How Slideshare spoiled my post on Social Media

I’ve been meaning to complete an article about social media and learning for ages. I’d planned to hold forth on the benefits of wikis for collaborative group tasks; the joys of reflecting on one’s own learning with blogs; the ease with which we can share and discuss on social networks; and the plethora of still and moving imagery available on sites such as Flickr and YouTube. I was intending to demistify the world of social media for our avid readers. Instead I will simply link to a presentation about social media by Sarah Stewart.

Sarah is Professional Development Officer at Australian College of Midwives and she spoke to us a while ago about social media in higher education. She kindly and very sensibly (because her work and enthusiasm is made available to a far wider audience) puts her presentations on Slideshare.

I can view lots of Sarah’s presentations on Slideshare – she has 67 on there at the moment. On each one I can leave a comment, if I feel so inclined, or I can respond to someone else’s comments. By clicking on the ‘Share’ button on any presentation I can easily email the URL of the presentation to anyone and can share it on any Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts I may have.

In addition to viewing her presentations, from Sarah’s profile page on Slideshare I can private message her, find her blog, and find her on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Her twitter stream is actually embedded in her profile page (which adds an element of immediacy)  just to make things a little easier.

When someone views any of her presentations they have the opportunity to ‘tag’ them with words and phrases that they feel are appropriate. Doing this builds a tag cloud which is constantly growing and changing, reflecting what viewers think of the presentations. A great way to quickly see what viewers feel the presentations are mostly about.

I can also ‘follow’ Sarah on Slideshare (so I can keep up with new presentations she uploads, for example) and I can see who else follows her and who she follows. Do you follow? She is currently followed by 96 people – presumably people who have an interest in her work, some of whom might have the same interests as me. I might take a look at some of them and see what they are up to. Sarah follows 67 people – presumably people whose work she has an interest in and people who I might find interesting too. I’m going to have a look at some of them too.

All in all, Slideshare really is a very social space and there is a heck of a lot of media there. And using a presentation I found on Slideshare that covers all and more than what I had planned to say about social media, rather than spending hours creating a less adequate version of my own, makes a lot of sense. Discuss.

Adobe Presenter 8 test

The new Adobe Presenter 8 was recently launched. Having recommended and trained several lecturers in the use of Adobe Presenter 7 I thought I would have a quick look at this latest release to see what else it offers, to see if it’s worth recommending we upgrade.

AP7 provides the possibility to record narration over PowerPoint slides and to include SCORM compatible quizzes. The major enhancement that AP8 brings is being able to create interactive diagrams and new ways to present information. As with AP 7 the output can be published as Flash or as an interactive PDF.

I played with it for about an hour and this is what I came up with, published as PDF:

Adobe Presenter 8 test

Using Blackboard to enhance learning

 

If you use Blackboard, one of the best ways we can enhance learning for students is to ensure course  (module) sites meet minimum standards in terms of structure and content. Clear, well organised sites using consistent navigation makes it simple for learners to fined their way around all of their modules on Blackboard.

We are producing a set of guidelines with suggested minimum standards for the structure and content of all Blackboard modules in Health & Life Sciences. The guidelines will shortly be available on this site and as a printed leaflet which we plan to make available to all Module leaders this semester.

Make Learning Objects with Xerte Online Toolkit

With Xerte Online Toolkits you can quickly and easily create Learning Objects. Not sure what Learning Objects are? Think of LOs as small ‘chunks’ of learning. Ways to deliver content, interactivity and assessment to enhance learning in small accessible packages.

More to come…
If you have experience with Xerte then leave a comment below to let us know your thoughts about it

UChoose – Interactive Case Based Learning

 

UChoose enables you make scenarios relevant to your own discipline and to your learners’ needs. The scenarios are ideal for Interactive Case-Based Learning and are ’played’ by learners to develop higher order thinking skills.

UChoose is available for use by all academic staff in the Faculty of Health & Life Sciences. Contact the TEL Developers if you would like to know more about using UChoose for learning.

How can we help you?

The TEL Developers provide academic staff in Health & Life Sciences with support and training for  various learning technologies. How do you think we could be helping you more? Your feedback via this poll helps us to understand what kind of support we should consider providing more of. Thanks for taking part.

Web 2.0

Introduction to blogging

I was recently contacted by a UWE lecturer who has been doing some great blogging work with his students. This has spurred me on to share a few of my own thoughts about blogging.

Firstly, a blog is simply a website that is easy to edit and to add content (text, images etc.) to. The content is usually organised in reverse chronological order on the home page, so the most recently added content (called a ‘post‘ in the blogging jargon) is displayed at the top of the home page and earlier posts are below. Posts can be placed into one or more categories and can be tagged (‘category‘ and ‘tag‘ are bits of jargon worth remembering) so that related posts can be easily found together. You, and if your blog is public, others too, can also leave ‘comments‘ (more jargon) at the foot of posts.

The term blog comes from ‘web log’: a kind of online journal or diary. But the use of blogs in the field of education is not limited to keeping a journal, useful as this may be. Starting with diaries and journals I will briefly outline a few of the many uses of blogs in education.

‘Authentic’ learning explained

Authentic learning goes beyond content by intentionally incorporating multiple disciplines, multiple  perspectives, ways of working, habits of mind, and community. Authentic learning puts the focus back on the learner in an effort to improve the way students absorb, retain, and transfer knowledge.