Periodic Fable

Wednesday, 31 January 2007

E-learning extreme!

Consider yourself - yes you! - tagged to answer this question!

Where is the most extreme place you have taken part in e-learning either as student or tutor or developer?

A lecturer yesterday admitted to having logged on during a trip up Everest at 4000m.

I'm afraid the best I can come up with is a bar by the pool in Sicily...

posted by Helen Whitehead 2:12 PM

(4) comments

E-learning Organisations and Resources

Eduserv

Offer funding, services and support

Questionmark Perception assessment software

free trial

EDINA

JISC funded national datacentre at Edinburgh

The future?

web 1.0 ==> web 2.0
personal websites ==> blogging
domain name speculation ==> search engine optimisation
Page views ==> cost per click
publishing ==> participation
content management system ==> wikis
stickiness ==> syndication
MySpace - Youtube - Google Docs

Collaborative Learning - Why?

* accelerated learning by collective problem solving
* learning by doing
* situated learning
* social and networking benefits

In Shell collaborative learning approaches have been used successfully to run technical training sessions across the globe. A single expert can interact with and run sessions with different groups by running collaborative online exercises. Questions and answers are posted and shared by different groups who support and learn from one another. The postings form an ongoing "Knowledge Base" for the subject area.

The DTI has built four communities of practice for high tech companies without the time and costs of bringing members together. 2000 members have joined and the forums have facilitated knowledge sharing and partnerships.

Advantages of blogs

* Date stamped
* easy to update
* informal
* quick and visible responses via comments
* facilitates development of learning community

posted by Helen Whitehead 1:50 PM

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Thursday, 25 January 2007

Knowledge Management Blog

Knowledge-at-work

An interesting blog from Denham Grey, "a Knowledge Management consultant from Indianapolis with a passion for virtual teams, knowledge ecology, communities of practice, distance learning and building corporate memory."

Knowledge management and learning are two sides of the same coin...

http://denham.typepad.com/km/

posted by Helen Whitehead 8:23 AM

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Thursday, 18 January 2007

Tools and E-tivities

SWF Tools

An interesting website of conversion and other tools for manipulating files into Flash.
http://www.swftools.org/

E-tivity error

A common mistake beginners make when designing interactive activities for students is to ask them to post the answer to a question that has a single right answer or a limited number of answers. This means that the first student to post with the right answer prevents all the others from participating. There's no point in any of them doing the work!

This might be a calculation - first student to post the answer has done the work. Everyone else has no need to.

Commercial web promotions can make the same mistake

I was just looking at a promotion whereby a company aimed to get visitors browsing its website by offering a prize for those who find certain information on the website - everyone who can quote the information goes into the hat and a name is chosen to win the products.

The problem being that they asked people to post a comment on a company blog posting.
The first person to post went to the website had a look around and posted the result. I went to the blog and posted the answer without having ever been to the website! And none of the other 55 people who posted the answer need ever have visited the website. Not a promotion that really achieved its aims!

The right way to do it? Use a blog with moderated comments so that no-one can see the comments with the right answer in until the end of the promotion, when all comments are enabled in one go and the name drawn out of the hat.

posted by Helen Whitehead 3:11 PM

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Sunday, 14 January 2007

Season of Inspiration - online writing course

Season of Inspiration is an entirely online 9-week writing course aimed at writers of all levels. Two tutors from the former trAce Online Writing School are again offering this popular course.

Join Helen Whitehead (UK) and Sharon Rundle (Australia) in making the most of seasonal colours and scents, metaphors of the season, place and time to provide inspiration for writing that'll see you through the rest of the year. We offer support, exercises and creative bolstering. You'll experiment with and collaborate in haiku walks, visual writing, meaningful journalling and capturing the sights and sounds of the season. Dip in and rediscover your creativity.

The course lasts 9 weeks: 19th Feb - 23rd April 2007

It will comprise 7 weeks of inspirational exercises and prompts plus 2 weeks to concentrate on a piece of your own work and get feedback.

Cost: UKP150/AUS$370

The course takes place in a customised Moodle environment and will include writing exercises, discussions and writing with feedback from tutors and fellow students.

www.newmediawriting.com

posted by Helen Whitehead 2:50 PM

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Friday, 5 January 2007

Personalised learning

Personalised learning hits the headlines!

Making the educational personal

And still no-one really knows what it means...

I guess what it should be about is making sure that every learner - whatever their age! - has access to a wide variety of ways to learn - it's about accessibility and diversity really. It's NOT just about technology, although technology can facilitate the process. It IS about creativity. As it's clear that not all students are the same, it's an approach that I very much support. But then, my writing classes are small and I have the freedom to be flexible and responsive to my adult students' needs.

But I don't see how it's achievable in English schools without smaller class sizes.

Meanwhile...

Here's an innovative (and effective) teaching approach from the US (Emma Jeter is the British-born daughter of a friend).

Making an impact on learning

In the photo it seems to me that Emma and her class are the epitome of "engaged".

Here is a slideshow with commentary about it.

posted by Helen Whitehead 8:39 AM

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Wednesday, 3 January 2007

Auricle Blog

Blog from the e-learning team at the University of Bath.
Auricle: learning technologies in Higher Education, information, issues, perspectives

posted by Helen Whitehead 11:19 AM

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E-Learning links from Adelie Project

I often put up interesting links and resources on the blog (or the website) that I keep in my current employment: for the Adelie project

The Adelie Blog

posted by Helen Whitehead 10:53 AM

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