Summary of NMIT's Moodle-based Individual Learning Plan project - Semester 1, 2011

This brings me to the one-hour format. Conference talks, lectures in universities, periods in schools and the 'one-hour' of e-learning pricing model, all of these fall foul of the deep addiction to the 'hour of learning' delivered as a lecture.

Do you write or prepare content for online courses? Being aware of the readability of text destined for online students is an important consideration when writing and sourcing readings for online courses.

The point is that new tools in general, and Twitter in particular, greatly challenge the binary dichotomy of attention as something that is either given or taken away, distracted. Instead, these tools allow us to direct attention to destinations where it can be sustained with more concentration and immersion

just cannot accept excuses about technology being optional, whether it's from someone who is new to teaching or others who are close to retirement. There are children in those classrooms every day who deserve the best education we can offer them, and it is completely unfair if that education is less than it should be because someone wants to pick and choose which aspects of their job they feel are important.  No child should have to put up with out of date learning experience just because their close-to-retirement teacher is "taxiing to the hangar".

As you'll see, Thomas' infographic shows the current size of major social networks as well as the other well-known online services we use on a daily basis relative to their peers. It also overlays the present size of each company's mobile user base. You'll see Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more. You can also check out the agency's infographic from last year to see the relative changes.

People jump at a post which shares generously, such as Joyce Seitzinger's Moodle tool guide for teachers post. In this case, Joyce adapted a social media cheat sheet with a business/marketing focus to one relevant to education. When you do the hard work and share a resource you've created in your post, it's a winner.

So here is the problem: research quality is a nebulous concept and it takes many years to work out whether someone's output has actually high quality or not. This is especially hard for non-insiders. The Government is a non-insider that funds academic research in Australia and so would like to know what it is getting for that money. So here is a typical solution: use the quality of research publications as a proxy for likely high quality in the future and use that to measure performance. Academics will recognise that solution as it is precisely what they try to employ internally.

I doubt that Google has plans to bring its Chrome browser to the iPad anytime soon, but for fans of Chrome, there's a new app you might want to consider: iChromy. The app has some of the look and feel of the Chrome browser. There are tabs at the top of the screen and an omnibox that'll let you perform searches as well as type URLs. There's also a little star on the side of the omnibox, just like Chrome, that lets you bookmark pages.

Skills Tasmania Conference 2011

I'm presenting to my colleagues at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina this coming Wednesday on the potential for networked learning in teacher education, K-12 and higher education. Inspired by a very recent initiative by Robin Ellis, I've decided to put up a Voicethread slide and ask for feedback from people on their experiences with networked/social learning.

Joyce Seitzinger doing PLN preso at Skills Tasmania Conference 2011

Prsentation by Pieter van der Hijden (pvdh@sofos.nl) of Sofos Consultancy (www.sofos.nl) and Ned-Moove (www.ned-moove.nl) at the Moodle Moot UK; Milton Keynes UK, 23-25 Octobre 2007.

A new train of thought… Leadership and Innovation in Skills Our 2011 Conference is jam-packed with the latest news, ideas, mind-blowing opportunities and exciting educational technologies. Find out how to leverage off the National Broadband Network to build your skills-base and future-proof your business. Impressive local, national and international speakers will inform and entertain you.

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