e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

Video Killed the Radio Star but What About the Instructional Designer?

I have to say that I remember a couple of years ago when Instructables came on the scene and I thought that their setup was a nice way to create some very interesting instruction.Well now it seems that the  youtube effect is trickling down to instruction and we are seeing maybe the next stage or I hope another stage (additive in other words not zero sum) that is employing video.  There is Video Jug,  5min Life Videopoedia,   and Sclipo - just to name the ones open in my browser at present.

I am still trying out all three - hey! that's how you tie a Windsor knot - but my initial impression is that while all are good, Video Jug and Sclipo have caught my eye quickest. Video Jug is nicely implemented and  has some typical but well done features like ratings, embedding code and they have done a great job making many of the videos available for download in a range of formats include for the PSP - now there is one you don't see every day! Video Jug also prides itself on the fact that the videos it hosts are not done by your neighbor's kid but rather "Every video on our website has been carefully researched and professionally produced or vetted (in the case of user-generated content) with an eye toward quality and value." This is great and one wonders what Keen might think of it but then they do wax a bit hyperbolic when they say "VideoJug embraces its mission of being the definitive source for credible answers and wisdom for every conceivable aspect of human life. They are of course free and ad supported by Google ads.

Then we have Sclipo. Feature wise, many of the same features and employing some nice design as well. The business model here though is a bit different. First, your neighbor's kid could upload a video to Sclipo unlike Video Jug but what I find intriguing is the "Sclipo Live" section - it features the tag line "the learning revolution." 

Two Papers from Downes and Siemens That I Need to Re-Read

Way back in December of '04, George Siemens wrote a great piece entitled "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" (his site indicates that he updated it in April of '05 and there is now a whole blog/community around this paper). Then in December of '05 (what is about winter, deep thinking and Canadians?) Stephen Downes published "An Introduction to Connective Knlowedge" (along with the 1.5 hour audi version).

I need to re-read these pieces again (and go through all the connectivism stuff on George's other site) and I thought I'd just take a minute to make sure that you knew of them as well. Be warned though - clear some time to go through these - not because of the writing - they're both fine writers - but this is long form and packed with ideas, thoughts and pieces that will surely send you off in other directions as well.

Swaptree...Another Possible Solution to An Object-Oriented Economy?

Here comes Swaptree. Sounds like one of those dot.com's doesn't it? Except here is the thing...I wonder if this effort doesn't provide us a window on how we could create incentives for content producers to participate in a market of their own learning/knowledge/whatever objects. This is one quote from the review that really caught my eye: "You first notice that Swaptree is different from other systems when you enter an item that you're putting up for trade. Swaptree shows you exactly what you can get for it, not what it's worth in the abstract. Enter more items, and the list of things you can get expands."

I love this idea that the more you put into the system, the more you'll be able to get out of it and that the formula for that is not one based on quantity market demand. Hmmm...if I spend a long time crafting a beautiful piece of Flash animation that explains some complex process, the not only can I get a lot for it - but I can get a lot for it again and again - since all trades on Swaptree are person-to-person. Second eye-catching quote: "In Swaptree, there are no credits. All trades are person to person. You list on the site what you want to trade out and what you want to get, and whenever there's a match, the system will enable you to do a direct one-to-one trade with a person who has something you want and wants something you have."

I wonder.....

LAMS 2.0 Released

If you haven't tried LAMS out yet, maybe now is the time. They have a partnership with Moodle, are working integration issues with Sakai, have a BlackBoard LAMS Building Block and have just released LAMS 2.0 with a revised architecture that looks a lot like it is learning from Web 2.0 trends. You can check out the wiki here, or get a test drive of LAMS on one of their servers here.

Solid Article on Copyright in Education (Innovate)

Creative Commons: A New Tool for Schools by Howard Pitler

Doesn't this story just warm your heart?

"One of my students showed me an early cut of his video, and I noticed that the music he had used for the soundtrack was a remix of songs by some of his favorite artists. We had discussed copyright guidelines in class, and the student thought that he was within "fair use" because he only used 10-second clips from a number of songs and sampled other sounds into the mix. Since the videos were going to be shown outside of our class and entered in a statewide technology contest and since he also had altered the original music, I advised the student to get permission to use those clips from the copyright owner. The story could have ended happily with the record company's agreeing to allow him to use and modify the music. Instead, my student received a very nice but pointed letter telling him in no uncertain terms that the record company would not allow him to use its music, even for the purpose he had described."

BellSouth Foundation Paying $600K to develop measures of effectiveness for online instruction

The BellSouth Foundation evidently has a $20 million program called the BellSouth 20/20 Vision for Education. According to the press release it: "is designed to bring engaging, rigorous, online instruction to students throughout the Southeast -- particularly low-income and minority students -- to address the growing achievement gap and improve graduation rates." The release goes on to note how this initiative is really aimed at supporting virtual schools and e-learning (not shocking for a bandwidth company).

The kicker is that out of this $20M pot, they are actually setting aside $600K to build an assessment program for the online instruction. Researchers at the University of Florida will develop "standardized methods for evaluating the effectiveness of online education for students" and will then use that data to research best practices focusing specfically on diverse student population issues.

Well kudos to the BellSouth Foundation. I hope I am not alone in thinking (hoping) that the tools and data derived from this study could move our entire field closer to a better understanding on assessing the quality of online instruction.

Blackboard Backpack and Offline Access

I like the fact that Blackboard is developing this capability for students to not only use their content offline but also to create more of an environment for learning - your notes, tests, etc. all in one place. Great. Good for them.

Here is my concern - I do understand that this environment is a product that Blackboard sells and either I'm not aware of I haven't seen many other competitor products BUT what I hope is that all this info that is coming from the student - notes, test answers, etc. - remains in some easily transportable format like XML.

I still have a lot of my notebooks from college and grad school and that paper can be easily pulled out of one box and put in another, I can also transcribe them or digitally scan them so I have a copy and can easily share them. I just know how many times I switch organizers not to mention what if someone changes schools and goes into a non-Blackboard environment...anyway kudos to BB but lets have some open data formats as well.

"Has eLearning Revolutionized Education?"

(story link)

A fairly balanced, academic-ish look at the impact/future of e-learning...what really struck me was that it appeared in EMBASSY: Canada's Foreign Policy Newsweekly

"Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005" (Sloan-C Foundation Report)

This report by the Sloan-C Foundation is based on responses from over 1,000 universities with the respondent usually at the Provost level. The full report is available as a free download here. The Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness (A-HEC) also offers its own analysis of the data here.

Interesting tidbits:
**Seventy-four percent of Public colleges report that their online courses are taught by core faculty, as opposed to only 61% for their face-to-face courses.

**The largest increases [of schools identifying online education as a critical long-term strategy] were seen in Associates degree institutions where 72% now agree that it is part of their institution’s long-term strategy, up from 58% in 2003.

**The online enrollment growth rate is over ten times that projected by the National Center for Education Statistics for the general postsecondary student population.

Just further evidence that more and more of the workforce will experience online learning as a routine part of their education prior to entering the workforce.

South Korea + e-Learning +Linux?

So these two stories (story 1, story 2) lead to believe that S. Korea could really be serious about pushing e-learning on a national scale and the fact that their Korea Institute for Electric Commerce (KIEC) earlier this year signed an MOU with the ADL Initiative lends further context to how that push might go (in line with other lobal standards). New markets are good.

But then I see this little story (Financial institutions lead march to Linux in Korea) which details numerous S/ Korean government pushes toward Linux and I wonder how ready the e-learning market is to deploy systems that run on both Windows and Linux (the answer could well be - very ready thank you).