Friday, October 28, 2011

Creately Web Based Diagramming Tool

A little bit of cross posting between my blogs here but if you have use for a diagramming tool and not come across Creately yet, then I think it is well worth paying a visit to the site. There are a number of pricing models available, including a free version that has plenty of features. The models available cover Business Diagrams, User Interface Design, Software, System, Network Diagrams and more. It was the inclusion of software design particularly UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams and Database design diagrams that particularly took my attention. You will find that in creating a new document the examples list will provide sets of templates, some of which seem to be partially complete, these would be particularly useful for teaching. AS well as the many diagrams available, the user interface also includes a standard set of drawing tools, basic shapes, arrows, call outs, you can add notes, comments and share your diagrams thought the free version limits you to five of these. Upon completion diagrams can be exported in either png, jpeg or Creately format. As a unique virtual trial I decided to create a shared media block at my landing point in Second life, so feel free to get a couple of avatar friends together a try it out. Please feel free to reply to this post with your impressions.

regards Barry



Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The LMS is Dead!

Have you come acrosss OpenClass yet?

It's a new kind of learning environment that goes beyond the LMS. It’s open to everyone, easy to use, and completely free — and it's making an amazing impact on education. (quote)

The ambition for the OpenClass LMS, utilising cloud and Google Apps for Eduaction seems to be centred on transforming outcomes by leveraging modern social technology to encourage collaboration and communication for students, faculty, institutions, and administrators around the world. (partly quoted)

There is a Take a Tour option that’s worth looking at because it provides a nice insight into the appearence and feel of the system in operation. I look after a Moodle installation here at the college and its hosted internally, a good option really as you get to have control over many issues such as upgrades and local management of the system, so I am not to sure how these would translate for cloud based solutions, but lets see.

Will OpenClass compete with Moodle, who can tell. One thing is for sure though, and that is competition is always good, at least that’s my view, so let’s sit back and see what happens in the coming months.

I for one have signed up to the service and will be staying in touch with developments and interested to see the uptake and use for this new and welcome initiative.

Do take a look at the video, it does seem to suggest to me that there is a certain implicit assumption, though I could be wrong, that by leveraging the benefits of social networks we will see a transformation in outcomes and the student experience.


If you are using Moodle or any o
ther vle for that matter, do you make use of the social networking tools such as WiKi, Forums and Chat, and if so, have you been drawn to any conclusions? If you have then please feel free to reply to this post.

Personally, I make use of these features regularly. Take a look at the chart here, it measures transactions from twelve students over a one month period; in fact the chat was about double the figure shown as some were using msn and I only included Moodle stats. Is this typical of your own experience, please comment. My experience is, and a recent effort on my part just last week proved to be little more than a self fulfilling prophesy, that unless a grading outcome is clearly established as part of the activity, as was the case for the transaction results in the screen shot, then all to often I find Forums are empty and chat rooms silent, do you find the same? please comment.

Kind regards Barry




Friday, October 21, 2011

Preparing for elearning the first run


This week finally saw the launch of the third phase of our Moodle vle roll out at the college with the delivery of a new 2 hour cpd staff training session Preparing for e-learning. If you have been following the blog here then you will know that this centres on the use of Wimba Create, in the production of learning objects from otherwise standard materials or handouts produced in Word. I see these new materials, as putting into place the final part of a resource package for implementing an e-Learning strategy that draw upon those other tools available in the vle in support of collaborative learning. From this last statement, you can correctly conclude that a certain amount of discussion took place on the very subject of learning objects themselves, principally some definitions and advantages they represent for both students and staff / developers alike.

The objective of the session was to take a typical class handout and see how it could be converted into a learning object with navigation, embedded videos, an embedded website and various question and answer feedback question types. I was pleased enough to see a range of IT skills among those attending especially as everyone completed the task in good time. After the initial production work we exported the material in scorm format and upload onto the vle. In fact I think it was the features of this last stage i.e. the launching and tracking of the object by Moodles Learning Management System that impressed the assembled group as much as the transformation of the material itself.

Since this first run of the course this week, I have already received requests to run more training, one in particular was for everyone in a single department, so very promising.



My objective then remains very much unchanged, and that is to move learning beyond the physical boundaries and time constraints of the scheduled curriculum. In the near future, when students enrol at our college, they will be enrolling into a very real vibrant working social environment, while at the same time enrolling into a very real, social virtual environment.

Please stay in touch for future posts and feel free to comment.


Barry Spencer e-Learning Project Coordinator


Saturday, October 01, 2011

Innovation Showcase

Our Technology School are exhibiting at the Excel Conference Center WorldSkills London 2011 05 from Oct 2011 to 08 Oct 2011, so for that alone, I would certainly recommend getting along for a visit in this coming week, I should be there myself on Friday, and really looking forward to it. I was even more pleased when on Tuesday Afternoon of this week, I was informed that a group of delegates from the conference would be visiting us at the college, and so would it be possible for me to arrange / organise a suitably impressive innovation technology type of showcase for them. I ran through a few of the broader possibilities, which I must say seemd to all go down very well. It occured to me, that we should together with our Marketing department, assemble in addition to any visitors pack that may already be in existence, include a folder, pad, pen and coloured flyers. The flyers being my suggestion would naturally be my job, OK with that. I finally delivered the draft version (shown here), to the Marketing team on Thursday afternoon and they did a great job of applying some desktop publishing effects.

I am planning for three of us staff to deliver the sessions, each lasting around 15 to 20 minutes, and taking place in separate IT rooms.

From the screen shot you can see that I finally settled on four, which are :-

The
CISCO lab that we have as part of tour BTEC BXD Networking programme, with units that cover IT Essentials, CCNA – Discovery, Exploration, Security and CCNP.

Producing e-Content with
Wimba Create. This is part of a wider eLearning initiative with the ambition of extending learning beyond the traditional curriculum boundary, using a learning objects approach for course materials.

Mahara, our fully featured open source electronic portfolio. Mahara is integrated with our Moodle system, and provides the tools to set up your own personal learning and development environment; used mainly in our Work Based Learning Projects for Foundation Degree students.


Finally
Open Simulator, a web 3.0D collaborative face-to-face working environment, that we are deploying to enhance student communication and social skills both within the college and as part of the Comenius project, that will link us with two colleges in Holland and one in Belgium.


Looking forward to the coming week.