Instructional Design Student and Practitioner » Uncategorized

List of Collaborative Resources for Teaching and Learning

chris — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:06:01 +0000

Hi Folks! Here is a list of collaborative web resources for teaching and learning (PDF).

Threaded Discussions

chris — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:37:39 +0000

Much has been written about the threaded discussion. It is the lingua franca for asynchronous online classes and obviously an important component therein. But there are weaknesses. It is easy for inertia to set in. In some classes, they are not very authentic and some participants do only enough to satisfy the course requirement. Some instructors just phone it in as well. They use metrics provided by the LMS to measure participation and do very little interaction with the student.

Here are a few alternatives. Remember, the whole point is to create meaningful student-instructor, student-student, and student-material connections and encourage deep patterns of study as well as reflection.

http://www.isetl.org/conference/presentation.cfm?pid=1269

http://voicethread.com/

Here is an online forum discussion of wikis relative to supplanting threaded discussions.

http://alg57htg7u.tal.ki/20100622/wikis-instead-of-threaded-discussions-for-onl-44364/

Here is a discussion of the issue with additional ideas:

http://alg57htg7u.tal.ki/20100622/wikis-instead-of-threaded-discussions-for-onl-44364/

HI Marketing People

chris — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:51:58 +0000

Quick Review of Spotify

chris — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:20:49 +0000

I have been using Spotify for about a month or so. Here are some thoughts/things to keep in mind.

The beta only applies to desktop version. The smartphone/iPhone version costs money.
It is really good. You can make playlists and the song catalog is very difficult to stump
However, it doesn’t have everything. For example, there is very little Peter Gabriel.
It also has the ability to catalog your own music

Bottom line: I think I still like Sirius or Pandora better; Pandora because it is free for smartphone. With both Pandora and Sirius I will always hear good music I hadn’t thought about or discover new artists that I end up really loving.

Quick Review of Google Music

chris — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:44:03 +0000

I got my invitation about midnight last night just as I was laying down. I didn’t have a lot of time to mess with it today. But if you don’t know anything about technology addicts, you know it isn’t something I can readily control.

So here are some quick thoughts:

1) Fast-Fast. I signed up and had 100 songs uploaded in probably less than 10 minutes.
2) I only had to promise scout’s honor that I wouldn’t upload illegally acquired songs. I don’t see how this is going to be feasible. My wife and I have between us hundreds of CDs from the last 20 years. I have shared music with friends ala mix CDs and vice versa and I have content that I got in those freeewheelin Napster days. I haven’t downloaded anything like that in many years, but everything is jumbled up. How’s a person supposed to operate?

That’s it for now. I will be interested to see it on iPhone and elsewhere.

Video: Learning Styles Don’t Exist

chris — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:43:39 +0000

My professor Gary Anglin reccomended this YouTube video to our EDC 710 class in the Spring semester. While I still like to refer to one’s personal preference with regard to instruction, Dr. Daniel Willingham really makes the case for eschewing this formerly regarded framework for delivering instruction.

Learning Styles Don\'t Exist

Clark Kozma Debate

chris — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:13:16 +0000

For people who want a brief synopsis of this long-standing intellectual debate, please go to The Media Debate.

It seems like with any of these opposing viewpoints, there are constructs within each that have merit.

I am in the middle of studying this in some detail. Clark is absolutely right and has empirical evidence to support these views. His assertion has the ring of common sense. Yet as a technophile, it troubles me that media had no direct impact on learning outcomes.

Now I am reading Kozma and beginning to see Clark as having a macro view of media as it pertains to instructional design. If you take a broad approach, he is right. If all images, video audio and computer generated media are the same, applied the same and perceived in the same way, then it will never make any difference. But I think Kozma is saying that it is not the same. The two viewpoints are not so different in one way of thinking.

Just trying to make sense of what I have read and discussed here!