Bonk on Sharing, Distance Education Assessement Tool, and Summer Reading

BONK ON SHARING . . .
A thorough review of Curtis Bonk's keynote address presented at the State University of New York 2006 Conference on Instructional Technologies. . . Titled “Oops, Did You Mean to Share That? Open Source, Open CourseWare, and the Learning Objects of Tomorrow," Indiana University Professor of Instructional Systems Technology Curtis Bonk combined his views on education-, information-, and communication-oriented sharing with a theme from the popular Thomas Friedman book “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.” In that spirit, Bonk coined and described the following “Ten Forces that Flattened the Learning World”:

1. Tools for Searching and Finding Information
2. The Rise and Demand for Online Learning
3. Open Source Learning
4. Collaboration
5. Learning Portability
6. Learner Empowerment and Individualization of Learning
7. Online Portals of Information
8. Online Learning Object Repositories
9. Open CourseWare
10. Knowledge Brokers MORE

DISTANCE EDUCATION ASSESSMENT TOOL DEBUTS AT NUTN
In a move to alter the way distance education measures quality, the National University Telecommunications Network (NUTN), Hezel Associates and Cisco Systems released an innovative tool for quality assessment called The Interactive Quality Assessment Tool (IQAT). MORE

DISTANCE EDUCATION FACT SHEET COURTESY OF HEZEL ASSOCIATES
Some interesting information about rising enrollments, increases in student access, accountability, quality, and what the new IQAT assessment tool does. MORE

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUMMER READING
Many of these suggestions have to do with information literacy. The most common definition of information literacy comes from the 1989 American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: “To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” This is a topic that is growing in importance quickly on a global scale as it relates strongly to the future of our Information Age. MORE