Learning Series Wheel

Peter Honey's Learning Series Wheel

Keywords of personalized eLearning and ontologies

The use of ontologies in personalised e-learning

Recently, we had very beneficial and interesting "e" Teaching and Learning Workshop 2009 in The University of Greenwich. I would like to share my poster posting that I have published there.

Google Wave

Here is the good example of simplicity. As collaboration really matters today, Google make it much more simpler and easier. Now, you have more freedom on your communications and you can take most of the actions with only one click. Isn't this simple? It is coming later of this year. http://wave.google.com/

How to Prepare a Proper Scientific Poster Presentation

This article on eHow.com gives useful tips for preparing a scientific poster presentation for conferences or workshops. It explains the required issues clearly in 6 steps.

How to Prepare a Proper Scientific Poster Presentation | eHow.com

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Blackboard's iPhone Application

Blackboard has introduced an iPhone Application to allow students to easily access their courses. By using mobile learning opportunities students can login their institution’s Blackboard platform any time, anywhere. They can get updates, assignments tests and other course information via this app. This is a good example of using iPhone for learning and teaching.

OLAT - The Open Source LMS

Online Learning And Training (OLAT), the web-based open-source Learning Management System (LMS) based on Java and completely free of charge.

OLAT is IMS Learning Impact Award 2009 finalist. OLAT was chosen as a finalist for the IMS Learning Impact Award 2009. On Monday, May 11th 2009 at 5pm Joël Fisler will present OLAT in Barcelona at the IMS Learning Impact conference.

The development of OLAT started in 1999 at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. They have announced latest OLAT 6.1 release. Certainly the most important new feature is: clustering!

OLAT supports eLearning standards such as SCORM, IMS Content Packaging or QTI.

University 2.0

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

University 2.0

View more presentations from Chris Sparshott.

From Blackborad to Moodle

If you want to move from Blackboard to Moodle, you can use the following tools to migrate all of your courses and users:

bFree - Blackboard™ Course Content Extractor

Blackboard to Moodle Conversion Tool

Call for e-learning writers.!

The eLearning Guild is looking for writers for Learning Solutions e-Magazine.It includes sharing strategies, techniques, best practices, and case-studies for the management, design, development, and delivery of e-Learning, Learning Solutions e-Magazine™ offers insightful articles written by your fellow Guild members from around the world. Each issue is rich with practical ideas, advice, and solutions for solving your e-Learning challenges.

Tips on writing papers

Recently, I have read an article about writing papers. Firstly, it mentioned about some general encountered problems on paper writing including badly written, poorly constructed or focuses on a topic that is parochial, overanalysed or long past its sell-by date. Also, fail to address the major theoretical issues, take far too long to get to the point or of “conclusions" that do not arise from what has gone before.

A few extra tips from Simon Lygo-Baker (King's College London):
•Rejection by leading journals is the norm, so get used to it (but listen to any concrete criticism)
•Do not "waste" too many good ideas in a single article.
•Book reviewing is a good way to get a writing career up and running, but be careful who you criticise.
•You don't have to include an invented word and a colon in the title of every journal article.

A few extra tips from Rowena Murray (University of Strathclyde and author):
•Use writing to develop, rather than just document.
•Always keep in mind and make explicit where your "original contribution" lies.
•Learn to overcome your inner editor. Fight the temptation to stop and find references for everything as you write.
•Defer the quality question: rough drafts are meant to be rough.

Create games for learning

There are various tools that allow you to create games such as:

Adventure Maker:
An innovative toolkit that allows you to create point-and-click games and virtual tours for Windows, iPhone, and iPod touch.

Game Maker:
Allows you to make exciting and professional looking computer games in very short period of time without the need of writing even a single line of code.

LearningWave:
Has all types of learning games for educational and corporate use.

Open Learning Commons combines elements of Blackboard and Facebook

Open Learning Commons combines elements of Blackboard and Facebook - News

"The love child of Blackboard and Facebook has a name - the Open Learning Commons.

The new platform prototype, launched by the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, allows interested people within and outside the Penn community to participate in classroom activities from the Web.

The first class covers global environmental sustainability and combines coursework with social networking."

Import learning objects into your Moodle courses

I did not surprise when I saw this tool.This module provides your Moodle server with an easy access to learning material stored within any GLOBE repositories; it gives you the opportunity to search, view metadata, download and import learning objects into your Moodle courses.

The module called "GLOBE resource for MOODLE 1.9.X" and it requires Moodle 1.9 or higher.

I have not tried it yet but it has demonstration video and contact person for support.

For more information visit the ARIADNE Foundation's home page from
http://www.ariadne-eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=80#

Enjoy with your module ;)

The use of Facebook for learning, studying and teaching

According to Facebook Press Room, today, Facebook has more than 150 million active users, average user has 100 friends and more than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day. There are more than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook Platform and more than 95% of Facebook members have used at least one application.

By considering these facts, we can say that Facebook may have big educational potential in engaging students in their learning and enhancing communication.

By means of various applications, people have already started to use the Facebook platform for their studies and learning. For example, "Study Groups" application allow users to create, browse, manage and share study groups, and discuss their ideas. However, currently has some problems with the newer version of the Facebook.

In addition, "Learn 10 - power up your language" application allows users to improve their vocabulary in 24 languages. The widget provide users a list of new words everyday to help them learn new language. It also makes translation between selected languages. This application has 2,287 monthly active users.

Of course, utilization of Facebook for education is not only limited with applications. Lots of educational institutions have already created their groups on the Facebook for communication purposes.

On the other hand, as Facebook has high popularity among young people, an assignment on developing a tool or an application for the Facebook can help them to improve.

iPhone & iPod Touch in Education

Apple Iphone and ipod touch like devices represent just the first of a new generation of touch-interfaced and scalable wireless Web access capabile devices. Such new personal high-tech devices are very popular and self-adopted by young generation. By considering these improvements, instructors look forward to increase availability of multi-platform and flexible learning resources.

In the fall of 2008, Abiline Christian University (US) distributed the iPhones or an iPod touches to the incoming freshman. Students use their iPhones and iPod touches to access specific web applications, to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes. Also, to get directions to their instructors' offices, and check their meal and account balances.