Introduction: How have educators been coping these past months? First of all, I like to express my empathy for my readers during the COVID crisis. COVID has affected us most destructively on a systemic and on a personal level – be it the fear of infection at the workplace (or dealing with its dire consequences), the challenges of homeschooling, the missing out on education, especially for the socio-economically most disadvantaged students, the lack of comprehensive…
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Covid-19 Crisis: Help for Educators to Move Classes Online (updated 11.04.2020)
All those schools and universities who already offer Blended Learning Courses have little problems of moving their classes fully online. For many others, they wished they had assistance. Here are a few links and information that might help: Good-old Skype can facilitate video chat groups up to 50 participants. Skype allows screen-sharing and provides a suitable tool for desktop-, tablet- and smartphone access alike, both for Win and iOS. If you need a bit more,…
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First Steps into Digital Education (1): Pedagogical Patterns and Algorithms. A Primer.
In a nutshell: Once we start thinking in terms of pedagogical patterns, we are handed the keys to Blended Learning. We can make informed decision about which parts of our modules to design online and which ones face-to-face. This is an introductory session that demonstrates how the world’s most complex pedagogical philosophies, such as Problem-based Learning (Barrows, 1992, 1996) and Design Thinking (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, 2020; Stanfordonline, 2016, 2018) can be conceptualized within…
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On the Interpretation, Implementation and Further Development of DigCompEdu (European Digital Competence Framework for Educators)
Introduction To this date, the European framework DigCompEdu (Ferrari, 2013; Redecker, 2017) is arguably the most comprehensive and well-researched policy effort to identify digital competencies for education. What makes the framework especially valuable for Higher Education is its emphasis on professional engagement as well as the integration of learner and teacher perspectives (Aagaard & Lund, 2020), emphasising the construction of knowledge, the adequacy of assessment methods and promoting an active learning approach. To this extent,…
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Digital Education 4.0: Emerging Concepts on the Digital CPD of Educators
The following blog entry has been compiled for educators dealing with the implementation of digital CPD-programs in Higher Education. This script is a summary of experiences and thoughts during my past two years as a digital education consultant at the University of Oldenburg. Introduction One of my key insights from getting started in digital education was that digital education is not primarily about technology or providing sufficient staff training on hard- and software (which is,…
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Why Educators need to join the Fight for our Planet
“This world demands the qualities of youth, not a time of life, but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination. (…) Everywhere new technology and communications bring men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becoming the concerns of all. (…) Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. It is the one essential, vital quality, for those who seek to…
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How the Key-Challenge in Digital Education Is Not Primarily About Technology, but the Digital Scaffolding of Social Spaces and Self
Picture Credit: Flickr/Stanford Center for Internet and Society, CC BY-NC-SA Looking for a deeper understanding The effect of digital media on learning is the pervasive power behind the current revolution in education. Ranging from Open Educational Resources (OER) to Blended Learning Models, media profoundly transform key topics of education. Subjects such as media literacy, media education, media pedagogy, the acquisition of digital competences, the digital divide, media socialization, and e-learning, among many others, dominate educational…
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Why I left Facebook: A Letter to My Friends
Dear Friends, When I joined Facebook about eight years ago, the more tragic consequences of social networks had not arrived yet. There were no Russian trolls, there was no US voter manipulation, rigging the system for a complete madman, no Cambridge Analytica, no support of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar and no tolerating of other hate-groups since political echo chambers had not visibly arrived yet. Mark Zuckerberg never realized how he had been living in…
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John Hattie: Invisible Learning – Visible Amateur Science
A critical review on John Hatties work on 'Visual Learning'
The TPCK Model of Technological Education: Explaining Everything, Achieving Little
A critical discussion about the usefulness of the TPACK model for digital education
