Week of March 13 - 19, 2010

Welcome to this week's EdTechTalk (ETT) newsletter! It was a great week on EdTechTalk in spite of (or maybe because of) many schools being on Spring Break in the US. This was the week of conversations about building communities of practice particularly in educational settings, and Jennifer Maddrell was the featured personality of the week sharing her doctoral dissertation project and areas of potential exploration on two different shows! EdTech Weekly kicked it off with a lively conversation between Jen and Dave Cormier and an active chat room. Then Jen was the special guest on the Instructional Design webcast at the end of the week and the conversation continued. If you missed these webcasts be sure to listen to the recordings and join in the continuing conversation about this very interesting, important topic. There was also a rousing discussion on Conversations this past week about copyright and ethical considerations, and whether those are the same thing. That's a recording you'll definitely want to check out if you are interested in copyright, fair use, transformative use, creative commons and some very diverse perspectives on the topic. We all learned a lot with these very thought-provoking, informative sessions. EdTechTalk is truly one of the best places to continue our professional learning as we explore these topics with other educators (as you have already discovered if you're a subscriber to this newsletter). If you're not sure when the live shows are, which is the very best way to become a part of the conversation, log into the home page of EdTechTalk and scroll through the calendar. If shows are canceled or updated you will always see the latest information there. http://edtechtalk.com


The Week in Review 

This week, Jennifer Maddrell discusses the focus for her dissertation work: the Community of Inquiry framework: http://communitiesofinquiry.com/. Her primary research question focuses on whether there is a relationship between learner's perceptions of "community" and actual learning outcomes as identified by grades, papers, tests, etc. The discussion took a very practical turn as we sought to identify particular strategies that may be used by instructors to develop community within online courses. Look for a three-part series investigating the pillars of the Community of Inquiry framework in April 2010.

Conversations Episode 67 - Ethics and Copyright/Copyleft
This week, Lisa, Sheila, and Maria were joined by Kristin Hokanson in the chatroom and Alec Couros in the Skype call to discuss copyright and fair use, copyleft and cc licensing, and the ethics surrounding it all.

K12 Online Echo: Jackie Gerstein
Jackie Gerstein shared a wealth of information about her work with students and her approach to teaching. Her video, Digital Writers' Workshop from K12 Online 2009 was streamed. It was a great conversation.





EdTechWeekly #157
In a break from EdTechWeekly tradition, Dave and Jen explored their research projects and interests regarding "community" within an educational setting. If you are looking for the contributed links to news and resources shared by the EdTechTalk "community" this week, please point your browser to our EdTechTalk delicious folder. See you next week when John returns to get us back on track!

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