4 Simple Tips for Recording High-Quality Audio | The Rapid eLearning Blog

Good audio is critical to your elearning success. You might be a great instructional designer and create the most engaging courses possible. But it all falls apart if the audio quality in your course is not very good.

Resource: GED Online – If you are a busy person and need your GED, come visit Franklin Virtual Schools today and get your GED online today.

Personal Learning Environment | EduTech Wiki

How I use social media to learn | Adventures in Corporate Education

Implementing New Learning Technology? Choose the Right … | Kapp Notes

Wikis in Education | eLearning Blog

Back to School: Buy a Mac, get free iPod touch | Apple Store (U.S.)

Army hopes interactive videos make smarter soldiers | CNN.com

“A scenario can put the course content into a context that is relevant to the learners because they can use the information in a real world setting. Even if you don’t create a pull-type course, scenarios are still effective in helping your learners.                     

As always the challenge for many instructional designers is that as you have to work with time and resource constraints. Many times it’s just a lot easier to build an information-based course than it is to build a scenario. Scenarios can take more time to develop and not everyone is a Hollywood scriptwriter (not that it means anything considering most of the movies that are released nowadays).”
(tags: eLearning Learning Technology RapideLearning Scenario Quality Push Pull)

• OLPC Peru: Teacher’s Technology Talk on XO Laptop | OLPC News

“While I don’t understand their Spanish, I’ve enjoyed watching Rocío Flores and Hernán Pachas discuss One Laptop Per Child in Peru on “Teacher’s Technology Talk”. At least check out their fancy threads…”

(tags: OLPC Peru Technology XO Laptop)

• Canonical developers aim to make Android apps run on Ubuntu | Ars Technica

   

At the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, Canonical has unveiled a prototype Android execution environment that will allow Android applications to run on the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

(tags: Linux Ubuntu Developer Canonical Android Google)

• 25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009 | eLearning Weekly

Jane Hart recently published the Top 25 Tools for Learning Professionals. This list was compiled by surveying learning professionals from around the world, and a majority of the tools listed are free!           

Check out the slides for an overview of the tools, and be sure to visit Jane’s site for more great information.

(tags: eLearning Tools SocialLearning MicroBlogging MindMapping RSS Wiki InstantMessaging Email Video Authoring Courseware Management Screencasting Presentation Audio Podcasting SocialMedia)

• The Distance Ed Tipping Point | Inside Higher Ed

But what about after distance education takes off? At what point does the question shift from what a college does to offer quality online programs to how a college needs to change in its entirety when it reaches a tipping point in enrollments — and at what point does such a change take place?

(tags: DistanceLearning eLearning HigherEducation Quality Faculty Technology)

• Should learning organizations make a financial investment in new forms of learning? | eLearning Technology

“Before you start shutting down training departments, hiring Chief Learning Officers, and coining an umbrella term for different learning methods, you need to establish what you are actually talking about and why it is preferred over other methods. And you need to back this up with some empirical data.”

(tags: TonyKarrer eLearning Investment Learning FormalLearning InformalLearning SocialLearning CollaborativeLearning PersonalLearning)

• Use Twitter in PowerPoint | Poll Everywhere

Your audience is tweeting
How do you draw them into your presentation? By asking for their opinion, and displaying their tweets directly in your slides. With Poll Everywhere, you can invite people to tweet a short comment directly to your slide in real-time, while still blocking inappropriate or off-topic tweets. You can also ask multiple choice questions and watch a graph evolve as people vote.

(tags: PowerPoint Twitter eLearning)

• The Semantic Web and E-learning | eLearn Magazine

“The goal of the Semantic Web is to provide the capacity for computers to understand Web content that exists on systems and servers across the Internet, ultimately adding value to the content and opening rich new data, information, and knowledge frontiers. Billions of Web pages are downloaded daily and are easily understood by humans. The knowledge gap exists for computers as these pages are only structured in the hypertext markup language (HTML) formatting language. When applied to the realm of e-learning, be it content interactions or learner management, the potential to add value is almost limitless.”

(tags: eLearning Semantic Web HTML RDF OWL XML LMS)

• 2009 E-Learning Awards | Hosted by e-Learning Age

Submit your entries now…

“…there are 15 categories to choose from so there’s bound to be one to suit you. We’ve split the extremely popular ‘Excellence in the production of learning content’ category into three sections and there’s a new mobile category too – even more chances to win!”

(tags: eLearning Awards)

• Back to the Future: Distance Learning, Correspondence … | eLearn Magazine

“Converge Magazine reported that the World Future Society predicted that one of the ten breakthrough technologies that “will transform life as we currently know it” is distance education. I was amused because (1) it has already transformed so many people’s lives and (2) most people no longer call it “distance education”.”

(tags: eLearning DistanceLearning Education)

• Best Practices: Evolution of a Video-Learning Object Format | eLearn Magazine

“In a previous article for eLearn Magazine I emphasized the value of creating an identifiable format for video-learning objects. Developing such a format requires an investment of time and creativity, yet the return-on-investment is significant as it allows a producer to “paint by numbers” when generating new episodes. In addition, viewers (or learners) know what to expect from each video-learning object-of key importance with video objects because they can’t be perused in a glance. Learners are asked to blindly invest their time and attention in viewing a video-learning object and should be rewarded with a consistent, concise, and engaging video.”

(tags: eLearning Video RTM)

Confirmed: Apple Tablet In 2010

A source familiar with Apple’s product plans says that the company plans to introduce a tablet-based device in early 2010. This is consistent with the report from Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster this morning suggesting precisely the same thing. Here’s the body of Munster’s note…

(tags: Apple Tablet iPod iPhone Mac OSX)

Asus Eee PCs in USA Schools: A First-Hand Report

Laptops make a good school better, but they don’t make a bad school good.

(tags: OLPC Asus Eee PC Linux)

NING: Staying in Character for Sarah Brynes

A NING, is a great social network to use with students ages 13 and older. NING is a very supportive site, and if the project is for an educational institution the NING folks will remove the ads from your ning site. All you need to do is email them, tell them your NING URL, say you are a school and ask for the ads to be removed.

(tags: NING SocialNetwork SocialLearning)

Curriki: Open-Source Curricula

Interesting premise for development of K-12 digital learning materials.

(tags: Curriki OpenSource Curricula YouTube)

Become a chief meta-learning officer | Chief Learning Officer

The May issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine went online today. Inside the covers, you’ll find a major article by Clark Quinn and yours truly entitled Become a Chief Meta-Learning Officer.

(tags: CLO Officer Learning Meta-Learning eLearning)

Investing In Flexible Learning Spaces: A Strategic Guide | Tidebreak

This paper is designed to help academic institutions develop best practices for designing flexible spaces. It begins by discussing critical design considerations that should be factored into strategic planning efforts. It then goes on to analyze several specific design challenges, identifying the most cost-effective solutions for flexible learning spaces that encourage intellectual innovation. 

Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools | Tech & Learning

1. Together we’re better
2. Global or local: you choose
3. Self-awareness and reflective practice
4. Ideas workshop and sounding board
5. Newsroom and innovation showcase
6. Professional development and critical friends

(tags: School Learning Technology Education Social Twitter MicroBlogging)

iPhones go to front of the class at Texas university – Network World

When almost 1,000 freshman students showed up at Abilene Christian University on Aug. 16, they got something more than the usual medical release forms, parking permits and Welcome Week t-shirts. They got a choice of a brand-spanking-new Apple iPhone 3G or iPod Touch, plus a package of ACU-written Web applications to use on them. (Watch a slideshow of the coolest iPhone apps.)

(tags: iPhone AbileneChristianUniversity iPodTouch iPod 3G Education GoogleApps Google Apple Wikipedia Mobile Learning AT&T WLAN)

The End in Mind ” An Open (Institutional) Learning Network | The End in Mind

“I’ve been noodling on the architecture of an open learning network for some time now. I’m making a presentation to my boss today on the subject and I think I have something worth sharing. (Nothing like a high-profile presentation to force some clarity of thought.)”

(tags: Open Learning Network Social)

U Michigan Rolls Out Laptop-Based Interactive Teaching Tool | Campus Technology

The University of Michigan will soon make a new interactive classroom response system available to faculty–one that was developed in house and uses laptops in place of classroom clickers. The system, dubbed LectureTools, was developed by Perry Samson, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences for use in a large lecture class, Extreme Weather. According to the university, it was also piloted in four other classes last semester. And it will soon be available to faculty at large through U Michigan’s CTools portal.

(tags: LectureTools UniversityOfMichigan Laptops)

5 Ways to Ruin Your Next Presentation

I found this article right on the money… These tips have a lot of application to when developing Rapid eLearning courses. Don’t do it half-assed, take a few extra minutes and really make it engaging, not “death by PowerPoint”.

(tags: eLearning RapideLearning Presentation PowerPoint)

Are Your E-Learning Courses Pushed or Pulled? | The Rapid eLearning Blog

Here’s the challenge for many of us. We want to make our courses engaging and interactive, yet sometimes the content or the time pressures of work don’t make that easy. The default position for many elearning courses is to merely push the information out to the learners. The end result is that the course is heavy on information and light on interaction. By changing the way you structure the information, you can quickly build the framework for more engaging and interactive courses. It’s just a matter of rethinking how you approach the course design.

(tags: eLearning RapideLearning)

Digital Flashcards: matching, hangman, crossword, word search, word scramble | Study Stack

1. Find data to study or add your own data.
2. Study and play with data online as flashcards, hangman game, crossword puzzle, matching, word search, or word scramble.
3. Study anytime/anywhere by printing data or exporting flash cards to your cell phone, PDA, or iPod.

(tags: iPod iPhone iPodTouch Flashcards)

Open Letter to the Teacher Who Said ”I Hate Technology.” | TL Advisor Blog

Dear Teacher who said “I hate technology,” First of all, I want to thank you for your candor and your willingness to openly share your opinion regarding the use of tools for learning. I am a firm believer that we should all have an open forum for expressing our opinions about our profession and the factors that influence…

(tags: Technology)

Why E-Books Look So Ugly | Wired.com

As books make the leap from cellulose and ink to electronic pages, some editors worry that too much is being lost in translation. Typography, layout, illustrations and carefully thought-out covers are all being reduced to a uniform, black-on-gray template that looks the same whether you’re reading Pride and Prejudice, Twilight or the Federalist Papers.        

“There’s a dearth of typographic expression in e-books today,” says Pablo Defendini, digital producer for Tor.com, the online arm of science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor Books. “Right now it’s just about taking a digital file and pushing it on to a e-book reader without much consideration for layout and flow of text.” …
(tags: eBooks Tor.com Publisher Typography)

100 Best iPhone Apps for Serious Self-Learners

Those who constantly strive to learn more from the world around them, who can’t pass up an opportunity to pour over a book or dictionary, or who take classes just to learn a bit more are a special breed. For those with an iPhone, the chances for learning just got a lot greater. No matter if you love literature, science, nature, arts, foreign languages and travel, medicine, or Christian studies, there are apps that will enhance your ability to expand your knowledge base.

(tags: iPhone SelfLearning Reference Materials Christian Studies Nature Math Medicine Foreign Languages Travel Arts Literature)

Text messaging in your teaching | e-Learning Acupuncture

Cell phones are not new technology to the average North American high school or college/university student. They use them frequently and well. Further, they often carry them with them at all times. This presents a unique opportunity for us to quickly and easily interact with our learners. Instead of placing content, notices, or updates on an LMS and hoping that your students find it in time, it is possible to email that material in the form of a text message to your learners. The benefit is that they have the information instantly, it is portable, and it is easy for educators to deploy. Also, the learner doesn’t have to go and seek this information and it saves them time.

(tags: eLearning Mobile Technology LMS SMS)

Wolfram/Alpha Computational Engine: Impact on Learning/Training?

This article is a nice write-up and actually has a couple links to other write-ups but in the interest of redundancy, I’ll add my own. This is not a Google killer. They are different. Ask Google “coastline of England”and it’ll return web pages that talk about the coastline of England. Ask W/A (sorry, just not going to type out ‘Wolfram/Alpha’ every time) that question and it will actually try to compute the distance of that coastline. Easy right? Its the difference between search and computation.

(tags: WolframAlpha eLearning)

The Fate of Academia | Vimeo

(tags: Academia)

Distance Education Essentials | About.com

The World of Distance Education:        

Distance education programs are more popular than ever. College and high school students now have hundreds of legitimate distance education schools to choose from. If you’re new to the idea of learning through distance education, this article will help you understand the basics.
What is Distance Education?:

Distance education is any type of schooling that takes place away from a physical campus. Distance education is also known as:
distance learning
virtual learning
online learning
e-learning
online education
web-based training

(tags: eLearning DistanceLearning HighSchool HigherEducation VirtualLearning WebBasedTraining)

Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day: Using Elgg as as Social Learning …

Here now is the 2nd presentation: Using Elgg as a Social Learning platform. This one looks at the use of the free, open source Elgg software as a social learning and collaboration platform for organizational use.

(tags: eLearning SocialLearning Elgg OpenSource)

The Future of eLearning is Social Learning ” eLearning Weekly

Jane Hart has been creating presentations recently to help explain social learning to her clients. Fortunately for us, she is now sharing some of this content online: Jane is working on a 3-part series related to social learning, and the first 2 parts are now available (and embedded below). Keep an eye out for the third part, which should hopefully be published in a week or two.

(tags: eLearning SocialLearning Future)

The Ten Commandments of eLearning | Upside Learning Blog

We discovered ‘The Ten Commandments of eLearning” as elucidated by Cath Ellis and Clive Shepherd. We’ve decided to follow in the same vein and list our commandments. First off, we thought ten is too many to remember, so we cut it down to five. There are some similarities to Cath and Clive’s commandments but that is to be expected given the nature of this post.

(tags: eLearning)

Learning with ‘e’s: e-Learning 3.0

Firstly, in a Web 3.0 world we will not only tap into the semantic web with all it promises, but e-Learning 3.0 will transgress the boundaries of traditional institutions, and there will be an increase in self-organised learning. Why? Because we will gain easier access to the tools and services that enable us to personalise our learning, and these will be aggregated more easily too…

(tags: eLearning3.0 eLearning Mobile Technology Collaborative 3D Visualization)

One XO Learning Laptop Per South Carolinian School Child – OLPC News

Last year, One Laptop Per Child/South Carolina launched a XO laptop pilot project at Britton’s Neck Elementary in Marion School District Seven and Rains Centenary Early Childhood Center in Mullins, with 500 computers and an over-riding goal: one XO learning laptop per South Carolinian school child.

(tags: OLPC SouthCarolina)

Breaking News: OLPC India Orders 250,000 XO Laptops! – OLPC News

Satish Jha, president and CEO of OLPC India has announced via IDG that two government organizations and one private-sector entity placed a 250,000 XO laptop order. Apparently, the XO laptops will be distributed to about 1,500 schools, starting in June.

(tags: OLPC India)

120,000 XO Laptops Headed to OLPC Rwanda

Back last year, One Laptop Per Child donated 10,000 XO laptops from G1G1 to Rwanda in an attempt to kick start OLPC Rwanda. OLPC also promised to donate another 10,000 XO laptops in 2009. The plan worked! It got President Paul Kagame excited about the concept to the tune of 100,000 XO laptops.

(tags: OLPC Rwanda)

The future of the book turns a page

(tags: eBooks)

School Of To Require iPod Touch, iPhone For Students …

Books, paper and pens are considered necessary school supplies. Now, so is an iPod touch or an iPhone for incoming freshmen at the MU School of Journalism.

(tags: Journalism iPodTouch iPhone Apple)

Blackboard Buys Angel – Inside Higher Ed

Blackboard on Wednesday announced that it was purchasing Angel Learning for about $95 million, shaking up the course management industry.

(tags: Blackboard AngelLearning Sakai Moodle LMS Pearson eCollege)

Amazon supersizes Kindle for textbooks, newspapers – Ars Technica

Amazon’s latest press event was used to roll out a large-format Kindle, along with deals with educators and publishers that will fill the new device with content. Ars reports from the launch of the Kindle DX, which is available for pre-order at a size-proportional price: $489.

(tags: Amazon Kindle Textbook eBooks Newspaper)

New Realities in Higher Education – elearnspace

Ray Schroeder is an active blogger that I have followed for about eight years. He covers a range of , pedagogy, and other trends on his numerous blogs. Last month, I started following a new blog by Ray: New Realities in Higher Education

(tags: eLearning HigherEducation Economic)

My Top Ten Tools for Learning 2009

(tags: eLearning Tools WordPress GoogleReader Wikipedia Diigo Dreamweaver GoogleDocs Captivate Wikispaces Skype)

Flex Builder has a New Name… Flash Builder

Over the last several days there has been a ton of exciting news related to Flash & Flex…        

First, Adobe has decided on renaming Flex Builder to Flash Builder!
(tags: eLearning Flash Flex ColdFusion)

Adobe Releases A Much Need Flash CS4 Update

Adobe has released Flash CS4 10.0.2, a patch to fix 61 bugs and improve the stability of CS4.

(tags: eLearning Flash CS4)