Two interesting tidbits this week:

This could be a useful resource for first-time online learners.

1. E-Learning Queen’s E-Learner Survival Guide

This could be a good resource to recommend to new online students. A link to the pdf file for this book is available on E-Learning Queen’s blog post here. From E-learning Queen:

This broad reaching collection of essays on e learning examines accomplishments, new directions, and challenges from many perspectives. The essays are arranged in categories, which include e learning and e learners, teaching and instruction, student engagement, learning communities, outcomes assessment and institutional leadership, all of which relate to learners and programs from college, K 12, career, to corporate training. Of special interest is a focus on successful outcomes for students and programs, and essays on often overlooked niches of learners, including generational differences (Gamers, Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y), stay at home mothers, working mother e learners, homeschoolers, bilingual online education and training.

E-learning is covered, along with mobile learning, and the use of simulations, virtual worlds, serious games, and more.

Very useful approaches to studying online, and developing effective success strategies make the articles helpful to students and instructors.

E-Learning Queen’s E-Learner Survival Guide

2. My Language Notebook

This open-source tool is primarily targeted at online language instruction, though it could have its uses in other disciplines. It looks like it’s set up to store online podcasts, from very short (just a few seconds) to long (20 minutes or so). The audio files can be combined with blog-like posts or embedded into another website. The following is a demo player window with conversational Spanish:

Outside the context of language learning, this could be an approach to creating short podcast lectures or sending brief audio notes to students that doesn’t require mastering the sometimes-tricky Audacity tool. Since I haven’t used this yet, however, it would be interesting to hear from anyone who has, and whether it’s easier to use than Audacity or not — or whether there are other advantages or disadvantages to My Language Notebook… If you have used this, sound off in the comments section: is it worthwhile?

My Language Notebook

The past couple weeks have been quiet on this blog, though WISE Pedagogy has been active. At the American Library Association in Chicago I presented a poster on the on-demand Introduction to Online Pedagogy workshop and had the opportunity to talk to lots of interesting people (and take a picture of my feet standing in a glass box in the former Sears Tower).

Since then I’ve come across several great teaching technology resources and articles, as well as the flu — which slowed down my productivity for a while. Rather than presenting a barrage of posts all at once about these resources, I’d like to point readers to my Delicious account, where I have a growing collection of information about collaborative learning tools, articles in online pedagogy, and other items that would be useful to online instructors.

Watchitoo is one item I would like to blog about specifically, however, because I’m trying to decide if this could be really beneficial in certain online learning situations, or just a cultural flash in the pan.

Basically, this is a social network that combines YouTube video with instant messaging and multi-user synchronous video screens. Each room features a pre-recorded video, a text chat box, and smaller video screens for a moderator and participants. Participants are listed at the bottom (with small photo icons) and if they have webcams and microphones they can drag-and-drop themselves into one of four video screens underneath the moderator’s.

In a way it reminds me of a DVD film commentary that shows the commentators in a small window along with the main film…if you could also add yourself to the commentary and adjust the volumes. I’m guessing that with any live software that offers audio participation there will be some time spent with people testing their mics and asking “Can you hear me now?” Still, I haven’t seen many other resources quite like this.

Although this shot doesn't include the text chat box on the left, it shows the possibilities for multi-user video chat.

This just came out in the last week, so it’s still currently in beta. Hopefully if this catches on, there will be more file-sharing options included to create PowerPoint video lectures and more. In the meantime, the following are some possible ways this could be used in online teaching:

• Bring more face-to-face interaction for full-class discussion — few live session software packages allow for videos of the instructor, and fewer still allow for video (or audio, for that matter) commentary from students. And, as anyone who has played the awkward game of “pass the mic” in Elluminate could contend, allowing more speakers at once opens more possibilities for lively discussion.
• Make video tutorials livelier and more interactive — If you are already creating video screencast tutorials or demonstrations, you can play the video with your students and let them ask questions as they arise. If it’s a physical demonstration, students might be able to attempt an action in front of their webcams and ask you if they have done something correctly. This could make online learning more accessible for fine arts, harder sciences, or other subjects that were previously thought to be f2f-only.
• Group work & presentations — If students are working in groups on a project, they could use this for meeting and working together. When it’s finished, you could have them present their project in front of the rest of the class.
• Office hours — Have a video room open during your office hours with your webcam on and let students know they can come and chat with you f2f. If you’re working on something else and someone enters the room, I don’t know if you’ll receive any sort of pop-up indicator (I still need to explore their site more fully) but if they have a mic you’ll at least hear someone say “Hello-oooo….?”

Is anyone else using this? If you have an opinion, it would be great to hear what others think. Would you want to use this with your students?

Watchitoo

I’ve added a list of blog feeds on the topic of eLearning / Online Pedagogy to PostRank. This website ranks a blog’s posts in terms of the types and frequency of audience’s interaction with them. In other words, the more attention is paid to your blog, the higher the rank it will receive.

Time may tell whether this resource proves useful for bloggers in online education, or just another venue for networking and getting one’s website “out there”. If you are on this site, feel free to follow my feed (linked above) or add WISE Pedagogy to your list! If you have an opinion about this site one way or the other, your comments are appreciated below as well.

In related news, I’m curious if anyone else is networking blogs via Facebook’s NetworkedBlogs application. I looked into this one, but it seems impossible to add a blog to the network without first subscribing to at least five other blogs. Personally, there are several blogs that I’m already subscribed to elsewhere, so I would rather not have that content added to my Facebook page as well. Can anyone who might use this network say whether this functions as a useful aggregate between Facebook and RSS?

cc licensed photo via Flickr by Gwen's River City Images: book sculpture by Donald Lipski

Three announcements in one post today:

1. The Library of Congress is making its audio and video content freely available through iTunes U. These include original Edison films, slave narratives, interviews with notable authors, and more, with new content to be added over time. Of course this content has already been available for free downloads through the main Library of Congress website — but this move may reach a new audience of iTunes U users. The LoC is apparently also reaching out with a blog, Twitter feed, and YouTube channel.

2. eLearning Learning — This popular network dedicated to online pedagogy (of which the blog is a member) has recently added a “Best of” feed. Anyone can now subscribe to this feed via email or an RSS reader. eLearning Learning aggregates blog posts from dozens of blogs that represent a wide spectrum of online learning, from academic courses to corporate training and individualized learning systems. The eLearning Learning Blog offers more information on how to subscribe to this feed.

Computer Tutor: Atari, a title book from Awful Library Books

3. A fun blog for librarians (and everyone else) is Awful Library Books. Each update features a library book which really needs to be removed from its library’s shelves. Most of these are nonfiction resources that might have been great inclusions when they were first published, but have become outdated or lost relevance over time. Old computer manuals, “teenage survival” guides by hair-metal musicians, 20-year-old medical advice, and (my personal favorite) hot new careers for go-getting feminists of the past get the spotlight on this website.

Some of these titles are as interesting for historical or cultural context as for personal amusement. The title I’ve copied to the left here is dated 1983. Then again, what goes around, comes around — maybe it’s not too late to find a way to incorporate Atari games into online teaching!

Thanks to Diane Kovacs for turning me on to this site!