VR project for 2018-19

Looking forward to the start of the new academic year, I am looking toward some particular innovation trials that I can run with regard to technology enhanced learning and so far I have settled on three that I am really looking forward to running

The first one that I am going to talk about is Google Expeditions. It was back in August 2016 that I put a virtual lab in place for the BSc Biomedical team. At the time Biomed were experiencing difficulties in arranging lab visits for students and so they requested the build which was constructed and put in place for them at one of our Opensim islands. 

Since then and following a visit from Rebox VR a Google Expedition’s partner recently, I discovered that among the collection of VR Career Expeditions there was a bio lab.  If you have yet to explore these tours then I can really recommend having look, though we shall be acquiring a set of RedboxVR headsets, it is more than possible to make use of compatible smartphones. The tour takes the form of a 360 degree set of images The teacher leads the group by simply marking items of interests on the their leader screen that will be linked to explanation text, you however have more than simply text. Students will on their screens see an arrow directing them to the marker that they follow to access the information. I must say that image quality and smooth scrolling on a smartphone not even using WiFi was impressive. I had a recent meeting with the course leader and am pleased to say that the demo was met with real enthusiasm. 

I shall be posting on our use of this and other expeditions that I have planned so do stay in touch if you would like to see how we get on and I shall also be posting on my other two projects for 2018-19 soon.

AI Arrives

As my students reach the end of thier level 4 course in Computing, an inevitable question is "what will we be using next year at level 5". I usually provide some materials on the vle on C#, because that will be the new language and they can pick up the notes etc over the summer to get prepared. This year however I decided it would be interesting to try and make use of AI. The implementation that I settled on was a conversational agent using a Panorabot, I particularly like this idea because for one I can publish the bot to the net and for two I can link it to a virtual bot in Second Life. The image below shows the net version of the bot, by the way little characters name is Tether Gistnut, its an acronym, please feel free to work that one out and follow this link if you would like a chat anyway.

For SecondLife, the experience is somewhat better as I have been able to use conversation responses in such a way that the bot is able to call up and display short video tutorials; you can see one of these running in the background of the screen shot below

If you would like to visit SecondLife and have a chat with Tether then simply follow this link and enjoy. If you would like to know more, then please IM me Skipper Abel in SecondLife, Feedback welcome, bye for now.

Word to Moodle

A recently discovered plugin feature for me anyway\y for Moodle is the MicroSoft Word import feature for Lessons as part of the new ATTO editor, I guess because I have been concentrating on making scorm content this kind of  material, it just slipped past me, well that’s my excuse anyway.  The plugin supports the .docx extension, but not older types though, but the real cool thing is that just about everything you have in the file will come across and format OK and that should include LibreOffice 5.x files saved in .docx format.

For the admins out there you will require PHP XSL extension enabled on Moodle 2.7 or higher. Once installed just look for the new Word icon in the ATTO editor tool bar and you're are away. For me I think this makes for a massive improvement when it comes to creating a Lesson in Moodle, far less tedious and so much more productive like it, like it.

Please feel free to reply with comments.

Data Analytics In eLearning: How To Use Them And Answer Your Questions

Data Analytics In eLearning: How To Use Them And Answer Your Questions: Wondering whether Data Analytics In eLearning can answer your questions? Check 5 questions Data Analytics In eLearning can answer.

Search Tip and more

 

Just a thought on searching the web for information  particular with regard to education, how about incorporating the "site:" command into the string, so the it becomes "site:edu". To search for Mathematics the search would become site: edu mathematics. You may to give this a try with and without the site:edu option and see what you think, and try the prefix before other searches such as site:gov.





If you are still trying to get some ideas or maybe convince the powers that be in encouraging the use of Mobiles in class, and lets face it they are there anyway, then this link 50 Reasons It’s Time For Smartphones In Every Classroom http://www.teachthought.com/terry-heick/50-reasons-smartphones-belong-classroom/may prove to be of some use, there are certainly many that as of yet I had not really considered.

On a final note, we are continuing to make use of Jing here at the College and with that in mind I wanted to create a quick reference guide that staff could take away with them from the CPD session, when I came across this link http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/68751/jing-cheat-sheet a nice set of PDF pages that covers the essentials in a click and go style get you going style.

1 Minute CPD

So how is CPD going with you? It has certainly been better for me as far as training is concerned and I am not just talking about Moodle and its array of activities in general. Of course I could conclude that this is because the training delivery has been so effective that there is no longer the same need; hopefully true to some extent. Looking on the bright side though, it would seem that if you have been having a similar experience then we are not alone. Like myself you may like to take a look at 1 minute CPD from Manchester Met who lamented the “After a term of frustrating no-shows and low sign ups to our advertised technology enhanced learning workshops, we were stumped. What else could we try? We’d advertised a range of different options and approaches, but almost no biters.”

This was just a little encouraging for me as it would seem to be a way of buying in  to Micro Learning, a subject that I have read on and thought about for some time, you may like to take a look at  “Integrated Micro Learning–An outline of the basicmethod and first results”.

The thing though, is how to get the whole process going, at present I have suggested a shared document, where someone leaves a one minutes CPD, then everyone that reads it and finds it a useful suggestion, award themselves a 1 say in a table cell associated with their name, and add a 1 to the score of the originator; I am thinking of this as maybe a chance to get a leader board. Anyway that's where I am for now, if you have experiences of 1 Minute CPD then please comment

How to use Google MyMaps

Found this really useful introduction to creating media rich resources. I have made use of Google maps a number of times in past as part of lectures and class exercises, and they certainly represent a good means of engagement, as part of a vle lesson plan.

C# Variables

The C# While Loop

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

Upgrading to Moodle 3

As a Moodlerooms client we have recently been upgraded Moodle 3 here at the College and as such I have been particularly interested in some of the new features that come along with that.

Looking at the improvements and changes to assessment methods I feel the inclusion of :-

fig 1

The Drag and drop onto image question type, see fig 1, where participants simply drag either text or small images onto an image is going to have so many uses for us.

fig 2

Then there's the Drag and drop markers question type where you can drag text markers onto a predefined image see fig 2.

 

fig 3



For us admins there is also some welcome imrp0vemenst to the Atto editor see fig 3 from now on it seems we will be able to drag and drop images, much quicker. There are some really significant improvements to the equation facility, for us Maths types out there see fig 4, plus some welcome additions for table editing for border styling, sizing and colours.

For even more information on the Moodle 3.x check out Moodle documentation here

Thinking about performance, Moodle 3.0.1 will support PHP7, which we are informed could potentially result in speed increases of between 25 to 70%, even at the lower end of the scale figures like these are in themselves reason enough to consider the jump to version 3.

If you read my previous post then you will have seen the reference to learner analytics, and I notice that our Moodlerooms currently have a short white paper for download that you may find interesting

Finally, I came across this innovative little clip showing how you can make use of your smartphone as a video tool, it just requires a claw clamp from the science lab to overcome the custom handheld shake effect.

That's all for this week, but do feel free to comment

Is your VLE cognitive?

As I recall, it was at least  few ago now that I first started to hear the term Student Analytics banded around in the corridors of eLearning, around the time of the 2012 Horizon Report.  For sure the systems that we now use have over time become increasingly attuned to the complexities of student performance tracking, and so  hopefully leveraging that competitive edge realized through analytics for our students. The benefits sited here include such aspects as an improved student experience, increased retention, efficiency cost savings, that can extend even to facilities management.

If you are a Moodle user, then you may be aware of the Learning Analytics dashboard form SmartKlass™. I admit we do not at present actually run this ourselves, but I would be interested in hearing from any of you out there in Moodle land who do, it does seem to be a nicely presented and interfaced product.

While you may be thinking that I am jumping on all this a little on the late in the game, It’s because I recently saw the posting from those people at IBM Research on personalized experiential learning, entitled – The ‘Classroom Will Learn You’

The concept seems to be that soon cloud based education / learning platform systems would be able to collect the vast arrays of student analytic data to alert teachers on intervention techniques and interactive content to address apparent gaps in knowledge. Furthermore the ability to tag student interests need could be used to generate a personalized learning pathway, silver bullet?

On another virtual learning front, I have been enjoying some success with my work in virtual worlds. My project Only Rocket Science was designed for my Level 4 and 5 students, and used the affordances of a virtual world to deliver a situated learning experience. Rather than repeat the details here, you can get a full blog from this link.

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

Motivation

While effectively we are at that time of academic year when everything is winding up and results being agreed and closed off, it is also the time before everyone begins heading for the sun, distant parts or something else, for staff development sessions. Thinking about this usually gets me musing over training needs and opportunities to introduce and present case studies of new technologies and practice. It was as I began looking at some likely candidates, I came across a very readable and timely posting on motivation, with accompanying six minute pod cast from Susan Smith Nash posted on the Quick Lessons blog, that considers the issue of motivation from the perspective of cognitive psychologists, and looks at comparing some of the most influential theories that include :-

•    Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

•    Herzberg’s Motivation / Hygiene (two-factor) Theory

•    McClelland’s Need for Achievement Theory

I really like this informative and  concise type of blog post, so many thanks to Dr Smith. Hope you find it as interesting as I did.

 

After just a few iterations of the design for our minted cubes mention in my blog post earlier on, we finally arrived a final version shown here. Given the size of 3cm, a decision was taken to abandon any images in favour of text, which in the end will serve the intended purpose?  Given that one side of the cube requires a lid, obvious really as a means of getting the mints out, this does mean there was less size for text on that side and so we went for a logo. The bottom face of the cube which you are not able to see from this image has information / health warning regarding the mint contents. Please stay in touch if you would like to know how they were received by everyone a desktop concept.

 

Minted Cubism

As a new round of training comes along, I start to think about how well my training sessions have run in the past ,and to what extent they have achieved their desired effect. A particular request for training that I felt had been covered by timetabled delivery plus the availability of instructional videos caused me to get thinking though. One of the reporting options I have is being able to see utilisation, and in this particular case this did not appear to be so good, so why? Not an easy question, or one that I suspect has a single answer, but from my web design knowledge I am aware of the issues surrounding click-depth, and in this case it was 4. If it turns on depth, then I perceive further accessibility issues developing as the click-depth to our new toolkit resource bank is also 4. So is the solution to raise the level of materials on the site, as with Google, everyone would like to be on the front page. At this point I decide to consider what I would actually like to happen here. Well basically, the materials having a highly persistent visibility. And it was thinking about this last point that led me to consider that maybe I need to have a physical presence, and from that came the idea of what I discovered are called Minted Cubes. Minted cubes are small plastic boxes, filled with mints (the clue is in the name I found), and how does this help me, it helps because each of the six surfaces of the cube has an image, in my case, an image of a resource, please see accompanying image, plus some links below.

Total Merchanise

Probospromotions

Sweetconcepts

So the plan is I hand these out at training sessions and they find their way onto desktops, shelves, computer tops, filing cabinet tops and window ledges, in fact any flat surface hopefully in arms reach. First off I downloaded a cube cut-out template and constructed a model, then copied a random sample of six images from our toolkit pages; see accompanying screenshot. My wider plan is to create cubes for combinations of toolkit resource such as media, presentation tools, gamification etc, in the hope that this may further buy into the psychology of collecting, though I may be a little to ambitious on that one. Anyway, the good news is that following a short presentation, the idea has the green light, and this week we will be putting together the proposals for the first batch. If you have any ideas or experience in supplementing training with merchandise then please feel free to comment or tell us about it.

Bye for now Skipper

Blended Learning

 

Maybe its just coincidence, well of course it is, but this week seems to have been full of requests and postings coming my way on blended online learning. 

It all seemed to start off with a request to convert some course options for one of the professional programmes to being fully online, in fact students could in theory even take just the online course as part of professional development anyway, and it was that possibility that raised a whole raft of other considerations. So first off, what are the considerations for moving from class based to online delivery, well I have talked about that a lot over the years on this blog, particular the move away from class support materials written in Word to something more eLearning compliant and for that we have been making very successful use of Wimba Create for some time now, I can recommend it. We soon realised however that an online course should have online payment, online enrolment and of course following that, seamless access to the actual Moodle course itself, all through a new web page on our college website. As you will I am sure know, if you have been through this one yourselves, it very soon gets complicated. However it seems not beyond realisation, as online payment and registration has already been successfully tested, and it appears is in need of an early trial, well here it is then, and we move on, great. So this was not so much actually doing from my perspective, but connecting.

 

Getting back to those blended learning postings that I mentioned earlier, the first was headed ‘Navigating the Digital Shift:Implementation Strategies For Blended And Online Learning’ by John Bailey, Carri Schneider, Tom Vander Ark.

While written around the Common Core standard, this little eBook is well worth downloading , though I confess that I am yet to read through all 270 pages of it, so I will be including my usual chapter breakdown. The clear and  central role of enduring commitment required to get these processes in place in order to realise the potential benefits makes for a refreshing read,  rather than the all to often throwing of technology at a very long term need and the inevitable consequences I seem to come across in postings. Please free to reply on this one.

 

 

Finally, if you find yourself being pushed for justify a blended learning option, then this posting

‘7 Top Blended Learning Benefits For Corporate Training’ from Litmos.com and by Christopher Pappas may be just what you are looking for,  providing as is does a brief and concise outline under the following heading:-

1. It offers the best of both worlds. 

2. It enhances corporate training effectiveness.

3. It simplifies corporate training logistics.

4. It is cost-effective.

5. It allows your employees to have control over their training.

6. It enhances employees soft skills.

7. It facilitates corporate training feedback.

 

hope you find it useful , and that’s all for now, but please feel free to comment and you may like to follow my Twitter feed Hash Tag SkipperAbel.

Internet Report

Interested as you clearly must in eLearning and so to some greater or lesser extent what is going on re the Internet, then if you have yet to get site of it, the “State of the Internet” presentation running to some 196 slides is going to be a slide turner for you. Delivered by Mary Meeker of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers in May this year, the report brings out a whole raft of key data points that I feel certain you will be grabbing for reference. I found the timeline showing the “Evolution of Content discovery” particularly relevant to any ideas I may be forming on the way forward for design and distributing of content particularly with regard to trending on horizontal / vertical  screen orientation views; that all starts from slide 24 by the way. And if you are of the view that students are always going to be students, then please take a look at the qualities for Generation X and Millennials hiring managers feel they are most likely to posses; this must surely also say something not insignificant about our cohorts (slide 113). In fact you may to look at the the lazy  ‘Generation Y myth ’ of playful, collaboration producing nervousness  of how this 80% of the coming workforce presents challenges to accepted practice and process. Their focus on short term success link to poor commitment is unjustified, they feel there are better ways to work and this should be our driver toward a constructivist pedagogical shift to leverage the affordances of story and online technologies.

Moving forward to the section headed “Connectivity has Changed” (slide 115), makes it start to come real that if we are still living in the world of being defined by location, alluding to the classroom, then it seems to me we should be thinking more in terms of being defined by who we are connected to, and that last point, before you even get to slide 169, take a guess at which country has the highest percentage of mobile Internet traffic, I was surprised; will this and similar trends affect your decisions on eLearning design? let me know please post a reply. Anyway great report, thoroughly enjoyed the read and will most certainly read again, and again.

Please follow hashtag SkipperAbel for more frequent updates on eLearning trends, software and practices.

Bye for now

Multi-Tenancy in Moodle

Have I considered Multi-tenancy for our Moodle, my quick response to that question was no, actually a new one on me, though I ask  are you already a Moodle mutli-tenancy site? If like myself this was a new, then it seems that multi-tenancy is when the same data / information and content infrastructure is used by different groups or organizations. Which I guess in our case may be applied to the areas of 14 to 16 provision, FE, HE and then Professional Studies, not a particularly unusual combination for a college I would suspect these days. Anyway each of these would become an LMS tenant, each having their own courses, materials and requirements. Without the multi-tenancy concept this would have to be implemented through separate LMS, and I do recall one college not so long ago having five! And the shed load of admin work that with it.

Apparently though Moodle unlike Totara while not being able to fully support the concept, does have a pseudo-multi-tenancy capability by combining the front-page settings with the use of Course Categories, which according to the posting and I quote - can be done by configuring the “Front page items when logged in” setting to Enrolled Courses. With regard to branding courses to specific departments or business units, the Course Categories can be named after the department, and Subcategories can be labelled as Course Topics. Each Category and Subcategory can then be themed separately from the Corporate/Organizational theme. Roles and capabilities can be assigned to specific categories to allow access to edit courses. Additionally, this can be done by inheritance to the Subcategories and courses.

If all this grabs your interest then follow this link From Lambda Solutions and read some more, there is even a free white paper on the subject.

 

 

 

 Finally, I know I have mention Twitter before in my postings, but when I came across this little info-graphic I just had to include it in this weeks roundup. While my own postings to Twitter these days seem be almost exclusively from other social networks, that still leaves me feeling a regular education user of the micro blogger, just hash tag SkipperAbel  my avatar name from SecondLife

 

 

 

 

 



 

MOOC Network



Following on from my experience of Mooc's that I blogged on recently, I was more than pleased to discover that the college had been approach to join the QAA MOOC Network and even better that I was invited to be our representative, needless to say an offer that I agreed to with enthusiasm. Our regular contact is facilitated through a Linkedin group and I have conference next month and looking to that, so do please stay in touch for future postings.

And while on the subject of MOOC’s I came across this interesting report collection that I can recommend ‘Ten useful reports on MOOCs nd online education’. Of particular interest to me at the present time was the ‘MOOCs: Expectations and Reality Full Report 2014’, expect a comfortable read with this as it covers some many of the questions that currently have in my mind in 211 pages, so you will need to take a seat for this one.

Others titles available at the resource include the following:-

• Disruptor, Distracter, or What? A Policymaker's Guide to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS)
• MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses. European University Association Occasional Paper. An update on developments in first paper published January 2013
• Introduction to MOOCs: Avalanche, Illusion or Augmentation? Policy Brief Published by the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education
• The Maturing of the MOOC. Research Paper published by the UK Government, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• e-InfraNet: ‘Open’ as the default modus operandi for research and higher education
• 2013 Survey on Technology and Instruction: Taking the Board to School on Educational Technology
• eLearning Papers. Issue No.33: MOOCs and Beyond
• MOOCs and disruptive innovation: Implications for higher education
• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Primer for University and College Board Members

 

Please feel free to comment on this post with your own experience of MOOC's.

Decided to get Mooc'ed

 Having read about them. watched video clips and hovered around the edge of actually registering for one, I finally took the plunge recently and signed up to a MOOC.  The course: - Second Life MOOC  ran from April 1 to 30 2014. 

The theme was connecting online for collaborative learning and teaching through Second Life. The live presentations included speakers reflective process on teaching and learning in fully online and blended learning formats.

 

Course Highlights included: -

• Experience Life in Second Life
• Avatars will Present about their Lives in Second Life
• Learn how to Teach in Second Life
• Get Acquainted with Learning Environments in SL

If you were not used to virtual worlds such as Second Life then there were sessions for  beginners and advanced Second Life participants alike. I was also pleased to see that Moodle was being used for asynchronous work with the synchronous side of things handled by WizIQ & Second Life. We also had recordings on WizIQ, Google Drive, YouTube, and Vimeo.

As part of our completion task we were asked to produce a learning resource that would be made available in-world on the subject of connectivism. I must say that I do enjoy Second Life and feel that its full potential as a learning environment is still to be fully explored and this  course really took every opportunity to bring us together in that particular virtual space; most enjoyable.

Our course instructor was Nellie Deutsch on Integrating Technology Toronto, Canada, and she did a great job, thanks again Nellie.

You will see that I have included a small screen shot of my certificate, soon to be placed on my office wall.

I recently posted on the use of games in education and today another guide dropped across my browser that I thought would be a useful accompaniment to the toolkit.

I like this guide because use real-world examples of how game-based techniques can energise online learning programmes and make a positive, measurable impact. Some techniques (such as immersive 3D virtual environments) require substantial levels of investment, while others can be produced quickly and cost-effectively with just a little imagination, planning and game-based thinking. If you're interested in gamifying the provision of learning in your organisation, this guide will give you some useful food for thought.

A few thought provoking facts are included that I thought worth posting here:-

By 2014, more than 70% of Global 2000
organisations will have at least one
‘gamified’ application (Gartner).

By 2015, more than 50% of organisations
that manage innovation processes will
gamify those processes (Gartner).

The average game player today is 37
years old, and 42% of game players are
women (The Entertainment Software
Association).

Students recall just 10% of what they
read and 20% of what they hear. If
visuals accompany an oral presentation,
retention rises to 30%. If they do the job themselves,
even if only as a simulation, students
can remember 90% (the Federation of
American Scientists, 2006).


This guide covers:
Why use game-based learning?
Story, characters and goals
Virtual role-play
Avatars and reward systems
Leaderboards, competition and
team games
Exploring virtual environments
Mobile games
Take-a-break games
Conclusion
Acknowledgements and further reading
Contents

Well that's all for now, but you have anything surrounding this post that you would like to share then please feel free to comment

Games and Learning

 Not sure really weer  am with the idea of Game Based Learning (GBL),but then I have yet to try it out. Sure I have been using both Second Life and OpenSim for some years now, but they are for me simulations not games. And so I was pleased stumble across a web site that offered an planning toolkit. Without going into too much detail surrounding the site as there is a lot of advice and case study material, the actual toolkit itself covers the following headings

• Realism (as opposed to pure fantasy)
• Complexity and Inclusiveness
• Learning Focused
• Flow
• Time Constraints and Flexibility
• Requirements
• Support
• General Curriculum
• Generic / Employability Skills

I have read through the material here and it has made me start to think more clearly about the application of GBl, so if you have any experience or views on the subject then please feel free to post a reply.

 I must admit to being a fan of infographics and so when I came across one for the Moodle vle the other day I thought I must include it in my next blog posting. 

Taking a look at countries by registration is a revealing chart, when you take into account the population count of the those countries. I was particularity interested in the 'Top plug-ins in the last year' which were Poodll and Aardvark

In case you have seen these two plugins before Poodll is free and open source and has designed around the needs of  language courses.  The feature comprises a collection of various plugins for the Moodle vle that include audio player, recording audio and video clips, draw pictures directly in real time. You will also find there are really interesting little widgets that include a Flashcard widget, stopwatch, countdown timer, click counter, webcam broadcaster, webcam subscriber, set of dice, audio/video pairs, a calculator and more. 

Aardvark, is a menubar based theme tool set from Bootstrap. If customisation is you thing then Using aardvark you will be able to customise the look and feel of your vle including icons.

if you use either of these on your own Moodle instance then please feel free to reply and lets all know your thoughts

 

Talking about sharing thoughts here are a some of my own of recent involving what I interpret as a possible synchronicity experience.

From Wikipeadia :- "Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The subject sees it as a meaningful coincidence. The concept of synchronicity was first described by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s."

I was taking part in a webinar earlier last week, and the presenter mentioned the widespread adoption by both students and institutes of web 1 technology and yet when it came to web 2 such as Facebook and Twitter this seemed to be the domain principally of students. Why was this significant, well because this was not really the focus of the session and yet that was the very same discussion that I was having as I was leaving college that very evening with a colleague. The next morning I get into class and one of my students informs me that the class have been running a Facebook account as a course discussion back channel since the start of the current academic year; so is this an example of Synchronicity I am wondering?

Thats all for now and again do feel free to post you own views and expediences for us all to share.

Moodle 2.5 running and OK

Well we have a Moodle 2.5 instance up and running, so in the last couple of days I have been taking those snatched opportunities to run some testing of resources and browse through the many new features that the versions offers. Given the work that I am focusing on at the moment with implementing eLearning using scorm materials I was more than a little impatient to confirm that the launching and tracking of objects worked as before and of course they do, and why not. As we have been using a system of certification for training for the Moodle courses that I run here at the College using Bronze, Silver and Gold, I thought lets give badges a try and that worked really smooth also, a nice surprise for the other members of the course when they next logged-in. I like the idea of having a choice of Forums and set one of those up and have already noticed that it is attracting some engagement from my colleagues. All in all then looking good, very good.

If you have been following this blog at all then will have come across my posts for links to free tools, and I recently came across an extremely nice list of 321 no less, and so I am sharing that source with you here. if you have any others to add then do please feel free to reply to this posting.