My first work flow is pretty straightforward. I want to ask students a directed discussion question. I want the students to answer the questions right there in the VoiceThread. This is a discussion board on steroids. I have always believed that proximity has always been a problem in learning management systems. The learning content is in one place and the collaboration tools are in another. This is just too clunky. VoiceThread puts everything where in needs to be.
With this posting I am going to begin a series on what I think is a wonderful teaching tool VoiceThread. This is one of a new breed of communication, collaboration, and presentation tools that you need to see in action to understand what they really do.
I believe without a doubt that I am better informed on a wide range of topics because of my RSS Feeds. I try to keep my feeds in Bloglines down to 25 or 30. I take RSS feeds from journals and news sources on a wide range of topics. This includes feeds form technology and educational journals as well as news from traditional outlets like newspapers and magazines.
The 2010 Edition of the Educause Horizon report listed mobile computing as one of the new technologies to adopt. I wanted to do a simple test to see if D2L my current learning management system was iPhone friendly.
Below is a VoiceThread presentation created using a series of iPhone screen captures. I wanted to test some of the basic daily interaction that an online student would have with their course hosted in the D2L.
Over the past ten years I have witnessed the growth of high quality open source course content beginning with MIT OpenCourseWare to a wide range of resources that now we have a continuum of usable high quality content.
While you are developing your lesson pages and interactive flow, you should also be selecting e-Learning methods that support your delivery.
All the ideas I have shown in these past three blog posts where adapted from a great book written by Ray Jimenez 3 – Minute eLearning. Below are three rapid learning worksheets that I hope will help you apply this method to your own courses.
After categorizing the content, we now move into laying out the basic design of a simple lesson, snippet, nugget or vignette.
The content is laid out on the appropriate type of pages with relationship of thought and content carefully considered to ensure that learning starts with “must learn” topics then moves to “in-depth and detailed” content.
I have read and re-read 3 – Minute eLearning by Ray Jimenez several times and have to say I think Ray has the right idea. Rapid development of eLearning content may not be a new idea but it is certainly not an idea that has been widely accepted. At its core is a basic application of common sense rules where the instructor and designer work together to identify the “must learns” in the course content and then develop materials around these core objectives.
I have made no secret that I am a big fan and a major user of Camtasia Studio. This software has been part of my development work flow since 2004. I use Camtasia to develop online learning modules, help tutorials, and wide range of learning objects to support online learning. Along with Camtasia I have also purchased every edition of Daniel Parks book Camtasia Studio – The Definitive for versions 3,4,5 and 6. There are always new things to learn about Camtasia and new ways to apply screencast so Daniel’s book has become a desk reference for me. Daniel Parks also has his own website and newsletter dappertext.com
