Group items tagged

Let's not forget about SMS Marketing shall we?  98 percent of text messages received by people are read. Compare that to the following read rates for other social marketing outlets such as Twitter, Emails and Facebook posts which sometimes are overlooked.

In retrospect, I think we'll see this as an important moment in the history of media, as well as the history of the smartphone. After all, if there's a single feature that's always distinguished smartphones from "dumb" handsets, it's this: Smartphones are built for reading as well as talking, for literacy as much as audibility.

While reading for ideas on doing mock up mobile interface, i stumbled this. very interesting read on designing for usability for mobile devices and why it is not just a scale down version of your actual desktop website.

As we use our smartphones more and more, our patterns of email reading and replying change. We could take note of these patterns, especially if doing surveys or email marketing campaigns, for better responses.

For those os us who needs to proof read publicity materials, reports... etc, these tricks might do you some good.

Thanks Benji, I find the read aloud method works for me a lot.

'How to use Twitter for Social Learning' is a great site to bookmark and explore. This site contains over 200 + articles and resources about using Twitter for Learning and is a great resource. 

Foursquare can also be used in education, though, for online students, lower education teachers, and in campus communities. Read on for great ways to use Foursquare in education.

Something for the ETs and Jason to read and react to.

Interesting article! I think one reason why many teachers keep on sticking to the defaults is because _precisely_ BB can be so flexible and do so many things, and there's a lot of templates available. This panoply of choices leads to decision fatigue on the teachers' part: "Which features should I use for presenting to my students? how can I package and so on... arrrrh I'll just stick with the defaults and customize another day." (Can read more about decision fatigue at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html) So, I think our training strategies would have to recognize and take into account this human tendency to choose the easy defaults, especially when mentally tired.

Defaults are bad? hmmm... My son started using the kiddy skate scooter about 4 mths ago and he does it like a pro now. When I bought the scooter, it came with 'default settings', i.e. all fixed up and ready to use. He had a go at it and we adjusted the height and widen the handles along the way. He grew more confident and I removed the trainer wheels. I cannot imagine when the scooter came without any 'default settings', i.e. 4 wheels, 2 bars, rubber tubes, etc, I will be quite frustrated setting it up from scratch and my son will be climbing all over me. Defaults cannot be seen as something bad in my opinion. It gives new users or busy people something to start with, I personally appreciate that. When we design instructions, we provide foundations to get our learners started, building blocks or scaffolding their learning as they progress. A range of basic, intermediate or advanced instructional plans can also be presented later on. Essentially, what are the characteristics of our learners or the users of BB? What do you think they need? Demographics of our acad staffs for example are quite 'senior adult learners' (correct me if I am wrong). Do we think we want to present a blank BB page and tell them, 'hey, guess what? its all about customisation now, whatever you want, put it in.' No prize for guessing what their reactions will be. On the other hand, there maybe a group of people who do not want to conform to defaults but to change things or customise their experiences. Nothing wrong with that too. My point is, let's provide a range of options for users, we inform that there are default settings to get them started but there are also room for customisation for the adventurous. We want to be learner centric, hence customisation of experiences but we also do not want to leave anyone behind. That said, I am going to change all my default passwords and user ids of my mobile.... no wonder banks have been calling me to ask if I needed loans.

What if I could link my e-portfolio to Flipboard? And even view others' e-portfolios for a given topic on my Flipboard - all automagically arranged to look like a glossy magazine? How would that inspire our teachers to update their e-portfolios accordingly?

Yeu Ann posted this in FB. For Carolyn, Rachel, and ETs to read and ponder over with respect to our own use of Blackboard. Compare these results with our own survey by Jason earlier this year.

Facebook new redesigned News Feed. Read on. 

For all of us who want to improve our writing skill, here's an article worth reading - I found it helpful.

For IDs and ETs to read to inform the design of PD sessions. Share your thoughts with me over lunch.

This is a good article for IDs, ETs & MDs to read... 

For IDs and other CeLebs who want to read about e-learning and instructional design, here's a bunch of free e-books.

This article was written 5 years ago. Now, we have the benefit of ubiqutious mobile chat platforms e.g. Whatsapp, which can create small focus groups to talk about a particular topic. Not only so, besides the usual text, Whatsapp also allows participants to share mobile videos taken on the spot, share their geolocations with one another, share audio recordings and of course, images. A personal example of how I use Whatsapp for personal learning: I use Whatsapp regularly to practice reading and writing my Japanese with a few other friends, and when I make mistakes, they can quickly give me feedback in real-time. We also exchange photos of Japanese culture, food items and even on-the-spot videos from those who are in Japan. Some of us go for Japanese classes, some don't. But those who go for the classes share what they have learnt with those who haven't.  I'm not sure if this can be classified as a type of "flipped learning", but I realized that mobile chat makes an excellent real-time, yet highly personalized tool for e-learning in small group discussions. Perhaps this is one area we can consider next time as a way to do mobile learning that harnesses the social nature of us learners.