It's About Learning

The State of Digital Education

Dwayne Harapnuik — February 1, 2012 — Leave a comment

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Three new trends in particular are bringing education into the modern age and helping to improve learning outcomes: digital content (digital textbook sales are projected to grow rapidly over the next decade), mass distribution (the transformation of content from print to digital formats streamlines distribution and enables learning to happen anywhere), and personalized learning (new technologies generate individual learning profiles and custom solutions that ensure concept mastery).

In 21st century learning digital, Learning

Going As Paperless as Possible

Dwayne Harapnuik — December 5, 2011 — 1 Comment

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2011/12/01/experiments-in-digital-grading/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Experiments in digital grading – Casting Out Nines – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout

Math professor Robert Talbert decided to go as paperless as possible because:

Paper-based student work is cumbersome.
Paper-based student work is expensive.
Digital student work saves time.
The tools available today to work with electronic documents are better and cheaper than ever.

Talbert provides a very good explanation of how he digitally grades two Calculus and one Communicating in Mathematics courses. While he uses some methods and software tools that could easily be replaced with simpler solutions the fact that he is exploring this option is exciting. I have been working almost exclusively digitally for several years now and once you start there is not turning back.

Read the full article…

In Technology & Culture digital, grading, Learning, paperless, teaching

John Hopkins Medical Library Closing Doors – Moving to Digital Model

Dwayne Harapnuik — November 10, 2011 — 1 Comment

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/10/research/major-medical-library-closing-its-doors-to-patrons-and-moving-to-digital-model/

Major Medical Library Closing Its Doors to Patrons and Moving to Digital Model — The Digital Shift via kwout

When you have only 100 people per day entering your physical library and checking out an average total of only 40 books per day but have have 35,000 daily digital downloads of articles it only makes sense to close your physical doors — even if you are the world renowned William H. Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University.

By January 1, 2012, the John Hopkins Medical library will close its doors. The library already commits 95% of it’s acquisitions budget to electronic journals and databases so the closure was inevitable. If you really think about this, wouldn’t you rather have your Doctor, a scientist or a Medical researcher spending their time searching the data on their iPad than walking the stacks.

When the best of the best are going completely digital can the rest of the library world be that far behind?

Read the full article…

In Innovation digital, library, medical

At a U. of Kentucky Dorm, a Live-In iPad Experience

Dwayne Harapnuik — September 26, 2011 — Leave a comment

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/at-a-u-kentucky-dorm-a-live-in-ipad-experience/33380?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout

When we start to see larger public universities in the US moving toward the deployment of iPad or an “iPad experience” then you know that the iPad has hit the mainstream in higher education.

What is also significant is that the U of Kentucky is also considering the whole digital learning environment and isn’t just satisfied in:

giving students and faculty a bunch of gadgets

Read the full article…

In iPad digital, digital learning

National Digital Library

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 8, 2010 — Leave a comment

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/oct/04/library-without-walls/

A Library Without Walls by Robert Darnton | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books via kwout

A National Digital Library that can be stocked by Google Books project brings us much closer to the possibility of unfettered access to digital content. Robert Darnton, the historian who directs the Harvard University Library recently brought together 42 top-level representatives from foundations, cultural institutions, and the library and scholarly worlds to talk about how to build the digital library. In the Chronicle of Higher Education article One Step Closer to a National Digital Library Jennifer Howard reports on the results of this meeting.

There are plans for a follow up meeting this coming spring where the discussion will focus on the more concrete plans of establishing foundations to raise the necessary funds for the project and the need to establish the political and cultural will to move this forward.

We are on the cusp of the shift to a new information age.

In 21st century learning digital, library