Plenty of stuff in two articles by Graeme Daniel at wwwtools for education, with information about MITs OpenCourseWare and Open Knowledge Initiative.
Worth reading or, at least, scanning.
[via sierto]
MIT: more on OpenCourseWare and Open Knowledge Initiative:
Importance of deselecting media in elearning
Who Needs Multimedia discusses some of the myths surrounding media use for elearning. I think the focus is off. The real question of media use is not “is the technology sufficiently advanced”, but “does it help the learner and improve the learning experience”. If it doesn’t add to the learning experience, don’t use it…doesn’t matter how “cool” or cutting edge it is. I’ve come to view the deselection of formats/concepts/activities in the learning design process as (almost) more important than the formats/concepts/activities that are included.
From Open Artifact and him from elearnspace and him from L&T Magazine
If you add to “If it doesn’t add to the learning experience, don’t use it” the fact that sometimes this multimedia stuff makes it thougher to people with bad connectivity or poor desktops, specially in underdevelopped countries, it gets really important to take in consideration the use of multimedia no “matter how “cool” or cutting edge it is”. And I guess some of the myths the article tries to demythologize still are not that clear in some whereabouts.
Virtual Educa
Next week I’ll be at Virtual Educa, “a strategic international annual conference – a multilateral forum – where experts from the education, government and business sectors analyze and share their expertise on the application of new technologies, information and communication systems to the education and training fields while examining the role of e-learning on today’s knowledge society”
I’ve yet to decide what I will exactly be assisting, but it looks like I’m interested in:
Wednesday, 16th june, 15:30 – 17:30
Internet and rural development
Wednesday, 16th june, 17:30 – 19:00
International Organizations and their contributions to Educational IT
Thursday, 17th june, 15:30-17:30
Cooperation for Development and professional training
Friday, 18th june, 09:00-10:00
ICTs and Comprehensive development
Friday, 18th june, 15:30-18:00
e-Training for accessibility and social exclusion avoidance
As always, anything interesting I might find there, I’d try and post.
Feel free to meet me. Barcelona’s quite nice these days :)
Virtual Forum on Free and Open Source Software for E-Learning (revisited)
I finally joined the Free Open Source Software for E-learning Forum.
The schedule of the Forum is as follows:
Session 1 (1-11 June)
- FOSS ? what is it and what should you know about it?
- FOSS for e-learning ? what are the pros and cons?
Session 2 (14-25 June)
- FOSS solutions for e-learning
The debate is quite interesting, but I’d rather catch up will all the messages I’ve got pending of reading :(
Hope I can post here the conclusions :)
MAX: Madrid Linux
Yet another Linux distribution for educational purposes, now by the Community of Madrid Government.
Linex, Lliurex, MAX… what’s next?
The first time I heard of it (Linex) I was excited. Now, I’m concerned: why not find synergies and save energies and enhance the previous distributions instead of making brand new ones? I wonder it’s because every single politician must profit the “return of investment” of his own political actions. Sad, so sad. They’re just blowing up the most basic principles of free software and the internet commons: collaboration.
No details in MAX Web Site, so don’t know if they joined efforts with the other mentioned projects. Any one knows?
[thanks to Yolanda Franco for the point :) ]
Reasons to set up the NGO’s intranet
Just a list of pros I sometimes am asked for and always have to think back.
You can also find some cons here: Reasons not to set up an intranet
- Manage your communications amongst NGO members in a rational way
- Keep in touch with people in your own headquarters, people in other organization’s offices and people in overseas destinations… within the same working framework
- Manage knowledge: keep the organization information, content, data, services and applications, and people who know how under the same environment
- Upload/download working documents and access them from wherever you are: headquarters, work, home, etc.
- Privacy: some information just don’t need being published in the Internet at everybody’s reach… but should be at a browser’s reach for members
- Help people feel they belong to the organization… even if they’re the last volunteer who signed in
- Build places where people can talk collectively in an informal way… and in a formal one too
- Know who’s who in the organization just one click away… and e-mail them or invite them to chat in the intranet’s instant messaging application
- Set up online volunteering programs… in a well-organized way
- Set up e-learning programs (some intranets can work as virtual learning environments too)
