Thursday 29 March 2007

Task managers

Just like buses - I have been looking for a good task manager for ages then two come along:

Neptune - www.neptunehq.com is very nice - really simple and has improved over the week as they have sorted out some sever issues - interstingly it doesn't include dates - being based on Gettgin Things Done - either you are doing something or it is 'witing for ...' time etc. Took some getting used to - dates by themselves don't help much in my experience.

HiTask - www.hitask.com came along today just as I was getting used to Neptune - hitask does have dates - but this means you can sort by date so if you scheduole something for next week it doesn't clutter up today - has a premium version but it is not clear what else you get with that.

Both are web based and being one of the google people affected by the outage yesterday (I was waiting to retrieve a phone number from my contacts having said I would phone them back!) this is obviously a disadvantage - and hitask has a calendar but not the facility to subcribe to other calendars - so all is not solved - even if I could decide which to go for, and of course maybe google will do one soon anyway!

Useful site

The University of Melbourne has a very good recourse site on elearning - this page neatly summarises the issues with VLE's.



Some limitations of contemporary Learning Management Systems : E-Learning Management Systems : A Guide to E-Learning : METTLEweb : The University of Melbourne



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Monday 26 March 2007

International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/

Special Issue
New Technologies and New Approaches in Higher Education Pedagogy

Guest Editor: Krista P. Terry

Radford University; kpterry@radford.edu

As emerging technologies begin to dissolve boundaries between time, place and space, educators find themselves searching for methods to understand the attributes and functions of these new media technologies in order to leverage them toward enhancing the teaching and learning process. Mobile learning devices have facilitated ubiquitous learning environments that transcend the traditional classroom boundaries while personal broadcasting and social computing technologies have harnessed the power of individuals to create and collaborate through computer mediated environments. The evolution of these technologies provides educators with both challenges and opportunities to create rich and engaging learning experiences for their learners.

This issue will focus on how best to match attributes and features of new technologies with instructional goals and objectives in order to communicate with and teach a generated of 'wired', multi-tasking, media-immersed students. Manuscripts in this issue should focus on (a) the research, theory and practice of designing effective learning environments that are focused on the integration of new media technologies, and/or (b) the application of new media technologies to higher education.

Potential topics may include, but should not be limited to:

* mobile learning, podcasts, cell phones and tablet computing
* social learning, folksonomies, networks, and communication tools
* virtual worlds and gaming environments
* blogs, wikis and user-generated content

Specific Guidelines:

Finished manuscripts must be submitted by November 1, 2007. Please see the IJTLHE Submission Guidelines for detailed author guidelines and submission procedures. For further information or inquiry about this special issue, contact the Guest Editor: Krista P. Terry.

Wednesday 21 March 2007

Student-Generated Content

The purpose of this collection is to showcase specific examples of how student-generated content can be used effectively in online education. In particular, this collection has focused on examples of student-generated content which represent a significant shift from students as content consumers to students as content producers, and/or result in products of lasting value to students individually, to other students, or to the larger community and society. - http://www.sloan-c-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Student-Generated_Content

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Friday 16 March 2007

Future of VLE's in universities

I am been having a couple of email conversations with colleagues recently about the university VLE - the theme is the extent to which we should use the VLE as the main delivery form for students and to what extent should we use a myriad of Web2.0 tools - blogs, social networks and bookmarks etc.

This relates to anther David's blog article http://cq-pan.cqu.edu.au/david-jones/blog/?p=107 about the future of the VLE in his institution.

One local and much more pragmatic issue is the use of Blackboard's Scholar social bookmarking system - my initial inclination was to suggest that we should recommend the use of open systems such as Delicious rather than the closed Blackboard system - but am being convinced that take up would be more with Scholar so may go with that.

Tuesday 13 March 2007

JISC Conference

The Joint Information Systems Conference starts today in Birmingham - for up-dates on the conference see - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2007/03/event_conf_0307.aspx.

Tuesday 6 March 2007