Linkage: Web Predator Myths, Twitter & Oprah

Study DeBunks Sexual Predator Myths: Sorry Chris Hansen, but a new study reveals that much of what people "know" or report about social networks and sexual predators is, well, just wrong.

Twitter and NASA: The Mars Rover is sending live updates to Twitter.

Virtual WWII Exhibit: The online collection features items and stories selected from a collection of World War II materials housed at the Lee Library at Brigham Young University.

Constructing Modern Knowledge '08: The Constructivist Consortium is sponsoring a four-day institute focusing on "intensive computer-rich project development with peers and a world-class faculty." The conference will be held at the Radison Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire.

O Ambassadors: Oprah Winfrey, in partnership with Free the Children & Oprah's Angel Network, have announced the launch a new social change organization for youth called O Ambassadors.

Want to Reach Teens? Think Mobile: Teens are already totally wired, so it's natural that teens will use their mobile devices as a way to connect with the brands they love. And advertisers are all too happy to oblige.

Open Yale Courses

Yale University has joined the OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement and is now offering free courses through Open Yale Courses. These courses are free and open to anyone who would like to participate.

Seven departments (astronomy, English, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology and religious studies) at Yale are among the first at the university to offer classes via the Open Yale Courses initiative.

The Open Yale site describes the program as follows:

"Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

Open Yale Courses reflects the values of a liberal arts education. Yale's philosophy of teaching and learning begins with the aim of training a broadly based, highly disciplined intellect without specifying in advance how that intellect will be used.

This approach goes beyond the acquisition of facts and concepts to cultivate skills and habits of rigorous, independent thought: the ability to analyze, to ask the next question, and to begin the search for an answer.

We hope these courses will be a resource for critical thinking, creative imagination, and intellectual exploration."

The Open Yale Courses have been funded and supported through grants from the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation, as well as the Yale Center for Media and Instruction. Open Yale Courses have also integrated Creative Commons licensing into their course materials.

Additional Resources

• Open Yale Courses
  
• Didactics World > Bridging the Digital Content Divide
  
• Creative Commons > Education
  
• Education Guardian Weekly > Reading Poetry at Yale...
  
• Didactics World > Open Content Provision Through ccLearn

K12 Online Conference 2007

Announcing the 2nd Annual K12 Online 2007 convention for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice.

The 2007 conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a pre-conference keynote during the week of October 8. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries.”

Additional Resources

• K12 Online 2007
  
• Upcoming.org > K12 Online
  
• Flickr > tag > k12online07

A Neomillennial Learning Approach

A recent article from the International Journal of Education & Development using ICT, A Neomillennial Learning Approach: Helping non-traditional learners studying at a distance” by M.D. Sankey and the University of Southern Queensland tells that todays students are demanding a change in delivery of their distance learning courses to fit their new millennial learning styles.

The advances in technology and the availability of multimedia resources have spurred the possibility of "multimodal" delivery.

I have always thought it would be the students who would force change upon those who are so comfortable wearing their old shoes...read on.