the ISBN-13 code. There are many apps for this. I used the Red Laser app, available for iPhone, Android, or Windows phone. Make a “list” from within the app, then from within the list, start scanning with “multiscan” on. When you are done scanning a few dozen, or hundreds of books, email yourself the list. The CSV file will contain ISBN-13 numbers and the book titles.  (If your books don’t have barcodes, or you are not selling books, skip steps 1 and 2 and enter them manually in step 4.)

2) Make a spread sheet file, e.g., with Microsoft Excel. These are the column headings, and the values for each:

• sku – this can be anything unique, I duplicated the ISBN here
• product-id – the ISBN from Red Laser
• product-id-type – this explains what the “id” is. Put a “2″ in this column, that means “ISBN”
• price – put “1000″ (will explain later way)
• item-condition – 2 (means “very good”)
• quantity – put “1″
• add-delete – skip this (leave blank)
• will-ship-internationally – y
• expedited-shipping – y
• standard-plus – y
• item-note – Add any note you want buyers to see
• fulfillment-center-id – leave blank

This is all easier than it looks. See documentation about the row headings. You can “fill down” in Excel to repeat the same values. Export the file as a tab delimited file.

3) Make an account with Amazon to start “selling professionally”. This costs $39.99/month, one month free. Go to sign up. Once you have an account, you will log in to the “Seller Central.” They have a free plan, but you can’t do bulk uploads.

4) Upload your spreadsheet containing your listings to Amazon. Go to “Inventory” > “Upload products and inventory”. Under “Upload inventory files”, choose “Inventory loader file”, then click the “Upload Now” button. Wait for a few minutes, then look in the “Inventory” > “Manage Inventory” > “All My Inventory.” You should see all your books. They will all be priced at $1000.

5) Price your books to the market price. Select all your books, and choose “Actions” > “Match Low Price”, and then “Save”. Repeat as needed for additional pages of books. This will set your price to what customers will expect to pay. You can sort by price, and then delete any books which are too cheap to be worthwhile. Most serious books about arts and science should be valuable. Then select all your books, and choose “Actions” > “Change to Fulfilled by Amazon”. Now the system is waiting for you to mail them. You can always set any price you want.

6) Send your books to Amazon. From “Inventory” > “Manage FBA Inventory”, choose your books, and mark them for shipping. Print PDF product and shipment labels provided by Amazon. Pack your books into your own boxes. You will put one label inside each box, and tape one to the top.  Use Amazon’s discounted shipping or select your own carrier. (A box will cost $5-10 to ship with UPS).

7) Amazon stores your books. Amazon catalogs and stores your products in their ready-to-ship inventory. Amazon receives and scans your inventory. They record Item dimensions for storage. You monitor inventory using their integrated online tracking system.

8) Customers order your books. How soon this happens will depend on the popularity of your books. Customers search for and purchase your products directly on Amazon.com, or on other e-commerce channels such as your own site. Your listings on Amazon.com are eligible for Amazon Prime and Super Saver Shipping, and rank by price excluding shipping. You can expand to list and fulfill your products globally.

9) Amazon picks and packs your products. Fulfillment by Amazon picks your products from inventory and packages them. Amazon locates your products using their advanced web-to-warehouse, high-speed picking and sorting system. They manage your order volume – whether you get a few orders a day or a thousand. Customers can combine your orders with other products fulfilled by Amazon.

10) Amazon ships your products and provides support. Amazon ships products to customers from their network of fulfillment centers. Amazon ships customer orders using the method they choose. All outbound shipping costs are included in your service fees. Amazon provides tracking information for customers. For orders on Amazon.com, customers can contact us for customer service.

Then you get paid from Amazon. They can pay personal or business accounts.

This same process works for items other than books, e.g., T-Shirts. The basic process is the same, but steps 1 & 2 differ. Amazon has extensive help pages. If you can post an ad to CraigsList or eBay, you can figure this out too. Remember to cancel your monthly subscription once you sell everything. For anything that doesn’t sell, you can have Amazon dispose of it or mail it to you for a nominal fee.

Get volunteers involved! The work goes quick with a few extra hands, and once you mail off the boxes to Amazon, there’s nothing else to do.

List of the best hashtags for education and outreach…

• #edtech: Using technology in education, both theory and practice
• #elearning: Computer-based learning and remote study. Can include computers, kiosks, mobile devices
• #OER: Open educational resources for reuse and repurposing, e.g., textbooks in the Creative Commons license
• #crowdsource: Delegating small tasks to a large group. Both business and outreach uses
• #STEM: Promoting knowledge of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. See also #scied.
• #OpenAccess & #OA: Projects that deliver free, immediate, open access to research online (Nice intro video)
• #mlearning: Learning mobile apps and devices. Contrasts with “elearning” above
• #edreform,  #edpolitics, & #edpolicy: Discussions of educational reform, policy and politics
• #ece: Promoting and discussing early childhood education, see also #earlyed
• #mtogo: Museums exploring the use of mobile, both in and out of their museum
• #dataviz: Data visualization, charts and graphs, information design
• #gbl: Game based learning. See also #gamification for broader uses in learning and commerce
• #commoncore & #ccss: Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
• #speced: Special education discussion and advocacy, see also #sped
• #museumed: Museum-based education, see also the lower traffic #mtogo for mobile-focused outreach
• #YouthSkillsWork: Youth and skills, often focused on developing countries
• #iPadEd & #iosedapp: Teachers and developers working with Apple iOS apps and eBooks
• #edcamp: Local, professional development conferences for K-12 educators, participant-driven (See Edcamp Foundation)
• #playoutdoors: Encouraging people to get outside. (Read about nature-rich society)
• #BlendedLearning: Course structures that blend of face-to-face and online learning environments
• #afterschoolworks: Promoting various types of after school programs for youth
• #museweb: Museums using the web in various ways
• #MOOCs: Massive open online courses, often free and not-for-credit, for thousands of students
• #HigherEd: Issues in higher education
• #edleadership & #edadmin: Views on leadership/administration in education
• #PBL: Project-based learning and tools
• #flipclass: In flipped classrooms, students learn lessons at home (often watching videos), and do assignments in class.

If hashtags are new to you, read this short orientation from Twitter about hashtags or read a short history.

There are many ways to use these hashtags. For example, if you are an app developer and have created a new educational app, you can use these hashtags to lurk in on discussions among your target audience, and include the hashtag in your tweets to increase the chance that influential educators find out about your project. Or if you’ve made a new video, try promoting it with #flipclass.

Direct to your audience

Aside from museums, most outreach organizations do not directly reach their audience via Twitter. In particular, if you create resources for students, you are likely to ultimately reach those students via their educators. Twitter is a convenient place to find out what those educators are talking about, try to get your project picked up by some influential Tweeters, or get some feedback.

Moreover, there is a vibrant, unorganized community of adult learners, self motivated to pursue new knowledge. Twitter is a useful watering hole for them as well, particularly if you use subject-oriented hashtags, such as: anthropology, Archaeology, art, ArtHistory, astronomy, autism, bilingual, BlackHistoryMonth, books, Brain, Breastfeeding, cern, climate, climatechange, Creativity, Culture, dinos, Dinosaurs, diy, dyslexia, earth, engagement, environment, Fossils, health, history, homeschooling, Imagination, journalism, kids, literature, microbiology, NASASocial, neuroscience, painting, Paleontology, photography, physics, Picasso, poetry, Psychology, read, reading, Refuge, religion, research, science, scientists, sculpture, Sociology, space, specialneeds, telescope, toxicology, and Writing.

Source: We compiled a list of over one thousand hashtags which appear among popular education, outreach, literacy, museum, and e-learning Twitter feeds, plus the accounts which @IDEA_org follows, and this list in a live Google Doc  from Chiew Pang (@aClilToClimb). We ranked the hashtags based on the multiple scoring factors, including signal-to-noise, relevance to education and outreach, the number of times the hashtag was Tweeted on Friday, 26-October (volume), the total number of times the hashtag was delivered to Twitter timelines (exposure), and the number of  people using the hashtag. 

You are not limited to Microsoft Excel, or your own programming abilities. We’re now in an awesome generation for visualization, with dozens of freely available software libraries — which developers have spent months (or years!) building. Increasingly these use Javascript (so they work in all browsers and mobile devices). The folks at Datavisualization.ch highlight most of the best tools for making maps and charts, or processing data…

Arbor.js is a library of force-directed layout algorithms plus abstractions for graph organization and refresh handling.

CartoDB is a web service for mapping, analyzing and building applications with data.

Circos is a software package for visualizing data in a circular layout.

Cubism.js is a library for creating interactive time series and horizon graphs based on D3.js

Dance.js is a simple data-driven visualization framework based on Data.js and Underscore.js

DataWrangler is an interactive web application for data cleaning and transformation.

Degrafa is a powerful declarative graphics framework for rich user interfaces, data visualizations and mapping.

Envision.js is a library for creating fast, dynamic and interactive time series visualizations.

Flare is a set of software tools for creating rich interactive data visualizations in Flash (ActionScript). Note, Flash is increasing an obsolete choice of platform because it is rarely supported on mobile devices.

GeoCommons is a public community and set of tools to access, visualize and analyze data with compelling map visualizations.

Gephi is a visualization and exploration platform for networks with dynamic and hierarchical graphs.

Google Chart Tools is a collection of simple to use, customizable and free to use interactive charts and data tools.

Google Fusion Tables is a web application that makes it easy to host, manage, collaborate on, visualize, and publish data tables.

Google Refine is a tool for working with data, cleaning it up, reformating it or extending it with web services.

Impure / Quadrigram is a  visual programming language aimed to gather, process and visualize information.

JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit is a Javascript library that provides tools for creating interactive data visualizations for the web.

Kartograph is a simple and lightweight framework for creating beautiful, interactive vector maps.

Leaflet is a lightweight JavaScript library for making tile-based interactive maps for desktop and mobile browsers.

Many Eyes is a web application to build, share and discuss graphic representation of user uploaded data.

MapBox is a web platform for hosting custom designed map tiles and a set of open source tools to produce them.

Miso Dataset is a client-side data transformation and management library to loade, parse, sorte, query & manipulate data.

Modest Maps is a display and interaction library for tile-based maps in Flash, JavaScript and Python.

Mr. Data Converter is a web application that converts Excel data into one of several web-friendly formats, including HTML, JSON and XML.

NodeBox is a desktop application that lets you create generative, static, animated or interactive visuals.

Paper.js is a vector graphics scripting framework in a well designed, consistent and clean programming interface.

Peity is a simple jQuery plugin that converts an element’s content into a simple mini pie, line or bar chart.

Polymaps is a library for making dynamic, interactive maps with image- and vector-based tiles.

Prefuse is a set of software tools for creating rich interactive data visualizations in Java. Note that Java is increasingly marginalized, and is not a good choice for most mobile development.

Processing is an open source programming language and environment to create images, animations, and interactions. Processing.js is the sister project of Processing that makes projects work using web standards and without any plug-ins.

Protovis is a library that composes custom views of data with simple marks such as bars and dots.

R is a software environment for statistical computing and graphical techniques. It’s a complex language, but highly favored by people who have to process a lot of numerical-type data.

Raphaël is a small library that simplifies working with vector graphics on the web.

Recline.js is a simple but powerful library for building data applications in pure JavaScript and HTML.

Rickshaw is a library for creating interactive time series graphs based on D3.js.

Sigma.js is an open-source lightweight library to display interactively static and dynamic graphs.

Tableau Public is a desktop application to build and post interactive graphs, dashboards, maps and tables to the web.

Tangle is a library that allow to interactively explore, play, and see the document update immediately.

Timeline is a tool to create timelines with data and media from different sources like Google Docs, Twitter, Flickr or Vimeo.

For more information on any of the above, and a fresh list of anything new, see the selected tools compiled by DataVisualization.ch.

Also, IDEA’s SpicyNodes project is a way to easily display concept-map type visualizations. Currently available in web browsers using Flash, and coming to the iPad in 2013.

• The week started with a webcast co-sponsored by SPARC and the World Bank featuring a conversation with 5 Open Access Experts.
• Follow and contribute to Twitter buzz at #OAWeek, #OAWeek2012 and #openaccess
• SPIE, the society of optics and photonics, is taking the plunge into Open Access
• Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene is a  new Open Access journal venture by BioOne
• Author Peter Suber released a new book on Open Access

Read about more Open Access stuff going on this week in this post by Heather Joseph of SPARC, and check out the main Open Access Week web site.

To get thinking about it, here are some simple game structures that work well for museum learning:

• Roleplaying Games: Create powerful empathetic experiences, and give insight into what happens when different points of view collide. Roleplaying games can range from simple to fearsomely complex when variables of character qualities, goals, obstacles, and novel situations are factored in.
• Action Games: Get visitors moving. In outdoor spaces or large indoor halls, visitors can running through boundary areas, collect items, and navigate obstacles. Instructors create a physical space with very simple materials, like poker chips, lengths of rope, and paper plates, and use students’ powers of imagination to redefine them as resources like food or water, and constraints like space or predatation.
• Tabletop Games:  Board games, card games, dice games, tile games, and even paper-and-pencil games can create a context for history learning. Building on existing game types, content and imagery can be adapted to local content and topics.
• Parlor Games/Social Games: Some games require only people. Both period games like Victorian parlor games, and games that use words, motions, questions and answers (like 20 Questions). Street play games, like handclapping games, hopscotch, foursquare, or running bases, are also social and simple to present.
• Period Games: Bring a historical moment to life, giving a view of material culture and leisure time activities. At Strawbery Banke, red baskets contain popular toys and games from a historical time — a set of marbles in the 1950s Shapley-Drisco House, a Shut the Box board in the Colonial tavern.

See Moon’s article at the AASLH Arrrrducation Blog >

See also “Gaming the Past,” a repository for theory, research, and implementations of simulation games for history education.

There are currently 5,206,652 pages available, from more than 800 newspapers from 25 states, and the database is expanding. This is part of a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. The project started in 2007, and was done by various grant recipients who digitized approximately 100,000 newspaper pages representing that state’s regional history, geographic coverage, and events of the particular time period being covered. Participants digitized primarily from microfilm holdings, and digitized at high resolution, greyscale.

So far, the National Endowment for the Humanities has given $22 million to 32 state libraries, historical societies and universities to digitize. That works out to $4.23 per scanned page. In 2011, the site averaged 2.5 million page views per month.

Read more in LOC press release.

Many universities are now offering free certificate programs online that are available to everyone. The concept is that while many people either can’t afford traditional schooling or cannot attend a traditional classroom schedule or setting, many of them still want and need to learn new skills. Dan Colman at openculture.com has compiled a list of 75 of the best free certificate courses, ranging from Stanford’s cryptography offering to Johns Hopkins’ Principles of Obesity Economics.

Rosie Redfield, Life Sciences Centre at the University of British Columbia

Still, the current generation of courses often disappoint, as it’s hard to find a balance between traditional classroom learning and independent online learning, and also keep the price free. As colleges and universities move deeper into on-line learning, they limit face to face classroom time with instructors teaching course content. Dr. Richfield, a researcher and professor at the University of British Columbia, is skeptical of the current generation of courses. She writes in “Preparing for the MOOC-ocalypse” that universities must “develop integrated programs with hands-on and face-to-face experiences that are seen as worth the cost.”

But what does integration mean, and how is the balance reached? Redfield suggests that “Ironically, the best way to prepare for this MOOC-opalypse may be to become part of the problem by teaching a MOOC.” One approach, borrowing from the “flipped classroom” widely discussed for younger students, students can learn the course work independently, using online tools and watching videos from their dorms, and use class room time for discussions and problem solving.

The need for a radical re-working of the costs of education is clear. Education is absurdly expensive. The following is a breakdown of estimated undergraduate budgets for 2011-2012. The dark blue is tuition and fees. For public 2-year commuter colleges, it’s just under $3 thousand; and for a private nonprofit 4-year campus, it’s $28.5k. (The per-course costs assume 8 courses per year.)

Source: Graph of tuitions undergraduate budgets from The College Board, Annual Survey of Colleges. PDF. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA3H1rqiJpk

Palmer sharing comments after a presentation at AAAS last night about wildlife filmmaking.

Palmer works to promote better portrayal of wildlife in film, both in terms of imbuing films with a conservation message, and also by maintaing an authenticity to filming wild animals. He emphasizes that scientists and filmmakers need each other. The filmmaker gains scientific insights and can anchor story arcs around scientific inquiry; and the scientist gets the word out about their work and the broader issues they study.

There are many great examples of science public outreach on video, but there should be much more. And not only in photogenic fields of wildlife biology and astronomy. But when working with video, all scientists will struggle with the conflict Palmer desribes on some level, as they seek to be brief, and express scientific concepts with relatable metaphors.

Tom Segal is an analyst for a venture fund focused on education technology.

To counter the argument that questionable ethics play a role, Tom Segal points out that “schools deal with for-profit institutions at every level.” He argues that expanding educational technology to the private sector also creates competition which in turn would allow schools to choose the best technology. Nonprofit institutions limit the amount of money that can be put into innovative development. Technological advances will not occur as quickly and with as much innovation unless the private sector is able to become part of the process.

Segal is focused on for-profit vendors selling technology to the schools — not on the wholesale commercialization of schools.

Jon Bower responded, “While we are starting to engineer education processes around student learning, much of the instruction process is still an art. Creating good processes and embedding them in technology is difficult, as companies from Brøderbund Software to Kahn Academy have learned.”

Go to article “Incentivizing Innovation in Education; or A Role For For Profits in Education” >