I find that one thing this time of year gives me and I am sure the same is true for other Moodlers, is the time to look around at what is happening out there and to get on with new projects, more of that later.

Fig 1

To begin I came across a very readable little report “The Power of Curiosity” written by the Center for Digital Education custom media division, with information and input from Canon U.S.A., Inc that presents the case for Inquiry-based instruction as a means of improving the learning experience in K-12 education. I was not surprised, given that this is an American paper to find an early reference to that well known comment from Benjamin Franklin “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” I am particularly attracted in this approach to learning, not just because of the close affinity that it has with the social constructivist nature of the Moodle vle, but equally the work that I am pursuing with the virtual worlds of SecondLife and OpenSim, the key point being that it is student centered with learning occurring when students discover and construct information with guidance from either teacher of some system of extended cognition such as a virtual world arouses curiosity and motivation in seeking solutions. The paper outlines some typical approaches for Social Studies, Science, English Language Arts, Math and draws its recommendation upon research by Herman J. M. & Knobloch, N. A. (2004). Exploring the effects of constructivist teaching on students’ attitudes and performance. Proceeding of the 2nd Annual North Central Region AAAE Research Conference. Lafayette, IN: 21-35. I found the paper a nice read and recommend a download, so please get back on this one and let us all know what you thought please.

 

Next up is a little resource collection that I came across, that I thought worth inclusion by way of eLearning from Flipped Learning classroom, these are not all new, but there may be a couple of useful additions that prove useful to anyone’s repertoire.

 



Finally a quick update on the virtual laboratory that I am working on for the Bio Med team using OpenSim. If you would like more details on the project and how it is going, then please follow this link to my Blog, but for now here are a couple of screen shots.

 

Fig 2

That’s all for now and please feel free to comment