Group items tagged

Home About the eLearning Network What is the eLN? The eLearning Network (eLN) is a non-profit organisation run by the elearning community for the elearning community. The eLN is the number one source for guidance on best practice and future trends in technology-based learning and development at work, with more than 1500 members in the UK and beyond. Here's why it has never been a better time to join the eLN: Inspiration Technology has never developed so quickly and with such far-reaching implications. You need information you can trust, practical advice and standards to aspire to. As a member of the eLN expect to be inspired: * The E-Learning Awards, run each year in conjunction with e.learning age magazine, provide a showcase for the very best elearning projects that the UK has to offer. In 2009, we are extending our programme to recognise talented practitioners in a wide range of disciplines from graphic design to project management. * Our 1-day conferences address the most critical issues faced by the elearning community and provide an opportunity to explore future trends. In 2009, we are looking at hot topics such as making the case for elearning, creating engaging and effective elearning content, the future of learning management systems, and next generation blended learning. * Our face-to-face events are supplemented by a series of free online events and, for the first time, premium webinars providing opportunities to interact with internationally-reknown experts.

"Twitter in the College Classroom: Engaging Students 140 Characters at a Time By: Mary Bart in Trends in Higher Education * * * ShareThis 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."

The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On An MS-Word version of this essay is available at http://www.downes.ca/files/future2008.doc In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. (Downes, 1998) At the time, I was working as a distance education and new media design specialist at Assiniboine Community College, and I wrote the essay to defend the work I was doing at the time. "We want a plan," said my managers, and so I outlined the future as I thought it would - and should - unfold. In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. I have found, on rereading and reworking the essay, that though there may have been some movement in the margins, the overall thrust of the paper was essentially correct. This gives me confidence in my understanding of those forces and trends that are moving education today. In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998, and with the benefit of ten year's experience, recast and rewrite each prediction. This essay is not an attempt to vindicate the previous paper - time has done that - but to carry on in the same spirit, and to push that vision ten years deeper into the future.

"For several years, the predominant blog layout has remained unchanged. Posts, usually shortened to fit neatly, sit on top of each other in descending order, headlines over each post. This creates a "log" feel from which the term "web log" or "blog" came. However, redesigns at two of the web's best-known blogs, Techcrunch and Mashable seem poised to shake up the traditional layout, offering slight variations that make the sites appear more like a traditional newspaper. The trend appears to be spreading. While no hard numbers exist, magazine layouts are among the most popular themes for existing blogs. These themes are generating some of the most hype among bloggers. Although the design of a blog is not always of particular import, as many readers read the content in an RSS reader, it is still an important consideration. It is one to which many novice bloggers don't give adequate weight. Choosing the wrong theme can make a site look dated or unprofessional, completely destroying any attempt to modernise one's web presence. For those seeking to enter the blogging realm, or to modernise an existing platform, a magazine theme may be a major step in the right direction. "

Interesting stuff - I quite fancy giving this a go with my blog and might try out some of the new Edublogs themes which appear to be flirting with this trend. I can see this layout being more appropriate for those looking to create an 'uber-blog' to accompany a programme of study - maybe with additional course management functions such as those offered by the Courseware plugin for Wordpress...?

Collaboration Tools : eLearning Technology As I mentioned in Real-Time Collaborative Editing, I had a fantastic experience participating in group editing of a Mind Map of collaborative tools during a session at Learn Trends. You can see the result below. But it was interesting to see the results exported which I've embedded below. I would expect the document to continue to grow and change, but thought it would be worth having it available in a text format as well (so I can find it when I need it).

eLearning Papers adds a new dimension to the exchange of information on e-learning in Europe and stimulates research. As such, the articles provide views regarding the current situation and e-learning trends in different communities: schools, universities, companies, civil society and institutions. eLearning Papers provides all those interested with an opportunity to have their texts published throughout Europe. Through these articles, the journal promotes the use of ICT for lifelong learning in Europe. The scope of the eLearning Papers reflects the four interest areas of elearningeuropa.info: schools, higher education, training and work and learning and society. All e-learning related themes are accepted as topics. The following topics are given as an example: * Technologies * Pedagogy * Process * Quality and evaluation * eInclusion * Learning environments

This blog is for volunteers, webmasters and administrators of associations, clubs, charities, communities and other groups. We discuss issues and trends in modern web technologies that help your organization achieve more with less. This blog is sponsored by Wild Apricot membership software: a set of tools for membership administration, event registration, website management, online fundraising - with friendly and knowledgeable tech support. See for yourself how affordable and easy it is to use: - Take a tour!

Using Twitter… 'The Smart Way' by Guest Poster on December 9, 2008 in Twitter Tools, Twitter for Beginners Today Mark Ramskill (@ramskill) from SubHub, takes a look at some of the steps that new Twitter users can go through to get going. Twitter, having been quickly adopted initially by key influencers, has grown into a mass-market communication tool, with millions of users. If you're publishing content, undertaking online marketing, and looking to keep up with the latest trends in anything web related then Twitter should be featuring highly as a 'weapon of choice'. In this article I'll be assuming you are new to Twitter, and that rather than wanting to use Twitter as a way of simply keeping up with friends, you want to use it as a tool for valuable engagement and maximum effect, avoiding the white noise that Twitter can also create if used incorrectly. I call this 'Using Twitter, the Smart Way'.

mike wesc purpose driven research project on anonymity kansas uni ethnography/social anthropology on web 2.0 trends

Voices Carry I was feeling really restless early last week about our ability to run and manage new and emerging services in a World where change happens at a pace that is nearly out of control. I thought my post, Why Run a Service would be a signal that I've come to a conclusion that there are real reasons to try and keep up. I didn't honestly expect it to strike the chord it did, but when you ask people interesting questions you sometimes get more interesting questions in return that demand to be explored. Lots of killer conversation going on in the comments of that post … one particular thread emerged about how encouraging open writing and blogging can generate greater depth of connections within our community. That last word is the really important piece to us - how we work to engage our community to embrace these emergent trends is what we think will ultimately make what we do more interesting and important. The more they participate, the more we can contribute opportunities to change teaching and learning.

Videos. Interview recordings. Documents. Photos. Media clips. Music. Podcasts. Whatever your materials, whatever your project, whatever your background - NVivo 8's superior technology lets you explore, analyze and glean insight from your information like never before. If you need to handle very rich information, where deep levels of analysis on both small and large volumes of data are required, NVivo 8 is your solution. It removes many of the manual tasks associated with analysis, like classifying, sorting and arranging information, so you have more time to explore trends, build and test theories and ultimately arrive at answers to questions.

"Many universities are currently, or have recently, reviewed their enterprise LMS including my own employer. Unfortunately we haven't made our review process public but many universities have been generous enough to provide information about their reviews. The following list are some of the publicly available LMS reviews that I have found. These were really useful in developing and informing our own review and I hope that by bringing them together in one place it will be useful for others. I have provided links to each institutions review documents and a quick summary of their process. I have included the eventual choice of LMS but of course this is a very small sample and shouldn't be taken as being indicative of any particular trend in LMS selection. The list is not presented in any particular order. If you know of any other publicly available LMS review documents please let me know and I will add them."

"# Executive Summary (6) # Technologies to Watch (14) # Key Trends (13) # Critical Challenges (3) # The Horizon Project (0) # One Year or Less: Mobiles (8) # One Year or Less: Cloud Computing (9) # Two to Three Years: Geo-Everything (5) # Two to Three Years: The Personal Web (11) # Four to Five Years: Semantic-Aware Applications (5) # Four to Five Years: Smart Objects (7) # Methodology (0) # 2009 Horizon Project Advisory Board (0)"

"This is a true story. Professor "Jones" decides to experiment with a blog in his class. It takes him about 10 minutes to set up a free site using Blogger. He then watches students engage in lively discussions of case studies outside of class, and tweaks the blog as experience teaches him how best to use the system. Teaching with Technology column Thinking that others might want to add a blog to their class as well, he goes to IT and offers to lead workshops for faculty on blogging in higher education. A few weeks later he is informed by IT that they have not only rejected his proposal, but that he is in violation of university policy and must stop immediately. Professor Jones asks what university policy he has violated, and is told that the policy has not yet been created, but will be soon. Professor Jones asks how he could possibly have violated a policy that does not yet exist. Soon afterward the IT department announces a new initiative to implement blogging at the institution. A committee is formed, and after nearly a year of deliberation they choose to pay for a system-rather than adopt a free, readily available system-because it allows for centralized control. IT sends out an email announcing the new system, along with a text document outlining a long list of policies that strictly limit how it may be used. No one adopts the system, leading IT to complain that faculty do not want to use technology in their teaching."

"Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services - think apps - are less about the searching and more about the g 1 etting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures."

Science fiction novelist William Gibson is attributed with the quote, "The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." He was speaking of course about the science facts upon which much sci-fi is based, and learning professionals also know something about understanding the realities of right now such that we can begin to support the organization of tomorrow. The fact is that the business of learning and development is about always looking forward. Whether gaining awareness about Millennial generation talent, the future of the LMS, or the promise of more successful remote collaboration, the realm of knowledge is very often tied to the practice of thinking ahead. We spoke with leaders and thinkers in the learning industry to get their insight into what the next decade holds for workplace learning and why we should be paying attention now.

12 eLearning Predictions for 2009 : eLearning Technology Last year I laid out in January my Ten Predictions for eLearning 2008. In my post, 2008 2009 - written in December 2008, I looked at how well I did in those predictions, and my results were pretty good, not perfect. So, let's try it again this year ...

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?

answers to questions from Twitter on teen practices Before I headed to Atlanta to do fieldwork, I asked folks who follow me on Twitter (@zephoria) what questions I should ask teens. Many of the questions that I received were more general questions about teens, rather than questions for teens. Still, I'm going to take a stab at very briefly answering some of the questions that I received based on what I know and what I learned. I am not answering the larger questions that would require pages and pages and my apologies if my short answers are not sufficient but I wanted to at least respond. Thank you all who contributed questions and my apologies if I didn't answer yours. To all who asked questions about Twitter: average teens don't use Twitter. They may in the future, but they do not now. Those who do are early adopters and not representative of any mainstream teen practice. Because of Oprah and celebs, some teens are starting to hear about it, but they don't understand it and they aren't using it.

Digital Citizenship April 15th, 2009 Introduction: Out of Control A spectre is haunting the classroom, the spectre of change. Nearly a century of institutional forms, initiated at the height of the Industrial Era, will change irrevocably over the next decade. The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system. Within just the last five years, both power and control have swung so quickly and so completely in their favor that it's all any of us can do to keep up. We live in an interregnum, between the shift in power and its full actualization: These wacky kids don't yet realize how powerful they are.