Week 11 - Quality Principles for digital resources

I found this article “Quality principles for digital learning resources” from Becta timely now that we are in the final lap of creating a digital learning object ourselves. The article outlines the key quality principles relating to the design and use of digital learning resources to support effective learning and teaching.

The principles serve as guide that we could use when designing digital resources or choosing one. The principles are divided into two groups which are interrelated:
1) Core pedagogic principles, which underpin effective learning and teaching, drawing from learning theory and commonly accepted best practices.
2) Core design principles, covering issues such as resource design, accessibility and interoperability.

Core pedagogic principles :
Inclusion and access, learner engagement, effective learning, assessment to support learning, robust summative assessment, innovative approaches, ease of use and match to curriculum.

Core design principles :
Digital learning resource design, robustness and support, human computer interaction, quality asset, accessibility, interoperability, testing and verification and effective communication.

The principles that we use will depend on the educational purpose of the resources that we are developing. The article explains each of the above principles and provides suggestions on how we could go about achieving them. For further reading, click on the link below.

http://learningandskills.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=32112&page=1886&catID=1868

Week 10 - Online quizzes

Providing feedback on learning is a valuable tool in a learning process. With large classroom size that I face back home in my school, I find using online quizzes just the right tool to monitor a student’s understanding of a topic. In ordinary paper and pencil quizzes, students need to wait for a paper quiz to be marked and returned. With online quizzes, students are able to obtain immediate feedback on their understanding.
What is good is the time saving features associated with online quizzes:
-saves teachers a lot of time by reducing the hours required for printing, administering and marking.
-allow teachers to edit / update quiz questions easily.
-log on students’ answers helps a teacher analyze student performance easily.
-Availability of quiz for students at any time.
With the above time saving features, teachers are freed to invest their time in setting appropriate question types with increasing cognitive requirements (content and knowledge, application, analysis, synthesis).

References:
Peat, Mary (2000): Online assessment: The use of web based self assessment materials to support self directed learning.
Carbone, Angela (1996): Developing and Integrating A Web-based Quiz into the Curriculum

Week 9 - Assignment 2 - Learning Object

Audience: Year 6 students

Objective: From this learning object, students will be able to learn how plants make food. They will learn that water, light energy and carbon dioxide are needed for photosynthesis and sugar and oxygen are the products of photosynthesis.
The graphic on the first slide provides a pictorial representation of the process of photosynthesis. It shows:
-the condition necessary for photosynthesis – sunlight, water, chlorophyll and carbon dioxide
-the products of photosynthesis – sugar and oxygen.
Each word on the graphic is linked to a slide which explains its part in the process of photosynthesis.

To assess their own learning, a quiz in the form of a crossword puzzle is created.

For the final project, a podcast will be created, to provide students with an overview on the process of photosynthesis.

Click here to access the slides.

Week 8 - Audio editing tool

When I was reading about podcasting tips from the podomatic website, I found the recording tool from Audacity very useful. You can record and edit your voice with extreme ease. Once recorded, you can export your files in MP3 format. However, to export it in a MP3 format you would need to download an encoder.
Try it out.Free tool.
Site to download the audacity file : http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Site to download encoder to convert to MP3 files: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3

Week 7 - Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Well structured information can be taught in a traditional linear fashion. When a subject is ill-structured and complex, Cognitive Flexibility Theory is most effective.

According to cognitive flexibility theory, when information is straight forward and simple, there is no problem presenting it in a linear fashion such as in a video which runs from beginning to end. However, when complexity of information increases, using linear instruction such as tutorials and lectures to present information results in failure to accomplish important educational objectives. This is because using linear models results in oversimplification of the way the material is presented. As such the students will not be able to transfer knowledge across to new and varied situations (Spiro, et al., 1992). It is important to help students transfer what they have learned to different situations. This ability is often referred to as "cognitive flexibility." The way students are taught would determine how they create, store and structure knowledge and how flexible they will be when they must use that knowledge. To encourage cognitive flexibility requires a flexible teaching environment. Information must be presented in a variety of ways, as well as for a variety of different purposes. By doing so, students will be able to readily transfer what they have learned to different situations. The computer and the format of hypertext are well-suited to flexible instruction. It allows for multiple presentations of information. Content is covered a number of times with different purposes. The use of hypertext enables students to explore the content from different perspectives.

The link below illustrates how cognitive flexibility theory is used in teacher education.
http://www.kdassem.dk/didaktik/l4-16.htm

Week 6 - The power of pocasting

Podcasts are just digital audio files (MP3s) made available over a website; users can listen to them on their PCs, or download them to an MP3 player such as an iPod. Some models of iPods have video screens which would allow students to see the lecture as well hear it.
Its great attractions are its flexibility and its inclusivity: it can meet the needs of a diverse range of students, including those with dyslexia, or visual or hearing impairments. It has proved particularly useful for those students who for good reasons can't attend every lecture. It has begun the trend that eventually gives people access to learning wherever they are in the world, and whatever their personal circumstances.
Podcasting have the potential to make education a more learner-centric experience. It changes the way students learn. Allows them to ruminate, and listen again to lectures and tutorials thereby encouraging critical and analytical thinking.
So far I have heard of the use of podcasts in higher learning institutions. How has this technology taken on with younger students? Has any one made use of podcasting in schools?

Reference: Kim, Thomas (2006).The power of the podcast. Retrieved from http://www.futurelab.org.uk/viewpoint/art70.htm on 19 April 2007.

Week 5 - Social Software - Google Docs and Spreadsheets

I found Google's docs and spreadsheets features simply great. This is an example of a social software that enables us to create documents online not just alone but together with whom we choose to work the document with. I found it very user friendly. The features of Google docs and Spreadsheets include the following :

With Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you can:

* Use the online editor to format documents, spell-check and more.
* Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text.
* Download documents to your desktop as Word, PDF and more.
* View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version.

Plus, since it's online, you can:

* Invite others to share your documents by e-mail address.
* Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
* Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
* Post your documents to your blog.


I find this tool excellent for teaching and learning especially for peer editing in composition writing. By clicking on the revision's tab, I was able to find out who edited the document.

Has anyone made use of this site for classroom teaching? Please do share your experiences.

You can visit this site at : http:docs.google.com

Week 4 - Web 2.0

I find Tim O’ Reilly’s comparison between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 helped me to better understand the term Web 2.0. Though there is no consensus on the exact meaning of the term Web 2.0, but the term is used to refer to a trend or practise that favors social webservices and user experience.

Web 1.0 is described as static websites, the use of search engines and the ability to surf from one website to the next. In Web 2.0 the move is towards a much more dynamic and interactive approach to using the World Wide Web. It has been argued that, while "Web 2.0" may add some useful functionality to the existing framework provided by "Web 1.0", it does not supersede the fundamental approaches of the Internet.

According to Tim O'Reilly (2005), Web 2.0 can be defined through examples of how typical web services did evolve. E.g.

Web 1.0 (past)--> Web 2.0 (future)
Photo-albums--> Flickr-like albums
FTP or http-based downloads--> BitTorrent
mp3.com--> Napster
Britannica Online--> Wikipedia
personal websites--> blogging
publishing--> participation
content management systems--> wikis
directories (taxonomy)--> tagging ("folksonomy")


Web 2.0 seems promising especially for teaching and learning. It is how we make use of them effectively for our classroom experience. Any suggestions?

References
O'Reilly, Tim, What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Week 3 - Multimedia for Learning

I found Mayer’s design principles, the do’s and don’ts for instructional designers, very useful. Clearly helped us to understand how learners learn better when they are able to hold corresponding visual and verbal representations in working memory at the same time.

Mayer’s do's and don’ts for instructional designers
1)Present in words and pictures rather than in words alone
2)Present corresponding words and pictures near each other rather than far from each other on the page or screen
3)Present in conversational style rather than formal style.
4)Exclude extraneous material rather than include.
5)Should not overload visual/pictorial channels. Animated pictures presented with an audio commentary are better understood than accompanied with on screen text.
6)Redundant to present words in both text and audio narration. Better to present an animation with audio commentary rather than an animation, its commentary and the corresponding text.

Reference : Clark, Ruth (2002) : Six principles of effective e-learning : What works and why. The eLearning Developers’ Journal. Septtember 10, 2002.

Week 2 - Graphic File Formats - Vector images

Graphic File formats can be broadly categorized into bit-mapped formats and vector formats.
Vector graphics use geometrical formulas to represent images. Bit-mapped or raster graphic are composed of a pattern of dots.Programs that enable you to create and manipulate vector graphics are called draw programs, whereas programs that manipulated bit-mapped images are called paint programs.
Vector-oriented images are more flexible than bit maps because they can be resized and stretched. In addition, images stored as vectors look better on devices (monitors and printers) with higher resolution, whereas bit-mapped images always appear the same regardless of a device's resolution. Another advantage of vector graphics is that representations of images often require less memory than bit-mapped images do.


Example of vector graphic image - Flash Graphic File Format
- file extension - .swf
- vector image which can be scaled up and down without any loss of quality.
- used for simpler drawings. Not for photographic images.
- small file size.
- proprietary format - need special plug in to view Flash movies in your browser. Plug-in is available free from Macromedia.


Reference:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/tutorials/vectorversatility/
http://www.wise-women.org/resources/abc/graphics/
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/vector_graphics.html

Week 1 - Instructional Design

Instructional design is a systematic process of designing instruction that aims to ensure the quality of knowledge is transferred from an instructor to a learner.

In web education, students are likely to be overwhelmed by the vast amount of information that they may become unclear about their tasks as learners. Thus it is even more important in web education than in the face-to-face classroom to have good instructional design to deliver the right content in the right context to the right user using the right media.

In the design process, instructional designers follow ISD models to systematically guide them to create a workshop, a course, a curriculum, an instructional program, or a training session. ISD Models are visualized representations of an instructional design process, showing the main elements or phases, and their relationships. Examples of ISD models include: Dick & Carey Model, ADDIE Model, Kemp Model, ICARE Model, and ASSURE Model. These models share three major activities: analysis, strategy development, and evaluation.

Part of the analysis phase involves understanding the learner. But how does an instructor develop an understanding of the characteristics and needs of an online learner as the instructor has little or hardly any face-to-face contact with the learner? How do we adjust teaching style and course content, and consider the needs and expectations of a diverse audience?

References:
Kemp, J.E., Morrison, G.R., & Ross, S.M. (1996). Designing Effective Instruction, 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Retrieved on March 19, 2007, from http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/s/j/sjm256/portfolio/kbase/IDD/ISDModels.html

Welcome

Dear All,
Welcome to Danam's blog. This my first time creating a blog and I find this very exciting.
On this site I will be putting up content on multimedia and the web for eduction.
Your comments on the contents are most welcome. I truly hope that this site would be beneficial to you.
Thank you.

Danam.K
MMWE