In this article, the Chronicle points to one librarian from Duke University who mentioned that the popularity of MOOCs has caught people by surprise. Additionally, “She’s been hearing from instructors that ‘the process of preparing courses for this environment made them rethink’ how they teach their on-campus courses. ‘Faculty have said it’s a huge amount of work but that it’s also a wonderful opportunity’.”  Advice for librarians was also provided at this event including the fact that librarians need to anticipate a global audience when online courses such as MOOCs are opened up to the masses. Librarians were also advised to take a MOOC themselves in order to fully understand the perspectives of participants. 

A librarian from Brown University, Sarah Bordac, also noted that traditional librarian tasks are expanding. “Library personnel might need to negotiate with publishers over course materials, help make fair-use decisions, track down public-domain images, provide digital production services, set up teaching spaces and equipment, and/or provide TAs with extra support, especially when the lead professor is also very busy with on-campus courses. At Brown, Ms. Bordac said, she serves as ;a connector’ among many several different offices and groups, including the university counsel’s office, media services, and the university library.”  Clearly, it takes a village to run a MOOC. 

Finally, a librarian from the University of California at Berkeley noted that the rapid profusion of MOOCs also means an opportunity to educate higher ed faculty about content ownership and opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge, “Jennifer Dorner is the head of instruction and user services at the University of California at Berkeley. ‘This is a real opportunity to educate faculty about the need for owning the rights to their content and making it accessible to other people,’ Ms. Dorner said in one session. ‘This is a really good place for us to educate them about open source and push them in that direction.’”

GETideas.org is the incubator where education leaders can develop their professional learning networks. This community provides tools, research, and inspiration to help transform learning institutions. The primary goal of GETideas.org is to bring people together to exchange ideas towards solving education challenges.

During the last few months, GETideas.org has been specifically exploring four themes particularly relevant to today’s school leaders. These themes have been:

-The Cultivation of Leadership
-The Design of Modern Learning Environments
-Technology-Driven Innovation
-The Future of Digital Content

Our Learning Trends collection of content and resources on these themes can be viewed here in the GETideas.org community: http://goo.gl/vd9yA. Additional resources can also be found in our various social media channels including Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

As part of these Learning Trends, GETideas.org has also held online conversations with various thought leaders via Google Hangouts on Air, a tool that makes video conferencing easy and accessible.

On April 24th, 2013, GETideas.org’s Executive Director Mary Anne Petrillo welcomed a select group of very special education standouts to the conversation including Alan November of November Learning, Dr. Chip Kimball of Singapore American School, Michael Searson of Kean University,Pam Allyn of LitWorld, Roz Hussin of University of Nebraska, and Jim Gerry of Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, and Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall also of IMSA. Please watch this recording to see an extraordinary conversation with extraordinary education leaders!

Show notes with more information and resources, including the distinguished biographies of our panelists, are available here: http://goo.gl/wAAcm. Comments from the public were made on Google+ https://plus.google.com/115848119890273950575/posts/2DfQ4fZPH8W.

For more content, please visit our main site, http://getideas.org, and join our community in order to receive our weekly newsletter.

Australian education leader Greg Whitby reflects on the many professional benefits of engaging with others on Twitter. If you are interested in exploring Twitter as a professional development tool, please check out our list of suggested education leaders to follow on Twitter. 

This is a video introduction to an online course (commonly known as a MOOC) taught by Stanford’s Paul Kim. Roz Hussin will be co-teaching a follow up course with Paul Kim and will be one of our panelists during our special Hangout on Air on April 24, 2013.

Visit these pages for additional information:

The original course URL: https://venture-lab.org/education (last year Fall 2012)
The ongoing course URL: http://shell.venture-lab.org/wooc (to be launched in August 2013)

Key Findings from this year’s report include:

• Today’s teachers, administrators and parents are increasingly mobile-using, texting, tweeting social media devotees whose personal and professional lives are dependent upon Internet connectivity and online collaborative learning environments. A majority of teachers (52 percent), parents (57 percent) and district administrators (52 percent) are now regularly updating a social networking site, and many are using a personal mobile device such as a smartphone to do that. 
• Four out of ten district leaders (41 percent) in 2012 pinpointed achievement measured by test scores and closing the achievement gap as top concern points for their district, a growth of 21 percent over 2011 responses.
• Teachers are increasingly interested in leveraging technology for activities with students and many are modifying their instructional plans to incorporate more digital experiences. Nearly a majority of classroom teachers (45 percent) noted in 2012 that they were creating more interactive lessons because of having access to technology, an increase of 25 percent in just the past two years.
• A continuation of the multi-year stagnation in funding for new education technology investments is finally forcing school and district leaders to scrap the plans they have on hold, and to test new ways to leverage technology to increase revenue or decrease costs even though some of these approaches challenge conventional wisdom and long held policy positions. In 2012, we see proof of this digital conversion happening right in the principal’s office.Today, over a third of principals (36 percent) say that a new Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to school policy for students is likely this school year.
• Social media and digital tools and resources have transcended the classroom and are emerging strongly as key components of 21st century school to home communications. 37 percent of parents wish that their child’s teacher or school would communicate with them via text messaging,less than one-quarter of teachers (23 percent) say that texting between parents and teachers is a common practice today.”

Download the PDF of the full report here or view the HTML version. 

Reknown education experts Stephanie Pace Marshall and James Paul Gee recently engaged in a conversation on the future of schools at National Louis University. Stephanie will be joining us live during a Google Hangout on Air for GETideas.org on April 24, 2013! Click here for more details. 

In related news, ISTE has also launched a petition calling for an investment in classroom broadband connectivity. Please consider lending your name in support!