“We’re all students by nature”

Recently, I attended a workshop where the presenter talked about the importance of conducting course and program level assessment. “We need to better assess what students are doing and to what extent they’re doing it,” she explained. “But the students aren’t the only ones we should be assessing. As educators, we need to reflect on [...]

Innovation involves risk taking

Innovation is another buzz word you’ll hear around the water cooler these days.  Everyone is promoting innovative teaching practices or trying to promote innovative solutions to the big problems facing schools, education and society.  Lost in the discussion of innovation, however, is the fact that being innovative requires a great deal of risk taking and [...]

Cultivating Collaboration

Regular readers of the 8 Blog know that I talk about collaboration a lot.  Over the last few years, I’ve written about wikis, Google Docs, Crocodocs, and Stixy (and many other applications) and discussed how different tools can be used to foster collaboration in classroom environments.  But why is collaboration so important?  In their book [...]

Update: Apple changes iBooks Author EULA

A few weeks ago, I discussed the new iBooks Author app and also outlined some of my concerns with the End User Licensing Agreement for the application.  If you recall, some people were interpreting the EULA as Apple claiming some ownership of any content that is authored using the iBooks Author app, whether it is [...]

Course Management Tools through iTunesU?

After featuring Apple-related topics in the last two posts on the 8 Blog, many readers may be ready for something different.  Before moving on, however, there is one more important feature of the Apple Education event that I feel needs to be discussed.   Besides the release of the iBooks Author app and the dedicated iTunesU [...]