Group items tagged

"The blogs listed here offer relevant and timely information for anyone interested in eLearning, whether you're a content producer, a platform user, or someone trying to determine how eLearning technologies can help your business grow. Because eLearning practices are still evolving, it can often be difficult to find the best information on the topic." These are all great blogs -- take a couple of days to skim and scan.

Two short videos on (a) desconstructing a company webpage to use in your elearning template (images, logos, colors, layout, text boxes, fonts, etc.); and (b) building the elearning template itself.

"Welcome to elearnspace! This site and blog explore elearning, knowledge management, networks, technology, and community. Many resources exist for elearning, yet a model of how the pieces fit together is often missing. elearnspace has been organized to present a whole picture view of elearning" George Siemens' collection of interesting articles, mainly about connectivism.

This is a reasonable article on getting prepared for a MOOC or flipped class -- or any class, for that matter. Steps include setting goals, knowing your LMS and the authoring system involved (especially important with an interface like Coursera). The eLearning Industry (Insturctional Design & eLearning Professionals' Group) is also linked on this page.

These are some good tools, some of which may be new to you. Includes Dipity, Document Suite (an authoring tool to transform documents into online help modules), Izzui to track and deliver courses, LessonWriter, Scratch from the MIT MEdia Lab for content creation, timeliners, course builders of various sorts, and a list of free podcasting, polling, and quizzing tools. Not much for mobile technology. There is a lot here to explore.

Talks listed are mainly on MOOCs, bringing creativity back to education, and why schools are bad. Food for thought.

A list of 49 free books. Not organized, so it will take some time to comb through, but there are some gems, such as great tools for e-learning, and "Don't get Trapped by Your E-learning Tools." A mix of tools and pedagogy. Direct links to those books that are published online, as is the case with most.

Penzu was a nice and easily managed blog space. Now they have created Penzu Classroom that lets a teacher manage assignments, make inline comments (highlight/pop-up) on writing, tag student work, and share entires with students online and with email; students can give feedback and discuss each others entries. This look to be highly functional and would be well worth a try, especially for a teacher just getting into elearning.

I like the idea of "flipped tweeting": topics are posted several hours before live Twitter chats, Thursdays, 3 pm EST. See the whole schedule posted at the Bottom-Line Performance Blog: http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/

"Teachers who want to put web 2.0 technologies to work for them can find many different free options online. There are tools for creating online classrooms, social networks, student podcasts, web-based flashcards, elearning modules, and much more. Here are 10 free web 2.0 tools for teachers to try in the classroom this year." The first of these, Engrade, looks like it would be useful as an online assignment calendar, gradebook, IM, and progress report system.

"In this video, made while I was Tech Liaison for the Alaska State Writing Consortium, I share some ideas about teaching with Twitter and reflect on using Twitter with both local and distance students at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "This video was created as part of an online presentation I did with, David Wicks, Seattle Pacific University, and Jason Rhode, Northern Illinois University. It was presented online for the Northwest eLearning Community January 27, 2011. We have posted more materials and links to additional videos at their Google site: Twitter in Edu." From Jacquie Cyrus, Guam.

"In the original 2004 article I stated: "The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application" (Conclusion section, � 1). I find Verhagen�s (2006) critique falls at precisely this point. The core of what I wrote in the initial article is still valid: that learning is a network phenomenon, influenced (aided) by socialization and technology. Two years is a lifetime in the educational technology space. Two years ago, web 2.0 was just at the beginning of the hype cycle. Blogs, wikis, and RSS�now prominent terms at most educational conferences�were still the sandbox of learning technology geeks. Podcasting was not yet prominent. YouTube didn't exist. Google had not released its suite of web-based tools. Google Earth was not yet on the desktops of children and executives alike�each thrilled to view their house, school, or business in satellite images. Learning Management Systems still held the starting point of most elearning initiatives. Moodle was not yet prominent, and the term PLEs (personal learning environments) did not exist. In two years, our small space of educational technology evolved�perhaps exploded is a more accurate term."

Types of activities: Make Instagram Galleries for Historical Figures. Create a Netflix series for a novel (displaying an understanding of plot, setting, characters, etc.). Make Amazon product pages to show the types of organelles that plant or animal cells might shop for. Create a Twitter profile for George Washington. Make Facebook pages for endangered species. A variety of activities for high school students.

Cleverly presented in a slideshow at the head of R. Byrne's blog.

The Future of Learning: can it be a school in the cloud. This 22+ min. talk is inspiring for those who love technology and futurist thinking. He aks for help in designing the "School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other -- using resources and mentoring from the cloud." Are we still creating for a machine that no longer exists?

We're still working on how to use virtual realities for educational purposes. This article proposes some sites for both younger kids and early teens.

Uses a course wiki for planning lessons and presentations. Student-teachers post a version of their lessons and then discuss in workshop, later using the wiki "comment" function. Students then revise their lessons and resubmit for evaluation by the instructor.

Adobe Captivate 6 is"a solution which can help you track how learners have been interacting with your Adobe Captivate courses. It gives you insight on aspects such as: how much time learners are spending on slide which interactive items they are interacting with how much time they are away from slide, on which slide they are dropping out of the course how many times they are visiting a slide how they have been performing on the quiz." Sounds like a useful program to have.

14 Free Tools -- includes Hot Potatoes, Quandry, JeopardyLabs, Edgames, etc. Games to revise/review as well as make your own quizzes.