Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation
Teaching Hacks Wordpress Plugins
Teaching Hacks
Jane's E-Learning For Free Information Service
eLearning Technology: What is eLearning 2.0?
e-learning 2.0: All You Need To Know
Half an Hour: Stager, Logo and Web 2.0
eLearn: Case Studies - The Reluctant Online Professor
As it turned out, this was one of the best courses, online or onsite, I have ever taught. Not only did I witness enormous engagement among almost all of the students, but the level of learning was much higher than in previous years.
The feedback from the students on the course was very positive, better than I had received for the onsite course in previous years. One of my favorite written student comments was, "… I don't know how this course could be taught as effectively in the classroom."
The Art of Building Virtual Communities (Techlearning blog)
Two models for understanding roles in online communities: 4L (Linking, Lurking, Learning, Leading) and 4C (Consumer, Commentor, Contributor, Commentator). Also includes some questions and ideas about what makes healthy online communities.
eLearn: Ten Web 2.0 Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes to Be a More Successful E-learning Professional
List from Stephen Downes of quick activities. Although the title says "e-learning professionals" many of these would be applicable to anyone interested in some quick ongoing professional development
eLearning Guild Annual Gathering 2008 - Day 1- Social Learning Discussion « eLearning Weekly
Tips and tricks for implementing social learning tools (Web 2.0 tools for learning) in organizations, focused on how to get people in the organization to buy in and actually use the tools.
<li>Oftentimes, when social learning is discussed at an organization, some workers shy away. They see their knowledge as their power, and they’re afraid to give up that control. How to overcome this? Emphasize their ability to help others and play a bigger role in helping the organization, instead of hoarding the knowledge. (Sometimes easier said than done.)</li>
<li>If you’re getting pushback on social learning technologies (ex. blogs and wikis), you may want to have evangelist(s) at your organization who take lead and emphasize the potential of these tools, show examples, etc.</li>
"What is the perfect social learning implementation? There is no such thing. Use whatever tools and methodologies that help your teams collaborate best."
Clive on Learning: Three tiers in the content pyramid
Clive Shepherd revises his model for e-learning tiers, adding a bottom level of social learning technology to the tiers of rapid development and high-end e-learning. High-end e-learning is a top-down model; social learning is bottom up. He makes good points about these tiers serving different purposes; they compliment each other depending on the needs of a particular situation.
Professional designers should not feel threatened by this proliferation of content created by enthusiastic amateurs - the more experience people have with creating content for themselves, the more they will appreciate the skills the professionals bring to bear.
Learning in the Webiverse: How Do You Grade a Conversation?
Principles for assessing online discussions and other conversations (blogs, chat, etc.) by coherence, awareness of audience, and diction. Writing for asynchronous discussion isn't the same as writing an essay, and the author argues that students who simply post essays to the discussion board should receive good grades.
Four Letter Words - How wiki and edit are making the Internet a better teaching tool - Using Wiki in Education -
Chapter in a "wiki book" (2 chapters are free, others require payment for the book). The beginning of this chapter is a basic intro to wikis, but the graphics explaining the workflow are interesting. The author argues that when you work with wikis, you get all the logistic pieces out of the way early in the creative process, leaving more time for actual writing and collaboration. In practice, I think there are times when you have to address the logistics issues throughout the process, but it's greatly reduced with wikis.
<p>The above example demonstrates the power of the wiki to make collaboration more inclusive and knowledge construction efficient, distributed and fast. If you think about this visually, the email/Word scenario has limited periods of creativity separated by the logistical and socially sensitive task of combining edits:</p>
<p></p><div align="center"><img src="/download/attachments/54/ch1-lowproductivetime.jpg" border="0"></div><p></p>
<p>The wiki completely changes this by shifting logistics to the shortest possible segment of time at the outset, leaving a much greater period of time for collaborative creativity and knowledge construction:</p>
<p></p><div align="center"><img src="/download/attachments/54/ch1-highproductivetime.jpg" border="0"></div>
Tools Used : eLearning Technology
Tony Karrer looks at some results from the eLearning Guild survey on eLearning 2.0, specifically what tools learning professionals are using themselves. He compares people in corporations, education, and government. Surprisingly, people working in education are using more of these tools than their corporate counterparts.
Using Blogs to Enhance Learning – Some Helpful Tips - OpenEducation.net
Tips for using blogs as learning tools, including making sure they are actually the right tool for the task, using blogs to record the "learning journey" and reflect, and using appropriate assessment.
Main Articles: 'New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies', Ariadne Issue 56
Schemas for categorizing the use of pedagogies, learning theories, and technologies. For example, Table 1 maps learning theories (behaviorism, cognitive constructivism, social constructivism, and situated learning) against types of technologies. Online communication tools offer more potential for social constructivist interaction and joint construction of knowledge.
This article also suggests a way to map tool use along three dimensions:
- Individual - Social
- Information - Experience
- Passive - Active This isn't a simple framework where a single tool always is used the same way. Blogs can be more social or more based on individual reflection, and could be at different places in that framework depending on the actual learning activities.
Brave New Classroom 2.0 (New Blog Forum) | Britannica Blog
Discussions pro and con about technology in the classroom, in response to this question: "Do the new classroom technologies represent an educational breakthrough, a threat to teaching itself, or something in between?" Michael Wesch and Steve Hargadon are two of the educators included in the discussion.
eLearning Learning
Aggregated resources for e-learning. Essentially, this aggregates feeds from a large number of e-learning-related blogs and lets you do a metasearch across them. You can also browse by keyword, tools, and companies.
Web 2.0 Selection Criteria: Save Time Choosing an Appropriate Tool | The Sloan Consortium
A checklist of criteria for picking Web 2.0 tools for learning, most of which would apply to any technology
Interaction Equivalency in Self-Paced Online Learning Environments: An Exploration of Learner Preferences
Case study examining what types of interactions (student-teacher, student-student, student-content) students found most valuable in an instructor-led self-paced online course.
21st Century Teaching and Learning: Learning in the Social Web: Online Teaching and Learning 2.0
Presentation on teaching online with VoiceThread & Ning, including survey results with learner perspectives on how these tools helped create a sense of community