• Mr. Higgins’ Blog » Blog Archive » ClustrMaps as Student Motivation

  A great description from a teacher of how his students are motivated by the ClustrMap on his class website, including how it inspires them to look up places on Google Earth

  tags: blog, education, k-12, motivation

• 20 reasons why students should blog « On an e-journey with generation Y

  A nice summary of reasons for students to blog. Even if you don’t agree with everything (for example, the digital natives bit in #16), this is a good place to start answering the question.

  tags: blog, education, k-12, motivation, learningstyles

• Steve Stander :: Blog :: Blogging & Motivation: Psychology of Language Learning

  Looking at blogging as a way to motivate students to write through the lens of Determination Theory (Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness), examining how to generate and maintain motivation. Also discusses an inquiry-based learning approach with blogging.

  tags: blog, education, k-12, motivation, inquiry

• Blogs Give Students an Audience | Edutopia

  Interview with an 8th grade teacher about how having an audience for their blog has motivated her students

  tags: blog, education, k-12, motivation

  • One thing that was surprising to the students and to me was the comments thanking the students. I think that was new for them, having someone appreciate that they did this work.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• CogDogBlog » Fear of Googled Past

  Some common sense in response to fears of “Oh no! Someone might Google me someday and find out I’m not perfect!”

  tags: identity, reputation, transparency

• Personal Branding in the Classroom? | Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

  Response to a question about whether universities should teach personal branding

  tags: education, identity, reputation, highered

• Angela Maiers Educational Services: Personal Branding and Education – Thoughts on “Me 2.0″

  A discussion of personal branding and its connections to education, arguing that being able to demonstrate your talents and passions is a 21st century skill

  tags: education, identity, reputation, 21stcenturyskills

  • Speaking from both his head and heart, Dan makes he compelling case that it is no longer is it enough to show that you are great, you have to show why you are a great match for a culture and brand of the company you want to work for. You have to be able to sell yourself, your talents, your passions, your uniqueness. (Aren’t these Key 21st Century Skills?)

• KAVEWALL: STOCK PHOTOS

  CC-By photos, mostly for textures. Lots of closeups of objects & nature (rock, fire, smoke, wood, glass, electric, etc.)

  tags: photos, creativecommons

• The Usefulness of Wenger’s Framework in Understanding a Community of Practice.

  Jane Bozarth’s dissertation on communities of practice, including a proposed revised framework for analyzing and understanding these communities. The revised version clarifies the difference between engagement and participation and adjusts definitions of other terms.

  tags: CoP, community, learning, PLC

• 10 Qualities of the Ideal Instructional Designer : The eLearning Coach

  Brief discussion about whether instructional designers need degrees, followed by a list of qualities for successful instructional designers like “Be obsessed with learning everything.”

  tags: e-learning, instructionaldesign, learning

• The E-learning List | The Marketplace for E-learning Services

  E-learning service providers can register on this site for free in different categories. Companies looking for e-learning solutions can submit RFPs and find people to work with.

  tags: e-learning, career, freelance

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave

  Guide to Google Wave from Lifehacker

  tags: google, googlewave, howto

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Comprehensive List of Free Online Classes and Online Courses

  Lots of open courseware classes from different universities, sorted by subject. Nice to have an aggregated list from the various sources

  tags: e-learning, education, openaccess, free, highered

• Volunteer Opportunity to Build Your eLearning Portfolio | onehundredfortywords

  Info on an organization looking for volunteer instructional designers/developers to create content for job seekers. They are OK with content being used in a portfolio, so this is a good place to gain some experience and get something to show for a portfolio.

  tags: e-learning, portfolio, career, instructionaldesign

• Sakai Pilot Evaluation Final Report

  UNC report on their pilot of Sakai as a replacement for Blackboard. Quote from a faculty member in the report: “Have heard many complaints about Blackboard being kludgy. Sakai is graceful.”

  The minimal support needed is a good sign of Sakai’s overall usability: “First, of the more than 1,000 people using a completely new collaborative learning environment for almost a full year period, we had a total of 264 tickets—the vast majority of which (74%) were for requests to use the system (new sites
  and new user accounts)…In summary, from a support perspective, 54 substantive help requests on behalf of more than 1,000 pilot participants over a nearly one-year period was a very positive finding.”

  tags: e-learning, highered, education, sakai, lms, blackboard, usability

• The eLearning Coach » Blog Archive » User Interface Design For eLearning – Updated

  Tips and simple examples for user interface design. The elevator example is perhaps not the best metaphor for structuring learning, but the concept is good.

  tags: e-learning, usability, design, instructionaldesign

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Swftools.com – Flash tools, utilities, applications, components

  Directory of tools that do at least some of what Flash can do or that work with Flash–presentation tools, quiz tools, PowerPoint to Flash converters, ActionScript editors, etc. Most have free demos; not many open source options in this area.

  tags: flash, tools, multimedia, actionscript, opensource

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Guide to Annotating using Diigo

  Screencast showing annotation feature in Diigo

  tags: diigo, tutorials, screencast, education

• Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn: Scientific American – Sean Kearney’s Lifestream

  Interesting research–totally flies in the face of how most of us think about designing learning. Do we design learning environments that allow people to fail enough to learn?

  tags: learning, research

  • The idea embedded in this approach is that if students make errors, they will learn the errors and be prevented (or slowed) in learning the correct information. But research by Nate Kornell, Matthew Hays and Robert Bjork at U.C.L.A. that recently appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition reveals that this worry is misplaced. In fact, they found, learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Screenr – @minutebio: Adding Learning Interactions in Adobe Flash using Flash’s Common Libraries

  Quick screencast on using Flash’s Common Library of learning interactions

  tags: e-learning, flash, screencast, howto

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Open Access Educational Technology journals – George Veletsianos

  Looking for research on e-learning, instructional design, educational technology, or related topics? Check out these open access journals. Great to have a filtered list for this rather than having to dig through some of the larger directories.

  tags: edtech, education, technology, research, openaccess, e-learning, instructionaldesign

• 30 Stunning Fonts To Enhance Your Designs | Fonts | instantShift

  Free fonts & additional links for free fonts. Check the licensing and be careful though; some are personal use only, some require registration, at least one requires personal info & credit card even though it’s “free.”

  tags: free, fonts

• Online Degrees Viewed More Favorably : Industry Market Trends

  Results from several studies on the increasing acceptance of online degrees by employers

  tags: e-learning, highered, education

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• SuddenlySmart – What is Effective E-learning?More than just “click next”: concrete ideas for more effective interactivity. Examples provided for intrinsic feedback, delayed feedback, case studies, branching scenarios, motivation.

  tags: e-learning, instructionaldesign, interactivity, feedback, scenarios

• The New Literacy: Stanford study finds richness and complexity in students’ writing

  Young people write more than they used to, and they don’t just write when it’s required. The study also found that spelling errors aren’t as much of a problem as they were 20 years ago, now that spell check software is easily accessible.

  tags: writing, web2.0, change, research

  • Today’s kids don’t just write for grades anymore. They write to shake the world. Moreover, they are writing more than any previous generation, ever, in history. They navigate in a bewildering new arena where writers and their audiences have merged.
  • For these students, “Good writing changes something. It doesn’t just sit on the page. It gets up, walks off the page and changes something,” whether it’s a website or a poster for a walkathon.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Pam Vreeland, my manager, posted a question in a LinkedIn group that has prompted some great discussion there. She graciously agreed to let me republish her question here, as I’m curious what others think about these two models for course design.

A colleague of mine challenged my thinking recently on course design.

I have always preferred having an instructional designer and a SME work collaboratively to develop online course work. Her position is that a course writer can do the job of both as long as he/she is good at researching the topic. I am not convinced.

Thoughts?

So what do you think? Do both models work? Are there certain situations where you would choose one model over the other?