elearning 2.0

Introduction to Concept Mapping Used as a learning and teaching technique, concept mapping visually illustrates the relationships between concepts and ideas. Often represented in circles or boxes, concepts are linked by words and phrases that explain the connection between the ideas, helping students organize and structure their thoughts to further understand information and discover new relationships. Most concept maps represent a hierarchical structure, with the overall, broad concept first with connected sub-topics, more specific concepts, following. Concept Map Example Definition of a Concept Map A concept map is a type of graphic organizer used to help students organize and represent knowledge of a subject. Concept maps begin with a main idea (or concept) and then branch out to show how that main idea can be broken down into specific topics. Benefits of Concept Mapping Concept mapping serves several purposes for learners: Helping students brainstorm and generate new ideas Encouraging students to discover new concepts and the propositions that connect them Allowing students to more clearly communicate ideas, thoughts and information Helping students integrate new concepts with older concepts Enabling students to gain enhanced knowledge of any topic and evaluate the information How to Build a Concept Map Concept maps are typically hierarchical, with the subordinate concepts stemming from the main concept or idea. This type of graphic organizer however, always allows change and new concepts to be added. The Rubber Sheet Analogy states that concept positions on a map can continuously change, while always maintaining the same relationship with the other ideas on the map. Start with a main idea, topic, or issue to focus on. A helpful way to determine the context of your concept map is to choose a focus question-something that needs to be solved or a conclusion that needs to be reached. Once a topic or question is

Resources On this page you will find links to resources, activities, etc. ONLINE TOOLS ■Storybird, create your own books using original illustrations. ■Tagxedo, create word clouds with different shapes. ■Online Convert, online tool to convert different kinds of files. ■Dragontape, crop and mix youtube videos, and embed the result. ■Vocaroo, record your voice online and send it to a friend, post it on the web with a link or a html code. ■Brainshark, add audio to your pictures or slideshow presentations. ■Dictationsonline, dictations for different levels. ■Only2Clicks: The 101 most useful websites READY MADE MATERIAL AND UNITS ■English Language Lab Asturias (ELLA) ■ESL-Library ■British Council Teaching Resources ■English Lessons Online ■News English Lessons ■EL gazette ■Mosaic, specific materials for low levels. ■Efl-resource.com, materials classified according to levels and topics. ■Film-English, lesson plans from films in English. WRITING ■Flo-Joe ■Busuu SPEAKING ■Busuu ■The Mixxer: Language Exchange Community for Everyone ■Verbling READING ■BritLit (British Council) DICTIONARIES ■SHAHI: Diccionario visual que combina contenido del Wiktionary con imágenes de Flick. ■Wordreference, Assorted Monolingual and Bilingual Dictionaries and links to other Dictionaries. ■Merriam-Webster Online, Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical Dictionary and Spanish-English Dictionary ■Cambridge Dictionary, Dictionary, Idioms and Phrasal Verbs ■Collins Dictionary, Monolingual and Bilingual Dictionaries ■Macmillan Dictionary and Thesaurus ■Visual Dictionary ■Pronunciation Dictionary ■Oxford Dictionary ■The Free Dictionary, Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus. Legal Dictionary, Medical Dictionary, Dictionaries in other Languages. ■Free Medical Dictionary Online ■Linguee, Dictionary created by internet users with real examp

Spin-off from the Facebook group with the same name which some teachers created last year. Most of us are teachers at Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas, and we like to share ideas, links and debate in Facebook, but we thought that all these posts would be better organized if we had a group so they wouldn't be lost among other entries in our personal Facebook wall. When the group started to grow (there are 92 of us already), we realized that we were missing some kind of categorization, so we thought a blog would do the trick. And here we are. We choose the ideas that are more popular among the posts in our group in Facebook and write a post here.

Bastard Culture!: How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production Mirko Tobias Schafer 0 Resenhas Amsterdam University Press, 15/07/2011 - 249 páginas In the wake of the recent far-reaching changes in the use and accessibility of technology in our society, the average person is far more engaged with digital culture than ever before. They are not merely subject to technological advances but actively use, create, and mold them in everyday routines-connecting with loved ones and strangers through the Internet and smart phones, navigating digital worlds for work and recreation, extracting information from vast networks, and even creating and customizing interfaces to best suit their needs. In this timely work, Mirko Tobias Schäfer delves deep into the realities of user participation, the forms it takes, and the popular discourse around new media. Drawing on extensive research into hacking culture, fan communities, and Web 2.0 applications, Schäfer offers a critical approach to the hype around user participation and exposes the blurred boundaries between industry-driven culture and the domain of the user.

Pinterest uniqueness stems from the fact that it has reinvented the 'image worth's more than a thousand words ideology'.

How many Presidents do you recognize? There are over 4000 K-12 games for teachers and students on http://www.bubbabrain.com

Although, no release date has been announced for the final version of the new OS, trend watchers are of the candid-view that it may show-up before the holiday season.

Martin Ingram Virtually Everything More posts | Read bio December 28, 2010 - 3:09 P.M. The economics of desktop virtualization 4 Comments TAGS:desktop virtualization, enterprise, finance, government, healthcare, hosted desktop virtualization, PC IT TOPICS:Cloud Computing, Cybercrime & Hacking, Desktop Apps, Emerging Technology, Healthcare IT, Laptops & Netbooks, Virtualization, Windows With Thanksgiving and Christmas behind us and the New Year upon us, it is time to take stock and see what changed for desktop virtualization in 2010.  One thing is very clear: We have moved from desktop virtualization being 'about to take off' to 'has taken off' -- the evidence for this is pretty clear in the number of licenses sold. With volumes sold in the low millions, desktop virtualization is way beyond the tryout and pilot stage. However, desktop virtualization is not yet for every user. There are a number of areas where it's still not a good fit. For example, a user who does not always have access to the Internet from his or her laptop may not be able to use a hosted virtual desktop. This is a problem that will be addressed by client hypervisors in coming years. These provide the management benefits of desktop virtualization to the intermittently connected user. For now, they are very new but will become critical for mobile workers and may also have a major role to play in bringing down the costs of desktop virtualization for non-mobile users as well. Of perhaps more concern is the question of the economic basis for hosted virtual desktops. This has recently become more visible thanks to Microsoft's paper 'VDI TCO Analysis for Office Worker Environments,'  which compares the total cost of ownership of traditional PCs and their virtual desktop alternatives. Their conclusion is that hosted virtual desktops are more expensive to deliver than a traditional, well-managed PC. There are a number of interesting points and conclusions to draw from this document. Firstly, Micros

emystifying the Economics of Virtualization and Cloud Computing Posted by Michael Vizard Mar 15, 2011 11:51:15 AM Make the Financial Case for Virtualization and Cloud Computing With the advent of virtualization and cloud computing, figuring out the actual cost of enterprise computing has never been more important or complicated. Now that every application to one degree or another is eventually going to wind up sharing IT infrastructure with some other set of applications, ascribing costs to each application gets significantly more difficult. In the past, when every application pretty much had its own servers, the costs were clear, except for mainframe and minicomputer environments that were designed from the ground up to run a symmetric multiprocessing environment that supported multiple applications. But now that virtualization and cloud computing are pushing the concept of shared IT infrastructure across the entire spectrum of IT, application owners want to know what their true costs for running these environments actually will be. In addition, the chief financial officer - along with the rest of the board of directors - is demanding a more line-by-line accounting of the allocation of IT resources. Conceptually, most IT leaders should welcome this increased level of scrutiny. It gives them a chance to show how efficient they can be, which represents a significant change of pace after decades of meetings with senior managers that only really wanted to know what the availability of IT services was without much regard to the actual budget. The challenge facing many IT organizations today, says Chris Pick, chief marketing officer for Apptio, a provider of IT financial management tools that are available as a service, is they just don't have the tools needed to delve into all the financial elements of the overall IT equation. For example, a new survey of 100 CIOs in the U.S. that was conducted by the market research firm Worldwide Executive Council on behal

igital Learning Day Read some of the highlights from the recently-held Digital Learning Day in the USA. I haven't fully explored all these myself, but they look promising! Digital Learning Day Showcase Digital Learning Day Round-up Digital Learning Day: The Aftermath  

These pages describe the thesis-writing process, and the various formal requirements that pertains to it. Should you have additional queries, please direct them to syo@svet.lu.se.     Before writing the thesis What we expect from a thesis; links to the theoretical courses; which particular events are included: information about thesis templates and so on.           Planning the thesis Thesis plan paper, planning seminars, supervision, finding a thesis partner etc.           While you are writing Locating information, and what resources the department has on offer to aid you in this           Handing in the thesis Information how to go about handing in the completed thesis, and related formal matters (including dates and times when to hand it in)           The thesis seminar... and later events Information about the thesis seminars, what is expected of you as author and as a commentator; grading issues etc.

Evaluating Internet Information The Internet offers a virtually unlimited supply of information, but there is no-one who registers, describes or checks the quality of the material. One of the consequences is that you must yourself both search out the information and evaluate it - much more carefully than in the case of traditional, printed material. The problem of assessing sources calls for a sceptical attitude towards this kind of information. Who is in fact the originator? Can I be sure that it is correct? these kind of questions must always be present when browsing the Internet. Fortunately, the web also offers many useful tools, which can be of service when evaluating the quality of different information resources. Links http://servercc.oakton.edu/~wittman/find/eval.htm Here you find a good and lucid list, outlining what to consider when evaluating information resouces on the net. Recommended as a starting-point for evaluating sources. http://milton.mse.jhu.edu:8001/research/education/net.html This is a similar and complementing site, but it contains more thorough information about evaluation criteria. Recommended for the more experienced user. http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm Contains a large number of links to material about evaluation of information resources, including a list of evaluation criteria at: http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/index.htm The ultimate site on quality evaluation of information on the net. Always remember that it is finally you who are responsible for quality assessment efforts. That is in fact part and parcel of any research effort. [End of document]