"The mere promise of Google Wave inspired a rainbow of potential use cases, but Wave's best real-world use boils down to this: it helps a group get things done together. Here's how to manage a group project in Wave."
"It's no secret that web design is a fast-growing industry. Virtually every type of business is in need of a quality website. There are opportunities at the large agency level down to freelancers developing small-business websites from home.
So how do you break into this exciting field? With little or no experience creating websites, getting yourself up to speed can be a daunting task. There are so many different avenues of design and development to explore. Which way should you go first? Which skill sets suit you the best?
We aim to give you an overview of a few things things that are essential to a well-rounded knowledge of web design. These are starting-points, if you will. Below each item, we've listed additional resources for you to continue on in your learning process.
Before we get into it, heed one important lesson: You can't become a professional web designer overnight. It takes years to reach an expert level in any aspect of the field. But everybody starts somewhere, and there's no better time than the present begin your web design education."
"With each new wave of technological innovation, the traditional way to explore the evolution of the educational model is to focus on how to best integrate the new technology into the learning process without influencing the traditional pedagogical principles and policies imposed by formal educational institutions. Recently, with the rise of new Web 2.0 tools and services (e.g. blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, social tagging), many researchers are going the same way by exploring how to best include these tools into the traditional academic and corporate learning process. I believe however that in doing so, educational Web 2.0 technologies will go the way of previous technologies (e.g. LMS, LCMS, CMS, LO, LOR); i.e. much hype followed by a slow death. "
"Now that we're certain of the value of storytelling, the pressing question that remains is how to tell stories on the web. I don't think that the existence of the story is in question-every product or service's value can be expressed as a story. The difficulty is in framing that story for the people that you know need to hear it. Take some time to remind yourself of that story: What was the problem that you set out to solve? How did you find the solution? Why is your solution special? Why are things different now that you've solved the problem? It's a simple structure, but often one that eludes marketers who are sometimes too close to their product or service to see the story clearly. Once you're clear on the story, there are two things to focus on next: (1) Writing the story, and (2) making sure that your website supports that story."
There are a myriad of options out there right now when it comes to tools for multimedia storytelling. The combination of tools you use can be your greatest strength or your greatest weakness. The important thing is to find the right combination of gear that fits your style of shooting and allows you to tell the best story possible. Below is a list of tools that we may use a combination of on any given multimedia shoot. Again the importance is to find what combination works best for you.
Multimedia tools are constantly evolving. There are many options on the market from which you can mix and match to best suit your needs. The following describes our current field production kit.
Low-Threshold Applications and Activities (LTAs)
An LTA is an activity or application of information technology that is reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating and incrementally low-cost in time, money, and stress.
Why IT Investments Often Don't Improve Educational Outcomes
At least three basic problems have dogged most attempts to translate technological investments into improvements in educational outcomes.
"The Cognitive Edge Network is evolving a series of open source methods based on naturalising sense-making through the Method Development Cycle.
The full list of methods can be accessed here.
The Method Template is designed to provide some guidance to users of the Cognitive Edge Wiki and also a cut and paste capability to assist in setting up a new page. In general the following principles should be followed:
1. Consistency: should be consistent with the principles of naturalising sense-making. In other words it should avoid idealistic approaches based on defining future states rather than enabling evolution
2. Minimalism: a method template should contain the essence of the method and should be written so that a practitioner can quickly glance through the sheet (especially the work flow) during use without the need to navigate through a large amount of text.
3. Use HTML: additional material, illustrations, detailed check lists, supporting documents, action forms or whatever can also be stored as files or as new articles and then referenced from the method document.
4. Object based: methods should be descrete items, which can easily be combined with other methods. As such they should be codified at a level which allows that. Assemblies can be written up as Offerings
5. Non-specificity: as far as possible do not make the method description specific to a particular application area or industry sector. If there is a good example of the application then create a new article and create a link to that article
6. Avoid recipes: the Cognitive Edge method is object based, it is not a recipe. We expect adaption in context. Methods should therefore not read like recipes, or encourage people to repeat past practice. The method document is an original from which context specific practice can be developed.
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"July 27, 2010
Ten Factors that Determine Online Student Success at Community Colleges
By: Christopher Hill in Distance Learning
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Community colleges are especially prone to problems with student completion of courses and retention of the students to graduation. To assist these institutions in addressing problems of persistence among online students, Robert Knipe, dean of learning technologies at Genesee Community College, undertook a study with area colleagues to learn what factors are most critical in predicting success, with an eye to understanding which factors are in the college's control and which may predict a student at risk for failing to persist.
Persistence is a key issue for community colleges because they tend to be driven by FTEs. These institutions are typically open admission, and maintaining a certain level of FTE determines the school's funding for the next year.
To better understand online course persistence, Knipe contacted colleagues at area community colleges. "All [were] seeing about a 70 percent on-time completion rate, down from 80 percent," he says. However, most research done at that point on online student persistence focused on programs at the baccalaureate level. So, Knipe constructed a "Top Ten" list based on his research that helps community colleges understand when students are most at risk for not completing an online course."
"Twitter in the College Classroom: Engaging Students 140 Characters at a Time
By: Mary Bart in Trends in Higher Education
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If it seems like everyone is tweeting these days, it's not just your imagination.
In 2007 Twitter users, as a whole, made about 5,000 tweets a day. By 2008 the number had increased to 300,000 per day, before growing to 2.5 million per day in January 2009. Just one year later, in January 2010, the figure jumped to 50 million tweets per day.
I think that is what people mean by the phrase "hockey stick growth."
Despite its rapid growth, however, Twitter can be a bit puzzling to someone on the outside looking in. With its quirky lingo, written (and unwritten) rules, and very real potential for being a classroom distraction, some instructors feel Twitter is a can of worms that's better left unopened. And yet, as an educator, you can't help but be curious to see what all the fuss is about, not to mention the desire to add something new to your student engagement toolbox.
For more content like this, be sure to download the FREE REPORT: Distance Learning Administration and Policy: Strategies for Achieving Excellence
In an effort to demystify the Twitter universe for faculty considering leveraging the power of the micro-blogging platform in the classroom, Kerry Ramsay, a professor at Loyalist College, presented a seminar on Using Twitter to Enhance Collaborative Learning."
"Welcome to Roundhouse, a student-led journal at the University of Leeds. Roundhouse has been discursively edited, peer reviewed and developed by Critical Theory students from the Politics and International Studies Department at the University of Leeds. The seminal edition of the Roundhouse journal showcases nine articles from recent graduates examining the 'applied turn' in Critical Theory along with an editorial statement of principles and is available from this page in the left-hand sidebar."