New Media Technology, Education, Learning tools: MIT OpenCourseWare

New Media and Learning Innovations 
-Rainer J. Steindler
This talk is about projects which use new media technologies to enhance communication, the use of multimedia to bring about an interactive experience. There are four award winning student projects that are showcased here, one of which is educational in nature (An interactive interface-a Reactable-that enables pre-school children to play, explore and learn). This project is similar to what I am working towards, and is quite inspiring. The other student projects are very interesting as well, and the use of new media and technology adds layers to the communication effectively.


Educational Uses of Technology 
-Steven Lerman
Steven Lerman talks about education systems today, the learning process, and using technology to facilitate learning. Some interesting points:
-‘Learning’ over ‘Teaching'-Teaching is a synchronous process, learning isn’t.
-The student becoming an active participant in his/her own learning
-Enabling technologies that help students
-Applications: Building real world educational software and learning technologies and applying them to real learners. Looking at opportunities, building things that will help students, and then putting them in classroom settings
-Evaluation and assessment- Does a technology help people learn differently, better, faster?
-How does that compare with traditional settings? Learning outcomes.
-Cost


Media, Education, and Technology  
-Bonnie Bracey
This is a very interesting lecture about educations, educators, changing times, and how we can make the most of technology.
Key points:
-Children nowadays have grown up digitally. To them , technology is a part of their natural world
-Teachers think technology can be used everywhere, except the classroom. They have no understanding of the way technology can be used in the classroom, and transforming education from last century into 21st century education. It is still “chalk and talk”, and children are bored.
-Not because teachers aren’t doing anything differently, it is because the world has changed
-Media allows children to be creators and producers. Allows them to think and analyze. Allow them to talk to people everywhere.
-How do we engage teachers? Allow them to play with technology, to create a learning landscape- The way in which they use technology to help children learn, understand, explore.
-Converging many ideas to allow children to learn- Create pedagogy
-Access, support, learning the technology- Taking the educator to the point where they understand what engaged learning is. How does it work? Seamless interface, structure?
-Product, Project, Objectives, Assessment
-Learn to be a learner
-Create paths to lifelong learning
-Change learning into seeing information, and changing it into knowledge that becomes personalized
-Children can begin to make decisions, ask questions and begin to explore
-Stakeholders-Community needs to understand the technology
-Think forwards
-Technology brings a face to communication 
-It is about learning to push the technology to a point where it is invisible, and but a tool

(MIT OpenCourseWare: http://videolectures.net)