elearningWatchApril2014

G’day
We need some rain. Probably pour down now. Anyway, March has been a busy month doing some work on transdisciplinary research (came across a very well written guide in the process). Also working on the next NZ Shar-E-Fest programme for October this year and contributing to the development of an action plan for reviewing an elearning framework with the intention of implementation a new more effective and efficient approach which puts the student first. I know,it’s a bit radical, but it’s quite amazing how the word ‘student’ is often an apparent anathema to certain sections of academia; not as good as preventing pedagogy getting in the way of learning:-)
In this month’s posting there are links to Instructional design resources, digital literacies,video recording, social learning, learning outcomes, transdisciplinary research, Bloom’s taxonomy,developing elearning, search engines with a difference, conferences and the odd one out.
That’s it. Come what May?
1.From JISC infoNet another very useful infoKit:Developing Digital Literacies.
Very comprehensive and well structured with an example of practice and or more resources within each section. Well worth the time to peruse and learn.

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/

2.Instructional Design Knowledge Base: A very useful reference site which compares various instructional design models and theories and provides links with pop ups to them all. Lots more to explore if you have time to follow other links.

http://cehdclass.gmu.edu/ndabbagh/Resources/IDKB/models_theories.htm

if you want even more information, how about a Periodic Table of Instructional Design ?

http://check-n-click.com/periodic-table-of-instructional-design/

3.Learning in the Social Workplace: Beyond the Course: The Learning Flow, a new framework for the social learning era. This is the first part of a series written by Jane Hart from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.As always, Jane’s writings both thought provoking and relevant to the evolving learning environment. Well worth reading all three in the series.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2014/02/19/the-learning-flow/

AND to complement the above, recently released from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning:
Part 1: Teachers’ comprehensive guide to the use of Social Networking in Education.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/05/teachers-comprehensive-guide-to-use-of.html

Part 2: Top 25 social networks for Educators:

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/05/top-36-social-networks-for-educators.html

4. The one Button Studio: The One Button Studio is a simplified video recording setup that can be used without any previous video production experience. The design of the studio allows you to create high-quality and polished video projects without having to know anything about lights and cameras. You only need a flash drive and push a single button.
With the Mac OS X App the One Button Studio is now accessible to everyone around the world. The app integrates third party hardware to give you an automated and streamlined video recording studio. A very nice development.

http://onebutton.psu.edu

5.Quality Criteria of Transdisciplinary Research: ISOE: A Guide to the formative Evaluation of Research Projects. A well written and presented document as well as being a very useful guide to evaluating transdisciplinary research projects. Good to have a copy on the cybershelf.

http://www.isoe.de/ftp/evalunet_guide.pdf

6. A Primer on Learning Outcomes and the SOLO Taxonomy,Course Design for Constructive Alignment (Winter 2012) from the University of Windsor, Canada: A useful addition and guide to the challenge of writing and using learning outcomes that work.

http://www1.uwindsor.ca/ctl/system/files/PRIMER-on-Learning-Outcomes.pdf

7.Bloom’s Taxonomy. Nearly everything about Bloom’s taxonomy and growing.
This is interesting both from an historical perspective and a useful resources to be able to explore different ways of implementing Bloom’s Taxonomy. Worth wombling around the site for a rich tapestry of ‘Blooming’ images and ideas.

http://zaidlearn.blogspot.co.nz/2014/03/creative-visualizations-of-blooms.html

8.Time Estimates for E-Learning Development: An interesting and useful article which provides some insights into how to determine the time it takes to develop elearning resources.The Time Tracking Template for Instructional Design might be for you. Worth following the link to Bryan Chapman’s research for some complementary data.

http://christytucker.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/time-estimates-for-e-learning-development/

9.Wolfram Research: Has come along way over the past few years and now offers a wide range of resources in computation and computational knowledge. There are lots of areas to explore and some useful tools and information for a wide range of disciplines. I had a look at theWolfram|Alpha’s Chemical Reactions Interface 2.0. Very impressive. Good for those chemistry lessons. Have a look at the Computable Document Format(CDF) whilst you are here. An excellent innovation. The amount of useful data WolframAlpha generates is phenomenal.

http://www.wolfram.com

10.Regain: A search engine for your desktop and or servers. I downloaded this application and found it to be very useful and efficient. Not difficult to set up and use and as the blurb on the site says:
‘regain is a search engine similar to web search engines like Google, with the difference that you don’t search the web, but your own files and documents. Using regain you can search through large portions of data (several gigabytes!) in split seconds!’

http://regain.sourceforge.net/index.php

11 Conferences
11.1 Fifth International M-Libraries Conference,May 27 to 30, 2014, registration now open
Registration is now open for the Fifth International M Libraries Conference, presented by The Open University (UK) in partnership with, and hosted by, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The overall theme for the conference is ‘M Libraries: from devices to people’ and the programme features international keynote speakers and around 40 papers from 20 countries around the world.
The conference venue, CUHK’s mountainside campus, overlooking one of Hong Kong’s iconic harbours, is stunning and delegates will have the opportunity to visit a variety of libraries in the vicinity.
You can get further details about the conference at:

http://www.m-libraries.org

11.2 altc2014: Riding Giants: How to innovate and educate ahead of the wave
The 21st annual conference of the Association for Learning Technology 1 to 3 September 2014, Warwick, UK
Put the date in your diary. The deadline for submissions has been extended to midnight GMT on Monday 14 April 2014.
View the full calls and guidelines, including details of how to submit, at :

http://go.alt.ac.uk/1he0JqF

11.3 ascilite 2014, 23 to 26th November 2014 DUNEDIN New Zealand: RHETORIC AND REALITY: Critical Perspectives on Education Technology. Hosted by the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic.
This is THE conference to be at in 2014.Such a great place and such great people!

http://ascilite2014.otago.ac.nz

11.4 Registration open for the DEANZ 2014 Conference, New Zealand, 30 April to 2 May 2014.
DEANZ14 is the premier conference in Aotearoa New Zealand for leaders and practitioners involved in open, flexible and distance learning. The conference will be relevant to tertiary and secondary educators, including librarians, and those company trainers seeking professional and organisational development that DEANZ supports. Non-refereed papers, digital posters, workshops, round tables, exhibitions and refereed papers are all invited for the event.

http://www.deanz.org.nz/home/index.php/deanz-conference-2014

12. NZ happenings: 7th annual NZ Shar-E-Fest will take place in Hamilton at the end of September followed by the regional symposia. We are delighted that Professor Jan Herrington from Murdoch University in Perth in Western Australia is going to be our keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. Jan is considered an authority on authentic learning and is a very experienced researcher and educational practitioner. Theme for this year is’ E-learning in practice: How are learning technologies being used effectively to enhance student learning and achievement? Dates for your Diary: Monday September 29th and Tuesday 30th, 2014. Details on how to make a submission will be posted soon.
13. The Odd one Out: WORLD SCIENCE U IS ABOUT TO LAUNCH. This looks like a very interesting initiative which is worth keeping an eye on if the demo video is anything to go by.

http://welcome.worldscienceu.com/page/s/splash

Richard Elliott
The Eternal Macademic
Auckland
New Zealand

Back to top