Other Places to Learn Geographic Locations

I sent an e-mail to some folks I thought might be interested in the geography puzzle I mentioned yesterday. Bernie Dodge from San Diego State responded that he also liked the Geography Olympics site.

In addition, he told me about another great geography game site called Geosense. Geosense is awesome! I've set it as my temporary home page.
Another site that is kind of fun dealing with US state locations is the Can You Pass Third Grade? site.
Terri Wilbanks, a friend and foreign language instructor at my university, had a cute comment about Nunavit, Canada's largest and newest territory.
"Nunavit? I think that's a place my mom used to talk about but I thought it was smaller...... 'I want Nunavit in my house!' "
Finally, if you wish to follow up with some basic knowledge about a particular country, check out the CIA World Factbook. I have no idea what data the CIA is collecting about you if you use this, but the resource is very good.

Burkina Faso?

Where is Nunavit?
How about Burkina Faso?
Myanmar?
I suggest you order The Global Puzzle from geographyolympics.com/.
It’s about $15. I read about it in USA Today and ordered one for my father-in-law for Christmas and one for me for the hell of it.
That was very fortunate.
I have been sufficiently humbled by my limited geographic knowledge and Brenda and I have had great fun solving the puzzle on our dining room table to boot.
I wish I had thought to market this idea.

Videoconferencing Sites

Members of a listserv I belong to (DEOS-L - The Distance Education Online Symposium [DEOS-L@lists.psu.edu]) has had a number of good suggestions regarding Videoconferencing reference sites. A few of these are below:

An introduction to using videoconferencing technology for teaching
by Jodi Reed and Merry Woodruff of San Diego State University.
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/vidconf/Using.html

“VCAlberta.ca aims to be a community driven site that provides advice on the videoconferencing standards in Alberta and answers questions on how to effectively conduct many different kinds of videoconferences. There are tools, forums, frequently asked questions in addition to a directory and tips and tricks articles.”
http://vcalberta.ca/

The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration has a pretty good resources section.
http://www.cilc.org/tools_and_resources.aspx

Lisa Tyler, of Global Compliance Network, has an internet-based tutorial about educational videoconferencing success strategies
To view it, go to www.gcn1.net and login using "gcn" for the username and "dugan" for the password. You will need the Flash plugin.

Sloan-C-Resources

From the Sloan-C Resources Report "The online enrollment projections have been realized, and there is no evidence that enrollments have reached a plateau. Online enrollments continue to grow at rates faster than for the overall student body, and schools expect the rate of growth to further increase:

• Over 1.9 million students were studying online in the fall of 2003.
• Schools expect the number of online students to grow to over 2.6 million by the fall of 2004.
• Schools expect online enrollment growth to accelerate the expected average growth rate for online students for 2004 is 24.8%, up from 19.8% in 2003.
• Overall, schools were pretty accurate in predicting enrollment growth last year's predicted online enrollment for 2003 was 1,920,734; this year's number from the survey is 1,971,397. "

Distributed vs. Distance Education in Higher Ed?

This first paper in the ACE/EDUCAUSE series, Distributed Education and Its Challenges: An Overview, provides a general framework for understanding the key questions that distributed education poses to the higher education community. This overview paper identifies significant issues associated with distributed education and suggests a series of questions to help institutional leaders establish and validate their options. (from the paper's abstract)
http://www.acenet.edu/bookstore/pdf/distributed-learning/distributed-learning-01.pdf

Several IDD students, alumni, and faculty presented at the 2004 eLearn Conference in Washington, DC. Pictured from left to right are Hendon Blaylock, Ann Marie Armstrong, Lin Mulenberg, Brenda Litchfield, and Jack Dempsey. My butt looks pretty big in this photo, doesn't it? Must be the lens.

Some interesting things (and sites) I found out about at the eLearn Conference in Washington, DC (NOV 2004)

Reuse
http://www.reusablelearning.org
I took a half-day workshop regarding reusability of learning resources. The workshop was delivered by Robbie Robson who chairs the IEEE Standards Committee and is connected with the National Science Digital Library This is a very important movement in education. This site has a good deal information on that topic. A PowerPoint and other materials can be downloaded from:
http://www.reusablelearning.org/index.asp?id=104

Small Talk
http://www.landware.com/smalltalk/
From the web site:
“Small Talk is a software application for Palm OS handheld devices. More than just a phrase book or a dictionary, Small Talk allows you to engage in a real conversation with another person, even if you don't speak the same language.”

CSS Zen Garden
http://www.csszengarden.com/
Shows what is possible with cascading style sheets. The same content is portrayed different ways by graphic designers using CSSs.

Math.com
http://www.math.com/
An excellent site that chunks each subtopic into 4 different levels of engagement. It also is an first-rate example of how to phrase copyright language for content you are willing to share . but not give away all rights to.

ADL, SCORM, and CORDRA
www.adlnet.org
Robert Wisher, director of the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative, delivered an interesting overview of ADL initiatives, particularly SCORM for interoperability and CORDRA for content repositories. Powerpoint can be downloaded from:
https://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=rcdetails&libid=752&filterid=37

The Gamer’s Directory
http://www.gamescanner.com/
This site has just about every link related to computer gaming. It’s great!!! Somehow, I had not come in contact with it. I guess it’s my age.

Portfolio Guidelines: Instructional Systems Technology, School of Education, Indiana University at Bloomington

Portfolio Guidelines: Instructional Systems Technology, School of Education, Indiana University at Bloomington

Indiana University's ID program has a pretty interesting web site on portfolios with examples. Many American higher education programs are seeing the value of portfolios as a method of evidence-based program assessment and promoting student achievement.