Blog posts

<li>online learning communities are grown, not built </li> <li>online learning communities need leaders </li> <li>personal narrative is vital to online learning communities.</li>

<p>He gives a set of mantras for teacher/leaders in any online community:</p> <ul> <li>all you need is love </li> <li>control the environment, not the group </li> <li>lead by example </li> <li>let lurkers lurk </li> <li>short leading questions get conversations going </li> <li>be personally congratulatory and inquisitive </li> <li>route information in all directions </li> <li>care about the people in the community; this cannot be faked </li> <li>understand consensus and how to build it, and sense when it's been built and just not recognised, and when you have to make a decision despite all the talking.</li></ul>

<li>Immediate feedback prevents subsequent confusion and limits the likelihood for continued inappropriate retrieval practice.</li> <li>Delayed feedback creates a beneficial spacing effect.</li> <li>When in doubt about the timing of feedback, you can (a) give immediate feedback and then a subsequent delayed retrieval opportunity, (b) delay feedback slightly, and/or (c) just be sure to give some kind of feedback.</li> <li>Feedback should usually be provided before learners get another chance to retrieve incorrectly again.</li>

If you already lean toward the idea that accessible sites are good for humanity as well as for business, then this list will provide plenty of reference materials for you. If you don’t have a clue about the issues that surround Web site accessibility, then this list will help you to become well acquainted with the issues involved in this movement.

<a href="http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071592067"><i>Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns</i></a> predicts that the growth in computer-based delivery of education will accelerate swiftly until, by 2019, half of all high school classes will be taught over the Internet.

The sculpture demonstrated a fascinating idea: given fewer rules, people actually behaved in more creative, co-operative, and collaborative (or competitive, as the case may be) ways.

Any time you construct specific rules of engagement, they are instantly open to interpretation and circumvention, and we want our members to negotiate their place with each other, not with The Authority.

Any community—online or off—must start slowly, and be nurtured. You cannot “just add community.” It simply must happen gradually. It must be cared for, and hosted; it takes time and people with great communication skills to set the tone and tend the conversation.

We also tried to create an egalitarian playing field. At a glance, visitors can’t differentiate a professional photographer with an enormous lens from an enthusiast just getting started in photography. There is no indication of “quality” apart from the content itself.

Participate in the community you’re trying to build. Add content, make contact, show yourself as a person and have fun.

<p>Current reality, however, is only <em>one</em> form of reality. And just because it's <em>current</em> doesn't mean it's the way it will always be. Or <em>should</em> be. </p> <div id="a000238more"><div id="more"> <p>Real innovators challenge excuses. Real innovators challenge the status quo. They do not concede to current reality.</p></div></div>

Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs. Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53 percent of non-bloggers say the same thing.

Most students (82 percent) believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further--and more than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class.

<strong>Is transparency one of the key benefits to this sort of job search?</strong> <br> Absolutely. I wanted the transparency. The problem with traditional résumé interviewing is it's so one-dimensional and it's so easy to paint yourself as something. If I can look at your social network, I can see much more. This took a level of trust for the people who were reaching out to me. But I did say that I'm a big enough boy, that I'm OK if you talked about partying or things that you do in your personal life. I want to know who you are. I'm a human being as well, and I don't care that you do things, because I expect that human beings would do these things.

In my opinion, good semantic structure is one of the most essential and overlooked accessibility issues. A clearly-structured site is usually easier to understand, navigate, and is more accessible to users, particularly those with cognitive disabilities.

Udutu brings to the eLearning community the world's first LMS designed to run on popular Social Networks such as Facebook.

In 2003, there was a study that showed that all this writing online was actually making kids <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030520/1943254_F.shtml">more comfortable</a> with writing in general. In 2004, a study showed (like this one) that with a little instruction kids easily <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20041223/1427218.shtml">understood the difference</a> between texting and writing. In 2005, a study actually found that kids were <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051031/1836235.shtml">better writers</a> than in the past "using far more complex sentence structures, a wider vocabulary and a more accurate use of capital letters, punctuation and spelling" even if they sometimes let a txtism into their writing. And, in 2006, a study showed that students showed <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060731/1938242.shtml">no ill effects</a> from widespread text and IM messaging.