Daily Bookmarks 07/19/2007

JOLT: Testing An Experimental Universally Designed Learning Unit

  • The idea of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is to create a number of different ways for students to access and interact with content and allow them to choose based on their personal strengths. Part of the research involved having the pre-service teachers determine their own learning preferences and Myers-Brigg Type. Over 85% of the teachers indicated an SJ type. – post by christyinsdesign

20 Ways To Aggregate Your Social Networking Profiles

  • Short reviews of a number of different tools to aggregate your profiles on various social networking sites
     – post by christyinsdesign

JOLT: CREST+ Model: Writing Effective Online Discussion Questions  Annotated

  • Model for crafting discussion questions for online courses. Includes examples of several different types of questions.
     – post by christyinsdesign

The CREST+ model, a model for writing effective online discussion questions, covers the cognitive nature of the question, the reading basis, any experiential possibility, style and type of question, and finally ways to structure a good question.  This model encourages students to participate in online forum discussions, provides a template for new online faculty to use in creating effective discussion questions, and promotes a higher level processing of the material.

The CREST+ model covers the cognitive nature of the question [C], the reading basis [R], any experiential [E] possibility, style and type of question [ST] , and finally ways to structure a good question [+].

Second Life: Do You Need One? (Part 4) : July 2007 : THE Journal

  • Last part of a series on Second Life for education. This includes some discussion on accessibility in SL as well as a set of differences between how traditional educators approach SL and how digital natives and gamers approach it.
     – post by christyinsdesign

A Wandering Eyre » Archive » Meetings, Meetings Everywhere and Not a Decision in Sight  Annotated

  • Interesting view on one reason people may resist using online tools for meeting and prefer to meet face to face: Collaborating online leaves a trail for accountability and transparency.
     – post by christyinsdesign

When you hold a meeting over chat, develop an idea on a wiki, discuss solutions to problems on a discussion board, or collectively edit a document, you leave little traces of the process everywhere. There are transcripts, different versions of documents, and there is an actual record of who made what comment and contributed what material.

In a f2f meeting, we rely on a person to take notes. We all know that Meeting Minutes are nothing more then a list of decisions and action items. Meeting minutes do not reflect the decision process, the tension a topic may have induced, or the crazy idea that got thrown on the table and very quickly was swept under the rug. Meeting minutes are the sanitized version of what really happened. Sometimes, they are so sanitized as to be completely useless to those who were not in attendance.

Conducting committee work on the web can be dirty, it can be chaotic, and, in most instances, it is open for all the world to see. Moving committee work to the web is the picture of radical transparency and that scares people. Big organizations hate admitting failure and process can look like failure.

We have to get over the idea that conducting our work in the open is bad. We have to get over the idea that f2f meetings are the most productive way to work. They are not. They never will be. Get over it already.

Leave a Reply