idolresources.com

We have an opening at the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at NIU for an Instructional Technology Coordinator. Below I’ve included the ad and link to download the complete position description. Come join our team!

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CommonCraft has released yet another witty video, this one focusing on the basics of social media: new technology that makes everyone a producer and tools that give everyone a chance to have a say.

You can find links to more great videos explaining new technologies in simple terms on the CommonCraft blog.

I recently received an email invitation to NfoMedia, a new free social networking utility designed especially for faculty and their courses. I’ve setup a free account and poked around a bit, but since NIU isn’t yet listed as one of the home institutions, I’ve not dabbled any further. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until many more institutions are listed and I look forward to eventually giving this a try.

This certainly does look intriguing…if you have already tried this new tool, please post a comment with your experience.

Here’s yet another simple and powerful video from CommonCraft. This one explains podcasting in plain english.

I’m giving a presentation at the 2008 Sloan-C International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning on the topic of socially constructed self-paced learning environments. In particular, I discuss the implementation of CMUOnet, an instance of the Elgg open source social application engine, for fostering organic, informal interaction among participants in an online self-paced professional development certificate program.

The slides for the presentation are available here along with the links I reference.  If I am successful in recording the audio for my presentation, I’ll eventually add there here as well as on my edtech podcast.

Here’s the complete substance of the proposal for the presentation…

Title: The Chicken or the Elgg? Developing a Socially Constructed Self-Paced Learning Environment

Type of Session: Individual Presentation (preferred); Group Presentation (secondary)

Objectives:

• Explore theoretical framework for developing socially-constructed self-paced learning environments
• View sample installation of Elgg social networking platform and integration with Blackboard
• Review results of a recent research study exploring learner’s preferences for interaction in a socially constructed self-paced environment

Description: New types of technologies that support the needs of students in learner-paced courses are being developed and implemented, promoting the incorporation of an increasing number of informal interaction types. For example, emerging social networking solutions allow for interaction to take place among instructors and students beyond the confines of the course management system. Such informal learning environments provide a more open venue for learners to connect with others interested in the same concepts either in a different course section or but who may be enrolled in a different course section or are at a different stage of the course. (Rhode, 2006). Participation in such an organic learning landscape blurs the lines that have been previous drawn between formal learning applications and informal personalized learning environments that promote lifelong learning. As these traditionally separate learning venues converge, the underlying precepts previously understood need to be re-examined (Rhode, 2007).

It is reasonable to assume that the constructs of the course as well as the individual preferences of learners may influence the development of the learning environment and dynamics of interaction. This study explored the dynamics of interaction within a self-paced learning environment in which interpersonal interaction with fellow learners and the instructor is strongly encouraged by not necessarily required. Rather than mandating asynchronous communication solely within an instructor-driven threaded discussion board, emerging approaches to fostering interaction encourage the formation of online learning communities and communities of practice outside of the prescribed course boundaries that can serve to scaffold a rich and meaningful learning experience. This study examined the experiences of adult learners who participate in an online course incorporating a variety of traditional computer-mediated communication and emerging educational social software to learn what modes of interaction learners prefer as well as to what extent such interactions with fellow learners as well as instructor-generated multimedia are perceived as being equivalent.

References:

Rhode, J. F. (2006). Anatomy of a socially constructed self-paced learning environment. Retrieved August 20, 2007, from http://www.idolresources.com/?p=416

Rhode, J.F. (2007). E-learning interaction matrix: Essential elements of a socially constructed learning environment. Retrieved December 3, 2007, from http://www.idolresources.com/?p=486

I just came across this new service, Page2RSS, that makes it easy to create an RSS feed for any webpage. It helps you monitor web sites that do not publish feeds. Page2RSS will check any web page for updates and deliver them to your favorite RSS aggregator.

Has anyone else already been using this service?  If so, what are your thoughts regarding it and how you might leverage this kind of technology?

Free Webcast: New Features in Blackboard 8.0
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm (CDT)
With the upgrade of the Blackboard course management system to version 8.0, faculty can expect to see a number of new and enhanced features when they log in to Blackboard. The new version introduces significant changes in the functionality of the discussion board, transition of the Blackboard Gradebook to the completely redesigned Grade Center, as well as a new “Self and Peer” assessment tool that will allow students to review and grade their own work and the work of their peers, among others. This online session offered by NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center will highlight these new and enhanced features and tools in Blackboard version 8.0. All are welcome. Advanced registration is required.

Registration Information:
Please email your name, institution, title, and email address, to jrhode@niu.edu. You will then receive confirmation of your registration.

CommonCraft has released yet another wonderful video explaining a technology in plain english.  In their latest video, they explain Twitter in Plain English.

How might Twitter be used in an educational context?  I’m looking for examples of how educators are using Twitter.  If you have an example, comment with your ideas.

This video by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University, creatively and powerfully looks at today’s students and how they are changing the world of learning and education.

Do you find these attributes as characteristic of the students you teach? What steps might you take to engage students of the 21st century? Please post a comment with your thoughts and reflections.

Thanks to a link from Ken Sadowski, I stumbled across this free online guide by Micah Ovadia offering practical tips regarding podcasting in education. This is appears to be a great resource for anyone looking at getting into more of the finer aspects of podcasting and is definitely worth bookmarking for future reference.

Edublogs sent out the following email announcing their new campus hosting service. Looks promising…

Today we’d like to share something really special with you, our new blogging system for schools, colleges and other institutions, Edublogs Campus.

http://edublogs.org/campus/

It’s a simple, powerful and safe way to bring blogs to your school. You can host the site at your own domain (i.e. blogs.yourschool.edu), create, manage and control all blogs on the site and get unlimited email (and even telephone) support from us.

We’ll also set up, host and maintain the software all for you… so you don’t need to worry about any technical details. And every Campus client has unlimited bandwidth and storage space too!

You can find out about these and more features at http://edublogs.org/campus/features/

If you’d like to discuss how Edublogs Campus could work for your school or organization, please just reply to this email or contact us through the site.

We’re more than happy to answer any questions you might have and look forward to taking your organization to the next edublogging level!

Thanks for taking the time to read this email.

Cheers, James Farmer
Founder, Edublogs

Mike Offerman, vice chairman of Capella University, is authoring a new blog on critical issues facing the future of higher education. Research shows that only about 15 percent of higher education students still fit the traditional definition of a college student: age 18 to 22, living on campus, and going to school full time. That is the inspiration for The Other 85 Percent (www.theother85percent.com), a new blog by Capella University Vice Chairman Mike Offerman that challenges the traditional view of how to best serve today’s college students.

Yes, that’s right, I’m starting another blog. You can find it at jasonrhode.edublogs.org. I have numerous other blogs already, such as my dissertation digest and my personal site. So, why another blog?

I’ve found each and every blog to serve a distinct purpose. I’ve been wanting a place where I can just ramble about anything related to education and technology while connecting with other educators on a more impersonal level. I’ve had an account over at Eduspaces for quite some time but with the recent instability of the ownership of that service, I wanted to move to another more stable host. I’ve linked this new blog with my Eduspaces blog so anything I post here will also make its way over there. However, I’m basically bidding a fond farewell to Eduspaces at this point.

Also, idolresources has evolved into basically a place to post resources and I don’t want to diminish the quality or purpose of this blog. For those who don’t want to sift through my informal ramblings, I’ll now keep those separate and over on my Edublog and keep idolresources purely links to resources related to Instructional Design for Online Learning (IDOL) and educational technology in general.

You can find my new blog over at jasonrhode.edublogs.org. This new one happens to be hosted on Edublogs and therefore is a bit restricted in terms of features but is completely free for me to operate. I’ll continue to post new resources I come across to idolresources as well as maintain my more polished professional academic site at http://www.niu.edu/~jrhode but am looking forward to using my new edublog for my very informal online journal of my scholarly activities.

Feel free to stop by and leave a comment anytime!

This report, released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), uses data from the 2001 and 2005 adult education surveys of the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) to examine the participation of adults in formal learning activities during the 12 months preceding the survey, focusing on the participation of adults who at the end of the survey had the lowest levels of education (no high school diploma, or a GED). These adults with low levels of education were found to have participated at relatively high rates in adult basic education, ESL, and GED classes. However, for the most common types of formal learning activities—work-related courses and personal interest courses—adults with low levels of education participated at lower rates and for shorter periods of time than did adults with higher levels of education. Among the adults who did participate in these activities, those with lower levels of education at the end of the survey were less likely than those with higher levels of education to pay at least some course expenses themselves.

View, download, and print the full report as a PDF file:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008041

In this latest episode of the Teaching with Blackboard podcast, Olga Urban and I discuss the Blackboard Content Collection. | Content Collection Documentation | SafeAssign Documentation | Scholar Documentation | Kaltura