Archive for September, 2004
Designing blogs for education
Designing blogs for education by: Jonathan Briggs
This presentation looks at the blogging work that I have done so far and at the design of www.jonathanbriggs.com to incorporate the lessons learned from previous experiments.
What is an educational blog?
- An additional communication channel between teacher and learner
- A searchable archive of notes and handouts including downloadable worksheets and documents
- Signpost learners to additional resources
- Support questioning and discussion
- Provide a channel for comment, criticism and evaluation
- Open the teaching and learning process publicly to other interested parties
Via OLDaily
Blogging style: The basic posting formats
Blogging style: The basic posting formats : index of the great 7part series by Amy Gahran
The format of a blog posting, if chosenconsciously and carefully, enhance communication – particularly the delivery of certain types of content. Consequently, some formats work best for commentary or explanation, others for alerts and references, etc.
Here are the seven basic blog posting formats:
Weblog as Online Community Management Tool
Weblog as Online Community Management Tool from Common Craft
Weblogs are built for the purpose of an individual (or small group) presenting news and information to a larger group. Inside an online community, a weblog is a better fit than a message board topic (i.e. Announcements) for relating information to the community. Weblogs are built for news, message boards are for discussions.
With the community manager having complete control of the weblog, they can use it to develop a stronger voice in the community without interfering with the discussions. The weblog becomes a representation of the manager’s thoughts and interests, which can help develop trust and culture more quickly.
RSS : Yahoo!
Yahoo’s Redesign Embraces RSS By Matt Hicks from eWEEK.com
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company unveiled a beta of the next generation of its personalized home-page service that includes RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds as part of a search and directory feature for finding content to add to My Yahoo.
Yahoo started an RSS beta service in January that allowed users to aggregate feeds on their My Yahoo pages, but it was segregated in a section dedicated to RSS.
The updated My Yahoo service, though, has changed its model for adding content onto personalized pages.
“It’s a powerful concept to be able to get anything on your page,” said Scott Gatz, Yahoo’s senior director of personalization products. “Rather than just the thousands of things that people are used to, how about we open it to the millions of RSS feeds out there?”
Rapid E-Learning
Rapid E-Learning: A New Approach to Courseware by Josh Bersin at Macromedia Edge Newsletter [Non-Flash Version - Here]
…the number-one challenge that e-learning developers face: It takes too long to develop a course.
Time is often the enemy of a training program. As time marches on, the business challenge continues to grow — and often the training problem itself will change.
For example, suppose your job is to build a sales certification program for a major new product release. You need to reach out to several thousand sales people and resellers quickly. But you also know that six-to-nine months from now there will be an update release and probably new features and pricing. By the time you get your course published, will it be out of date? Also, the product managers (subject matter experts) are busy — how can you get enough of their time? You need them now.
This example is common in nearly every organization. Sometimes the problem is a product launch; other times it is a new regulation, a merger, or a major new corporate initiative. There are two aspects to the time challenge:
— Time to build: Can I build the content fast enough to meet the business demand?
— Shelf life: Will the content be current and relevant long enough to justify the investment?
