Allison Kipta's Public Library

"Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts. We define concept as a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label. The label for most concepts is a word, although sometimes we use symbols such as + or %, and sometimes more than one word is used. Propositions are statements about some object or event in the universe, either naturally occurring or constructed. Propositions contain two or more concepts connected using linking words or phrases to form a meaningful statement. Sometimes these are called semantic units, or units of meaning. Figure 1 shows an example of a concept map that describes the structure of concept maps and illustrates the above characteristics."

cmap.ihmc.us/...heoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.htm - Preview

concept-mapping mindmap

"New web tools, known as Web 2.0 or social media tools are creating a new phase of Learning known as (E-)Learning 2.0 or Social Learning. Jane Hart, a Social Media & Learning Consultant, provides a quick guide to getting started with social media for your own learning and productivity. "

www.c4lpt.co.uk/...socialmedia.html - Preview

social-media how-to

"Just as the internet allows users to create and share their own media, it is also enabling them to organize digital material their own way, rather than relying on pre-existing formats of classifying information. A December 2006 survey has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content. The report features an interview with David Weinberger, a prominent blogger and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society."

www.pewinternet.org/...Tagging.aspx - Preview

internet pew tagging research

"The future success of e-learning depends on appropriate selection of tools and services. This symposium will propose that the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) as an institutional tool is dead, no more, defunct, expired.

The first panel member, Steve Wheeler, will argue that many VLEs are not fit for purpose, and masquerade as solutions for the management of online learning. Some are little more than glorified e-mail systems. They will argue that VLEs provide a negative experience for learners.

The second member of the panel, Graham Attwell, believes that the VLE is dead and that the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is the solution to the needs of diverse learners. PLEs provide opportunities for learners, offering users the ability to develop their own spaces in which to reflect on their learning.

The third panel member, James Clay, however, believes that the VLE is not yet dead as a concept, but can be the starting point of a journey for many learners. Creating an online environment involving multiple tools that provides for an enhanced experience for learners can involve a VLE as a hub or centre.

The fourth panel member, Nick Sharratt, argues for the concept of the institutional VLE as essentially sound. VLEs provide a stable, reliable, self-contained and safe environment in which all teaching and learning activities can be conducted. It provides the best environment for the variety of learners within institutions."

elearningstuff.wordpress.com/...ff-podcast-028-the-vle-is-dead - Preview

virtual-learning-environment technology tools personal-learning-environments

"People do NOT remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, etc. That information, and similar pronouncements are fraudulent. Moreover, general statements on the effectiveness of learning methods are not credible---learning results depend on too many variables to enable such precision. Unfortunately, this bogus information has been floating around our field for decades, crafted by many different authors and presented in many different configurations, including bastardizations of Dale's Cone. The rest of this article offers more detail."

www.willatworklearning.com/...people_remember.html - Preview

research learning pedagogy

"This website has been designed to serve as a companion piece to Thomas L. Russell's book, "The No Significant Difference Phenomenon" (2001, IDECC, fifth edition). Mr. Russell's book is a fully indexed, comprehensive research bibliography of 355 research reports, summaries and papers that document no significant differences (NSD) in student outcomes between alternate modes of education delivery, with a foreword by Dr. Richard E. Clark. Previous editions of the book were provided electronically; the fifth edition is the first to be made available in print from IDECC (The International Distance Education Certification Center). The primary purpose of the NSD website is to expand on the offerings from the book by providing access to appropriate studies published or discovered after the release of the book. In addition to studies that document no significant difference (NSD), the website includes studies which do document significant differences (SD) in student outcomes based on the mode of education delivery."

www.nosignificantdifference.org/ - Preview

research learning pedagogy

"Our needs assessment identified one critical type of space: collaborative spaces for small groups to work. McIntire’s pedagogy calls for breaking down 40-person class sections into learning spaces designed for teams of 5 or 6. To accommodate the demand for out-of-classroom learning among members of the groups, 16 breakout rooms were incorporated onto the two main classroom floors. Each room is equipped with a conference table, direct connections to a large flat-panel television for laptop projection, and more traditional tack panels and whiteboards. Students schedule the rooms using the school network and e-mail system or a room-scheduling panel adjacent to each breakout room."

www.educause.edu/...163849 - Preview

learning collaboration community pedagogy

"# A Learning Landscape approach to master planning takes into account the entire environment that learners experience, from instructional to informal learning places, from physical to virtual.
# Compared with traditional campus space allocations, the clustering of functions into “hubs” can create multiuse spaces that encourage synergies between activities, enable more effective use of space, and bring groups together.
# Hubs are envisioned as collaborative centers with enabling technology that are bookable on demand to support the more distributed mobile work patterns of all types of learning communities, and to foster interaction and innovation."

www.educause.edu/...163848 - Preview

learning technology collaboration community

"Dozens of teachers, students, and academics of all stripes wrote in saying that they need better and faster ways to communicate and collaborate in and out of the classroom."

lifehacker.com/...google-waves-best-use-cases - Preview

google-wave google lifehacker

"Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files."

mashable.com/...google-wave-guide - Preview

google google-wave

"I believe that I have written recently (Where Obama is Getting Education “Wrong”) that I think we should be teaching students to capture, manage, and visualize data as a basic working skill. It seems to me that ushering it away to the central office to worry over data as an educational concern may actually be detrimental to the learning our students need to be engaged in. Limited resources will cause us put undue emphasis on what can be easily measured at the expense of those important skills and knowledge that can’t."

davidwarlick.com/2cents - Preview

digital-literacy education technology

"What I found particularly interesting were the parallels between the governance issues for government and our context in the delivery of education. The same issues of control/openness/reliance on external services and dealing with the legal risks and ramifications of reduced control over information release and interaction are present and not really solved either for us and them. I expect to see and hear more on the new US approach to openness and hopefully we’ll be able to borrow solutions as they apply them. We might also enjoy increased comfort with such approaches to delivering services as well."

nfhood.wordpress.com - Preview

personal-learning-environments e-learning

"Learning management systems have become almost ubiquitous as a technical solution to e-learning within universities. Extant literature illustrates that LMS system logs, along with other IT systems data, can be used to inform decision-making. It also suggests that very few institutions are using this data to inform their decisions. The indicators project aims to build on and extend previous work in this area to provide services that can inform the decision-making of teaching staff, management, support staff and students. Through an initial set of three questions the paper offers support for some existing critical success factors, identifies potential limitations of others, generates some new insights from a longitudinal comparison of feature adoption of two different LMS within the one institution, and identifies a number of insights and ideas for future work."

indicatorsproject.wordpress.com/...ty-grades-and-external-factors - Preview

learning research learning-management-system virtual-learning-environment

"Learning management systems (LMS) are software systems that are specifically designed and marketed to educational institutions to support teaching and learning and that typically provide tools for communication, student assessment, presentation of study material and organisation of student activities (Luck, Jones et al. 2004). These systems are also referred to by a number of different terms including virtual learning environments (VLE), course management systems (CMS), learning support systems (LSS), and learning platforms (Mendoza, Perez et al. 2006). Currently widely use LMS include systems called: Blackboard, Angel, Moodle and Sakai. The speed with which the adoption of an LMS has spread through universities is surprising (West, Waddoups et al. 2006). A 2004 survey of universities found that 73% had adopted an institution-wide LMS, compared to 60% in 2002, with 90% expecting to make such a claim within five years (OECD 2005)."

davidtjones.wordpress.com/...what-is-an-lms - Preview

learning-management-system

"As a step towards thinking about how you judge the success of an LMS/VLE, this post looks at some work done by Steven Malikowski. Why his work? Well he is co-author on three journal papers that provide one perspective on the usage of features of an LMS, including one that proposes a model for research into course management systems. A list of the papers in the references section.

Malikowski, S., Thompson, M., & Theis, J. (2006). External factors associated with adopting a CMS in resident college courses. Internet and Higher Education, 9(3), 163-174.

Malikowski, S., Thompson, M., & Theis, J. (2007). A model for research into course management systems: bridging technology and learning theory. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 36(2), 149-173.

Malikowski, S. (2008). Factors related to breadth of use in course management systems. Internet and Higher Education, 11(2), 81-86."

davidtjones.wordpress.com/...adth-of-use-of-lmsvle-features - Preview

learning-management-system virtual-learning-environment

"This Web site describes my professional experience with instructional design, which is often called e-learning. The buttons on the left side of this Web site describe some of my experience with instructional design. "

malikowski.org - Preview

instructional-design

"After reading George’s articles, I can see how his learner-centred approach can produce far more effective learning outcomes for students. The students are pursuing what they perceive as important to them. An important aspect, particularly of adult learners is for the learning to have purpose/meaning/relevancy. If a learner can see why what they are learning is important, they are more likely to engage. In this type of design, the learners decide to learn what is most relevant to them, and can focus their efforts to this end."

damosworld.wordpress.com - Preview

connectivism information e-learning

"Sometimes, on looking back at previous work, you find a fortuitous thread that suggests more coherence exists than is felt through daily developments of concepts. I had such an experience this past week as I prepared and delivered a presentation to Mozilla’s Open Education course. Formal learning, and as a result, the entire infrastructure that supports it (curriculum, instructional design, delivery, technology incorporated in its service), is heavily content-centric. Most courses require a textbook, access to journal articles, or a course “pack” of some sort. In our digital age, the physical resources have been replaced somewhat with online video, wikis, or ebooks. Even then, content is a fundamental starting point of formal learning."

www.connectivism.ca/?p=127 - Preview

connectivism information e-learning

"There is an established pattern within the literature around data mining LMS usage logs. That pattern is essentially: the higher the grade, the greater the usage of the LMS. ...The order is reversible as I don’t think anyone has firmly established a causal link, it’s just a pattern. My belief (yet to be tested) is that is probably, mostly good students get good grades and do everything they can do to get good grades, including using the LMS."

davidtjones.wordpress.com/...ing-data-and-connecting-people - Preview

technology education participation data

"I’m beginning to believe that we’ve got it completely backwards. For decades we’ve been trying to use technology to improve the effectiveness of education. How, specifically, have we tried to use technology? At a high level, we’ve tried to use it to deliver content to learners. The goal has been to “find something that works,” and then deliver that something (interactive content, etc.) to learners at high fidelity and low cost. In our attempts to deliver effective content at scale, I believe we have had a nationwide (if not worldwide) encounter with the reusability paradox, which I first wrote about at length in 2001. Briefly stated, the reusability paradox says that, due to context effects, the pedagogical effectiveness of content and its potential for reuse are orthogonal to another. This finding is too inconvenient to accept, as it would destroy or severely maim the prominent paradigm of educational technology research, and so it has been roundly ignored by the educational research community. While using technology to deliver content seems to have had no noticeable impact (or even a slightly negative) on the effectiveness of education, using technology to deliver content has had a huge impact on the accessibility of education. Think of distance learning… Think of opencourseware and open educational resources… Think of the millions of people who now have access that never would have had access otherwise. The impact of using technology to deliver content on increasing access to education is completely unassailable and totally undeniable."

opencontent.org/...1098 - Preview

e-learning education technology