Guidelines on Learning that Inform Teaching at UNSW

The Guidelines for Teaching and Learning is the University of New South Wales’ overt response to guide faculty toward quality teaching in higher education and act as guiding principles to consider faculty members’ promotion process. See http://www.guidelinesonlearning.unsw.edu.au/guidelinesHome.cfm.

ePortfolios for everyone in an entire nation?

An interesting take on eportfolios is “employed” by the nationally-supported Careers Wales programs. See https://www.careerswales.com/progressfile/default.asp. The portfolio systems is referred to as “ e-Progress File: an online e-portfolio where you can build up a unique personal profile.”

Endnote and Google Scholar--a Well-Referenced Duo

I’m on my sabbatical in Malaysia and I’ve finally had a little time to learn and start using Endnote (See http://www.endnote.com/ ) I’m using version 9, which is not the latest, but in general, I am very happy with it. One thing I have found to be very handy when you locate an article or pdf on the Internet, is to use Google Scholar (See http://scholar.google.com/ ) to automatically put the full reference to it in your endnote library. You have to set that up in Google Scholar preferences, but it’s just a check box.
What’s that you say? You haven’t signed up for Google Scholar? C’mon now…

Two Great Connections

I would like to recommend two sites/blogs about ID and Education that are what I might refer to as "connection" sites. I suppose they are editorialized repositories. Whatever...

One I have often designated as my browser home page in the last couple of years is elearningpost (See http://www.elearningpost.com/ ). It uses a half-blog – half-feature article format. elearningpost’s stated goal is to…
“Explore news, views and stories around Corporate Learning, Community Building, Instructional Design, Knowledge Management and more. Elearningpost's mission is to provide quality e-learning and knowledege management content that attracts a diverse and emerging audience.”
A second blog that I’ve just become familiar with in the last month is the eLearning Guru (See http://www.e-learningguru.com/ ) This site points you to a good number of interesting sites without a lot of yada-yada. Check out the very recent post on cell phone use in Kenya. These kind of demographics are making mLearning impossible to ignore.

Learning Objects and Games at MERLOT Conf.

I am spending this week attending the MERLOT International Conference in Ottawa, Canada. MERLOT stands for Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching. See http://www.merlot.org/ . I think of MERLOT as a large repository, and that it is, but I am also interested in seeing what else it is.

Today I attended two half-day workshops. Both were conducted at the University of Ottawa. One workshop concerned choosing and assessing learning objects and the other educational games. The first workshop presented by Liesel Knaack, an Asst. Professor from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, which she referred to as a laptop university.

Dr. Knaack developed a very useful web site regarding developing learning objects. See http://faculty.uoit.ca/knaack/cualo/index.html. She is also developing a neat site called Learning Object on Learning Objects (still under construction). See http://innovation.dc-uoit.ca/learningobjects/cualo/CUALO_content.html

I hope she keeps these linked, but in case they disappears I have included some of her reference links below.

Two examples of sites that use learning objects (the Plagiarism one is particularly good.)

Learning Object 1: Plagiarism Prevention- http://innovation.dc-uoit.ca/plagiarism_lo/index2.html [This link opens in a new window.]

Learning Object 2: Pharmacokinetics - http://icarus.med.utoronto.ca/lo/pharmacology9/index.swf

Some general links related to learning objects:

• A Teacher's Dozen - Fourteen General, Research-Based Principles for Improving Higher Learning in Our Classrooms by Thomas Anthony Angelo - http://aitt.acadiau.ca/research/Best_Teaching/teachersdozen1.pdf
• A Teacher's Dozen - Summary of Article - http://faculty.uoit.ca/knaack/cualo/attachments/A%20Teachers%20Dozen%20one%20pager.pdf
• David Wiley - The Instructional Use of Learning Objects - http://www.reusability.org/read/
• Pithamber Polsani - The Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning Objects - http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v03/i04/Polsani/
• Claire Bradley & Tom Boyle - Students' Use of Learning Objects - http://imej.wfu.edu/articles/2004/2/01/index.asp
• Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects - Volume 1- http://ijklo.org/volume1.html; Volume 2 - http://ijklo.org/
• Wikipedia - Definition of a Learning Object - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_object
• Using Learning Objects in Four Instructional Architectures - Chuck Barritt http://www.svispi.org/networker/2002/0702a1.htm

These were all good, but a number of the learning object repositories she recommended were not open like MERLOT, but closed except to a particular group. Surely someone must have a list of “open” learning object repositories around the world.

The second workshop regarding educational games was conducted by David Kaufman and Louise Sauvé, two Canadian academics connected with an organization called Simulation and Advanced Gaming Environments (SAGE) for learning. See http://www.sageforlearning.ca/.

Related to their work is something called Educational Games Central. See http://www.savie.qc.ca/carrefourjeux/an/. Apparently, you can develop frame games using their templates using this site. I’ve registered the University of South Alabama, but it takes a couple of days to get everything clear. It seems worth looking into.

A couple other related sites I bumped into while surfing during the workshop today are…

• International Journal of Intelligent Games & Simulation.See http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1822/ijigs.htm
• Digital Games Research Association. See http://www.digra.org/
• Cyberchase - PBS games. See http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games.html

And, last but not least---- the latest version of a narcissist competitive video site—Google Idol. The competitions are on two categories, web cams and music videos. I wonder if sites like this can be considered a MMOG? I could argue that either pro or con.
See http://googleidol.com/

Blogger for Word

Another pretty neat tool I’m just learning about is Blogger for Word. See http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html In essence, this tool allows you to compose in MS Word (a huge advantage) and even publish from Word. The only disadvantage is that you can’t automatically publish photos, but one can just insert them in the HTML as I did above.

1st Test of Audioblogger

Just for fun I recorded off my little laptop mike using SkypeOut which lets you call regular phone numbers. I'll test under better conditions later. The number to call in the US to make an Audio Blog is 4 1 5 - 8 5 6 - 0 2 0 5.