YouTube - A Shared Culture
Introduction to Creative Commons explaining how CC licenses benefit content creators who want to share their work with the world. Includes an overview of the differences between licenses.
Imported from Diigo
100 Conversation Topics : eLearning Technology
A list to go to when you're stumped for something to blog about. Imagine you had a conversation about one of these 100 topics related to learning, e-learning, and technology.
W3C Web Standard Defines Accessibility for Next Generation Web
Press release on the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, with links to more information. "WCAG at a Glance" is a quick overview of the standards, but probably only helpful if you're already somewhat familiar with online accessibility.
<p>WCAG 2.0 explains how to make
content:</p>
<ul>
<li>Perceivable (for instance by addressing text alternatives for images,
captions for audio, adaptability of presentation, and color contrast);
</li>
<li>Operable (by addressing keyboard access, color contrast, timing of
input, seizure avoidance, and navigability); </li>
<li>Understandable (by addressing readability, predictability, and input
assistance); and </li>
<li>Robust (for instance by addressing compatibility with assistive
technologies).</li></ul>
My Top 25 blogs for 2008 | The E-learning Curve at Edublogs
Michael Hanley has collected his list of top 25 blogs, related to e-learning, learning, training, and education. I'm on the list, and I recognize most of the names here, but there are some blogs that are new to me.
Sakai 3 Proposal
Vision for what Sakai could look like in the future. The authors envision an LMS based on widgets with lots of flexibility, social networking, and content creation tools. The proposed changes to the organization (doing away with sites) would make Sakai much more flexible outside of a traditional academic course environment. The ability to have groups persist outside of courses would allow cohorts to be part of a group together, which creates some interesting possibilities.
"In summary, our ambition is not merely an incremental improvement of Sakai nor is it to copy Google. Our goal is not simply to create a better and cheaper version of Blackboard. It is time to arrive at a clearer understanding of the capabilities that represent needs unique to education and for the Sakai community to focus its development effort on providing these capabilities while taking advantage of established open‐source efforts to provide more generic capabilities. We should, in short, strive to create a different type of academic collaboration system."
Census: More than 54 million disabled in U.S. - Health care- msnbc.com
US Census statistics on disabilities. If almost 20% of the population has some sort of disability, isn't that significant enough for us to take accessibility into consideration when developing online learning? If you want stats to justify why accessibility matters, this is a good place to start.
More than 54 million U.S. residents, or about 19 percent of the population, have some sort of disability, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.
How To Master Photoshop In Just One Week :: Elite By Design
Three-part series of tutorials on Photoshop--basically a crash course to learn the software
gotoandlearn.com
Free video tutorials on Flash
Tutorials | elearninglive.com
The goal here is to create Flash tutorials specifically for instructional designers and e-learning developers. Right now there's only one tutorial (on creating a drag and drop activity using ActionScript 3.0), but he plans to add more over time.
Dynamic FAQ Page - A Lesson in Accessibility and Progressive Enhancement
Slick looking dynamic FAQ built with jQuery, where each question is in a box with a tag to click for the answer. The great thing about this technique is that it's still accessible to screenreaders because the content is still visible even without Javascript and CSS.
e-Portfolios or Assessment Management?
Looking at the differences between e-portfolios and assessment management systems. According to the author, assessment systems are more like traditional grading and are institution controlled rather than being student-centered portfolios.
Project Based Learning
Principles for designing project-based learning
Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project - Topics
Collection of resources for project-based learning with multimedia, including planning, implementation, and assessment
Animations
Library of science animations, movies, and tutorials, sorted by topic (chemistry, microbiology, protein synthesis, etc.)
Multimedia Physics Studios - Table of Contents
Collection of physics animations illustrating concepts from introductory physics
EDTECH: Focus On K-12 - Getting Animated
Example chemistry lesson plan where students create animations to demonstrate chemical elements and compounds
authorSTREAM Online PowerPoint Presentations and Slideshow Sharing
Similar to Slideshare, this site lets you upload PowerPoint presentations for online sharing. However, this site also allows conversion to Flash while keeping all transitions and animations.
reinventingpbl wiki / Content and Tools-ISTE IEEW
Resources to accompany the book Reinventing Project-Based Learning
40 Beautiful Free Icon Sets - Six Revisions
Free icons for web design or elearning design. Note that not all can be used for commercial applications--check the individual licenses.
Weblogg-ed » Response to Jay Matthews at the Washington Post
Will Richardson responds to a Washington Post article that calls 21st century skills a "doomed pedagogical fad."
With access to the Internet, and with an understanding of how to create and navigate these online, social learning spaces, opportunities for learning widely and deeply reside in the connections that we make with other people who can teach or mentor us and/or collaboarate with us in the learning process. That, I think, is where we find 21st Century skills that are different and important. Sure, those connections require a well developed reading and writing literacy, and critical thinking and creativity and many of the others are skills inherent to the process. But this new potential to learn easily and deeply in environments that are not bounded by physical space or scheduled time constraints requires us as educators to take a hard look at how we are helping our students realize the potentials of those opportunities.
To me, that’s what 21st Century Skills are all about, teaching our kids to navigate the world as they are experiencing it, not the world we experienced.
Principles for a New Media Literacy
Media literacy principles for consumers and producers. Much of this is about information literacy--learning to be skeptical of sources, learning to filter out the unimportant, watching for credibility, providing accountability, active participation.
YackTrack.com: Home
Enter a URL for a blog post and see conversations about it through comments, Twitter, Google blog search, etc.
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: The Cellist of the Schoolyard
Story of the cellist of Sarajevo who played in the bombed out shells of neighborhoods. This would be a good story to replace the urban legend about Perlman currently used in our CM course.
» Now You Can Design E-Learning Courses Like a Pro The Rapid eLearning Blog
Showing how you can create interactive e-learning even if PowerPoint is your only available tool, with a demo of a frog dissection created in PowerPoint.
Reinventing Project-Based Learning Ning
Ning community set up by the authors of Reinventing Project-Based Learning, used for a course. The group is currently dormant, but the archived discussions still have some interest and will likely provide some inspiration for the project-based learning with multimedia course I'm revising.
The Development Of A Community Of Inquiry Over Time In An Online Course: Understanding The Progression And Integration Of Social | The Sloan Consortium
JALN article on creating a community of inquiry through online discussions, with positive results for students' perceived learning and satisfaction. Specifically, the authors found that, at least in this context, cognitive and teaching presence were correlated with both learning and satisfaction, but social presence only improved satisfaction. Registration required to download the PDF.
Facilitating Critical Thinking through Online Courses | The Sloan Consortium
JALN article on 10 strategies to help students improve their critical thinking skills. Registration required to read the full PDF article.
"The following ten strategies are proposed: (1) ask questions that can be answered through information seeking, (2) expect students to describe the meanings of their required readings in their own words, (3) motivate students to use effort through grading criteria, (4) stimulate students to give examples of concepts or theories being studied, (5) provide case studies or other examples for application of class content, (6) prompt students to ask questions of each other and the instructor; (7) phrase questions so that additional independent research or reading is required, (8) promote student debates on controversial subjects within the discipline, (9) require students to use journaling, and (10) reinforce students’ use of critical thinking"
Student Experiences Of Using Weblogs: An Exploratory Study | The Sloan Consortium
JALN article summarizing student reactions to using blogs for learning. Some recurring themes in the survey responses were that blogs helped with learning by showing other viewpoints, providing space to organize and collect thoughts, and prompting thorough analysis of the content. Registration required to read the full PDF article.
Essential Elements in Designing Online Discussions to Promote Cognitive Presence — A Practical Experience | The Sloan Consortium
JALN article on supporting cognitive presence through designing effective online discussions. The authors goal was to support meaningful interaction in the discussions rather than just playing an "assessment game" where students post the minimum required for grades. The found that discussions did promote cognitive presence and critical thinking. Registration required to read the full PDF article.
Glossary (UCSC Media Services)
Glossary for multimedia and digital media