incorporated subversion

Monday, March 29, 2004

Re-branding... teaching online lesson plans OK, so a little re-branding to reflect what's been going on with the plans, get better search engine relevance and perhaps get me burnin' on them again, gone is 'incorporated subversion: the book and here is teaching online lesson plans (which, much as I'd like to avoid 'teaching' and use 'facilitating' probably makes about as much sense as my continued wish to call 'blogs' 'personal and collaborative publishing tools' ;o)  9:09:12 PM    comments  trackback

Friday, March 26, 2004

Student AIM Debby Kilburn posted to ITForum yesterday about her use of AIM with students...most excellent ideas and reflection and reposted here with permission: "...I ask my students to sign up for AIM (http://www.aim.com) at the beginning of the semester and have them email me their username. I create a class list and encourage them to add their classmates to their buddy lists. The second week of class I post an assignment that asks them to contact three classmates through AIM and learn 3 new things about them. They then save and send me the log file. At the midpoint of the semester, I hold required online office hours just to touch base. I also have my AIM open when I am online most of the time and tell students that if they see me online, my office door is open. I have used this for several semesters now and it has worked extremely well. The students that take advantage of AIM report very high levels of satisfaction with the course and tend to do very well. They say they feel very connected and appreciate the access to their peers and instructor. I haven't had too many problems being overwhelmed by "chit chat" or being pestered by students because in the beginning we set out guidelines for use. For the occasional student who constantly pops their head into my virtual office door just to say hi, I have plan B... another screen name that I use only for friends and colleagues. I like being able to make a connection in this way and the students like it also." 10:27:35 AM    comments  trackback

Thursday, March 11, 2004

FAQs: Discussion Board Plan Learner Group: Any Group Size: Large Group (lot of teachers) Tool: Discussion Boards Timeframe: 2 weeks - Forever Focus: FAQ provision, consistency Introduction This isn't so much a lesson plan as a class management one. Basically you use a discussion board as a place where learners ask questions about the course (for example, about assignments) and you (and your colleagues) answer them. Suggested by Dr Eileen Honan  (who I'm lucky enough to have the odd conversation with) this kind of approach is used in a lot of support forum contexts (for example, Radio Userland offer a VERY good support structure IMO: http://radio.userland.com/discuss/ ) and offers several things: consistency (especially across a large course with multiple tutors), resources (time-saving & easy to access) and a teaching aid (really helping to guide the design of future materials / the unit in the future). Steps 1. Probably the most important thing to set up is an understanding with teachers and learners that all queries about, for example, assignments must be posted to the appropriate discussion forum you're using. Then you'll probably want to 'man' the forum with only one person at a time and build some sort of schedule making sure it gets checked every day. If you don't already have one you can get plenty of 'free' discussion forums... I'd go for http://groups.yahoo.com or http://nicenet.org if I were you. 2. Teachers and learners should be familiar with how to search the content of the forums and post appropriately (i.e. new threads for new issues). How you do this is up to you but if you can build in instructions into the page on which the discussion is on then that's the best way I think. 3. If you can, keep the forums open for the next semester. If not, you should certainly try to archive / store them as the kind of questions asked and issues raised will be invaluable collected together in better designing your courses and material. 12:12:59 PM    comments  trackback

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

RSS from the BBC Outstanding... RSS from BBC news (never noticed this one!) now I can... finally... keep up to date on the soccer through RSS. Wish the Guardian would follow suit! 2:25:41 PM    comments  trackback

Monday, March 08, 2004

Introducing RSS Learner Group: Any Group Size: >50 Tool: RSS Newsreader Timeframe: 2 weeks+ Focus: Introducing RSS Introduction This is kindofa rip off of earlier weblogs and rss lesson plans but I figured we need some quick 'Introduction to...' lessons which can familiarize learners with technologies and ideas that aren't so current (i.e. searching the web, email, web pages etc.) Basically learners start to use an RSS reader to keep track of information you're posting as a teacher, course related information and developments and stuff they're interested in.   Steps 1. First up you need to select an aggregator which you can all work with. Here's some lists: http://blogspace.com/rss/readers http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/directory/5/aggregators http://www.lights.com/weblogs/rss.html Unless all your learners are working from their own laptops I'd say go for a web-based such as: Bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com/ NewsisFree: http://www.newsisfree.com/ Feedster: http://www.feedster.com/ Personally, right now, I'd go for bloglines (although Feedster is pretty interesting too - if a bit slow and clunky) However, if learners can use desktop based aggregators then walk that way... especially if they integrate with their email app! 2. Make sure you're familiar with it... use it for a bit :o) 3. Think about what'll get your learners using it, I'd recommend: -Post important info (tasks, dates, details) as well as regular / interesting info on your class blog. -Make sure you've got lots of course-relevant RSS feeds to hand to share around... you can get these through a ton of ways... these are probably the easiest: Relevant blogs / Feedster Searches http://www.feedster.com/ /  News Sources (Like Yahoo http://news.yahoo.com/rss/  / PubSub http://www.pubsub.com / News Sources http://backend.userland.com/directory/167/feeds/newYorkTimes or http://www.newsisfree.com/ [This'll need a major search engine and academic dbases to use it before it REALLY cracks on though] -Using the above to get learners subscribing to stuff they're interested in... hey, you can even start with Dilbert (or any number of daily comic feeds!) http://dwlt.net/tapestry/ 4. Get learners to sign up with / download a news reader, give them feeds (course & class) that you'd like them to sign up to and let them roam for others... ask them to email any new ones they have (if they don't blog) and post them on the class blog to share [if your learners already blog... get them to share their rss feeds and get signed up to each other] 5. Ask learners to check their aggregators every weekday for the next two weeks and think about their value, how they could help them. 6. After 2 weeks, have a discussion on the benefits of and problems with news aggregating, devise a path to 'better aggregating', ask learners to implement this and reflect on the value of aggregation as a hurdle task down the track. 7. Provide, throughout the term, useful rss feeds (especially relevant to assessments and major tasks). Extras & Tips: -Although this is designed as a 'stand alone' RSS introduction I reckon aligning it with weblogging (especially in the social sense of subscribing to each others feeds and having conversations about news & resources) can be a much more rewarding experience... perhaps :O) 4:04:36 PM    comments  trackback

What Wiki Works Best? Sebastian asked in these comments "do you have any recommendations for a Wiki system?" which is well worth asking out loud here I think. So... what wiki works best? I don't really have an answer... but I think I can throw out some specs (I've had a play around with several and these have bee n important factors... Free Hosted by someone else (for us techno-dunces) Multiple-edit-possible (i.e. if two people are editing at the same time one can't overwrite what the other has done) Good lookin' (no TNR, please... please) Easily backupable (for soft security purposes) Solid... so everything doesn't disappear at a whim RSSifyed (this is rapidly becoming a MUST) A nice add-on would be the ability to secure pages if need be I think I'm asking too much... am I? 10:19:17 AM    comments  trackback

Friday, March 05, 2004

Wiki Activities Catalogue Well buy me a syrup and call me 'ginger', here (.pdf), pointed to by Doug Holton (presumably this guy rather than this one :o) is a rather natty collection of educational activities (non-subject specific) using Wikis. Good plans too! With teacher feedback! I might as well give up and go home (or hey, I could quietly steal them... d'oh too late ;o) A MUST HAVE if you're thinking of teaching with or are teaching using a wiki...very very very cool! 3:51:09 PM    comments  trackback

Wiki Basics & Wiki RSS Feeds Hey, cool referrer brings me Wiki School Basic Course which looks like a most excellent introduction-to-wikis-type-thing and has some pretty useful links too (including me ;o)! It's got an RSS feed too which is exciting... either I'm totally blind or I haven't seen an RSS enabled wiki before (could be for the whole wiki or just this section) perhaps... and this is a pretty significant possibility I reckon... Wikis haven't taken off simply because they haven't had that 'push' syndication thing... could this be the beginning? 10:21:38 AM    comments  trackback

Thursday, March 04, 2004

Wikipedia Code So, while creating your class wikipedia why not use the real thing, sweeet. A new version of (_thanks Tom_!) the code that runs the Wikipedia is available for general users, including multi-lingual support and the ability to display mathematical formulae and other hard layout challenges using LaTEX.... [Many-to-Many] 1:27:01 PM    comments  trackback

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Micro-WikiPedia: Wiki Lesson Plan Learner Group: Any Group Size: Any Tool: A Wiki Timeframe: 2 weeks - 10 years+ Focus: Sharing resources, collaborating Introduction Based on the rather marvelous Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page this lesson plan is especially useful if you teach a similar course each year / semester. However, if you have a nice institution then this could be used across courses to pretty good effect! Basically it involves collaboratively building a knowledge resource for a particular subject area. Your learners build it together, recognizing the value of sharing (i.e. they suddenly have access to plenty more resources - suggested by their peers! - than they ever had before) and building on / adding to resources developed by previous cohorts. Steps 1. First up you need to have a wiki tool, there are plenty out there, you could try  http://www.seedwiki.com/ or http://www.bloki.com/ for free. 2. Secondly you need to get your learners familiar with Wikis (see forthcoming plan, 'Getting learners familiar with wikis'). A quick way of doing this is to get them to build a class list identifying similarities between themselves and other learners (hence building your class dynamics). 3. Now take your learners to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and get them to critically review some sections... what's useful, what's not, what do they think of the concept etc. 4. Now set them the task of building a micro-wikipedia for the subject they're studying (or building on a past one). They can use the structure in wikipedia or you can kick it off with a template for them to work from. If there's already one there then that should dictate things nicely (although never rule out complete makeovers or dramatic changes) [If someone has some of these going could they drop a comment so people can use these as models] 5. A simple assessment piece is to tell learners that as a hurdle task they need to reflect on the value (or otherwise) of their experience contributing to and using the Wiki. Extras & Tips: -Again, soft security is important (keeping a daily backed-up copy so someone doesn't accidentally delete the whole shebang) -The degree to which you might moderate this is an important question, personally, I'd encourage encourage encourage people to go there (to the extent of posting my resources there) but wouldn't interfere with how it goes. But that's me... I'm slack ;o) 3:39:08 PM    comments  trackback