Latest Post - Category: eLearning
Conference proposal as a set of tweets
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:57:13 +0200
Yes Virginia, it is the 21st Century. I was asked to supply a set of bullet points for a talk dealing with the future of education. That just seemed too 20th Century for me. Bullet points by email!!!!!! Bullet points are surely a symbol of being chained to the past. Email is for old people. So I tweeted the ideas, and told the organizer to read my tweets. #connected_context OR #sociosemantic - Twitter Search
One can't really sensibly talk about the future of education and use bullet points! Its just not sensible.
sociosemantic
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Some new research articles relevant to eLearning from the iJET journal
Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:38:20 +0200
This just in from Michael E. Auer, and it will be of interest to the eLearning team as well as academic staff who want to move into eLearning.
International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET) has just
published a new special issue at --> http://www.i-jet.org. We invite you to
have a look at the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to
review articles and items of interest.
*International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET)*
Volume 5, Special Issue: "ICL2009 - MashUps for Learning" (2010)
*Table of Contents*
-------------------
***Mashups for Learning - Editorial
(Martin Ebner, Ralf Klamma, Sandra Schaffert)
--> http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/1190
--> doi:10.3991/ijet.v5s1.1190
***ReMashed - An Usability Study of a Recommender System for Mash-Ups for
Learning
(Hendrik Drachsler, L. Rutledge, P. Van Rosmalen, H. Hummel, D. Pecceu, T.
Arts, E. Hutten, Rob Koper)
--> http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/1191
--> doi:10.3991/ijet.v5s1.1191
***Avant-garde Pedagogical Practise Utilizing Virtual Environments and
Machinima in Systems Development
(Naomi Dreher, Heinz Dreher)
--> http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/1193
--> doi:10.3991/ijet.v5s1.1193
***An Architecture to Support Learning, Awareness, and Transparency in
Social Software Engineering
(Wolfgang Reinhardt, Sascha Rinne)
--> http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/1194
--> doi:10.3991/ijet.v5s1.1194
***Personal Learning Environment - a Conceptual Study
(Behnam Taraghi, Martin Ebner, Gerald Till, Herbert Mühlburger)
--> http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/1195
--> doi:10.3991/ijet.v5s1.1195
***Collaborative Development of a PLE for Language Learning
(D. Renzel, C. Höbelt, D. Dahrendorf, M. Friedrich, Felix Mödritscher, K.
Verbert, S. Goevaerts, M. Palmer, E. Bogdanov)
--> http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/1196
--> doi:10.3991/ijet.v5s1.1196
***13th International Conference on Interactive Computer aided Learning -
ICL2010
(Call for Papers)
--> http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/1200
elearning research
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Transforming Higher Education Through Technology Enhanced Learning: downloadable book
Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:56:29 +0200
The UK Higher Education Academy’s new book, Transforming Higher Education Through Technology Enhanced Learning, is available for download from the web. One of its authors, Derek Morrison, used Wordle to generate tag clouds for the chapters, which makes for interesting reading. elearning
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Pranav Mistry demonstrates some of the potential of augmented reality
Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:03:10 +0200
At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop". In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all. This should give us a sense of some of the potential of augmented reality, which I covered briefly in a previous post. augmented reality
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The big eLearning gotcha: Insidious pedagogy
Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:24:42 +0200
First Monday has an interesting paper by Lisa M. Lane that talks about "insidious pedagogy". It should provide some lessons for us as we move into eLearning at Wits, with a new system and a new team supporting it. Course management systems, like any other technology, have an inherent purpose implied in their design, and therefore a built–in pedagogy. Although these pedagogies are based on instructivist principles, today’s large CMSs have many features suitable for applying more constructivist pedagogies. Yet few faculty use these features, or even adapt their CMS very much, despite the several customization options. This is because most college instructors do not work or play much on the Web, and thus utilize Web–based systems primarily at their basic level. The defaults of the CMS therefore tend to determine the way Web–novice faculty teach online, encouraging methods based on posting of material and engendering usage that focuses on administrative tasks. A solution to this underutilization of the CMS is to focus on pedagogy for Web–novice faculty and allow a choice of CMS.
Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems affect teaching
by Lisa M. Lane
First Monday, Volume 14, Number 10 - 5 October 2009
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2530/2303Well, perhaps not a choice of 'CMS' - and may we be cursed if we ever talk about 'CMS' or 'LMS' at Wits - but we certainly need to be on guard against the 'everything is the default' syndrome. We are fortunate to have a system that is highly flexible, and a team that can configure and adapt it and create innovation in the eLearning tools space. We must make sure we cater for the novice academics, and make sure we foster good pedagogies for connected eLearning in the 21st Century.
elearning
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Augmented reality - are we ready for the reality of it at Wits
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:25:35 +0200
A new technology explosion is in front of us, something that has been available only to military aircraft pilots until quite recently. This is augmented reality, something that is increasingly made possible by the combination of mobile computing, global positioning systems, geolocation based services, mobile cameras, cloud computing and large datasets such as that provided by Google maps and other mapping services. The rise of sophisticated cellphones with software that can send location information to a service, and that have access to the cellphone's built in camera and live image display. Information from the service can be displayed on the phone's screen, and mashed up with location, direction and the camera image.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about agmented reality, and it is brought to you by a feature in Chisimba that is similar to the kind of thing that could be used as a back end for augmented reality applications.
.... (click the title at the top of this box to go to Wikipedia and read more)
Late last year, I had lunch with a Wits graduate who is building augmented reality applications into his car. He is an engineer, and a DIY kind of guy, but his experience shows what is possible even now. I have an Android phone, and if I type Augmented reality in the Android market I get about 20 applications returned. Most of them are small, experimental or work for other parts of the world. This stuff is happening now, and it is going to be a space to play if we at Wits intend to be technology leaders, which I think we have to be if we are going to be in the space we want to be in as a world class university.
Here is a simple use of augmented reality on an Android phone for in-car navigation. I would find it very distracting, but it does show some of the simple potential.
Below are some videos that will help you understand the concept of augmented reality. This iPhone application helps locate the nearest subway station in London. As far as I know, there is an similar one for the Android as well.
Now, imagine that we had location information about sites at Wits, and students could do things like
- Where is my next class
- Where can I see information about human evolution
- Where can I go to learn about the history of medicine
and the phone could give directions and distance.
The phone then provides them realtime navigation information overlayed on top of the live view from their cellphone's camera.
Now, imagine a student in the Adler Museum, and she points her cellphone camera at an object in the museum, and the phone (via its back end service) recognizes the the object and provides detailed information overlaying the camera, and as the camera moves among objects, she gets detailed information about each object, including snippets from lectures about the history of medicine that pertain to this object. Imagine further that this is linked to the semantic and socially connected archive/museum/herbarium initiative that we are just starting in the Library, and she learns that an important document about the object in the history of medicine is housed in the Wits archive. The phone provides her with navigation instructions to the archive in real time, so she can go and look at the object, or bookmark its semantic and social location for later viewing in a web browser on a full screen.
Here is a slideshare presentation on Augmented Reality Language Learning – Virtual Worlds meet m-Learning.
Here is a slideshare presentation on Augmented reality given by Patrick Collings, 10 months ago at the Creative Cape Town section of the recently held Design Indaba. I include it here only because it is so close to home, and it effectively shows the importance of layers - layers of information that are location and object specific.
the real opportunities for us lie in the overlay of information on real life, using mobile technology as well as perhaps fixed information displays at critical locations which can be interacted with via mobile phone technologies.
Augmented reality is a technology still very much in its infancy. But it is coming, and it is coming with a speed and impact that are both large. Are we ready for it? Are we encouraging augmented reality research? Do we have an understanding of the impact tha it will have in all areas of operation from administration of students, campus navigation to eLearning? This is an area where Wits should work together across academic and support services and grab firmly hold of the bleeding edge.
Here are some links to sites that have information on augmented reality
- The Augmented Reality Homepage http://www.augmented-reality.org/
augmented reality
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Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) project gets funding
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:21:08 +0200
A $2.38 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Indiana University will be used to develop software created specifically for the management of print and electronic collections for academic and research libraries around the world. Kuali OLE project researchers will now work to create a next-generation library system that breaks away from print-based workflows and reflects the changing nature of library materials and new approaches to scholarly work. Read more.... library
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