Rowland’s Blog about e-learning matters

Had my attention drawn to an article by Stephen Downes which gave an extensive introduction to connective knowledge. It was very long and I can’t say I understood all of it but I found it thought provoking so I am making a note here to allow me to go back and read it again. I [...]

[Read more]

I have been thinking about the concept of transforming learning with technology rather than just transferring the old pedagogy onto the web and have come up with the following list so far:

Transfer 
 Transform

 Inflexible:  Teacher centered
 Flexible: Student centered

Fixed module contract: tutor decides on the structure of the module and the assessment criteria
Student negotiation: Tutor [...]

[Read more]

As I am considering using a wiki in my teaching next semseter it was useful to find, quite by accident, a discussion about using a wiki in an article called “My Brilliant Failure: Wikis In Classrooms” part of the Kairos news site which might be useful to look at further.

In the article [...]

[Read more]

I have been agonising over what template to use on this blog.
I want something with fairly large text and good contrast for all parts of the blog, so that is usable and accessible. Additionally I would like to use the whole width of the screen rather than squash up in the middle.
[...]

[Read more]

I was just randomly linking around between blogs when I came across a post on Connectivism and web2.0 on Sharon Peter’s blog. It has a direct link to a lecture by George Siemans which uses a combined slide show and voice over to present the lecture.
Sharon gives an excellent summary of the lecture on her [...]

[Read more]

Today I am in Wolverhampton taking part in a day on using podcasting.
So far we have had two sessions, both of which were very interesting but rasied some interesting issues – more about that later.
At the moment I am supposed to be learning to use Itunes and have downloaded the Ricky Gervais podcast – must [...]

[Read more]

I have just taken a look at the blog of proximal development and read an interesting blog about the impact on students of having a blog taken away. It also mentioned a piece of open source blog software that might be worth a look. [Though not if you are in France ]
I have also [...]

[Read more]

I have taken a look at the Edublogs awards and might well have a go at voting if I can work out how to do it.
It would be interesting to know what the criteria for selection were. Many of the entries are so different from one another that it is difficult to work it out [...]

[Read more]

I have just been looking at the JISC pages on e-learning pedagogy which contain some useful information. The aim of the e-Learning Programme is to improve the quality of e-learning across the post-16 and higher eduaction sectors. The Programme focuses on four areas: e-learning and Pedagogy; Technical Framework and Tools for e-Learning; Innovation and Distributed [...]

[Read more]

Found some interesting information on Josie’s blog about the Learner’s Charter for a personalised learning environment which is a publication from Nesta Futurelab.
There is some excellent discussion here about how things might go if learner’s are given a flexible and personalised learning environment to work with rather than the manager centred systems that we [...]

[Read more]