Apr
27
Ulises Ali Mejias at i d e a n t has written an interesting piece about the use of tags, including some guidelines as to how they might be used most effectively: Part of the allure of classifying things by assigning tags to them is that the user can give free reign to sloppiness. There [...]
Apr
27
Some Principles of Effective E-Learning
Filed Under E-learning | Comments Off
As usual, Stephen Downes manages to inform and challenge: What makes e-learning effective is, of course, typically in the eye of the beholder. One person’s toast and jam may be another person’s steak and kidney pie. This is what makes the drafting of a set of guidelines for effective e-learning so difficult. Follow the guidelines [...]
Apr
27
An old design for an eLearning aggregator
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Scott Wilson has posted about a model he developed some time back that provides a visual representation of how such an aggregator might look and work. There seems to be still plenty of activity around the themes or escaping from monolithic learning systems and building environments that make the most of existing and emerging technologies.
Apr
27
Communication patterns
Filed Under E-learning | Comments Off
Jon Hoem at Diablog :: has posted some comment on an interesting model for communication patterns in digital learning environments: Information produced by center Information produced by individual users Information produced by users as a collective Distribution controlled by center Transmission Registering Commenting Distribution controlled by individual users Consultation Dialog Collaboration Distribution controlled by users [...]
Apr
21
You Might Not Need “Community”
Filed Under E-learning, General | Comments Off
Lee LeFever at Common Craft writes about the difference between community and social strategies. His post is written in a business context but similar thinking might apply in education. As I’ve written before, I believe that the term ‘online community’ is overused and does not match with the reality of what most organizations want when [...]
Apr
20
World’s largest deployment of Moodle?
Filed Under E-learning | Comments Off
Derek Morrison over at Auricle has been commenting on online learning environments (LMS, VLE, etc) and watching open source developments such as Moodle. Although he is generally supportive of those developments he has written previously about the inherent danger of monolithic systems and vendor lock-in. Picked this one up via OLDaily. The Kiwis are apparently [...]
Apr
20
Teaching as performance in the electronic classroom
Filed Under E-learning, Teaching | Comments Off
Published in First Monday, this article extends the common experience of teaching as a repertory art to the online classroom: New developments in online educational technology have a profound effect on notions of intellectual property. Theories of the social construction of technology explain the extremely unstable nature of new technologies. Walter Ong’s theory of the [...]
Apr
20
ICT in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers or How ICT Can Create New, Open Learning Environments
Filed Under ICT integration, Teaching | Comments Off
Available from UNESCO as a complete book in PDF: As the foreword to the book notes: This handbook is principally designed for teachers and teacher educators who are currently working with, or would like to know more about, ICT in schools. A major theme in the book concerns how ICT can create new, open learning [...]
Apr
8
From Student Work to Exemplary Educational Resources
Filed Under Courses, E-learning, Teaching | Comments Off
James Levin, Nicholas Burbules & Bertram Bruce write in E-Learning, 2(1): Abstract Within the existing system of education, student work rarely has any value beyond the particular course that it is created for. The work is graded and then usually discarded. The authors describe in this article a way that student work can be systematically [...]
Apr
8
Invisibility of knowledge work
Filed Under DocsCom | Comments Off
Jim McGee writes at Enterprise Systems about The Invisibility of Knowledge Work: For all the productivity gains that accrue to the digitization of knowledge work, one unintended consequence has been to make the execution of knowledge work essentially invisible, making it harder to manage and improve such work. Attacking that invisibility opens an important path [...]