EDUC251

I can't wait to see what you come up with for this. Actually, I wish we had time for all of us to create a full course. There are such interesting topics coming up!

I liked the term "research team" - says it all about collaboration!

Mary Ann, You really have a lot of great visual material to pull from to create your science safari of the Galapagos. Have you thought about incorporating any satellite and other ground level images of these islands from Google Earth?

animoto.com is a tool that allows one to take pictures and create a slide show, adding text and music. It is a free tool, however, for a modest amount you can have additional features that allow you to do professional editting. I chose this activity as a way to connect with everyone and can really match faces with names. If you do see any mistakes, please let me know and I can easily update the slide show. I feel it goes to the discussion about creating community and having a presence that is more dimensional than just our names in a list. One could request and easily add other photos or snips.

Ann: I agree with Joy...cool tool. What a nice way to introduce the class.

My thought exactly Ann!

Another video.

I thought this had merit.

This is worth checking out if you're teaching K-12. Actually, it's pretty interesting for higher ed, as well, but designed for K-12. I was around when they originally started building it, and it's been fun to watch it evolve. Good people on this project!

This site is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There is a list of numerous resources on evaluating quality in all types of online learning. So if I wanted to see what other organizations were using to evaluate, there is an article geared toward benchmarking. There are also several articles on distance learning and accreditation

As part of the lesson 8 readings (Boettcher, Page 146), there is a description of the characteristics of quality on discussion postings. This outline is helpful and an extremely important element of eLearning course design that I had not previously thought about so succiently. Analogously, the link above - lists the guidelines - one should consider for good job postings. I think the underlying messge is to post a depth of detail (like salary range) which with all the information we have to consider is probably quite helpful.

I liked the idea of asking about time in activities, so as a teacher I can judge if my time expectations are correct.

I took your survey, Hyerin, and appreciated the questions you posed. I agree with Ann regarding asking about the time spent on various activities in the module. I, too, am interested in how much time it takes my students to complete tasks so that I can adjust activities if they require too much or too little time.

This website is a repository for "policy research from leading think tanks worldwide." There are many articles posted in PDF format for your perusal. I looked at several, among them, one regarding blended (hybrid) learning classes in Colorado Public Schools and another about the impact of digital learning in the US and the world.

I read the article on What Determines the Return to Education. This was basically a study about how in 1973 Scotland raised the minimum time to leave school was based on a calendar event - the end of Easter and not just the age of the student. The result was that it added about a year to the student's staying in school and this resulted in more people getting more formal acadmic qualifications and helps them in the job market, but the impact of how much more they learned wasn't measured. A good website for the latest.

Here's a survey for my leaarning activity related to my Sepsis case study

Nice, Susan! I especially like the question requiring a written answer because it involves learners in thinking about what they learned and justifying that thinking.

I am sharing a video I made for the class project. I welcome any critiques or information on how to make this a better video. I do not know if I have addressed all the elements Jen has asked for. I tried to address as many as I could...except those I will learn about in Module 8. This was my first attempt in making a eLearning video on You Tube, with the help of Jing and Screencast. I found a few frustrations along the way; but it was fairly easy to use. I have the following probs: 1.) I could not fit the screen to the screen used in You Tube; 2.) I had problems setting the volume controls on my recording; 3.) I found myself unable to think as fast as the video was going and 4.) the overall quality of the screen when used" full screen" was not as good as I would have liked it to be. Finally, I have never ( well maybe not NEVER) had so darn much fun doing something so darn frustrating at times.

Using a headset doesn't get the kind of result I want. However, I will try to do that the next time around. I have found this to be a problem when I made the elluminate recording, too. I could think you must be a fan Mary Ann! I really don't know what I am doing when I start these projects...they just sort of do themselves. My husband just shakes his head and ignores me. His computer is in our office. It is L shaped and I am on one side and he is on the other on the inside side of the L.That way we can't see each other...it keeps me from being tempted to do things to him, I might not want others to know about ( I am saying this while I untangle my fingers from his neck...at the moment.)

Thanks for posting your work. It gives us all good yardstick for our own assignment.

An interesting blog post about a change in how we manage online courses and research at an institution.

I like the way he reasoned that you have to change the assessment of these classes and this in turn changes the classes and the time frame as well.

I must admit that I don't really have a good definition of what LMS means to the author. He refers to learning environments and gives the "follow the teacher" example, so I'll assume he means personalized elearning, but I would have preferred that he provided a definition. Anyway, I agree to have to change the assessment, as well as the expectations for the teacher. It would be a challenge for the teacher to keep up with many students, but probably also provide him or her some additional insights to his/her work.

I designed a 5 question form that asks you to think about what you did during this Module and to respond with brief text answers. Enjoy!

The questions were quite reflective and more of "test" in a way, although there is obviously not a right or wrong answer. I must admit that the modules have somewhat blended, so I couldn't answer precisely. That being said, I used a similiar concept in my course framework, where I combined self-check with a "quiz", with the difference being the quiz questions are more reflective and would contribute to the score I give to the activity. Good questions!

My online community is a movie review group on Facebook, and like the title, the group is about reviewing movies, as well as introducing new movies (usually with trailers) to other group members. There is a separate discussion board, but people usually write on the wall, which is more convenient. I can look at other people's comments on certain movie that I would want to watch, as well as find out about new movies that could be coming out soon. Occasionally, some peopel post advertisement posts, since this is a group that is open to any facebook user, but most of the posts are movie-related posts.

I do not believe learners will cheat if they are made to feel they are capable learners with something to offer society, each other and their community. Also, seeing the consequences of cheating in their lives might make them think twice about it. Cheating denies each of us the right to self respect and earning what we have achieved, through hard work and desire to learn. Maybe cheating has more to do with the institution and instructors or professors than the learners.

Thanks for the great resource. Having only taught in a very small university, where classes average 15 students, you really get to know your students thinking, style of writing, etc. Yes, the comment made about cheating more likely to happen when a student feels "invisible" is probably common in larger university settings. I've put this link in my File section for future reference. Thanks, Joy.

Your welcome Helene. I really liked the tips this woman gave me! I intend to try them for my bog!

This website offers chat boards for teachers in all subject areas and grade le vels. It also has free lesson plans, etc. I went to the science teachers chat and looked at many of the postings, questions asked and answered, and decided that for the time being, I would join this community.

There's certainly bias in this post, and it's political, but I think it's important for us all to be aware of what's going on in budget cuts to education. It's a complex issue, but one that affects our entire society, not just people with kids.

I am still laughing over that one!!! Alright you teachers in this class...as a tax payer, I want you to work 12 months a year for us. If your not teaching, I want you to babysit all those latch key kids out there! You owe us...NOT! By the way, that principle or superintendent that was just fired in the Seattle, was making $264,000 per year plus benefits! Ouch!!! How much are teachers making...I'll bet it is not that amount.

If you're not already familiar with this, you may want to search for some articles about it. Andy Carvin, from NPR, has been collecting and redistributing "tweets" of people involved in important world protests and revolutions right now. He also sends tweets asking for translations of video and audio that aren't in English. People translate and send them back to him. It's really quite incredible. He's also just a nice guy. He's sacrificing a lot of his personal time to do this. Occasionally he posts about his family and other things he's doing.

Interesting...

Check out what Howard Rheingold is up to now. He's offering free tuition to 2 librarians, people who help out with the wiki maintenance.

Still trying to figure this out!