7.05 Flash exercises

I focused on Sound (chapter 13) and forms (chapter 14) in week 7 posting them at Week 7 exercises.

Note the page and its contents are quite large. Also don't have your volume up too loud as it starts playing almost immediately. pressing the stop button on the second example (top right) will stop the background music.

There are some interesting sound effects. Found the synchronisation exercise quite fiddly - trying to match lengths of animation to soundtrack and vie-versa. Also had problems with the music selector and need to re-visit this at some point - buttons are in a bit of a mess due to playing around with them. Tutorial invites you to break them apart to allow the text to be coloured when the music is playing - this tends to throw the positioning ig you're not careful. However it does show how you can use a series of buttons to play a soundtrack.

The forms and components chapter was okay but not very useful - may explore this further through other material.Would have liked more material on this showing how it can be used for Q & A type exercises.

Becta Communities : online conference structures

A series of online conferences in BECTA:

• Becta Communities : Digital Video in Schools Conference
  
• ICT Advice Online Conference and Exhibition May 2002
  
• ICT Advice Science online Inset 2004
• ICT Advice online Insets 2004
  
  
• ICT in Schools across the UK
  
• Game Online Conference
  

7.01 - Learning Objects

There seem to be numerous web sites associated with the ideas behind learning objects. The first one The Instructional Use of Learning Objects -- Online Version had a variety of interesting articles. Others include:

- Learning Objects
- LEARNING OBJECT TUTORIAL
- Learning Object Repositories
- Learning Objects Portal
- Learning about Learning objects
- Learning Objects - Resources
- Learning Objects and Pedagogy Grant Program .

From my own perspective the key point is the ability to design the chunks of material to make them independant of the framework they are sitting in. i.e. the chunks need to deliver a specific learning point that is generic to many areas.

Firstly conceptually the piece can be attached into several different learning strands. So for instance in my own CBT a 'food and drink - ordering drinks and sacks' could be built and used across a number of modules delivering basic Italian e.g. saying hello, ordering Food and drink, Tourism, etc. For example at the level of 'ordering coffee' it's applicability could be across a number of modules in different settings.

Secondly the chunk could be at a level that allows it to be adapted into different learning vehicles. So for example a 'generic' design for saying hello could be similar across different languages. The chunk could then be adapted to bring together appropriate materials depending on the language.

The idea for the CBT would therefore to build the Flash objects at a low enough level to be able to use them within the structure at various points i.e. the Flash CBT would in effect be a series of combined files rather than one large file.

For the more technical the IEEE WG12: Learning Object Metadata site contains a wealth of material.

Many LMS are getting into this idea as the article WebCT Announces Real-Time Delivery of MERLOT Learning Objects indicates. The most recent incarnation of WebCT (WebCT Vista) does advertise itself as allowing the re-usability of Learning Objects.

Teaching and Developing Online - LMS +

The link Teaching and Developing Online.: November 2004 Archives is a blog will focus on the teaching of High School online. Packed full of interesting links I found it via LMS: The wrong place to start learning article suggested by Emma.

I think that latter article articulates more clearly what I have trying to comment on throughout my work in these areas i.e. what role has a VLE / LMS / Virtual school in todays envrionment for learning.

Is there a dissertation in this?

6.05 Reflection on week 6

Wondered why this wasn't showing on the blog - Forgot to turn the posting from draft to actual. Anyway I've made an entry in my reflective journal for week 6.

Happy reading.

The eLearning Guild

This looks like a useful link: The eLearning Guild

6.0x Flash examples

At last I managed to get week 6 examples across to the server.

6.01 Communites again

Some further nuggets:

While looking for issues in online communities I found the paper social cohesion and online community extremely incisive and worth a glance. This paper is part of a project looking into theories of the ways and extent that computer based networks contribute to reinforcing social cohesion and capital.

The paper Cultural and critical dimensions in a virtual power struggle also makes some useful points in that it addresses issues asscoiated with students undertaking purely online courses without F2F - an area where there appears to be little research.

Another paper looks at motivation important in relation to Salmon's first stage.It is especially interesting as it introduces Keller's ARCS model as a measuring tool. Further reading on this can be found at:

• Keller's ARCS Model of Motivation
• Unit 4: Motivation and learning
• Motivation to learn

6.01d - trolls on the internet

A simple search on 'managing trolls' and 'trolls on the net' brought vast reams of material some related to the topic. What appeared to work best was to identify a related resources and follow the links.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia has a fairly extensive explanation of the issues with 'Trolling'. It also has links to other sites including a reference to the paper we have been asked to read.

(The same content also seems to be posted The free dictionary.

One of the links gives advice on managing the troll and recommends Andrew Heenans guide to flaming. Another view on managing the troll is given by Diane Wilson.

Because many beleive that trolling is an inevitable part of the internet it might be important to consider the difference between a troll and a flamer, the description at Internet Trolls describes asects that could be flaming and how we can identify a true troll as opposed to someone pushing a discussion too far.

And I thought they were simply a character in the Lord of the Rings. You learn something everyday.

6.02 Evaluation of learning criteria

I am finding it difficult to identify 10 key points for assessing a piece of CBT. Most of the sites visited seem to offer more complex solutions.

Though not strictly CBT the CIDOC: Multimedia Working Group: Multimedia Evaluation Criteria highlights the need to break the criteria into five sections:

• Content
• Functionality
• Interface
• Implementation
• Overall Impact

Some of the questions within the sections would seem to be relevant to any 'web' based products.

A more comprehensive 'method' is available through peer review of an online course. This has five main sections as follows:

• Instructional design
  • clarity of expectations
  • building student knowledge
  • learning activities
  • assessment
  • evaluation
  • human interaction
  • support
• Interface design
• use of media
  • interactive multimedia
  • writing style/text accuracy
  • copyright
• technical aspects
• comments
  

It is also worth considering the more general evaluations for web sites in genreal e.g. Ten usability Heuristics or guidlines for multimedia on the web.

Two sites offering links to other papers on evaluation are LTDE and peer review

Learning Theories of Instructional Design

I'm not sure if this was on any of our reading lists but the paper Learning Theories of Instructional Design seems to have quite a lot of useful information.

LMS: Learning Management Systems

A summary of what a learning managment system (aka VLE) can be found at LMS: Learning Management Systems

The Interactive Syllabus - A Resource-based, Constructivist Approach To Learning

Given our recent research in constructivist learning I liked the approach described in The Interactive Syllabus - A Resource-based, Constructivist Approach To Learning . It has lots of links to diagrams and other pages (some not found) and even a Flash animation.

EDUCAUSE Quarterly - Volume 27 - Number 4 2004

The article
The Real Story Behind the Failure of U.K. eUniversity is worth reading on how wholly online learning can fail big time.

5.06 Reflection on Week 5

Forgot to say that I finally posted my week 5 reflective journal.

Over the last two weeks I have been posting more and more into draft form only publishing when I am happy with the content. Not sure if this is working very well. Am also trying to use the dates to get a sens of continuity so that different items appear together where appropriate.

So if my Blog looks in a mess or you are not seeing / being notified correctly then I apologise. One thing I will have to do is look into some code to show only first few lines of posting - I know that examples exist atblogger.com but just haven't got round to implementing it.

Blooms Taxonomy

In undertaking some revision work on the above I found this site called A picture is worth a thousand thoughts which I thought explained quite neatly the various levels using a photograph a photograph.

I found it through a link on Bloom's taxonomy in action ... online

Other sites I found were:

Major Categories in the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Learning objectives - a practical overview

designing technology based instruction

The latter site was a simplistic CAL / CBT package.

5.04 More Instructional Strategy information

I found this page after I posted the last lot of information. It was set up by the National Employee development Center and is calledISD - Specifying Instructional Strategies .

5.04 Information on Instructional Strategies

Some resources when thinking about this:

• Glossary of Instructional Strategies
  
• Instuctional strategies
  
• Learning Strategies
  
• Implications of Distributed Learning for Instructional Designers
  
• Instructional Strategies
  
• ADDIE Based Five-Step Method Towards Instructional Design
  
• Learning Theory and Instructional Design
  
• CREATING POWERFUL ONLINE COURSES USING MULTIPLE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES
  

Depite research in this area I am unsure how to phrase the instructional strategies - I have a rough idea but, from my rapid application development background, would prefer to think them through as I develop a prototype. This issue is succintly addressed in a paper discussing Introduction to Instructional Design and the ADDIE Model which discusses the ADDIE model alongside other approaches.

The site e-Learning Centre (e-learning information and services) has a usefult set of articles on a range of elearning topics.

5.02 - Discussion board software

Looked around the various types of software but got rather 'lost' because I could not see how they could be implemented easily, Would have liked to see some real demonstrations / real applications of the various chat/board type software. However did recognise IPB Demo Board as the basis for the ECE discussion boards within the University.

Found the look round activeworlds and MOOAPI quite useful. The latter has some entertaining demos. Tried to set up a test MOO with activewords but failed as it 'did not recognise me as a user'. It wouldn't even let me send an anonymous support message. Started to think about trying to set something up through their download software until noticed it was over 2 megabytes.

I ran out of time on this one so may return to it later by reading appropriate chapters in 'E-Learning Tools..' book . An initial skim read of this seemed to suggest that this book was concise and clear in its definitions.

5.02 - Virtual learning Environments (1)

Can I ask a those with more experience whether they think Moodle is a better / more usable product than the two biggies WebCT and Blackboard. I note that Moodle advertises itself as supporting 'social constructivism and seems to have an active set of supporting documentation in the various areas which you can access with a guest login. There is also a nice demo version available. I think it would be interesting to test this VLE out with a course and look at in comparison with various other software approaches. For example Atutor seemed more like a 'portal / communication tool'.

I also tried to refresh my memories of Bodington common but unfortunately access to the university of Leeds bit seems to come up with a 'page not found'. Before you could actualy browse how various departments were using it, this had the feel of a MOO/MUD being organised in buildings, floors and rooms. As a piece of 'free' open source softtware this is worth looking at.There is a succinct overview of the project as a whole.

I ran the edutools comparison for WebCT, BlackBoard, Bodington, Moodle, COSE and Atutor and the resultant surevey makes interesting reading. I think the key problem is the types of LMS / VLEs andthe type of learning they are trying to support.

5.01 Discussion lists

Notes.

Newsgroups

Firstly there seems to be a lot of spurious postings with a single entry in many of the lists I looked into on 'usenet' - maybe I was looking at the wrong ones. Seems a lot of effort for little return - I don't see unless one set up a specific 'newsgroup' for your own topic how they can be effectively used.

One of the problems is discussion groups is the organisation /visualisation of information. I like googles approach to this in that the structure shows on the left and the message on the right as in the thread about Content managment systems

Lists

Yahoo groups - Many of the list seem to have very few members which made me wonder whether they had critical mass to survive or what purpose they served. Difficult to find one that is useful although decided to joint the Instructional Designers Forum. Yahoo groups is an advertised service so there seem to be alot of adverts to get through. Even with quite a few members it seemd empty and irrelevant.

JISCmail - I think this is a great type of lists service and have used it regularly i.e. where the community is fairly focused and allows user to browse or join where appropriate e.g. the site for the Association of History and Computing or The Computing in Archaeological Fieldwork. Although the latter example shows one of the weaknesses of the JISCMail lists in that it does not clearly indicate that the list is no longer used. The other weakness is knowing which group is the relevant one to join - I would think that these lists perhaps support other F2F communities and have not come into their own through the buildingf of an online community. I'd be interested to read around the subject of creation and management of such lists so that they have an effective purpose.

BECTa Communities - this seemed quite active and focused on a 'conference' type mechanism. Interestingly one of the areas I found was a group for the ICT Advice Online Conference and Exhibition May 2002' although you may not be able to access it unless you join th eBECTA community - quite simple to do. It's worth looking at because we could use how they have organised it as an example for ours - the web pages are extremely clear and concise.

Discussion boards - I found these, while perhaps low in numbers and participation, quite useful in that they are like lists fairly clear, concise and specific. Both the common room and VLS seem to have some useful threads although many posting seem quite out of date for the latter. The flash discussion board seemed enormous and provided lots of topics and tips.

Conclusions

There needs to be careful thought and management of discussion type boards before using them within online learning / communities. The online communities book specifically refers to some of the issues associated with this type of list e.g. too many / too few postings. As a user one wonders whether the effort is worth while for the return that is gained. Benefits come from actively being involved and using them as a forum to get information or alternatively as a messaging service for experts interested in that field.

4.06 Reflection on Week 4

Have finally posted an entry for week 4 in my reflections journal.

Getting this one published has been somewhat of a disaster. Started as a draft post I came to finalise it for posting. I managed to post it during downtime of Blogger.com which meant I lost it and the draft. So this is the third version.

International Journal of Learning Technology (IJLT)

The International Journal of Learning Technology (IJLT) is new and has a few useful articles in it. Of especial interest is the article by Oleg Liber who as part of his inaugural lecture in May 2003 looked at the relationship between cybernetics, e-learning and the education system.

After a run around some of the models of educational organisation (some of which should be recognisable from WEPAP) he goes onto discuss the role of elearning. One paragraph stands out in which he states that while "VLEs at first seemed to offer new possibilities for learning ... the widespread adoption of VLEs by colleges and universities has seen the emergence of market leaders that while certainly providing for new models of access, do not promote pedagogical diversity, instead opting for an online version of the traditional delivery model."

While the paper emphasises the problems of elearning within the structured educational system I found it quite positive.

5.07 Flash Tutorials

Spent a couple of hours on this this week. I focused on chapters 10 (Movie clips) and 12 (working with text) before going back to actionscripts. The chapter on text does have some actionscript examples in it which made life a little dificult.

Examples can be found at my week five page.

Not overtly impressed with the textual handling in Flash - seem to need to write fairly basic HTML to make the text look anything like decent.

4.03 MOOs and MUDs - Tappedin

I was intrigued by ideas behind the TappedIn website, I now realise that the University of Leeds VLE 'Bodington common' borrowed their structure from the ideology of AREA/BUILDINGS/FLOORS/ROOMS.

I like the way that the whole stucture seems to have a massive amount of flexibility within an intrinsic structure. I'm also astounded by the amount or resources available either as materials e.g. chemsense , virtual offices e.g. Venny Su's Office , groups etc.

I also thought the interface was well designed given the busy nature of the information - see Introduction to the User Interface. Because you can control your own settings and have the ability to join various communities the MOO/MUD becomes a personalised 'gateway' to the learning available - an important factor in motivation, empowerment and ownership.

I think the idea of a 'CAMPUS' is extremely exciting and would be interested to discuss how this idea of 'CAMPUS' can be utilised within a VLE at a university. Indeed does this structure show that the model within the commercially available VLE software is in fact to inflexible and does not match what is th ephysical reality?

There are some useful links to other papers and sites, for example NETC Circuit | Spring 2004 provides some interesting insights into the ideas of building learning communities.

cheers

4.06 Flash Tutorials

For week 4 I completed chapters 8 (Bitmaps) and 9 (Buttons) in the hands on training book. I've attached the various exercises to the following web page:

Week 4 flash tutorials - examples

These two chapters took a lot longer than I thought they would as I had to go over the material a couple of times to get it right.

cheers

3.05 Reflection on week 3

Have finally posted an entry for week 3 in my reflections journal.

Having re-read it it sems a little dry and uninteresting.

JISC - Distributed e-Learning Strand

It is often difficult to keep up with the number of JISC projects being undertaken. Terry(?) referred to the Ramble project on BLOGS being undertaken by Oxford University and documented at Ramble . However this is only one of many programmes within a wider Distributed e-Learning Strand .

The list as always strikes me as interesting in that may seem to be 'seed-corn' initiatives providing localised rather than national benefits. For example several are associated with bodington common the MOO/MUD type VLE used at Leeds and Oxford. Given that 'Ramble' project is trying to integrate weblogs into the bodington common VLE has a couple of implications:

- Firstly how will the commercial proprietary VLEs react
- Secondly what is the reason for doing this

On the first point can a product like WebCT be opened up / organised to either integrate with existing tools or utilise the existing tools that exists. One drawback with WebCT seems to be that as a community tool it seems to be fairly closed and restrictive. This fact was emphaisised in Mike Blamires opening comments at the ESCalate VLE conference in which he mentioned that the VLEs are effectively virtual walled gardens without doors or corridors for access elsewhere.

I don't see why this is so given that it could be opened up at a higher level to allow community building at award level. One could imagine a much more open environment upto including students having their own diary areas with invited access . It would be intereting to see 'development' plans for some of these tools. For example some see The weblog as the model for a new type of virtual learning environment . Other similar comments have been raised by James Farmer

On the second point are Oxford simply re-inventing the wheel. Tools for communication and reflection seem to sit more comfortably within their own stream rather than within the VLEs, Communication is part of a bigger process and should not necessarily be seen to be solely a part of the learning, teaching and assessment process. Oxfords on comment on personal reflections and VLEs seems to be a autonomous part of the process.There seem to be masses of these around including VLEs with this as their main aim e.g. First class .

I note that some university elearning area are beginning to use blogs e.g. Bath University elearning seem to have a blog called Auricle

Semantic cartography to support conceptual development through blogs

All,

I found the article Semantic cartography to support conceptual development through blogs on the Warwick website about blogs worth reading as it describes how one person is using blogs.

The University of Warwick site recommended by Terry is worth looking at from a perspective of a 'corporately' sponsored approach to the provision of services of benefit to all. Characteristics that seem really nice are categories and groupings.

On the down side I wonder what business benefit there was to developing the services inhouse when there are so many freebies around.

cheers