Podcasting as theraputic intervention.

This is still using podcasting as "push," rather than as "pull." Somehow I have to think that this is not quite right. It's Dr. Phil living in your ear (ugh). It's exhortation-on-demand. It's in loco parentis gone loco. Does it work? Probably about as well as watching Dr. Phil on television, or about as well as Mom's nagging. Can't we do better than this?

New U of M podcasts aim to help students handle stress, eliminate procrastination and prepare for final tests. The way to reach students these days is through their iPods or other portable digital media players, so the University of Minnesota is taking advantage of this technology to reach students with new podcasts that focus on study skills, managing stress and [Online Learning Update]

12:02:30 AM    

More discussion on games and learning.

Don't miss the comment here that MMOGs require as much as forty hours to master the first level. Makes me wonder, for example, how many traditional instructor-led or e-Learning "courses" are so compelling that learners would willingly stay seated and engaged for a week in order to learn just the basics? Wonder-me number two: How good would they be at whatever it is they are learning if they spent a week practicing it and getting feedback? Wonder-me number c: In a business setting, how are you going to justify keeping them off the job for a week (or will you require them to play the game on their own time)?

MMOGs as Learning Environments: An Ecological Journey into Quest Atlantis and The Sims Online - Michael Young, et al; Innovate Online. Yes, video games are mainly for play and fun. But video games are educative as well as interesting and engaging—something that we all hope that more classrooms could be. Many of today's students spend more time playing video games than they do watching te [Online Learning Update]

11:57:28 PM    

ePortfolios and Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).

Catching up from my six months offline. Thanks to Jeremy Hiebert: these are entries from his Weblog that I don't want to lose.

Seblogging PLEs Sebastian Fiedler captures much of the recent PLE buzz and offers his own excellent take on the topic: "I treat personal learning environments more as a psychological perspective. What forms my 'personal learning environment' at a given point in time, and for a particular purpose or goal (that drives a learning project), is largely determined by the range of resources that I am able to perceive, locate, link to, access, manage, and so forth."    Personal Learning Environment Model Thanks to some valuable feedback from Dave Tosh, Aaron Campbell, James Farmer, Aaron Nelson and Graham Attwell, I've spent some time fixing up my midnight-brain-dump e-portfolio model.   E-Portfolio Model I've been thinking more about personal learning environments and pondering how they might be different than e-portfolios. Is the PLE just a new label that seems to focus more on individual needs and has more latitude to include different kinds of tools? Did vendors and institutions kill the initial promise of e-portfolios by trying to turn the concept into a single tool (product) used to measure student achievement?

4:01:59 PM    

Big names weigh in on Boston Globe article.

Blogging and Careers. Some folks are talking about the Boston Globe article on blogging being essential to a good career.

... the "challenges" of blogging are also touched on.  I'd add that another downside is information leakage.  Sometimes, personal info you don't intend to share gets inferred, shared, or found and known to others in awkward manners. 

4:44:58 PM    

Possible impediments to media development and use?

Media, Tech Firms Warn About New EU Rules (AP). AP - Media and technology companies warned Tuesday that new European Union broadcasting rules could restrict the growth of emerging media formats such as video broadcasts through the Internet and mobile phones. [Yahoo! News: Technology News]

10:38:29 AM    

No more copying notes from the whiteboard!

Click the link to see the results.

ScanR: Turn your camera phone into a scanner.

Oliver Starr at MobileCrunch has a long and excellent writeup on ScanR, a new free service that allows you to take a camera phone picture (or any digital picture) and turn it into a searchable PDF file. If you have a camera phone with at least one megapixel of resolution, ScanR is great for turning things like whiteboard images and paper drawings into something more usable. This is particularly interesting for heavy travellers who do not have a scanner handy.

To use it, you simply take a picture and email it to scanr. They supply you with an enhanced pdf version by email.

10:14:37 AM    

Boston Globe says blogging is good.

(In case you needed any validation) 

The media figured out Blogs 'essential' to a good career (Boston Globe). "A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field. 

Link:   http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/04…

View discussion

10:11:57 AM    

Five trends you probably already know about.

XplanZine links to five Tech Trends -- April 18, 2006. "Today's theme is coming up , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn."

• Gaming
• Blogging, mediacasting, and online creations
• Handhelds
• Social Networks
• Technology Talks

10:09:07 AM    

Want to get published?

You can also contact me about Learning Solutions eMagazine.

Where educational technologists publish. The January 2006 issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology has an interesting article “Where do educational technologists really publish? An examination of successful emerging scholars’ publication outlets” by Alison Carr-Chellman (Vol 37 No 1 2006 pp5–15). The author has surveyed educational technologists who gained tenure between 1999 and 2004 to determine where they published. The idea was to see if there was an ‘A’ list of journals where ed techies can publish their articles as a way to give a leg-up to those seeking a career in ed tech. You may be relieved (or possibly disappointed) to hear that apparently there isn’t a premier league of top journals to aim for. The majority of those who were surveyed cast their peer reviewed publications far and wide in the literature, possibly reflecting the diverse nature of the subject. [David Davies' Weblog]

11:23:03 PM    

Accounting for all sides of the learning object.

Lone Star Learning -- Where to Go with Learning Objects. The limitation of our traditional notions of learning objects is that they are not big enough or complete enough. Our models have accounted for only a piece of the process -- a quiz, an assignment, or some reading material -- and have not dealt with the multi-faceted and fluid nature of the real learning process. Read more... [XplanaZine]

11:18:14 PM