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Saturday, February 28, 2015

OpenDOAR The Directory of Open Access Repositories

URL: http://www.opendoar.org/

What?

The OpenDOAR service provides a quality-assured listing of Open Access Repositories (OAR) around the world. OpenDOAR staff harvest and assign metadata to allow categorisation and analysis to assist the wider use and exploitation of repositories. Each of the repositories has been visited by OpenDOAR staff to ensure a high degree of quality and consistency in the information provided: OpenDOAR is maintained by SHERPA...

Aims?

Survey the growing field of academic open access research repositories and categorise them in terms of locale, content and other measures.
Produce a descriptive list of open access repositories of relevance to academic research.
Provide a comprehensive & authoritative list for end users wishing to find particular types of, or specific repositories.
Deliver a comprehensive, structured and maintained list with clear update and self-regulation protocols to enable development of the list.
Play a prominent international role in the organisation of and access to open access repository services.
Support Open Access outreach and advocacy endeavours within institutions and globally.

Useful?

At present there is no single comprehensive and authoritative list which records academic open access repositories. In a networked environment, Information Discovery and Retrieval are the keys to the successful delivery of services. By listing archives and their descriptions, OpenDOAR will support third party service providers - for example, search services - in developing new services for end-users...

Findability?

Although OpenDOAR was not originally intended to provide a search service for individual articles held in repositories, the advent of Googles Custom Search Engine has made this possible. You can therefore now both search for the full-text of material held in open access repositories listed in the Directory using Search Repository Contents, or use OpenDOAR to find repositories or groups of repositories that fit particular needs using our Find facility.

Masterminds?

OpenDOAR is being developed and maintained by the University of Nottingham as part of a portfolio of work in Open Access and repositories under the SHERPA umbrella. OpenDOAR was started and initially developed by the University of Nottingham, UK, and the Lund University , Sweden...

Currently, there are 930 repositories in the directory (Surely to grow!). Here is one of many juicy informative and visual statistics about what you can find in OpenDOAR :)

OpenDOAR Chart: Proportion of Repositories by Country - Worldwide

Thwarted Innovation What Happened to E learning and Why

Link to Report (By Robert Zemsky & William F Massy)
Abstract: "The Thwarted Innovation report suggests that educational technology and e-learning have not delivered on the promise of revolutionizing the classroom and making higher education more profitable. It suggests that, despite the rapid growth in the US of online education, many teaching staff at colleges do not use innovative technology on their courses, and that not much benefit has been gained from the investment in educational technology. E-learning was studied at six institutions: Foothill College, Hamilton College in New York, Michigan State University, Northwest Missouri State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Texas at Austin over a 15-month period for the report.
The Learning Alliance includes higher education research centers at Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania. The report is 61 pages long (excluding title pages and appendices)."

Every Single Internet user always thinks about "how to increase internet speed" and in my point of view every one want to know how to increase internet speed.

Well my answer is you can increase your internet speed by using Internet Cyclone.

Well friends when I start using internet back in 2000 I always worry about my internet speed but I dont know hot to increase internet speed. A long time passed and I have done a lot of research about how to increase internet speed as much as I can. Well here is the solution of my 4 years of research about this problem. I tried many softwares and other technical methods but in the end I certify Internet Cyclone as the best software to increase internet speed which is very power full and very easy to use. Best internet accelerator i ever use. What it does? It automatically optimize your windows settings which boost your speed upto 180%. Internet Cyclone is compatible with all type of internet connections. I guaranty you the increase in speed of your internet connection.
Using this software you will gain guaranteed faster Internet speed for the time youre online. Surfing, downloading files, emailing, playing online games, and anything else you do online will be faster. This is an excellent software for slow dial-up modems as well as high speed access connections.

Internet Cyclone Preview

This software will be extremely valuable to you as you continue to upgrade your computer and connections. It will work with all internet connections and all browsers so it will still be extremely useful to you in the future. You should use Internet Cyclone as a REAL alternative to expensive upgrades.

What can Internet Cyclone offers to you ?

Internet Cyclone optimizes your Windows settings automatically in order to increase internet speed or you can customize them manually.
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Works with all Browsers.
Compatible with all kind of internet connections.
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System Requirements:

Intel 800 or Higher
Microsoft(r) Windows(r) 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, Me, 98, 95
256Mb of Memory or Higher
Any connection to the net.
10 MB of free disk space

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Creating and Testing T L Strategies for the Virtual Classroom

Link to article (By Nancy E. Thompson)
Full Title: Creating and Testing Teaching/Learning Strategies for the Virtual Classroom "...the purpose of this study is to define and describe teaching/learning strategies for use in distance education, use those strategies in designing distance education instruction, and test their effectiveness. Three theoretical frames were used in the creation of the strategies: adult educational theory; brain-based educational theory; and the Effective Distance Education Model."

Findings:

Teaching/learning strategies developed within a theoretical frame of adult education, brain-based education and the Effective Distance Education Model can be effective when used in the virtual, graduate classroom.
Inexperienced instructors need additional help to succeed, and therefore should go through induction programs, which consists of training, support, and sustained feedback in a collaborative environment.
Training sessions should be designed to acquaint the teacher with distance education teaching strategies.
It is recommended to pair the new teacher with an experienced teacher to provide the new teacher with a role model, friend, advisor, and confidante (mentor).
Encourage the role of reflection in the development of teaching skills as teachers learn to know themselves and view themselves through the eyes of their students, their colleagues, and the professional literature (e.g. video tape the instructor and review, periodic assessments of the teacher by students, participation in informal professional-development groups, and study professional literature.)

Yes, there is a lot to learn from this article! Induction programs, mentoring, and continuous support to new and inexperienced teachers in any educational institution could covert them into great virtual teachers (within a very short time. Say, two (2) months! Trust me!).

Link to OpenEducation.net

"OpenEducation.net (by Go College) is a site dedicated to tracking the changes occurring in education today. In an era where it is possible to photoshop images, facebook people, and access an endless stream of knowledge by googling, the Internet Age offers both great promise and enormous challenges for educators. At OpenEducation.net, readers will be exposed to both an objective and subjective look at the many issues facing the profession today (Source)."

EDITOR?
The site editor Thomas J. Hanson (31 years in education), “relishes the opportunity to share his thoughts on the challenges facing educators and families in today’s complex world. Tom’s belief has always been that teaching is the second most difficult and the second most important job in the world, second only to the challenge and importance of being a parent. He publicly acknowledges his frustration regarding the lack of respect now accorded public school educators, noting that the expectations placed upon schools today are greater now than at any time in history yet the challenges facing children have never been more significant (Source)."

LEARNING JUICE?
If you want to keep yourself updated on changes or issues occurring in education today (especially in North America) this is an excellent new learning avenue to explore (since June 1, 2007) . Here, you can find articles or posts discussing distance learning, teaching and learning, open source software, OpenCourseWare, public policy, intellectual property and much more. The articles (blog posts) published on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Personally, I like the fact that this site (or blog) is updated consistently and often, and the posts are original, stimulating, attractive (cool graphics!), useful and relevant. Here are three (3) articles to support my case:

Innovative Teaching - Chris Wilson Discusses the Comic Book Movement
Athletics Do Offer Lessons that are Missing from the Classroom
Education In the News - What’s Worth Checking Out

Thumbs up on the learning juice factor! Perhaps, they should make the archive a bit easier to access, enabling us easily to jump and scan through all the interesting articles published here. Anyway that is a small matter, which can easily be tweaked if wanted or needed.

Overall, I believe (I hope!) I have shared with you enough learning incentives to explore this excellent site further, which is free for all :)

How to Number Your Blog Comments Winners!

I tried so many different tutorials online to number my blog comments, but none of them were working and I was not about to count through all of the 146 comments on my 100 follower giveaway to find the winner!

It ends up that in addition to inserting the HTML from this tutorial, you also have to change one of your settings in Blogger!

Once you change the HTML based on that tutorial

Go into "Settings" on your main blogger.
Click "Posts and Comments."
Where it says "Comment Location," change it to "Full Page."
Save it and check out your numbered comments!

I hope that helps some of you who are getting frustrated playing with HTML without any progress!

Now.... drumroll please, its time to announce the winners!

You two can expect your items via email in just a few moments! Congrats and thanks for entering!

Global Educator com Founding Editor Graeme Hart

Link to GlobalEducator.com
GlobalEducator.com is building the worlds largest listings of reviewed resources for Global Education professionals. Since launching in April 2003, there have been over 90,000 visitor sessions and 55,000 article downloads. The newsletter and new articles are published on the 1st Monday of each month. "

Their philosophy is to provide a free service for web users. They raise revenue by charging a nominal fee for listings in the monthly mailout and sponsor logos on the home page.

The GlobalEducator vision is to create a community of practice for Global Education professionals. They want to make a place where like-minded people can go to not only share stories (which were doing with articles) but also to help and network with each-other. They are in the early days of creating a Guild of Global Educators and hope you will be part of it.