I attended the Social Bookmarking 2.0: Research, Share and Collaborate Online Using Diigo presentation by Jason Rhode at FSI 2010. About 10 participants attended. Okay, no notes, today. Rather, see Jason's handout.
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - 13:34
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - 10:36I attended the Simple is always hard: Design guidelines for effective online activities presentation by Eric Wignall at FSI 2010. About 22 participants attended. Key take-aways include:
- Simple is best.
- Students can feel shot-down by a single, simple "no, that's incorrect" response.
- Linear design models (Dick & Carey, ADDIE, even Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, etc.) are based upon theory but no evidence; does not reflect actual practice.
- Classroom Instruction that Works - recommended as excellent, research-based summary of multiple models and pieces of research; summarized to 9 effective strategies.
- Quality Matters.
- Sternberg's Beyond IQ
- Not enough of our education is visually-oriented, yet visuals are most important
- Research:
- Knowledge builds over time
- Declarative (internalized)
- Procedural (never mastered; can always get better)
- Contextual (where it matters)
- Synthetic (predictive/anticipatory knowledge)
- Organizing environments
- Linear
- Time-based
- Objectives
- Contextual
- Themes
- Information
- Coalescent
- Interests
- Learners
- Linear
- Knowledge builds over time
- Three types of assessment
- Assessment for evaluation
- Assessment for learning
- Assessment for you
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - 14:40I attended the 50 Ways You Could be Using Facebook in Your Classroom presentation at FSI 2010. About 18 people present. Why Facebook is so good:
- Students already use it daily
- Levels the playing field; it's their environment, not yours
- Invites 2-way street of conversation
- Create a teacher/school profile (a separate account)
- Invite people to "like" the group (rather than "friending" you)
- Setup multiple groups for each course, group, etc.
- Explore lots of apps; a few worth noting:
- Calendar (30 boxes)
- CourseFeed
- SlideShare
- Manage privacy settings very closely
- Tag students to help get the message out (also shows content to "2nd degree" circle -- a.k.a. free marketing)
- Bottom line: reach out and communicate with students
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - 08:55I attended the Learning in Community: Designing Successful Collaborative Projects for Online Courses presentation (only part 1, as I had to present during the part 2 time slot) with Jan Engle for FSI 2010. About 10 people attended. Some of my key take-aways:
- Group projects fall on a continuum of Cooperative Activities (mostly divide and conquer) to Collaborative Activities (work must be done jointly for a single, consolidated deliverable).
- Driven by:
- Level of online learning experience
- Level of group learning experience
- Level of virtual group learning experience
- How well students know one another
- Prior online teaching experience of instructor
- Amount of time available for activity
- Suggested structures:
- Allow plenty of time
- Establish groups early
- 4-6 students for cooperative tasks; 2-4 for collaborative tasks
- Provide specific instructions
- Provide milestones with due dates
- Provide teambuilding strategies
- Provide group-specific collaborative technologies:
- text chat
- audio conferencing
- discussion board
- Creating Groups
- Instructor-formed
- Randomized
- Self sign-up
- General tips:
- Don't allow late adds (beyond, say, first week); don't start group projects until after add/drop period
- Consider drafting a "best practices of online group work" document; make it required reading/guidelines for those inexperienced with online group work and optional for experienced groups
- If instructor assigns groups, use tracking tool and sort by number of logins (not total time); then group first X students together, then second X students together, etc.; rather than pairing most frequently accessed with least. Let's type-As work together (and learn to work with other type-As) and anti-type-As work together (who all work in a flurry near end of project). Quality tends be the same as more evenly distributed arrangement and group cohesion tends to be better (except for most type-A group, perhaps). Good idea!
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 14:30Attending presentation entitled "Content Management Systems II: Illinois Efforts Panel" by Tim Offenstein, Nicholas Hoyt, Robert Slater, and Jeremy Todd at the 2009 UIUC Web Accessibility Conference. About 50 people in attendance.
- Discussed the history of IT Access initiative at Illinois. They found that several disparate groups on campus were reproducing the same effort of evaluating and selecting a CMS
- OpenCMS used by library system, but this system was selected purely based on needs, not based upon size of support community. Plus it has terrible accessibility.
- Drupal used by Colleges of ACES and Education, Uni High, and a scattering of others.
- Accessibility of Drupal based largely upon which theme you select and modify.
- Some Drupal sites use a different theme for screen reader users.
- Be sure to check the output of all contributed modules for accessibility concerns.
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