Engaging Interactions

If you are developing e-learning materials or learning objects it can be nice to add an interaction.

B J Schone has written a very nice ebook on twenty five different engaging interactions.

I hate boring eLearning courses. I get frustrated when I’m not intellectually engaged in a course and when I feel like I’m wasting my time. I know many learners feel this way, too. As an eLearning developer, I’ve had good luck using engaging learning interactions in my courses. These interactions break up the monotony and improve the learning experience for the end-user. After covering new material in a course, a learning interaction (or from here on, simply an interaction) gives the learner a chance to actually do something and (gasp!) apply their knowledge!

This covers a lot of different ways in which learners can interact with a subject (through e-learning) and therefore enhance the learning process.

UCAS Form “Cheating”

The BBC are reporting that students are using content “lifted” from the web for their online UCAS forms.

Sixth form students are being warned not to cheat on their university application forms by copying material from the internet.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service has written to every UK school saying doing so could affect students’ chances of winning a place.

Ucas is to use plagiarism detection technology to scrutinise the half a million forms seeking entry in 2008.

Maybe it’s time to move away from a written statement on a form for applications.

The web may have made it easier, but when I filled in an UCAS form (some time ago now) I know people who were given extra guidance and help filling it in over and beyond what you would expect and that was never considered “cheating”.

Copying and pasting is cheating, there is no doubt, using the web to help fill in the form is fine, but who tells the sixth former filling in the form what is okay and what isn’t?

Nice selection of animated “how to” guides

Russell Stannard has posted a range of online animated guides that demonstrate various ways in which you can incorporate learning technologies into teaching.

These videos were created for teachers to help them to incorporate technology into their teaching. My own background is in teaching English, so some of the sites are specific to ELT and are grouped separately. The rest are for all teachers and there is also a section for those interested in more difficult multimedia products like Flash and Director.

The cover how to use iTunes, PowerPoint tips, creating blogs and many other things.

He has used Camtasia to produce the video guides. Personally I am a fan of Captivate which does a similar job, for those looking for a free tool, Wink is certainly one option which does work quite well.

Well worth a look.

Dealing with e-mail

An excellent presentation from Merlin Mann on how to deal with e-mail and have an inbox with zero e-mail in it!

One of the key messages, is don’t check your e-mail, deal with your e-mail.

  • Delete or Archive
  • Delegate
  • Respond
  • Defer
  • Do

Well worth a watch especially if you have more than fifty unread e-mail in your inbox.

Old Books Going Online

The British Library is taking over one hundred thousand books, digitising them and putting then online.

Old Book

The programme is focussed on the 19th century, alas if the author died after 1936 then it is unlikely that there books will be digitised, as their works are still in copyright.

The BBC has more on this exciting programme:

More than 100,000 old books previously unavailable to the public will go online thanks to a mass digitisation programme at the British Library.

The programme focuses on 19th Century books, many of which are unknown as few were reprinted after first editions.

Photo Source

Photo Sharing Guide

If you have read this blog before you will have noticed that I have embedded my Flickr photostream into the blog (look further down the page). You may have even visited my Flickr account and looked at my photographs.

Flickr

However not everyone knows what an online photo sharing service is and therefore visiting Flickr for the first time may appear daunting.

TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images) who are funded by the JISC have posted a guide which highlights the advantages and potential issues that using these sites have for educational institutions.

Photo sharing has become increasingly popular in recent years as a means for individuals to publish or distribute their digital images online. As a result, some of the photo sharing sites that host these images have become useful sources of free or low-cost images. Many of these sites also include enough features to be seen as practical tools for managing and organising your own collection of images. This paper looks at the most common features offered by a number of photo sharing sites, highlights the pros and cons of using such sites, and offers some practical tips for both finding images and organising your own images.

Thanks to eNews from the JISC Regional Support Centres in Scotland for the link.

iPod touch, me touch, me like

Today I was lucky to try out the iPod touch, and yes I was impressed.

I had quite high expectations for the touch interface, and to be honest it met (and surpassed) those expectations.

Browsing was certainly easy as was navigation.

Alas the device I was using had minimal content on, but it was still possible to try out many of the features. Though it was really the touch interface I really wanted to try.

MoLeNET Launch Conference

Today I was at the MoLeNET launch conference at the Oval in London.

I did Shozu a few photographs to Flickr and the blog, but unfortunately connectivity was poor and time was limited for writing blog entries.

My workshops went well, though it was a struggle to cover what I wanted to cover in only fifteen minutes, I would liked to have had more time to allow more discussion, in a similar way to the way I ran my mobile learning workshop at ALT-C.

Quite a few people came up to me to ask about various things I showed we are either doing at Gloucestershire College (the college formerly known as Gloscat) or in the process of planning how we can implement them.

I enjoyed Mick Mullane’s presentation about podcasting and texting (sms), which was illuminating.

Other parts of the conference were interesting and informative

I was disappointed with the connectivity, but it is a lesson for all of us, the wireless network failed to cope with the sheer number of wireless clients in attendance. Not only did we get a large number of mobile and e-learning enthusiasts together (most with laptops) we also had exhibitors with their wealth of wireless devices. My 3G connection was less useful for basically the same reasons, lots of people with mobile devices.

It was certainly worth going to, lots of useful networking, and nice to see a lot of colleges looking at mobile learning.

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