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Potential of Distance Education to Reduce Learning Gaps in Higher Education: A Look to the Colombian Case

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Sale vector created by macrovector - www.freepik.com One of the main needs of Latin America, besides education coverage, is to reduce learning gaps in higher education. In order to respond to such need, many strategies have been designed, worldwide, to impact the demand and provision of higher education programs. Among these strategies, we can find grants and scholarships, financial aids, and others. Many have been the options that have been proposed to raise the provision of higher education programs, such as offering technology-supported education modalities like blended-learning, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and distance and online education. This paper aims to explore the potential of the provision of distance education programs to close learning gaps in Colombia’s higher education.  In order to do so, we present an estimation of the effects that students and program's characteristics can have on the results of the test “Saber PRO” (a Colombian standardized test that me

Trends in Educational Technology research in the Caribbean Coast of Colombia

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The present book chapter presents a characterization of the research done in Educational Technology in the Caribbean Coast of Colombia. The research describes how research studies about "Digital Educational Resources", "Communication and Education", and "Technology-enhanced learning environments", have been done in the mentioned region of Colombia. You can access the book chapter (and the whole book) here [Spanish only]!

Video production as a strategy to foster Intercultural Efficacy in secondary education students

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School photo created by kstudio - www.freepik.com The following paper shows the result of a research project conducted in one school on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The city where the school is located is surrounded by many indigenous communities that represent an important part of the cultural heritage of the Northen region of Colombia. In the study, 54 students participated in the video-production-based project. In an interdisciplinary effort (involving teachers from different areas like technology, social science, history, geography, and art) the kids did research in different indigenous communities, being able to gather information directly from members of these communities through interviews, field notes, and observations, being able to collect stories that have not been documented and have only been communicated through oral tradition. Music vector created by rawpixel.com - www.freepik.com The students created a script using the data collected and then produc

Mobile devices for teaching and learning in higher education

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Mobile learning can be seen as the application and use mobile technologies like smartphones, laptops or tablets to support learning processes. With the appearance of smartphones and tablets, the possibilities of using these devices in educational practices have raised. There have been many studies that have analyzed and identified how the use of these devices can help in improving students’ experiences of learning during instruction and while studying independently. Technology vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com When it comes to using mobiles devices independently (which includes studying after instruction or preparing for classes), scholars (like those included in a systematic literature review by Nguyen et al, 2012 ) have highlighted that most of the students that use mobiles applications, used mobile applications that allowed them to organize their materials and time effectively. Some of these applications were: Calendars —for time management Note taking app

Thinking about integrating Web 2.0 in higher education?

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Logo photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com The use of technological tools for teaching and learning has proven to be useful and an effective strategy for many educators in different areas of knowledge. The Internet offers a wide array of tools that may serve for multiple purposes, some more specific than others (e.g. create a digital presentation, organize data, edit images, edit/create videos, write and share a text, etc.), and these may not be necessarily focused on education. When the Web 2.0 (“Social Web”) appeared between early and mid-2000’s, the way the world saw Internet changed, allowing users to produce content and share it with anyone in the globe. This new approach opened up new doors for different fields, education included. However, it is really hard to take the principles or philosophy of Web 2.0 and make them fit or work naturally in the education field. One may say that the collaborative approach of Web 2.0 is enough to determine the effe

Book review of "Digital Citizenship: A Community-Based Approach" By Susan Bearden

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I want to share with all of you this recent book review I made of "Digital Citizenship: A Community-Based Approach" By Susan Bearden  ( @s_bearden ), which was published in The Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education (TOJDE) . As an educator, researcher, and technology passionate person,  I found this book a great start point to get to know what Digital Citizenship is about, and how to identify in which ways we can start promoting advocacy for it in our institutions (whether it is a K-12 or a higher education context). You can find the review  here !

What is Digital Citizenship and why is it important?

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In this video I want to share some brief ideas of what is Digital Citizenship and why it is important to foster it in different levels of education.