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Susannah Holz

Susannah Holz

Susannah would have liked to be a student forever, but life had other things in mind. Writing is the perfect medium for keeping up with the world of e-learning and edtech.

3 Habits of highly effective online teachers

This post has been updated on March 4, 2020. While face-to-face instruction allows teachers to inject their personality and tone into their lessons, it nonetheless demands that teachers be organised a...

5 Digital collaboration skills every student needs to master

Many people still feel that the immediacy of face-to-face collaboration is the gold standard in getting teamwork projects done. However, there are a number of high profile examples of digital and onli...

HE Challenges: Fast changing digital teaching methods

In the last on our series about the challenges in higher education, we will examine how universities and colleges are managing the fast pace of change in teaching methods and curricula. According to U...

5 Aspects of digital citizenship students must be aware of

We have spoken before about what defines a good digital citizen, and today we will extrapolate some more on that definition to include some new emerging trends. To recap, digital citizenship encompass...

HE Challenges: How some colleges are filling the revenue gap

In the third blog in our series on higher education challenges (rising costs, declining completion rates), exploring how innovative colleges and universities are addressing them, we’ll look at funding...

HE Challenges: Combating declining completion rates

Last time we started to explore the top four challenges facing higher education in the US. Preferring to offer up innovative case studies from across the HE sector (rather than just discuss the issue)...

HE challenges: finding innovative solutions to the rising costs of attending university

It is in a way appropriate that the higher education space mirrors and also reveals the broader challenges faced by the society of the day. After all universities are a gateway to free thought, rigoro...

3D printing in schools: Is it worth it?

3D printing is one of those strange education trends that garners much hype, but which to my mind has yet to unveil any true educational potential. I get that it’s great to see one’s renderings produc...

3 Alternative roles of teachers in networked learning environments

Last time we began exploring the role of educators within networked learning environments, broadly using a theory by George Siemens called “Connectivism” as our base. 3 Alternative roles of teachers i...

What is the role of the teacher in the online classroom? Connectivism might provide an answer

This post has been updated on February 16, 2020. Enabling interaction, collaboration, and social learning online is perhaps the most difficult, and yet most important, part of teaching online. “Beyond...

Makerspaces go digital: 6 options for the blended classroom

Makerspaces are a wonderfully interactive, highly creative and increasingly valued part of classrooms in the technology age. There is literally a wealth of inspiration, guidance and ideas on the web f...

5 Innovative ways for teachers to connect with other teachers

The professional development programs offered by most districts can be a somewhat bland, formulaic and often times an irrelevant experience. Collaboration is one of the most valued features of meeting...

8 Edtech organizations every teacher should know about [INFOGRAPHIC]

If you have spent any time in the ed-tech world you will no doubt have realized that there is a swirling cloud of acronyms that attend the subject, from ISTE, CoSN to NMC and P21. A veritable “alphabe...

6 of the best art and culture ed-tech tools

We’ve delved into some quite technical stuff recently, so I thought I’d give us all a break with a little bit of art. Specifically I’ve trawled the net for some of the best art, art history and cultur...

Why gamification works [Part 2]

In my last blog we started discussing the "why" of gamification, with a specific focus on the nature of motivation, lensed through one broadly held theory of motivation called Self-Determination Theor...

Why gamification works [Part 1]

Candy Crush, a mobile gaming phenomenon, earns its makers, Swedish-based King Games, big money: $250 million in the company's last declared quarter alone. To date the game has been downloaded an eye-p...

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