Free SCORM Technical Resources - Ostyn Consulting
Technical information, tools, and white papers for SCORM. Less technical information is available on another page.
Blog posts
IDEA - The International Dialects Of English Archive
Audio primary source collection with international and regional dialects of English. Intended primarily for actors learning to imitate an accent, but could have other educational uses too.
AU Press - The Theory and Practice of Online Learning (second edition)
Terry Anderson has edited the second ed. of this book, available online under a CC-NC license. You can download the entire book or just individual chapters by specific authors.
50 Tips and Tricks to Create a Learning Space in Second Life | College Degrees
Resources and tools for using Second Life for education and training
Sensory Integration | Brain Rules |
Several people have mentioned John Medina's book Brain Rules. A lot of this sounds common sense, but check the footnotes on slides 2 & 3 for his rule "Sensory Integration: Stimulate more of the senses." He has a nice chart about how much more we remember for passive/active learning with multiple senses stimulated. He cites Dale's cone of experience, but he has numbers for each level, so we know he's, shall we say, stretching the research a bit.
Social Networking: Learning Theory in Action
Exploring how social networking applications could be used to create a more social constructivist learning environment to support collaboration, creativity, and networking. (The author calls it "social learning theory" and contrasts it with "objectivist" learning, but never uses the phrase "social constructivism." Still, it seems like that's what she's describing.)
Share More! Wiki » Anthology/Diigo the Web for Education - From TeleGatherer to TelePlanter with Diigo?
Miguel Guhlin summarizes ways to use Diigo in education. Also includes directions on signing up and subscribing to RSS feeds for tags.
GlassGiant.com - Make pictures for your Facebook Photos!
Some silly photo editing and image creation tools. More useful ones include creating a keyboard button with any word you want on it (Smite is the example given) and a chalkboard with a message of your choice. I could do these in Photoshop, but this would be easier.
fd's Flickr Toys: Do fun stuff with your photos
Fun things to do with digital images
For My Summer 2008 C&I 401 Students « Cycling Through Ed Tech
Cheri Toledo writes about internet safety, plus Twitter as a Personal Learning Network for teachers. I love her phrase to describe the typical paranoid response to kids being online: the "Ostrich Safety Method."
Too often, school boards and districts, teachers, and parents use the Ostrich Safety Method: block everything and don’t talk about it. This is not a sound educational method.
14 “OTHER” Ways to Use RSS Feeds | MakeUseOf.com
Essentially a list of applications that use RSS--forward emails to RSS, create widgets, send reminders to RSS, etc.
Wikis in Higher Education (and at UD) - Mathieu Plourde
Profiles of multiple professors using wikis for their courses at the University of Delaware
Dropdown low down — Tyssen Design
Comparison of accessibility of numerous dropdown menus using CSS and Javascript
Shorter, Intensive Courses Rated More Effective
Study based on survey results showing that accelerated university courses were rated higher overall by students. The press release mentions research on learning outcomes, but doesn't cite anything.
"A wealth of scholarship reveals that students seem to learn as well in abbreviated courses as they do in longer ones, but we wanted to see which format students rate as more effective. We looked at effectiveness, as indicated by course instructor surveys, and found that intensive nine- and 11-week classes garnered significantly higher overall course ratings, even after controlling for class size, probable grade in course and workload."
ParentCentral.ca - News & Features - Where teachers learn diversity
Article from the Toronto Star on integrating diversity in teacher education programs, therefore fostering a sense of respect for diversity in the classroom. Nice example of integrating diverse perspectives in geometry using Moroccan tiles, plus community involvement through parent computer training.
<p>And before they set foot in a classroom, student teachers must examine their own cultural identity – race, gender, social class, even sexual orientation – so they are aware of the bias they may bring to a classroom.</p><p>"Our research shows who you are impacts how you deal with children, so the worst thing is to act colour-blind," said Solomon, whose urban diversity program has graduated more than 1,000 teachers over the past 14 years, many of whom have gone on to school leadership positions in the field of equity.</p>
"Teachers need to know more than the 3 R's; if you don't know the community your students live in – the social, the racial dynamics – you won't be as effective," said Solomon.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
American history museum with some online exhibits and primary source materials. Quizzes and other materials for teachers also available.
90-9-1 Theory - Wiki Patterns
Wiki Patterns explanation of participation in a wiki with the 90-9-1 theory. This includes some of the statistics of participation for Wikipedia and other community sites.
The 90-9-1 theory explains the percentage of a wiki's participation, breaking it down as readers being the highest percent, with minor contributors composing the 9 percent and enthusiastic and active contributors composing 1 percent of the total participants in a wiki.
While it is impossible to overcome this type of human behaviour, it is possible to change the participation distribution (i.e 80-16-4 where 80% are lurkers, 16% contribute a little and 4% contribute the most).
21st Century Teachers | Educational Origami
Moving from the idea of 21st century skills for learners, this post discusses 21st century skills for teachers. The proposed roles for teachers include Adaptor, Communicator, Learner, Visionary, Model, Collaborator, Risk Taker.
We know they are student centric, wholistic, they are teaching about how to learn as much as teaching about the subject area.
Blogging and Reading Comprehension Strategies « Classroom Tech Tips
Applying reading comprehension strategies (questioning, making connections, inferring, etc.) and tips for students to improve blog conversations. One of the suggestions is to have a class focus together on one strategy in their comments to each other. I can see how the sentence frames would be very helpful, especially for younger writers.
ZaidLearn: 75 Free EduGames to Spice Up Your Course!
Directory of free educational games, plus some online resources about games in education.
Musopen - Free Public Domain Classical Music
Sheet music and audio in the public domain. You can hear a random piece or listen to their online radio station too.
Make Your Blog Design Work For You | chrisbrogan.com
Design ideas from someone who says that every part of his blog design is intentional. It may not be perfect, but he's thought about all the elements and how they help him accomplish his goals. Some of this is visual design, but a lot of it is general usability and effectiveness.
Center for Digital Storytelling: Resources
Articles and other resources about digital storytelling
The Many Hats of an Instructional Designer
Matching game about skills for instructional designers
Sage Advice on Wiki Adoption: Keys to Success
Best practices for wiki adoption in organizations:
- Start with what you already do
- Don't mandate--let it grow naturally
- Invite Senior Leadership
- Find the Champions
- Practice what you preach
In the Wild « Web2.0 in High School
Observations from the beginning of a high school project with Ning, Animoto, and Flickr. Most of the insight is around how Ning facilitates conversations between students and lets the teacher join the discussion. Students are engaged with Ning; they are personalizing their spaces and giving each other constructive feedback.
The ability for teachers to understand and add value to the comment ‘back channel’ is a key skill for the ‘connected teacher’. Anyone can swap an writing pad for a blog, there is no value in that. The back channel is the conversation, and is the heartbeat of thought.
I can’t think of another way in which teachers can get such immediate access to the ‘thinking’ process that is playing out in front of them.
Instructional Technology Program Student Resources Instructional Designer Skills
An old (1995) list of skills for instructional designers, very focused on the corporate training side of the field. I wonder why there's so little here about working with others; communication skills are kind of tacked on the end of the list as an afterthought. Communicating and collaborating with SMEs is such a big part of instructional design that I'm surprised that's never mentioned here.
Mnemograph: Web Based Timeline Software
Free tool to create online Flash-based interactive timelines.
Top News - Online insight: Challenges beat cheerleading
Network analysis in online discussions in two classes shows, not surprisingly, that asking probing questions and challenging posts results in more learner engagement than simple "cheerleading" posts like "Great job!"
New link: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2008/05/08/online-insight-challenges-beat-cheerleading/
FactCheckED: Monty Python and the Quest for the Perfect Fallacy
Lesson plan for teaching logical fallacies using political and commercial advertising, plus Monty Python. Aligned to National Social Studies standards and NETS info literacy.