The Debate on Instructional Design Models

I know I've mentioned this site in class, and I'm sure Dr. Nicholson has as well, but in case you haven't checked it out already, I thought I'd post a bit on Elliott Masie's LearningTown.

Elliott Masie is an instructional design guru-founder of the MASIE Center, and essentially the go to guy when it comes to cutting edge learning development and best practices.

LearningTown is a huge online forum that brings together people from all walks of the instructional design and technology industry. Members have individual profile pages and use the site to network, participate in threaded discussions, message each other, share resources, and join groups of like minded professionals. As part of a class activity in Dr. N's eLearning Concepts and Techniques course, we all joined the site and did some perusing and investigating.

There are tons of interesting discussions on nearly any topic related to instructional design and technology you can think of, but the one that stuck with me the most was a question posed by Elliott Masie himself: Do We Need A New Instructional Design Model?
Follow the link to follow the discussion.

Various professionals talk here about the "real world" of instructional and course design, what works, what doesn't, and how the industry is changing. It's a great way for students and professionals to keep a finger on the pulse of the industry, pose questions to a large community, or just read a lot of interesting opinions and resources.

Holiday E-Cards

It is that time of year, and I have not found a more fun site than http://www.elfyourself.com/. After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing, I had made a card of my kids and I dancing in elf suits. OK, maybe I've been hitting the holiday e nog to hard, but this was funny, I don't care who you are. give it a try and I"m sure you will be the hit at your next get together.
Enjoy,
Bill

Sony Playstation Home

This week I was given the privilege of beta testing Home for Sony Playstation 3. It is very similar to Second life, the characters are customizable and the overall feel of the community is the same.

The MAJOR differences are the PS3 has HIGH QUALITY graphics and SECURITY that comes with Home existing on a protected game platform.

I have not used either platform enough to say who the winner will be. I think that this could be a more protected environment that schools could take advantage of in the future.

http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/Home

Alternative to Photoshop

Paint.net

So this blog could have come about two or three weeks ago for the purpose of our Blackboard project. For me, I had trouble coming up with a course banner, and even something for the group Wiki project. I don't have Adobe Photoshop and have no idea on how to use it (I hear its difficult). Adobe Photoshop is not free, but Paint.net is! It is compared to Photoshop and Microsoft Paint and considered the free alternative. "It is a powerful editor with support for layers, blending, transparency, and plugins." (from Wikipedia) There are tutorials that show you how to create excellent graphics. I watched the tutorial on how to create a collage. Check it out! (here is a snapshot of the interface)

PC Pandora

I just had to post this!

I have been thinking about really implementing the Mac laptops that I have in my classroom on a more consistent basis- like everyday. But like most teachers, I want to be able to keep my students off of the websites that I do not want them on. This put me on the hunt for a software that monitors student activity on networks. I know of many companies that you can pay for the software, like Vision, but I know that our budget is tight. So, I started hunting for free computer monitoring software. There is a lot of them that offer free trials, but one is actually giving this monitoring software away to schools districts on an application basis to help fight cyber bullying and predating. PC Pandora calls it their SAFE SCHOOLS program. This company is giving back to the community in a very positive way-- Check it out!

instructables.com = Greatest. Site. Ever.

I recently stumbled upon the site of instructables.com, and it may very well be the greatest stumble I have ever had.

instructables.com is a site where you can learn to make just about anything... And I do mean anything. There is a step by step tutorial for making such necessities as "Build the Starship Enterprise from useless office supplies" or "build a (somewhat) historically accurate Viking Costume " or "how to make a Universal bike light battery out of a Parmesan cheese container."
I eprsanlylam excited to try the USB Batman Spotlight, where you can make the bat signal out of a USB lamp.

This site is like the Red Green show on steroids.

Instructables

What's the Best CMS?

Having just created a course in Joomla, I am curious about the other content management systems. This CMS was difficult to work with mostly because I had a lack of training. From the way it sounds, udutu would have been much easier to work with. Joomla also had several templates from which to choose and start. Changing things around did not so much require knowledge of programming languages, but rather an understanding of the infrastructure. There are so many interactive things I wanted to incorporate but did not know how and could not have learned on my own in a timely manner. So, this post is more or less to pose a few questions: Which content management systems you have used and which have been easy to work with? Which ones were best for interactivity?

Free Course Authoring Tool

I found a free web-based elearning authoring tool with a WYSIWYG interface. The tool is called udutu (pronounced (You do too). The nice thing about this tool is that you don't need advanced programming knowledge because there are several templates available for use. Aside from content development you can develop interactive quizzes, scenarios and assessments and provide instant feedback to the users of the system. Often as trainers there is a need to collaborate with SMEs and since this tool is web based with no need to install software, collaboration is made that much easier. As you add items to udutu you are also developing a library of reusable objects. No more reinventing the wheel. Publishing is also a breeze because udutu is SCORM compliant and you can either host on your own LMS or post on their site for a fee. Take a look at a brief overview here.

Microsoft Releasing Free Anti-malware Tool

Microsoft in the second half of 2009 will be releasing a free anti-malware (rootkits, spyware, trojans and viruses) tool code named “Morro”. They are releasing this suite of software due to the increasing demand of PC security.

The current consumer security offering, Microsoft Live OneCare will be discontinued at the latest on June 30, 2009. The new Morro suite will use many of the same technologies found in Live OneCare. It will lack several features currently found in the Live OneCare suite (printer sharing and automated PC tune-up) in order to minimize the use of system resources.

The package will be able available for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems via download.

The only problem with this suite is many independent reviews have found Microsoft’s current offerings for Anti-Malware, the OneCare Anti-Virus and Windows Defender, lacking in capability and often missing infections. Let’s hope that Microsoft has improved their overall product for this release.

Source: Microsoft discontinuing OneCare, will deliver free security offering instead

SearchWiki

I will freely admit that I'm addicted to Google. I'm not sure how I survived without gmail, Google Docs, iGoogle page, Google Maps, and even basic Google searches before the site was around. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't use Google for something. It seems that they are always adding new features and apps that make using Google even more fun and useful.

I noticed when I logged in the other day that they've added yet another new feature called Searchwiki. Basically, this will allow you to customize your search results, save your results, and make notes about the search pages that you find. This brief video from Google can explain it better then I can.



I haven't gone and played around with this at all in my own Google account, but I thought it looked interesting. It seems like a form of social bookmarking. I could see myself using this to save the sites I go to often or to make a note to remember something about a site. The possiblities could be endless!

Sloodle

+ =

Sloodle is an open source project that brings together Moodle (an open source course management system) together with Second Life (3D Virtual World) to provide interactive game-technology and various tools for supporting learning in the virtual worlds.

Moodle and Second Life as illustrated by the following image:








To learn more about Sloodle, YouTube has many videos explaining how they work together.

Here is video that will walk you through Sloodle. There are many, many videos posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bkKumVecK0&feature=related

There is also a Sloodle wiki that will include many resources for Sloodle.
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/sl/index.php/Sloodle

If you are interested in learning more about Sloodle, there are introductory classes that run in Second Life every Wednesday at 5:00pm EST in the SLOODLE classroom.

--Lynn

Google Chrome

I guess you might have seen Google Chrome doing big roars in the world of bites for being the new light browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Features of this new browser include:

• One box for everything
  
  Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.


• Thumbnails of your top sites
  Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.


• Shortcuts for your apps
  Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.


• Safer downloads


• Better crash control......But I am not sure how long will this last. As we all know firefox was very efficient for crash control when they started in 2004 but after all those plugins its now a heavy application almost capturing more than half of my memory resources and susceptible to wild crashes.

Check out the notes from the developers themselves on why they built this browser.
"A fresh take on the browser
At Google, we spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And like all of you, in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends - all using a browser. People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they're doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.
Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.
So today we're releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.
On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff - the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.
Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better . By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.
This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done. We've released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and we'll continue to make it even faster and more robust.
We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others - and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.
The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.
But enough from us. The best test of Google Chrome is to try it yourself."
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.....................................
You guys simply rock what would be Google's next project. A Operating System?????????????Who knows time will tell.........Sayonara....adiós....GoodBye folks.

It all adds up!

In lieu of a burgeoning finiancial crisis, (if you really consider it a crisis, and not just a media ratings driver) it seems sensible that training directed at financial and money management would be piggybacking this "crisis".The National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) is a nationwide network that leads in promoting economic literacy with students and their teachers. They have actually created an interactive learning game (sans poor graphics) that is targeted at teens to help them do basic personal finance tasks, such as understanding credit, interest rates, how to live on a budget, etc.

It's called "it all adds up" and it's a serioes of games and simulations geared with a pedialogical approach to teaching personal finance.

After playing a few of these games, it's pretty clear that these games are not just beneficial for teenagers. in fact, if more people understood some of these basic concepts, we probably could have avoided the housing crash, IMHO.

It's actually practice on basic common sense practices that get lost in the shuffle a lot of the time. The only downside is the games are hardly but free, whoever created them perhaps rushed a little bit too much putting this stuff together, or maybe they just didn't have a budget. it's hard to say. Still, it's worth a run through if you still think you can afford that BMW. :)

It All Adds UP!

http://www.italladdsup.org/

http://www.ncee.net/

Pretend this was posted last week....

I've been reading the eLearning blog that Dr. Nic suggested and it's really interesting. First of all, I was surprised by how informal most of the posts are. I guess I thought that because these people are presenting at the conference, they would be very professional and well, kind of dry. But they are far from it! I think I even saw a smiley face " :) " in one of them. Ha ha. I enjoyed Patti Shank's post about Past Promises and Present Challenges of eLearning, found here. And also, the comments in response to her post by Curts Bonks. I even enjoyed reading Thomas Reynold's post about j-walking and open container laws in Las Vegas. The interview with keynote speaker, Dr. Ellen Wagner is great, too. She even shows us some of the produce she grows in her garden! It's hard to imagine her getting busted for j-walking in Vegas. If you haven't checked it out yet, do so, there's a lot of great information.

Thinkfinity!

Thinkfinity is an educational resource provided by the Verizon Foundation and all materials are absolutely free. There are eight resource providers shown below that are currently affiliated with Thinkfinity - each image is a link to that tool. All of the tools allow you to search for lesson plans by state standard, by grade level, by interactivity, etc and most of the lessons offer interactive media resources and some even have primary sources digitized for viewing. Such incredible resources! Link directly to Thinkfinity or check out sites of interest below:

Job Hunting during an Economic Recession

If you are like me and graduation is fast approaching it is Job Hunting time! However, the current global economic situation is dicey at best and jobs might become difficult to come by. Here are some helpful tips. Happy job hunting and good luck!

Find a Job You Love
onmoneymaking.com's advice in finding a career you will enjoy.

Use the Right Words
A CareerBuilder CNN article that lists 25 words that could actually hurt your resume and hinder your application.

Job Search Rules
A CareerBuilder CNN article that discusses seven exceptions to job search rules.

Use RSS Feeds
A Lifehacker article describing on how to set up RSS to email feeds for job searching

Example Resumes
Emure, a resume site, aids "first-timers" in developing resumes and cover-letters.

Create a Video Resume
Education Portal's tutorial on creating a video resume.

Get Ratings and Reviews of Companies
glassdoor.com is a site dedicated to what current employees have to say about their employer.

Does Client Size Matter?

I've been selected as the Lead ISD on a project with the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) and I must say, I am a little nervous about working with this client because of the size of the corporate university and the size of the contract. This paper, titled "Size matters—but not
in the way you think" that I stumbled across, explains how Instructional Designers should use the size of their client to their advantage. The author says that for all of us who plan to become Instructional Designers and create courseware for large organizations, there is nothing to worry about. I consider this to be good information for recent graduates in the field of Instructional Technology.

Second Life vs. Reality

Where are priorities placed?

I don't know about you folks but I have enough trouble trying to keep myself sane in reality let alone in a cyber-relationship too. This article and its related links go to show how wrong things can go either in real-life or with a fantasy relationship. This article and the links with it just blew my mind. Now I see why I haven't visited this Second Life site. I guess you can take anything too far. I want to know where these people find the time to spend on developing these online relationships when real life is so time-consuming. They must not do anything with their free-time other than this Second Life site - affairs, divorces, rehab, killings... these are all a bit much for me to understand. Read this article and the associated links and see what you think.

Second Life Affair ends in Divorce

Instructional Gaming Presentation Resources

Here are some of the resources I used for my November 13th presentation.

Discovery Education Hidden Message Puzzle program (Classroom Resources tab) retrieved from http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/ on 2008-09-10.

Soapbox: Learning to Play to Learn - Lessons in Educational Game Design retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050405/zimmerman_01.shtml# on 2008-09-12.

Games in Education Video retrieved from http://www.seriousgames.org/ on 2008-09-12.

Teaching Facts and Concepts with Online Games podcast Kapp, Karl retrieved from http://iit.bloomu.edu/dit/pages/podcasts.cfm on 2008-09-12.

The Effectiveness of Instructional Games: A Literature Review and Discussion.pdf, Hays Robert T., Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division retrieved 2008-09-14.

Casual Games and eLearning for Adults breeze presentation Kapp, Karl retrieved from http://breeze.bloomu.edu/casualgames3/ on 2008-09-24.

Designing Interactive Sites/Online Courses

It is amazing how much we learn by experiences we encounter! During this course, we have discussed many issues regarding the development of online courses in terms of planning, reusability, interactivity, styles of e-learning and more. One topic that we have not talked about is color.

In observing a student teaching a lesson to a class on Monday night, I saw a great lesson on adjectives and adverbs. The student prepared a descriptive paragraph and color the adjectives and adverbs. All of the adjectives were type in red, and all of the adverbs were typed in blue. The students were asked to find things in common among the red words. At this point, I watched a student quickly begin asking questions to his partner. A few minutes later, we realized that the student was color-blind and couldn't identify which words were in red text.

Ah! How does this play into the development of online courses? I think it brings about a very important topic of which I need to consider when I develop an online course. To provide a little more insight on the topic, I would like to pass along a website that was sent to me. It provides suggestions from a gentleman who is colorblind.

Enjoy thinking about a new dimension of design that could help a student be more successful! http://particletree.com/features/interfaces-and-color-blindness