Designed to Inspire : instructional design : technology : online learning

Do yourself a favor and read / listen to the recent panel that addresses the full story behind the oft published numbers that propelled DOPA last year, including from Dr. David Finkelhor - the Director of the original study. Per the netcaucus.org site that hosted the event, "The discussion covered issues related to online youth safety including
recent trends and the latest research. A sampling of their academic
works are posted on the Resources page." Thanks for the heads up, Arvind!

Technorati Tags: DOPA

Join us at EdTechWeekly on Sunday nights at 7:00 p.m. ET on the EdTechTalk.com channel of the WorldBridges network. Here is the list of links we will be discussing during this week's live web cast. Feel free to add your suggestions by adding a del.icio.us tag of "for:edtechtalk" to your favorite links. See you Sunday night!

Like other web page annotation sites, trailfire allows you to post comments (marks) on the web page for both personal and social viewing. However, it adds a cool StumbleUpon like feature which allows viewers to forward through a link roll of sites. It takes bookmarking of student resources to a new level by providing learners with a written guided tour through a series of annotated pages - all in a step by step progression - hence, the word "trail" in the name :) Here is an example: Educational web sites for kids

Technorati Tags: trailfire annotation

Join us at EdTechWeekly on Sunday nights at 7:00 p.m. ET on the EdTechTalk.com channel of the WorldBridges network. Here is the current list of links we will be discussing during this week's live web cast. Feel free to add your suggestions by joining the Diigo.com social bookmarking network (it takes but a minute!) and joining the EdTechTalk group - see http://groups.diigo.com/groups/edtechtalk. You can then easily add to the EdTechTalk group's bookmarks by "sharing" the bookmark(s) with the group and adding a diigo tag of 200705013 so we know we should review it for this week's live webcast. See you Sunday night ... and happy tagging!

Update #2: Ok - diigo just released a new FF toolbar update, so all worked as billed. In one click, link was properly tagged on personal diigo account, EdTechTalk group on diigo and into del.icio.us folder (with proper tag). Cool!

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Update: So far, none of the links that I tagged in the last day using the FF toolbar feature have made it into a) my diigo account, b) the EdTechTalk diigo group or c) the route to my del.icio.us folder. Ahhhh ... that's a problem. As noted below, diigo is loaded with features ... too bad the main one (getting your tagged links to show up) is a bust. Back to del.icio.us ... for now ...

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Here is a very cool "discovery" ... by signing up at jkn.com and downloading a Firefox (or IE, if you are so inclined) add-on, you can make comments and annotations to any web page. The web page snapshot with annotations can then be e-mailed, posted in a web page or blog, printed, saved or bookmarked (say, in del.icio.us). What a great resource for a teacher to provide web site feedback to students or for a student to keep notes directly on a web site! Very cool and extremely user friendly. Set up took 2 minutes! Nice ... they just need to work on the name :)

Technorati Tags: jkn, annotation

I am such a sucker for these things! So, this explains Act 1 - the insurance executive position after graduating with a BBA and MBA - but what about Act 2? hmmm ...  Try it for yourself ... 

Join us at EdTechWeekly on Sunday nights at 7:00 p.m. ET on the EdTechTalk.com channel of the WorldBridges network. Here is the list of links we will be discussing during this week's live web cast. Feel free to add your suggestions by adding a del.icio.us tag of "for:edtechtalk" to your favorite links. See you Sunday night!

Here is how to add a Frappr map for your blog. Set up a frappr account. Click "Create Map" and there is the code. I don't want one, so I'll just put it in this post ;)

Join us at EdTechWeekly on Sunday nights at 7:00 p.m. ET on the EdTechTalk.com channel of the WorldBridges network. Here is the list of links we will be discussing during this week's live web cast. Feel free to add your suggestions by adding a del.icio.us tag of "for:edtechtalk" to your favorite links. See you Sunday night!

Ben Hunt has a great web design site at WebDesignFromScratch.com. Geared for both the designer and non-designer (who just plays one on her Drupal site), the site points you to the direction of more simple and user friendly web site design using a lot of before and after web site redesigns. The site contains information and recommend resources related to graphic design, site architecture, accessibility, usability, copy writing, production, basic html, CSS and JavaScript. Nice.

Technorati Tags: web design, design

The linked web site - Rubric for Online Instruction - presents a means of assessing (and self-assessing) an online learning program based on best practice guidelines developed in the TIGERS Project. The site, hosted by California State University, Chico, includes a rubric for online instruction, as well as links to other instructional design resources to create, deliver and evaluate online instruction including:

• Rubric for Online Instruction - pdf
• Instructional Design Tips for Online Instruction - pdf
• MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
• Designing and Evaluating Online Instruction - the Tigers Project Summary 2003

Technorati Tags: elearning, online learning, instructional design

Looking for a quick browser based FTP solution? Try fireftp. I've been using it for months now with great success. It only takes a couple of clicks to set up and to FTP right from the Firefox browser.

Is your computer running Windows feeling a little sluggish? Start up "issues"? Consider doing a couple of quick scans to get things back in order. Microsoft buries these free little gems within their Windows Live One Care site. Why they hide these goodies from their customers, I cannot explain. However, even though these free morsel of goodness are hidden away in the bowels of Microsoft, they are well worth the effort to find them and use them. Each scan runs via your browser. The clean up scan runs a disk clean up (to compress old files and toss out temp files), a registry cleaner (that has gotten me out of a jam or two when I have been unable to clean out the pipes in any other way) and creates a restore point (which has also helped me when I go overboard testing out new software). The tune up scan simply checks to see if it is time to defrag. The only bummer ... you need to dust off IE to run these ... and they try to upsell Windows Live One Care when you are done. But, you can simply chose "Not yet" and be on your way with cleaner tubes.

Technorati Tags: windows, clean up scan

After reading Dr. Schank's Learning by Doing article in the infamous Green Book for class, I dug into his recent whereabouts and found these links of interest:

• Consulting via Engines for Education (non-profit arm) and Socratic Arts
  

I stumbled on this YouTube video from a link to a new Explode "friend" (Janet Clarey) from a link to different blog (Mark David Milliron) - love that Internet!

This week and last, we have been discussing issues of structure in learning environments. Prof. Honebien observed that the degree of required structure within a learning environment is based on a) the learner's task and b) required scaffolding and that the standard of performance affects both. Here is my take away from his comments:

• Learner's Task: The tighter the standard of performance, the greater the required structure. So, if a Dr. needs to learn how to make an incision at a specific place in the body, this tight standard of performance would require high structure.
  

This week, a student pal brought up the topic of mlearning. As I've posted on my blog for some time now, I too feel that there has to be some learning (edtech) opportunity for mobile devices when an estimated 80% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 own cell phones, as reported in the linked AP article by Allen Breed.

Attached is the presentation material from the Drupal workshop I hosted today during the 2007 Indiana University IST Conference. Please leave any comments below or use the contact form (on the menu bar above) if you have any questions ... or ... better, yet ... join us on Monday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET for live web casts at the Drupal CMS Academy!

The AECT web site offers a global roundup of academic institutions offering degree programs in educational communications and technology. Search the  database for specific types of degrees (Certificates, Masters, PhD, etc) offered both f2f or online.

Technorati Tags: instructional design, edtech, educational technology, AECT

Link to: Authentic Activities in Online Education

ref: Honebein

I gave Yahoo! Pipes a try this morning to see what all the fuss is about. In a nut shell, it is a hosted mashup tool on steroids with a fairly simple interface to seek and grab web content for publishing within your desired mashup. I fear I have only seen the tip of this iceberg, so I can't yet fully get my head around it or the possibilities. One refreshing aside ... it is a project from the largely dormant Yahoo!

Technorati Tags: pipes, yahoo!

The February / March issue of Innovate is out. Here is a roundup for the topics covered in this issue. To mix it up, I linked to the author bio - face to a name. The publications are found in the left side bar or under each author profile:

Read all about it - http://www.groundhog.org/

I ran across a post today from Patrick Dunn. He raises some interesting points when comparing learning designers to architects. Here are a several passages (direct quotes in italics) that caught my eye ...

In IU IST R626, we are analyzing Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience* as it relates to learning and instructional design. For discussion and debate, our prof. broke our group into pro / con camps and I am part of "con". I have been digging into some online resources and (so far) have come up with links to the following:

George Seimens at the Learning Technologies Center at the University of Manitoba is coordinating a free Online Connectivism Conference that runs from February 2 - 9, 2007. Per the announcement, the conference "is an open online forum exploring how learning has been impacted by ongoing changes." Confirmed presenters include:

During our little weekly discussions at EdTechWeekly , we've joked a fair amount about Google (Big Brother) gathering up all of our personal data to take over the world. Today, I ran across a new "feature" (?) of Google Reader that displayed my recent blog reading habits. While it provided me with several moments of shock and awe (I read HOW MANY blog posts in the last 30 days?), it also did a good job of illustrating how Big Brother can (and does) gather, track and log our online habits. Did I get a bit of a sick knot in my stomach after seeing the data they collected? Yep. Will it change how I use Google products? Nope.

Here is a snippet of some of the data they captured about me this past month:

All fears of selling my soul to the Google devil aside, Google Reader is good (ok ... pretty darn great). As a long time Bloglines gal, I haven't checked by blog roll there for months. Tonight, I found another reason to justify the switch. Google Reader has a little toolbar widget (under Settings / Goodies) that allows you to stumble on to the next post in the feedreader (think StumbleUpon) and what makes it great is that you go directly to the original blog. This is a great alternative when you want to catch up on the full content of your favorite blog or just to see the post in greater context. Cool.

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