Elgg 1.5 Released

Recent Articles

• Oxwall: Ning Alternative?

  August 22, 2010 in Social Networking, open source

  I recently found another social networking server app through Twitter. As we know Ning recently changed its terms of service and is no longer offering free social networks. This sent a wave of panic throughout the educational technology community, accustomed to having “free” apps at their disposal. People immediately sought alternatives to Ning. Of course [...]

• Graphics to support learning

  August 16, 2010 in multimedia, pedagogy, presentations

  This is one of a number of posts exploring multimedia learning. I have been reading research on this topic with an eye toward improving my presentations and other multimedia instructional material. Here are earlier posts in order of creation: Text and graphics in Multimedia Presentations Multimedia Researcher Mayer on Slideware Graphics in Instructional Presentations In [...]

• Graphics in Instructional Presentations

  August 10, 2010 in Technology, multimedia, pedagogy, presentations

  As I grapple with research trying to improve my instructional presentations, I have learned about Richard Mayer’s assertion that people learn better with words and graphics than just words alone. As a result, I have been investigating information about the role of graphics in learning. One natural extension of the reading that I have done [...]

• Corporate Web 2.0 in Education

  August 9, 2010 in Technology, open knowledge, open source

  Jim Groom just got me fired up again. Groom, in conjunction with Brian Lamb, wrote an important article in Educause entitled Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle. The article laments the corporatization of  Web 2.0 in education.  The authors acknowledge the appeal and power of free online services offered by Google and [...]

• Critique of Timeline Lesson

  July 19, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge, pedagogy, presentations

  The animated Chinese timeline shown my previous blog post was a demonstration of a workflow using proprietary software to make a stand alone animated timeline. While viewing the timeline several times, I started examining it through the prism of the research on multimedia learning that I have been reading–particularly that of Richard Mayer. One learning [...]

• Create animated timelines as OERs

  July 17, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge

  This is a fairly specialized procedure for users of Keynote and TimeLine 3D, both proprietary Mac programs. The important thing is that it results in something that could be a high quality OER. I had a couple requests for a how-to on building a timeline like the one shown below. Bee Doc’s Timeline 3D is [...]

• How to turn a Flickr image into an OER

  July 12, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge

  If you have a Flickr account, one of the easiest ways to to contribute open educational resources (OERs) is to Creative Commons license your images. Once you have done so, your photographs will appear on Flickr’s Creative Commons search page according to the license that you have designated. This is quick and simple to do. [...]

• How about a summer of OER?

  July 10, 2010 in open knowledge

  In general, teachers love freebies and actively seek them out. These free things range from blogs to web apps to lesson plans. I’d like to challenge teachers to go beyond just consuming freebies to producing them as well. Teachers create great resources all the time in the course of their practice. We could go a [...]

• Multimedia Researcher Mayer on Slideware

  July 7, 2010 in multimedia, presentations

  Richard Mayer is one of the leading researchers on the impact of multimedia on learning. However, in his two books, Multimedia Learning and e-Learning (coauthored by Ruth Colvin Clark), slideware is not often mentioned. Multimedia Learning he simply mentions PowerPoint presentations as an example of multimedia. Since I have ben exploring his research as a [...]

• Text and Graphics in Multimedia Presentations

  June 30, 2010 in Technology, multimedia, presentations

  My presentation design has been greatly influenced by Nancy Duarte’s book slide:ology and Garr Reynolds, the author of Presentation Zen. I have integrated their ideas in both my conferences and instructional presentations. Their advice has dramatically changed my practice from bullet points to slides that are more graphically oriented with much less text. Both Duarte’ [...]