Hispanic LEP, MOOCs, and Meetups

Hello, I just wanted to share ta sample of my most recent article published in the Revolutionizing Modern Education through Meaningful E-Learning Implementation: 9781522504665: Educational IS&T Books | IGI Global

Chapter 8

Hispanic LEP, MOOCs, and Meetups  (pages 149-160)

Ramón Talavera-Franco

The 21st Century demands the transformation of education into a more collaborative system. School stakeholders need to strengthen the sharing of educational resources to make them more attainable for students. Hispanic LEP Meetups as MOOC communities of practice hubs explores the challenges of the Hispanic Limited English Proficient (HLEP) community living in the United States. It proposes an alternative for them to continue their education by using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and by taking advantage of meetups to develop local communities of practice.

Here is a sample pdf of the books in case you want more information about the article:Sample PDF

En México educación gratuita de alto nivel a través de MOOCs. ¿Qué es eso?

Por Ramón Talavera-Franco

@ratafra

Cualquier adulto quien vive y trabaja en la ciudad de México sabe lo difícil que es tener acceso a educación de calidad. No porque no exista, sino porque no hay tiempo o dinero para acceder a ella. Los bajos salarios, las jornadas laborales de más de 8 horas, las distancias para ir de la casa al trabajo y viceversa, y el tráfico, son algunos factores que impiden a un adulto poder continuar sus estudios de bachillerato, universidad o posgrado.

La educación en línea se ha convertido en una opción.

Actualmente cualquier adulto puede estudiar bachillerato o universidad a través de programas educativos tanto

Educating 1 billion students in 10 years: Open edX Conference 2015

Ramón Talavera-Franco

@ratafra

Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX was clear about the goal of the organization: Educating 1 billion students in the next 10 years. By 2015, Open edX—a non-profit organization established in Boston, MA—has reached 5 million students from more than 196 countries. The organization partners with 90 educational institutions in 40 countries, and offers 700+ courses online. According to these numbers, reaching the 1 billion students goal

Open edX Conference 2015: Cultivating creativity through projects, peers, passion, play

By Ramón Talavera-Franco
@ratafra

Dr. Mitch Resnick, director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Media Laboratory at MIT was the 2015 Open edX Conference keynote speaker. During his conference, Dr. Resnick argued that schools do not teach children to think creatively to be able to face XXI century demands such as adaptability to new situations, confronting uncertainty, and becoming creative thinkers. In order to cultivate creativity in the learning process, Dr. Resnick designed a 4p's framework that explores how a learner learns from projects, peers, passion, and play.

How MOOCs help Obama's TechHire Initiative

By Ramón Talavera-Franco

ratafra

I would like to share a short video that I produced about Obama's TechHire Initiative. The video is a call to action to the Latino Limited Language English Proficient (LEP) community to take advantage of this Initiative. The TechHire initiative is designed to recruit and place applicants by creating more fast track tech training opportunities. I think that TechHire Initiative might empower the Latino LEP community by helping them get the skills required to be competitive in a global economy.

The video is self-explanatory. Please share it with all Latino organizations that might benefit from this Initiative.

How MOOCs led me to Harvard

Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

In a way, MOOCs have led me to Harvard. A few days ago, I presented the first draft of a game designed for learning Spanish during the 2015 Heritage Language Research Institute sponsored by National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), at Harvard University. This Institute “brings together researchers from language sciences and education to focus on fostering new research in heritage language and to promote the heritage language agenda in academia and society at large” (NHLRC, n.d.).

I’m interested in Spanish heritage learners' linguistic variations, syntax, socio-cultural language norms, and pedagogy theories that explore best teaching practices for this particular linguistic group. Therefore, I often attend conferences and symposiums regarding this topic. Harvard hosted the 2015 Heritage Language Research Institute and I decided to go and dive into new learning.

MOOCs certifications are going cuckoo?

By Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

When MOOCs started the only certification users received was a certificate of participation. Probably the low completion rate of the thousand of students registered in a MOOC encouraged MOOC providers to issue a more valued credential to motivate people to finish the courses. Hence, they started to issue certificates of completion, and shortly after, MOOC providers decided to create stronger certifications focused on the needs of the job market. Some examples are:

1) Nanodegrees from Udacity. In one of my previous blogs, I explained:

2014... the year I juggled MOOCs

By Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

I had an intense relationship with MOOCs in 2014. As all intense “relationships”, I loved them, hated them, invested a lot of time on them, or abandon them. MOOCs surprised me with new knowledge (i.e. gamification), or satisfied my pedagogical learning needs (i.e. EdTech and blended learning). I defended MOOCs against those who desperately wanted them to fail based on their high dropout rate, but also, I raised my voice against those MOOCs that experimented with students and neglected their needs.

Throughout 2014, I witnessed the evolution of MOOCs and I confirmed my thesis that MOOCs are just the beginning of an important revolution in e-learning. According to Shah D. (2014) 400+ universities offered over 2400+ MOOCs in 2014. At the beginning, all MOOCs were Massive and Open. At the end of the year, some evolved to be less massive, and less open.

Loving and hating a MOOC. MITx 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology

By Ramón Talavera Franco
@ratafra

To read week 1 click here To read week 2 click here To read week 3 click here To read week 4 click here

Registering for a MOOC while working full time and being a part time Ed.D. student is challenging. Complying with its pedagogical components (videos, readings, assignments), and participating in its forums, groups, hangouts, etc., is a major task, especially, when the course is designed using the same concept of a course taught at a university level. The huge difference between them both is that a course taken at a university offers credits towards a degree while MOOCs do not offer those credits. Hence, if MOOCs pedagogical and assessment demands are similar to college courses, shouldn’t students receive recognition according to those demands?

First open edX conference… a blast!

By Ramón Talavera Franco
@ratafra

http://con.openedx.org/

The first open edX conference brought together over 200 education specialist from all over the world to share ideas about the use of the edX open source platform. For two days, we examined possible solutions to issues addressed to the implementation of edX platform as well as pedagogical and best practice approaches—such as the importance of transforming the MOOC certification paradigm. Breakout sessions and keynote speakers were impactful. However, the best part of the conference was the opportunity to get to know the people who are “behind the scenes”. These are the people who came from different places of the world to share creativity, knowledge, problem-solving skills, and enthusiasm in order to make a better MOOC world.

Does grade matter? Second week of MITx: 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology MOOC

Ramón Talavera-Franco
Ratafra

To read week 1 click here      To read week 3 click here      To read week 4 click here      To read week 5 and 6 click here

This week I’ve been kind of disappointed after submitting my assignment to11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology MOOC because I haven’t received any comment on it. Are assignments important in MOOCs or not?

All of us who have taken MOOCs know the different facts that are involved in submitting an assignment: time invested, research, complying with due dates, and even managing stress. What happens when our assignments are not peer reviewed, or graded?

Everything old is new again… First week of 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology MOOC.

Ramón Talavera Franco
@ratafra

To read week 2 click here.      To read week 3 click here      To read week 4 click here      To read week 5 & 6 click here

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share my experience as a student registered in11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology MOOC. Designed and taught by Professor Eric Klopfer from MIT, this MOOC discusses the relationship between educational theory and technology. The reason that I’m taking this course is due to my interest in Ed Tech, and my ongoing analysis on MOOCs instructional design and pedagogical approaches. Also, because I’m a doctor of education student at Northeastern University and my doctoral program does not offer a course related to this subject. Hence, this MOOC is an excellent opportunity to explore this topic.

¿Un MOOC para aprender a trapear?

Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

Los MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses por sus siglas en inglés) son cursos en línea diseñados y producidos por las mejores universidades del mundo. Son la nueva revolución educativa por su concepto democratizador de la educación (debatible aún) ya que cualquier persona, no importando su lugar de residencia o su nivel socioeconómico, puede tomar cursos en línea de Harvard, MIT o la Universidad de Berkley en California, que estarían fuera de su alcance de no ser distribuidos en forma de MOOCs.

Facial Biometrics: A Solution or a Problem for MOOCs Assessments?

By Ramón Talavera-Franco

@ratafra

Photo author Mounirzok

I just registered in the Performance and Assessment in the Virtual Classroom Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This is one of the four courses offered in the Virtual Teaching Program designed by the University of California, Irvine/ Extension through Coursera. This is the sixth MOOC that I have taken so far. It differs from others in two aspects: 1) the course requires that participants who pursue a Specialization Certificate register through a facial biometric system, 2) the cost of the course is 39 dollars. Since both aspects are controversial, I’m going to concentrate only in the facial biometrics feature, leaving the cost issue for a future post.

K-12 and the joy of learning

By Ramón Talavera-Franco
@ratafra

Photo by Dell

How can we help K-12 students enjoy learning? I think that if teachers and school decision-makers are interested in answering this question, it is necessary to listen first the students' voice. The millennial generation registered in K-12 education has been demanding the reinvention of school for quite some time. Are we listening to their voice?

Let's analyze some of the characteristics of the millennial generation and compare it with the instructional methodology, design, and pedagogy that we are offering in schools.

Serendipity, MOOCs and Gamification

By Ramón Talavera-Franco
@ratafra

Photo by Artsproject

In a way, a baby girl sited in front of me represented both characters of the short film Sight that I was watching for my gamification MOOC assignment while having a cup of coffee in a restaurant. Sight, the short sci-fi film by May-raz and Daniel Lazo depicts a futuristic world where people have retinal implants that allow them to connect to virtual realities, play games, obtain digital information about other people’s lives, send chat messages, pay bills, and receive points for every success activity. Why am I comparing this baby girl with the characters of the film? Because she belongs to the generation who started using technology at a very early age, and who certainly will contribute to change the world similarly to Sight. The way May-raz and Daniel Lazo predicted the future in their short film, could be compared to how George Orwell predicted our present in 1984.

5 MOOCs e-Pedagogy models, and 7c’s Learning Design framework

By Ramón Talavera-Franco
@ratafra

I would like to share with you two main lessons learned from The pedagogy of MOOCs webinar presented by Terese Bird and Gráinne Conole, from the University of Leicester, during the Open Education Week 2014:

1. Differences between Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
2.  MOOC’s pedagogical perspective.

After listening to the webinar and conducting some research, my understanding of OER and MOOCs is:

What is MOOCstream?

Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

English composition1: Achieving Expertise

In 2013, I submitted my application to study the Ed. D. program at Northeastern University. As a Spanish-language speaker who obtained my graduate and undergraduate degrees in my native language, I was concerned about not meeting the academic English writing requirements of a doctoral program. My prior academic writing consisted of two English composition courses taken six years ago. Therefore, I wanted to take an additional writing course before embarking in this new academic adventure.

While browsing the Internet, I found a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that caught my attention: English Composition I: Achieving Expertise
 (ECIAE). I didn’t know what a MOOC was or what to expect from it, but what struck me was that this course was provided by Duke University with no fees. How could a prestigious university such as Duke offer a free-of-charge course? Well, investigate was hooked. I signed up.