Choices and options involved in teaching and learning: 25 tools. July 21, 2008

So much has happened to the potential to teach in 6 years since I started blogging.
At that time my choices were limited to just one two system which was leased to and controlled by institutions . Subsequently open source tools have been developed and made freely available to all who have the interest and skill to teach and an audience, or the ability to recruit an audience.

25 tools (from the introductory page at 25 tools):

1. Web browser – Firefox

   More than just a browser with 100s of extensions available to provide an enormous range of extra functionality not found with other browsers.

2. Email tool – gMail/Google Mail

   No more worrying about an email client on your desktop and dealing with spam and viruses – and tons of free storage space.

   * Resource gMail/Google Mail: Mini Tutorial

3. Instant Messenger – Skype

   An easy way of not only text messaging your contacts but also free voice calls – with low charges out to landlines.

4. Social bookmarking tool – Delicious

   Store your bookmarks online, tag them and share them with others, students, colleagues and so on.

5. RSS Reader – Google Reader

   Subscribe to website and blog feeds and the news is delivered automatically to you. Effortless!

   * Resource Google Reader : Mini Tutorial

6. Real-time messaging tool – Twitter

   If you want to stay in touch with people no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

7. Online calendar – Google Calendar

   Don’t keep your calendar to yourself, share it and make scheduling events an easier process.

   * Resource Google Calendar : Mini Tutorial

8. Office suite – Google Docs

   An online suite of office tools for personal use or to collaborate with other. It can read in Microsoft Office documents too.

   * Resource Google Docs : Mini Tutorial

9. Mind mapping tool – FreeMind

   For organising your thoughts or just brainstorming

10. Start page tool – iGoogle

    Aggregate all your resources, mail, RSS feeds, etc, in one place.

11. Blogging tool – WordPress

    Use it to create a personal or professional blog

12. Web authoring tool – Nvu

    A versatile web authoring to build web pages and web sites.

13. Wiki tool – PBwiki

    Create editable websites for collaborative writing and working.

    * Resource PBwiki : Mini Tutorial

14. Photo hosting and sharing tool – Flickr

    Host your personal or professional picture collection, and share them with friends, colleagues and others.

15. Presentation hosting and sharing tool – Slideshare

    Upload presentations, tag them and share them with others. Synchronise them with an audio file to create a narrated presentation

16. Video hosting and sharing tool – YouTube

    A large collection of shareable videos – host your own there tool.

17. Collaborative presenation tool – Voicethread

    Create a slideshow around images and invite comments (audio or text) from others.

    * Resource Voicethread : Mini Tutorial

18. Podcasting tool – Audacity

    Record and edit audio and, with the extra encoder, convert your audio files into MP3 podcasts

    * Resource Audacity : Mini Tutorial

19. Screen capture and screencasting tool – Jing

    An “always-ready” program that instantly captures and shares images and video.

    * Resource Jing : Mini Tutorial

20. Polling and survey tool – PollDaddy

    Want to get some quick feedback? Set up a poll, and track responses.

    * Resource PollDaddy : Mini Tutorial

21. Web meeting tool – Yugma

    For small meetings of up to 10 people, to whiteboard, annotate and share files. You can even use Skype.

    * Resource Yugma : Mini Tutorial

22. Live broadcasting tool – Ustream

    Live interactive video broadcasting to a global audience. All it takes is a camera and an internet connection.

    * Resource Ustream : Mini Tutorial

23. Social networking tool – Ning

    Create and customise a private (secure if required) community for a group of like-minded people, large or small.

    * Resource Ning : Mini Tutorial

24. Course authoring tool – eXe

    Create SCORM-compliant learning content that doesn’t require you to be proficient in HTML or XML markup.

    * Resource eXe : Mini Tutorial
    * SCORM/AICC eXe Tutorial

25. Course management tool – Moodle

    Host a complete course or program or simply provide user authentication for other training materials.

    * Resource Moodle : Mini Tutorial

Personalization Course June 24, 2008

June 17, 2008 Untitled: “The jist of it? Have to get a syllabus prepared.

The complication. 25Tools and, specifically, eXe. We have Clemme, Ray, Spike and now Ron Miller all agreeing to teach and
taking Rays lead by preparing syllabi (as part of the Viterbo clearance to teach).

I think eXe is a really fine way to get anything put together for the web”

edu2.0 seems good too (free and many features)

(Via .)

eXe: IF you design lessons, teach and type, THEN online teaching is now a snap! June 15, 2008

Oh!, how huge my frustration, no doubt shared by millions of other teacher-types, who are quite incredible interactors! Back in the early nineties, say 1992, my original frustration surfaced when I realized the potential of the web and also that web technique was not within my reach not without a major mindset operation and lots and lots of training. Now, with eXe, we can take our teaching online orders of magnitude less of both sweat and radically different skill acquisition. And, in the bargain, eXe allows the learning of good lesson and course principles which will serve both online and in the face-to-face classroom.

The real difficulty is to find people who have both the wish and the ability to teach. I’ll leave that very large topic until another time. Abandoned, for the moment, so that we can talk about the already competent face to face teacher [another time, remember] and the web.

But at least a preface about the the teacher as an existential “type”. There is, as far as I can tell, no theoretical limitation to human capabilities and inclinations as they are parceled out to us as individuals. In my own experience, however, there are existential and developmental limits on this special combination of human abilities and inclinations.

For example, the wish to interact with and nurture the becoming of others is relatively rare as a primary, or close to primary, individual drive (I am not here discussing the “wired-in” protectiveness that seems to be part of the human and mammalian package). Also, the wish to and ability to communicate effectively in multiple situations with varying ages, genders, groups and personalities is also fairly rare. While related, these two skills are more rarely found in one person. For a “teacher-type” add to these two, wishing to support/nurture the achievement/becoming of others and comprehensive set of one-to-one and group communication skills two other skills, the ability to “sense” and/or “deduce” the conceptual processing of another, and the ability to communicate about and structure situations such that the learner can move from their own position on something like a learning ladder of skills to a next level of learning . This, based only upon the teacher/student transactions and the information and learning experiences and informational materials provided to the student.

As you can see this is a relatively unlikely combination of human skills, having one may increase the motivation to develop another in the set but does not guarantee that that skill will develop.

I hope you now see that nothing in this teacher disposition (my reference to this set of motivations and skills) relates directly to mathematics, logic, technology. And, one could argue, for personalities inclined in this direction, the development of such skills would require a distinctly different set drives and predispositions than those which drive the teacher we have described above.

In short, I would argue that it is a very rare combination indeed that finds both in depth computer language skills (html among them) and teacher skills in the same person. Particularly in adults who received elementary, secondary and postsecondary training prior to, say, 2000.

It is far more likely, however, that such teaching inclined adults, those born before 2000, have acquired lesson design skills, and even curriculum development skills, on top of their “package” of skills and inclinations that move them to teach. The gift of eXe is that it allows such a person to put lessons and teaching online by means which are in reach. With eXe the face-to-face teacher can reach out to construct for her/himself a teaching and learning environment which can work work her/his live classroom or even for students who we will be doing online learning alone.

————–
Links
eXe blog
25tools for eXe and other online learning support applications. (All are Open Source, incidentally. There is now much less
in the form of technical or fiscal limit that stops the teacher type from trying to reach out online. Hooray)

Working on readability on Several Fronts May 14, 2007

All of them WordPress

Potentiality – at incsub.org

Becoming Connected which is an entry system via opml at this site.

Interwoven Supports for Personal Development on my interwoven website

SET also on my interwoven website

SWIS on my interwoven website as well

WordPress Meta Plugin May 14, 2007

This plugin gets you more organized for google-find and public listing of your entries. Once the plugin is installed (see site at wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack). There are some usage tips:

1. Use plugin to write a good excerpt and title for each entry.
2. Read Michael Steele’s SEO book .
3. Do the following:
   • Give homepage a decent [?see SEO book] description
   • Tag posts with categories — categories become meta keywords.
   • Write an excerpt for every post
   • Tweak titles to give them [accessability?, appeal?-->See the SEO book]

Entry formatting. May 14, 2007

First, at least in present blog format, the title shouldnt be too long. A long title will, for example, in the Fleur de Lys format, end up taking up too much space and look kludgy.

Second…. if you don’t want the entry to look like “lots of space”, “less ideas”, “sup?” then you better write longer paragraphs.

First, at least in present blog format, the title shouldnt be too long. A long title will, for example, in the Fleur de Lys format, end up taking up too much space and look kludgy. May 14, 2007

Format is not content. May 13, 2007

Mixing the two can slow down overall output.

Get your format all worked out.

Then use something as basic and content-focused as an opml outline to get the ideas, the prose itself, down.

For me, anyway, separating form from substance increases idea flow through!!!!

Grantwork: May May 13, 2007

Ray and I have met and planned. we’re working for board participation and extension of ideas.

We’ve prepared what we call the 15 pager: a prospectus of our five year plan

In it we’ve specified major goals, budget, personnel, classes.

We’re eager to hear the response from our approx 15 heavy duty alternative educaors.

GrantWork 3/11-4/1 May 13, 2007

Just prior entry has details of grant so far.

We need to accomplish a number of things:

Spike Material:

-Body argument about cost effectiveness & J.V. s paper about cost effectiveness

-Targeted objectives need to be inserted in grant:

For starters here’s a list:

Programs for Teachers increase or improve

There are increased options for students in schools

Immaculate web site giveing acces to “all” major online alted reources + contact info for those resources not online

Centrallize ed network of people in alte ed who are connected via online system

Literature of impact outlined, developed, researched and Published (success stories a start on this set of qualitative studies/ messages of the heart [those types of research which can be related to by nonresearchers.

See references below for appropriate learner outcome descriptions

1. Overview of Alt Ed on iaae.net a paper by Urban Institute (resources)

2. Alternative Learning Environments

3. AltEd Quality Indicator Checklist

4. NCES Public Alternative Schools report — extract their statistical reasoning sequence (either from report or from interviews of members that R. Knows)

Ray Material:

Ron Mirr — heads up we’re coming with material (Ray says we’ve got enough)

Bill Callahan — the ten pages we have enough for him… feel him out on the terminal degree issue.

Ray to recruit Taiwan and Russian and ?? international membership of board with help of Jerry Mintz..