Group items tagged

f you are looking for solutions that would allow you to set up a professional web TV channel of some kind, one for which you have a budget to spend and hope to sell advertising and sponsorship for, you have no choice but look for a professional white-label video publishing and distribution service.

Much less exciting is the moment when you want to start controlling the ads that are displayed on your video clips, or you want to set up a day-by-day video programming schedule while monitoring and analyzing traffic, views and clickthroughs.

The times are ripe for serious and economically capable video publishers to step up significantly above the generic, amateur Internet video publisher, and to strengthen their online video presence by providing extra quality, reliability, speed and monetization options which are so critical to their own future survival.

Building a Learning Community Palloff and Pratt recommend seven basic steps for building a successful learning community. These include: clearly defining the purpose of the community, creating a distinctive gathering place for the group, promoting effective leadership from within, defining norms and a clear code of conduct, allowing for a range of member roles, allowing for and facilitating of subgroups, and allowing members to resolve their own disputes. The authors caution that it is possible to develop a community that has strong social connections between the students, but where very little learning actually takes place. Thus, it is important that the instructor be actively engaged in the process and encourages students who stray from the learning goals of the course. Specifically, the authors recommend: (1) engaging students with subject matter, (2) accounting for attendance and participation, (3) working with students who do not participate, (4) understanding the signs of when a student is in trouble, and (5) building online communities that accommodate personal interaction. Indicators of a Successful Learning Community You can tell if the learning community is working when you see: active interaction, sharing of resources among students, collaborative learning evidenced by comments directed primarily student to student rather than student to instructor, socially constructed meaning evidenced by agreement or questioning, with the intent to achieve agreement on issues of meaning, and expressions of support and encouragement exchanged between students, as well as willingness to critically evaluate the work of others. Finally, they suggest that the keys to successful learning communities are honesty, responsiveness, relevance, respect, openness, and empowerment. Palloff, R.M. & Pratt, K. (1999). Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Development of common interactive whiteboard format

Currently most content files developed for any one type of interactive whiteboard cannot be opened by the software of others. This means that it is not possible for teachers, the National Whiteboard Network, local authorities, or other content publishers to create content that can be used on the software of more than one type of interactive whiteboard. To tackle this problem Becta has, after completing a tendering process, appointed RM to develop a common industry-wide standard that will bring huge benefits to schools, allowing the exchange of resources within and between schools.

The aim of this development is to provide the industry with an interoperability standard, followed by demonstration of support for the format with the production of an open-source file viewer.

With the start of the new school year, many teachers and students are seeking new products and technologies to help them through their upcoming academics. With the increase of teachers using blogs and wikis, and students networking and utilizing online tools, the demand for easier and more efficient ways of learning is on the rise.