Posted 8:42 PM by George Siemens
It's nice to see projects come together (or to a close!). The "Teaching Online" course that we've been working on over the summer is close to pilot stage. I always have far more energy at the start of a project than I do during the "monotonous middle". Hit that stage some time in August...

The course covers nine areas:

• What is online learning - History, how is it different from classrooms, role in education
  
• Planning and preparing to move online - creating a "centering point" for students, creating efficiencies (FAQ's), scheduling
  
• Orienting students - self-assessment, remedial resources, "layers of exposure", study plan, facilitator assistance
  
• Fostering interaction - with content, instructor, students, and the interface
  
• Facilitating online - role of instructor as a guide, differences from classroom, teacher as learner as teacher, use of journals, encouraging reflection, communicating with students - i.e. quality, timeliness and precision of feedback
  
• Assessing online - Assessing philosophies, tools, authenticity, plagiarism, testing, designing
  
• Building community - Why community?, building social connections, stages
  
• Virtual classroom management - dealing with difficulties - dropouts, conflicts, complaints, lurkers, etc.
  
• Evaluating and reflecting - Did the course meet expectations?, problem areas, tools for gathering students comments
  

Have I missed anything major?...email me if you think I have.

Posted 8:18 PM by George Siemens
Is PC Through as Key Technology Driver?
Quotes: "The personal computer's role as the primary driver of semiconductor technology is finished...So just what will drive semiconductor technology next? "The grid -- the Internet -- is the backbone of future computing,""

Posted 7:55 AM by George Siemens
Evolution trumps usability guidelines
Comment: Focuses on web design...but offers great advice to elearning development. Guidelines result in canned work. Evolution and situation specific approaches offer a more practical model. I love the concept of mutations - I've used the word spiraling in the past to describe the concept of "I develop something, you add to it, someone else does the same"

Posted 7:44 AM by George Siemens
Semantic What?
Quote: "The web was successful by decentralizing data on a very large scale. As with any buzzword, the exact meaning of the Semantic Web is not exactly defined, my view is that the Semantic Web is the attempt to replicate the forward-leap of the web by decentralizing metadata (data about data) on the same very large scale, with all the benefits of having a lot of machine-processable and data-minable data."
Comment: Quick read - brings up the role of taxonomies (and its limitations... came across an interesting quote this week - taxonomies kill creativity). Offers the concept of "personalized information filtering" as a solution.