Report on Innovative #Pedagogy #EdTech #elearning #data @IETatOU

The new 48-page Innovative Pedagogy report from my colleagues at IET at the Open University, UK is published in collaboration with the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). And as always it is of interest for everybody looking for a quick overview of interesting innovative educational technologies, including practical examples and linked references (with the great PhD-researcher Tina Papathoma @aktinaki on the front cover).
The report was written by Rebecca Ferguson, Sarit Barzilai, Dani Ben-Zvi, Clark A Chinn,
Christothea Herodotou, Yotam Hod, Yael Kali, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Haggai Kupermintz,
Patrick McAndrew, Bart Rienties, Ornit Sagy, Eileen Scanlon, Mike Sharples, Martin Weller,
Denise Whitelock.

The 5 previous reports with themes can be found here.

This report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. A remarkable move is the insistance of looking at the learning from the learners' perspective, including emotions, self-direction in terms of learning analytics, values and communities.

1. Spaced learning: admittedly not that new, but functional and effective for more behaviorist content (including test preparation), includes 3 spaced learning resources.
2. Citizen science: I am totally in favor of more of these projects, as citizen science can benefit from all for all citizens. The three resources mentioned (which you can experience as much as you like are: Galaxy Zoo (yes! observing and adding star galaxies!), iSpot (identifying plants and animals!), nQuire-it (which lets you decide what you want to explore - android mobiles)
3. Open textbooks: in relation to OER, with links on the benefits of open pedagogy, for example a wonderful chapter by DeRosa and Robison entitles from OER to Open Pedagogy: harnessing the power of open.
4. Navigating post-truth societies (think critical thinking in action): with a focus on epistemic education and ways to stimulate epistemic growth. Including the very useful guide for web literacy for student-fact-finders.
5. Intergroup empathy (nice!): or understanding the perspectives of others. This connects with the post-truth society topic. A remarkable initiative is 'the enemy is here' (it is a mixed Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality experience where you meet persons at different sides of a war conflict and you get to 'engage' with them and their believes which comes down to the shared humanity on both sides (small critique: mostly male protagonists it seems, but okay that can improved in later versions). And a science game called to-be-education.
6. Immersive learning: or intensifying learning by experiencing new situations.
7. Student-led analytics: refering to the University of Michigan and their toolkit for students to direct their learning based on data, the Academic Reporting Tool.
8. Big data inquiry (thinking with big data):  wcith a nice link to Ocean Tracks.
9. Learning with internal values: more along the line of using students' interests to stimulate their learning. 
10. Humanistic knowledge building communities: helpint learners to develop knowledge (now that is a lifelong mission :)

Spaced learning through #mobile apps work wonderfully

Mobile learning is an integral part of any contemporary training strategy ... or should be by now. The toughest challenge however is to build a toolkit of mLearning options that cater to the variety of learning that needs to be done in an institution/corporation.

In the last couple of weeks I have been looking at ways to offer solutions for spaced learning. An options that allows your learners to stay up-to-date with specific content that must be delivered multiple times for immediate memorization.

For those not sure about the spaced learning effect, I embedded a graph provided by Retenda who rock in spaced learning http://www.retenda.com/ and how their spaced reminders effected retention.

A classroom option, before giving the mobile option
Before sharing the mobile option, it makes sense to understand the complete dynamic of the principle of spaced learning. In classrooms you can create a perfect setting to get spaced learning going. A wonderful synthesis with lots of information is shared here by the Innovation Unit of the Monkseaton High School. They have put together a publication outlining all the steps to integrate spaced learning with inquiry based learning for optimal memory results.

The spaced learning mobile apps
Now this becomes more difficult with learners in a corporate setting, as you do not have that many face-to-face moments... but this is where the mLearning options come in. With these mobile options you can deliver the content that needs to be memorized through mobile apps, with algorithms that enable those questions that were not answered correctly (yet) to be repeated for that particular user.

It is a great way to provide any content that is cross institutional/corporate like for instance first aid, or security guidelines, or new guidelines overall.

The app below offers a strong desktop and simplified mobile option:

http://fullrecall.com/

The next one's is an open source spaced learning option which is cross platform:

http://ankisrs.net/

http://mnemosyne-proj.org/

It takes some time to get things organized, but it is well worth integrating it in your overall mLearning.