Guess-the-Google

OK, this Guess-the-Google game may be a bit of a time waster, but I think it's also interesting to try and test your skill at matching the Google image collages to search terms.

Writing Objectives

Those in the CC class who are practicing objective-writing this week might want to check out some of the following resources:

• This workbook is an interesting resource from the University of South Alabama that gives a good overview of ISD issues and would work nicely as a supplement to a more comprehensive text. It also contains some useful interactive exercises for the user to work through. (The program is in Authorware, so you may have to download a plugin to access it).
• PSU has some great information on writing objectives and other course design topics
• This site from NY State Office of Higher Ed has a nice focus on specifying criteria/accuracy needed for "degree"
• This site from the University of Tennessee has some good, straightforward information, as well as some interactive online exercises (a bit simplistic, but fun).
• For definitions and some background information about behavioral objectives, check out this site from Florida State University College of Medicine.
• From the Information Designer's toolkit, this page cites some good examples of good and bad behavioral objectives.
• This page includes a basic overview of the purpose of objective writing, examples of condition, behavior, and degree, and links to other resources.
• Don Clark's "Big dog" site has lots of useful resources, including a quick guide to objective writing, taxonomies of the domains with examples of verbs for behavior, and more.

Read/Write Web & Connectivism

Will Richardson has put together a great list he calls "a basic reading list for people interested in getting their brains around the Read/Write Web and the changes it's bringing about specifically related to education." This looks like a great start to me!

A good companion for the reading on Connectivism is this audiographic presentation in Articulate from George Siemens on connectivism and Web 2.0, which lays out some key issues and challenges for rethinking traditional learning approaches in light of concepts about learning networks and "where learning resides".

Essential freeware for the PC user

This list of free software for PC users has been making the circuit around the blogosphere lately...

Music to teachers' ears

An interesting article from MSNBC on the use of iPods in elementary school classrooms.

(Thanks, welogg-ed for the link)

Video and learning

Some great thoughts on a personal history of working with media-rich learning from Clive Shepherd
(Link via Elearning Centre)

Information Architecture and Interaction Design

Some interesting thoughts on this topic from Jonathan Korman at Cooper Design. (Thanks, elearningpost for the link)

Furl and del.icio.us

For those of you in the TO class who are looking into Furl and del.icio.us this week, here are a few posts you might find useful:

• Beginner's Guide to del.icio.us
• Furl and del.icio.us: Almost perfect together
• Online Social Bookmarking
• 10 Cool Ways to use furl
  

20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have

Whether or not you fully agree with this list from T.H.E. Journal, you'll probably find at least some of these resources useful

It's the pictures that got small[er]...

I wonder what Norma Desmond would have thought about the idea of cellphone serial dramas? Interesting to think about the challenges of designing video for these tiniest screens... but can we please come up with a better name than "mobisodes"?

SimCity in the classroom

I'm so jealous... I've been wanting to incorporate Simcity into a class since I first set eyes on the program years ago. At least I can live vicariously though others...

(Thanks, Headspace J for the link)

Tagging, Categorization, & Cognitive Processes

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about tagging, categorization, and organization - particularly since working with a new LMS has forced me to rework some of my standard organization schemes for resources and links for my online classes.

I found Rashmi Sinha's cognitive analysis of tagging to be very useful - particularly the section on the "post-activation analysis paralysis" that occurs with categorization. (Thanks, elearningpost for the link)

I agree that the key issue really has more to do with future "findability" rather than categorization itself - and for me this has to do with setting up the right conventions to fit in with the way I find and use information ... and I still can't help but find that tagging is too chaotic and counterintuitive for me - I guess I need the discipline of forming my cateogories, hierarchies, and conventions in advance, though I agree it's sometimes maddening to try to force different types of information into my current organizational schemes and to constantly re-categorize and subcategorize. Hmmm... I guess I have to give this one a bit more thought to see if it's really my own stubborness that's keeping me from reaping the full benefits of tagging ....

Keeping Up

Keeping up to date on information in this constantly-changing field is always a challenge. The Keeping Up Web Site is designed to

"help library and information science professionals, information technologists, instructional technologists, and other academic technology support professionals develop and maintain a program of self-guided professional development. A central, guiding premise of this web site is that academic librarians and technology professionals must go beyond the constraints of their own literature to really keep up and maintain their myriad skills and diversified knowledge base."

(Thanks, EduResources Weblog for the link)

Comfortably Objective

A great post at Pedablogue showing some of the thought behind crafting meaningful, measurable objectives for complex learning tasks

Blogs and Blogging

Some good resources and basic information on blogs from this course site.

Amy Gahran at Contentious does a good job of defining what is and isn't a blog in this post.

Who's reading your blog?

Some good free resources for finding out who's looking at your blog. (Both sites are web-based. They require free registration and the inclusion of some simple code and a site button in your HTML.)

• Sitemeter: A simple, fast way to add a counter and stats. (There is also a fee version that includes additional functionality.)
• Blogflux: In addition to the usual statistics and graphs, this utility uses Google Maps to show where visitors are coming from.

4,000 year-old noodles

The remains of the world's oldest noodles have been unearthed in China, according to the BBC.

(link via slashdot)

More on the Blackboard acquisition of WebCT

OLDaily provides a good summary of links and edublogger reactions

Apple unveils video-playing iPod

According to this BBC News article, the new video iPod will be available in the US this week.

LMSs: The wrong place to start learning?

Very much still relevant to discussions of LMSs is this article on managed learning from George Siemens at elearnspace.

Cheating and the online classroom

This post fits in nicely with the discussion in the TO class on cheating in the online classroom. I must say that in my experience, the "Google test" he talks about works pretty well (this happens all the time in almost every class I teach).

However, I don't go out of my way to humiliate learners who plagiarize - in fact, most of the time I don't even bother to point out that I recognize the source. (This kind of intellectual laziness reaps its own punishments, I find.)

Of course, if the material is posted in a public space, some sort of remedy is needed, but is posting content within the online classroom really public?

And one more thing to worry about...

Research Papers a la Wikipedia:

1. Write a craptacular draft full of factual errors, incredible sources, and grammatical/mechanical mistakes.
2. Post it to Wikipedia.
3. Wait a few days and let the community clean it up for you.
4. Turn it in!

(From Kairosnews, after the Esquire article posted to news.com)

Nothing says "I love you" like an emitting/polling infrared transmitter

The loveJacket gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "I light up every time I see you"

The "Watercooler" of learning

This article is a good followup to our discussion in the TO class this week on formal vs. informal learning

Blackboard and WebCT

Yikes.... WebCT & Blackboard are merging? (Thanks, EdTechPost for the link)

More on the merger at Slashdot, Inside Higher Ed, aperez_nyu, Learning Circuits Blog, and elearnspace (podcast)

Cost Comparison: Instructor-Led Vs. E-Learning

Still catching up on my "Learning Circuits" reading from over the summer... this article presents a mathematical model to help calculate the key cost components of different delivery methods

Podcasting in Academic and Corporate Learning

Good basic article from Learning Circuits - part of a series on technology trends - providing an explanation of podcasting, with a focus on its uses in learning, and links to more information.

Comparing & Choosing a Course Management System

This online comparison tool from EduTools is a great resource that's been around for some time. This is a great way to walk through various systems and get a handle on what the differences are.

A look back...

An interesting little bit of history on what happened with the venture that gave rise to the iAuthor program.

Though this was before my time at NYU, I was involved in a similar debacle at a nonprofit organization... and it did seem as though every organization in the world was suddenly developing a for-profit branch. Mercifully, most of them seemed to tank rather quickly.

Blackboard and Moodle

Lots of discussion in September on the DEOS-L mailing list with resources for comparing these systems. (scroll down)

Particularly useful to me was this description of the LMS evaluation process at Athabasca University

Too much flexibility

From the New South Wales web site - Exemplar of what can happen if you build in too much flexibility too many options in course design.