Great Online Learner

This Just In: Free Image Editing on the Web

2010-02-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

My professor pal, Dr. Jason Rhode, just sent me a heads up on Aviary. It looks to be a most amazing site with a variety of image editing tools that rival Photoshop but are available free on the web. Looks like they have also added sound editing recently. Haven't tried it out yet, but thought I'd get the word out. I'm guessing a lot of my teacher-students are going to love it.

Resources for Building Online Communities

2010-02-27T10:01:00.000-08:00

This post lists several sites that discuss aspects of the process of building learning communities--some focus specifically on online communities and others are more about the face-to-face experience. The first one is something I came across, and the rest were discovered by my students. In those cases, I included a link back to their original blog posts. How To Build An

Free Technology for Teachers

2010-02-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.freetech4teachers.com This is an amazing blog site for teachers by a teacher. Be careful, you might get lost in the endless posts about cool technology and how to use it in the classroom. Yesterday’s post was about tools students can use to explore the Olympic Games. (I followed a couple links and had some fun playing here: http://www.olympicschool.ca/

2nd Resource Site for K12 Educators

2010-02-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post this week as I prepare for face-to-face class. Found this vast and amazing list of social network sites for education. This will take you a while to get through, so go make a cup of tea and get started!Educational Networking Wiki's List of Networkshttp://www.educationalnetworking.com/List+of+NetworksIt's on a wiki page, so if you've got your own site to share, you can just add

Resource Sharing #1

2010-01-26T20:54:00.000-08:00

OK, told my students I would do some posts about resources for our course "Using Technology to Build Learning Communities." What makes this tough is narrowing down the resources to select only one at a time! Since I'm hearing a lot of requests for ideas that can be used in the classroom, here's my first pick: Using Screencasting to Engage and Build Community with Online Learners http://

Another Reason to Love the Internet: PostCrossing Follow-Up

2009-12-31T13:45:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to comment that it is very easy to get connected to a like-minded postcard lover in Lithuania (through Postcrossing.com) while lounging in bed at my home in Chicago. But buying a stamp and mailing a postcard to her from Todos Santos, Baja Sur, Mexico involved driving down some really bumpy and dusty roads to track down a poorly marked building where I

Clicking, Connecting, and Crisscrossing

2009-12-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

One experience I love, which is now ubiquitous but still perhaps somewhat taken for granted and unexamined, is the experience of finding something new through a series of haphazard clicks and connections. You know what I mean… It all started today when I finally got back to reading my Twitter feed again. Something to do with comps prep/work got me signing up to follow a

Learner-Friendly

2009-10-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

Just spent a few days with Ben, a friend of my brother’s from New Zealand. Despite the somewhat dreary weather these days in Chicago, we had a great time chatting, riding bikes, eating cake, drinking Margaritas, and just working side-by-side together at the kitchen table, each of us glued to our own laptop. I mention this here because spending time with someone new is a

New Tricks

2009-04-16T14:14:00.001-07:00

I heart my iPhone. Today I used the Google app to do a voice search for the first time. Works great. Learn faster! There is so much to learn.Posted with LifeCast

Diagram From The Early Stages

2009-04-15T19:51:00.001-07:00

Posted with LifeCast

Learning To Post From My iPhone

2009-04-15T19:48:00.001-07:00

That's it!Posted with LifeCast

A Little Example of Learning

2008-06-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

Online learning means a lot of different things depending on whom you ask. My example for the week is how I learned to make one of those tiny site icons that show up in the favorites list in your browser.)The first thing I learned is what those little thingies are called: Fav(orite) + icon = favicon. How did I learn this? Well, I had to use my already learned skill of how to figure out the right

Are We Having Fun Yet?

2007-12-05T22:38:00.000-08:00

Oof. Been off working hard at being an online student and a face2face one as well (blended learning, you know). But haven’t forgotten about my quest here. Have some new sources to write about in my next posts, and a fun experience also for today. After reading The Synchronous Trainer’s Survival Guide, discussed last time, I visited the author’s site and signed up for a free session called “Learn

Learning How to Learn Online

2007-11-04T12:22:00.000-08:00

Lo and behold, The Synchronous Trainer’s Survival Guide, by Jennifer Hofmann of InSync Training, includes a section on “Learning How to Learn Online.” The book, geared toward facilitators of “live and online” training for adults, provides an introduction to the tools and techniques used in what it refers to as “the synchronous classroom.” Hofmann uses a terrific analogy in her introduction;

“Are you sure you’re ready for online learning?”

2007-11-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

This post’s title is the tagline of OASIS, “an online readiness assessment designed for students either considering an online course or currently enrolled in an online course.”It includes two assessments, one for online learning readiness and another for learning styles with tips on how to make the most of one’s styles—active or reflexive, sensing or intuitive, visual or verbal, sequential or

What Not to Do When Developing Online Training

2007-11-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

Having just completed some mandatory online training this week, I was inspired to take a side-step from the topic of “preparing to learn online” to cover today’s special topic, "What Not to Do When Developing Online Training."Don’t waste your trainees' time.Don’t waste the taxpayers' money (oops, sorry, that’s not so much a training issue, is it?).Don’t mandate training for those who had it last

Preparing to be an Online Learner

2007-10-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Found a PowerPoint out there entitled “How to Become a Great Online Student” by Lynne Fukuda from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Judging from the recommendation for “at least Windows 98” I’d say it’s been out there a while. It seems meant as an introduction for college students new to online classes, and I thought it would be interesting as a starting off point for research. Some of the basic

Introduction

2007-10-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Cheers, all! I’m starting this blog for a doctoral program project; ideally it will connect up with expanded future work and continue with a life of its own. This will be a journey for me, as I am an online student for the first time this fall (though an online learner in some respects for much longer; more about that below). Have spent much time as student and as teacher/facilitator of learning