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Board800 : Flex / Flash / Red5 based Interactive Whiteboard
Collaborative whiteboard/drawing tool. Basic tools, but easy to share with others and draw in real time. Images can be saved.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Archive for April, 2010
Weekly Bookmarks (4/25/2010)
April 25, 2010Weekly Bookmarks (4/18/2010)
April 18, 2010-
Directory of E-Learning Tools: Social networks
Lots of choices for social networking & collaboration tools. Those looking for replacements for Ning are probably most interested in the private/closed social networks that are free and hosted.
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CSS-only gradients–no separate images needed. Still won’t work in all browsers, but it’s a nice touch for the ones that do.
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Using Moodle: Workshop Grades Not Posting to Gradebook
Forum info on how to synchronize legacy grades using the Workshop module
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Guide to using the Moodle Workshop module
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Weekly Bookmarks (4/12/2010)
April 11, 2010-
NCVER – E-learning in Australia and Korea: Learning from practice
Lengthy study from 2005 comparing how e-learning is used in Australia and Korea, finding some similar concerns. Like most other studies, this one has found that e-learning “cannnot on its own guarantee successful learning outcomes for students. The way in which the teacher and the learner utilise the technology continues to be important.”
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21st Century Teaching and Learning: Learning in the Social Web: Online Teaching and Learning 2.0
Presentation on teaching online with VoiceThread & Ning, including survey results with learner perspectives on how these tools helped create a sense of community
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Moodle.org: Modules and plugins (Assignment Rubrics)
Assignment rubric plugin info
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Information on using rubrics for assessment
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Interviews with Designers – Christy Tucker
My interview with the UW-Stout ID certificate students in March 2010. Students contributed possible questions on a wiki, then decided as a group what the top questions would be for me to answer.
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Visual Design of E-learning Systems
Criteria for evaluating the visual design and usability of e-learning systems. (Usability, readability, attractiveness)
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Case study examining what types of interactions (student-teacher, student-student, student-content) students found most valuable in an instructor-led self-paced online course.
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Information on the MOOMIS report creator for Moodle–create reports by groups over multiple courses
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Blender – Training Solutions: Moodle Reporting and User Management: Is MOOMIS the answer?
Info on a tool for creating custom reports in Moodle
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Weekly Bookmarks (4/4/2010)
April 4, 2010-
Custom E-Learning Training & LMS Solutions Kineo – New Skills for Instructional Designers
Slides from a presentation on ID skills, specifically at the intersection of instructional design and IT. Especially interesting were the comparisons of word clouds from descriptions of graduate programs in ID with word clouds from ID job descriptions.
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Working with SMEs in elearning » Making Change
Very practical tips for dealing with SMEs who want to dump lots of information and preserve their text-heavy PowerPoint slides
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1. Read what they gave you.
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2. Involve them from the beginning
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3. Ask them to help identify what people need to do
and why they aren’t doing it -
4. Ask them to help brainstorm activities and limit information
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- If a person doesn’t know that fact, what do they do wrong on the job? How would that affect our goal?
- How could you tell by watching me do my job that I know that bit of information?
- What mistakes do new people make?
- What mistakes do people make when they get over-confident?
If your SME keeps suggesting fact checks instead of more realistic decision-making activities, you might try the following questions:
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This helps remind the SME that the only information that should go into the material is the info that’s required to perform the activities
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A List Apart: Articles: Contrast is King
When designing so colorblind users have full access to your content, you aren’t stuck with black and white. Using contrast is important.
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YouTube – UsingMoodle’s Channel
Lots of great tutorials for Moodle
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Key Steps to Preparing Great Synchronous Interactions
April 1, 2010
These are my live blogged notes from Karen Hyder’s webinar, Key Steps to Preparing Great Synchronous Interactions from the Training Magazine Network. My side comments in italics. Any awkward phrasing, typos, or mistakes are mine, not Karen’s.
Tip #1: Get participants to commit to participate
Ask them whether they will participate or just sit and watch
She modeled this & did a poll before introducing it at a tip. Nice to model the tip & not just talk about it.
Used multiple polls at the beginning to set the expectation of continuous participation. Didn’t give people much chance to tune out, which is good.
“Death by PowerPoint online is worse than Death by PowerPoint in the classroom” (not an exact quote, but gets the gist of what she said)
Synchronous time is “premium time”: if you just want “chalk & talk,” just record it and let people watch on their own time. Lecture is a bad use of synchronous online learning.
In a classroom setting, you couldn’t ask everyone for feedback they way you can in virtual classroom. You’d have chaos with everyone talking over each other, but a backchannel chat allows it.
Feedback in chat is more helpful as a trainer than guessing what body language means. Can happen much faster than in a physical calssroom. But if you don’t plan well, it will feel chaotic.
“Interaction is in your mind, not in your mouth.” –Thiagi (as quoted by Karen)
Messy is OK. With 130 people typing on the screen you can’t read everything, but that’s OK. Just using your mind to answer it is beneficial to you as a learner, even if the trainer doesn’t validate it.
Examples of adaptations from F2F classroom:
- Show of hands if you’ve ever = status/emoticons
- Share example = Microphone
- Brainstorm = chat pod
- Demonstrate = Application share/web tour
PPTs for structure
- Show something on the screen at all times
- Animations when possible (in Elluminate, must do a slide for each change)
- Point or annotate
- Placeholder slides for polls, activities, etc. with instructions
Balance Online Activities
- Sandwich demos with learner participation
- Don’t just do an intro followed by 60 minutes of demo (yeah, I did too much demo during my trainings in the last two weeks…but that’s why I’m attending this to get some more ideas)
- Practice exercise–can be asynchronous. Helps extend the time of the training
- open-ended questions
Cautions
- Phone or VOIP–do people have headsets? do they know how to adjust sound?
- Breakout rooms–how does audio work? do people have to hang up and dial in again? Give a time limit
- Application/Desktop/Screen sharing–If possible, have two different machines. One where you drive, one where you watch what the audience sees. I’ve never seen this, but it’s an interesting idea. Like a monitor speaker for music performance.
- Media file types/players–if you use Quicktime, will everyone in the audience be able to see it?
I do wish her slides were a bit less bullet points and more graphics. Even the PowerPoint 2007 Smart Art would be an improvement.
Don’t assume you can talk and read at the same time. Take a second to pause talking and read the chat
#1 most important thing: Ask More Questions
If you don’t ask questions, learners aren’t doing anything. Lots of questions, variety of questions.
Recommends against calling on someone specific–too often leads to dead air. Teaches them that you are willing to put them at risk. Hmm…I did call on specific people in the training I just did, although it was a small group & I knew they were present. Maybe I should ask for volunteers when I need responses one at a time.
If you don’t ask questions, chat will be random and off-topic. Questions increase chances of getting good feedback.
Instead of calling on people, ask who is willing to respond–have them answer a poll yes/no, then call on someone who said yes.
I also need to plan more questions throughout my training
Use questions to get and stay connected with learners.
- Plan
- Seed questions throughout the session
- Tell people how they should respond
- Wait for responses
- Use information to connect learner & content
Questions that won’t help
- Any questions? — Just signals that you’re moving on & done with this topic
- Since there’s nothing in chat, I’ll assume you have no questions, right?
Ask questions that are inviting and relevant, then tell them how to respond
She puts question on slide so she doesn’t forget
Dead air is OK. This is training with real people, not morning radio. Getting used to dead air & silence was really hard moving to corporate training from middle school where I never had silence.
Question Ideas
- Have people type examples in chat–can be short application or synthesis (like “create a poll question you could use”)
- Open ended chat response
- Audio response–something too long to type in chat
Think Bloom’s taxonomy for different types of questions. Helps spark ideas.
Provide permission & instruction for using tools
Participants will give feedback if you ask a lot of questions & tell them how to respond
Voice & Language
- don’t just focus on technology, think about how your voice works
- Be cautious of storytelling & humor, especially with global audience
Aspects of online preparation
- Trainer
- Participants
- Software
- Content
- Producer–in the middle of all of it
Ideas
- Wordsearch for icebreaker, as people are joining–have people use the drawing tools
- One question at a time–don’t do multipart questions–too hard to juggle
Image Credit: elluminate by shareski
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