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