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Tag Archives: Higher Education

OhioLINK Seeks Executive Director

OhioLINK, my employer, is seeking nominations and applications for the position of Executive Director. The search is being conducted with the assistance of Brill Neumann Associates, and the position description is linked from their current searches page (direct link to PDF, cached link to PDF).

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UDL: Universal Design…for Libraries?

This week I was at the Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion, and Disability annual conference conference at the Ohio State University and was reminded again about the principles of Universal Design. The presentation was “Universal Design: Ensuring Access to All Learners” by Maria Morin from Project Enhance at the University of Texas — Pan American. Although she talked about Universal Design for Learning (encompassing assessments, instructional delivery and resource presentation), there was a point in her presentation that I snapped to Universal Design for Libraries.

Here were the two slides:

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From Joshua Kim, Ideas for Working with Vendors

Joshua Kim, senior learning technologist and an adjunct in sociology at Dartmouth College, recently had a series of posts about working with software vendors. Although Joshua’s focus is with learning technologies (course management systems, lecture capture systems, etc.), these are general enough to be useful in a variety of library environments as well. His posts, hosted by Inside Higher Ed, were:

Here are descriptions or excerpts from each of the posts.

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Experiential Learning Enhanced with 2-D Barcodes

QR-Code pointing to DLTJ

This morning I attended a presentation on “Using QR Codes and Mobile Phones for Learning” at the Ohio Educational Technology Conference. Presented by Thomas McNeal and Mark van’t Hooft from Kent State University, the example used in the presentation was their GeoHistorian Project from the 2009 ISTE conference. By using a pamphlet of 2-D barcodes labeled with strategic locations at the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, participants using barcode scanners on smartphones were able to call up text and media from various websites while walking around the memorial. They put together a video showing participants walking through the space and their impressions of the 2-D barcode-enhanced experience.

Tom emphasized the need to have an activity that is relevant to the technology. As he put it, “Use the technology to ampliy the activity.” In this specific case, the 2-D barcodes pointed to text, pictures, and videos that provide additional background to the components depicted in the World War II Memorial. As participants mentioned in the video, it is a way add context to the experience of walking through the memorial.

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Ohio Educational Technology Conference Program Posted

For those interested and involved with distance and technology enhanced learning or have attended one of the past ODCE/LLT higher education conferences, you’ll want to know about the Ohio Educational Technology Conference in early February.

The Ohio ETC is the combination of OLN/OhioLINK/OARnet conference and the eTech Ohio conference — coming together this year for the first time. There are many sessions directed towards higher education that shouldn’t be missed and opportunities to network with counterparts in primary and secondary education. The Ohio Educational Technology Conference has published its program guide for its annual meeting February 1 through 3, 2010 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. With over 300 concurrent sessions, 225 exhibitors, and acclaimed keynote and featured speakers (Adora Svitak and David Weinberger among them), it is sure to be a great event.

Registration is available on the eTech Ohio website. While there, also sign up for a “Hall Pass” that will enable you to create your own personal itinerary in the Ohio ETC Conference Planner. (Tip: when registering for a Hall Pass and are prompted for an Organization Category, select “Other” then select “College/University” under the Organization Type heading.)

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Proposals Now Being Accepted for the Ohio Educational Technology Conference, February 2010

The theme of the 2010 Ohio Educational Technology Conference, P-20 Conversations: Shaping a Path for the 21st Century Student, addresses the need to provide seamless technology integration throughout students’ careers. Reflecting this year’s theme, the sponsors of last year’s Learning, Libraries and Technology conference — Ohio Learning Network (OLN), OhioLINK and OARnet — have joined with the Ohio Resource Center (ORC) and eTech Ohio, the technology service provider for primary and secondary education, to provide a premiere professional development event for all of us – teachers, faculty, librarians, instructional designers, administrators, students, and technicians.

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A Thread of Comments on the OLE Project Draft Report

Carl Grant, president of Ex Libris North America, posted a pair of messages on his corporate blog that it is worth calling attention to regarding the OLE Project final report, if you haven’t already run into them: OLE; The unanswered questions and Library Software Solutions – We need a higher level of discourse... Equally important is the comment on the first by Brad Wheeler, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at Indiana University. The whole thread should take about five minutes to read; five minutes well spent if you are interested in the intersection of community source software development with proprietary, closed-source software development. It is even more important if you are looking for a case study of governance issues surrounding community source software development. Go ahead…I’ll wait.

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Federal Textbook Disclosure Rules Now Law

The fact that the Higher Education Opportunity Act (Public Law 110-315) — otherwise known as HEOA — was signed into law last year is probably not big news to anyone. One of the parts of the bill that I have been following and commented on here in DLTJ is the textbook disclosure rules. I haven’t posted follow-up commentary here because I’ve been expecting that the U.S. Department of Education will be forthcoming with new regulations regarding the implementation of the disclosure rules. As it turns out, a sentence was added into the legislation between the time I last read it closely and when it finally was made law: “No Regulatory Authority- The Secretary shall not promulgate regulations with respect to this section.” It would appear the language of the law stands on its own.

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Textbook Affordability at the Student Success Assessment Summit

I had the pleasure of presenting on a panel at the Ohio Student Success Assessment Summit this morning on the topic of textbooks and open educational resources. Specifically, I was talking about the plans and desires of the University System of Ohio to help faculty help students with the escalating of costs of learning materials. My talk (below and on SlideShare) gives a background of the problem in the context of the State of Ohio, principles upon which a working plan for statewide support is forming, and strategic themes

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Flat World Knowledge and U.S. Gov’t on Open Access Course Materials

The sand is really starting to shift under the traditional textbook providers as the open course content movement shows signs of, well, movement. Already this year there are two events that point to shifts in how instructors and students can shortcut the complex ecosystem of textbooks as we know it today. First, Flat World Knowledge — a provider of open access course materials — launched earlier this year. Second, new legislation has been proposed in the U.S. Congress to mandate that some agencies use their funding to produce open access course materials.

Flat World Knowledge Launches

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From the Disruptive Library Technology Jester (http://dltj.org/), printed on Thursday the 2nd of September 2010 at 6:49:55 PM UTC (+0000). The URL to this page is http://dltj.org/tag/highered/

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