EdLab

Online materials are one of the most efficient professional development resources for educators. While many teachers have self-directed their own professional learning online, they might not be aware of some implicit decisions they are making during their learning process. Beach’s (2017) study on this topic aims to help educators and professional resources developers understand more deeply about how educators navigate these resources and what they learn from these professional activities. Fifteen elementary ed...

Rhizr is an open curating and learning platform that encourages learners and educators to collect, archive and organize learning materials. By sequencing resources in various ways that make sense to themselves and others learners, Rhizr users are conducting active learning simultaneously. This process of organizing to learn on Rhizr echoes chunking theory in cognitive science. The chunking model is developed to explain observed performance differences between expert and novice learners. Experts are able to identify key issues of problems using perceptual cues...

Flipped classroom is a pedagogical approach that "exchanges the time used to deliver basic knowledge in class and the out-of-class time for applying the knowledge or doing homework” (Lai & Hwang 2017). With such arrangements, educators hope to use valuable face-to-face time to help students as they apply knowledge to solve problems and interact with them more deeply to address their individual needs. There have been many studies on the effectiveness of the flipped classroom.

New media tools such as social networking, blogging and video sharing sites have transformed our daily information landscape into a crowdsourced media space. As information environment becomes more participatory, educators are urged to rethink how learners get the learning resources they need, from whom and through what means. For self-directed learners, valuable learning resources are no longer confined to those provided by schools, but can be found in peer-generated and crowdsourced materials. In

Peer networks are crucial resources for self-directed learning. Many self-directed learners consult peers with expertise in specific learning areas to get advice on learning materials and project development (Brookfield, 2009). Creating supportive learning communities is essential to turn peers into productive resources for self-directed learners. Recurse Center (formerly Hacker School) is a self-directed educational retreat for programmers that

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are great learning resources for self-directed learners. MOOCs are disciplinary and thematically organized materials, and are flexible and accessible for learners anytime anywhere. Although there have been issues of low completion rates in MOOCs (Jordan, 2014), learners have different goals and expectations as they approach these online courses. Some learners are motivated to learn because of personal curiosity and interests, while others have professional growth needs. Le...

I would like to check out an iRobot Roomba, bubble machine, karaoke machine, and popcorn machine.(Illustrated by Brian Mead. Read mo...

Here is an interesting thesis by Alexandra Christine Nelson on a different kind of Library of Things (L.o.T) that is not like the one about checking out cool things. Nelson proposes the L.o.T model, a play on I.o.T., that "aims to reconceptualize the public library’s role in cities by ...

Self directed learning is initially developed in adult education, but can it apply to K-12 learners? Beese and Watson (2016) address this question through a descriptive case study. They investigated two SDL related theoretical constructs: self-regulation and self-determination in their case. Self-regulation explores the subject's cognitive skills and goal-directed behaviors, while self-determination examines the learner's subjective sense of motivation. An ideal self-directed learner should develop both self-regulating skills and behaviors, and ...