Group items tagged

"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."

"These are three VLE related learning technology blog posts I have read and pondered recently: * http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/a-five-stage-model-for-using-the-vle/ * http://eduvel.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/building-vles/ * http://loujak78.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/from_repository_to_interactivity/ It is perfectly fine to reflect what is observed in models. It helps to take stock and put things in order and into perspective. In this sense, the models proposed by James Clay, David Sugden and Louise Jakobsen are entirely valid because they reflect fairly accurately what I currently see happening around me. That said, I very much disagree that these models make particularly good role models for developing a VLE."

Silent movie from Alex Spiers walking you through the creation of a voice e-mail with Wimba through Blackboard.

good slideshare presentation on PLE's

"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. "

window into learning - a portal for supporting talent

"As promised, I am presenting a step-by-step approach to a low-cost knowledge management (KM) program using social computing, and will focus on the functionality that has been touted but rarely delivered by communities of practice (CoPs). The name brings to mind Etienne Wenger's pioneering work in observing naturally occurring use of virtual environments by engineers. The problem was that when people went from a researcher's description of what had grown naturally in the past to a prescriptive recipe, things went wrong. People never accurately report all the factors that lead to the success or failure of a project; retrospective coherence clicks in. Also, the fact that something worked once in a specific context does not mean that it will work again even in the same conditions, or that you can accurately replicate the starting conditions. The other big problem was that people built over structured, formal top-down systems that replicated the design methodologies for enterprisewide systems like SAP. So, let's look at a bottom-up, naturalizing approach to building communities for knowledge flow using blogs:"

In March 1987, the AAHE Bulletin first published "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." With support from Lilly Endowment, that document was followed by a Seven Principles Faculty Inventory and an Institutional Inventory (Johnson Foundation, 1989) and by a Student Inventory (1990). The Principles, created by Art Chickering and Zelda Gamson with help from higher education colleagues, AAHE, and the Education Commission of the States, with support from the Johnson Foundation, distilled findings from decades of research on the undergraduate experience. Several hundred thousand copies of the Principles and Inventories have been distributed on two- and four-year campuses in the United States and Canada. (Copies are available at cost from the Seven Principles Resource Center, Winona State University, PO Box 5838, Winona, MN 55987-5838; ph 507/457-5020.) - Eds. Since the Seven Principles of Good Practice were created in 1987, new communication and information technologies have become major resources for teaching and learning in higher education. If the power of the new technologies is to be fully realized, they should be employed in ways consistent with the Seven Principles. Such technologies are tools with multiple capabilities; it is misleading to make assertions like "Microcomputers will empower students" because that is only one way in which computers might be used. Any given instructional strategy can be supported by a number of contrasting technologies (old and new), just as any given technology might support different instructional strategies. But for any given instructional strategy, some technologies are better than others: Better to turn a screw with a screwdriver than a hammer - a dime may also do the trick, but a screwdriver is usually better. This essay, then, describes some of the most cost-effective and appropriate ways to use computers, video, and telecommunications technologies to advance the Seven Principles.

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.

When times are tough, institutions are under more competitive pressure than ever to do well for their students. Unfortunately this is the precise time when cash is in short supply, faculty workloads may have increased, and development/support staff and budgets are often slashed. For institutions that want to do a more effective job of competing and meeting external demands for quality, it's time for a more frugal approach to innovation. One approach to frugal innovation: help faculty share low-cost, low-risk, easy-to-explain improvements in teaching and learning with each other.  That's really two ideas, and they go well together: Faculty helping each other improve their courses (with a slight assist from staff to help them get together) Low Threshold Activities and Applications (LTAs) -- small steps toward improvement -- that each faculty member can grasp quite quickly and try safely, easily, and inexpensively and that promise real rewards if successful, e.g.  better learning, time-savings.  (For on LTAs, click here.)  "Frugal": These kinds of improvements are a good fit for peer-to-peer assistance because LTAs can be communicated quickly and easily: e.g., in: a casual conversation among faculty, a 5-15 minute workshop scheduled as an agenda item in a departmental meeting and led by a faculty member, a page-long description written by a faculty member and appearing on the web or in a newsletter, an eClip (brief video clip online that explains how to do something or why it's worth doing), or just a few sentences in an email or on a web page.

"Stephen Downes about Personal Learning Environments"

Connectivism: A Theory of Personal Learning "

"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. "

"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."

"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."