Education 2.0 & 3.0

What have I learned in a year of constant use of video conferencing? I’ll try to reduce it to a series of points, some of which you may find simple and easy to implement, while others may be difficult, impossible, or no use. But in all cases they are issues that have helped me to make videoconferencing a comfortable tool that I make good use of, and which I needed to appear professional:

Here are 12 logistical tips to improve clarity and communication, and to support teaching and learning online.

Along with countless other sobering repercussions, COVID-19 jeopardizes kids’ physical activity at a time when the emotional benefits that exercise provides are sorely needed. With school closures, suspension of team practices and the imperative to stay home and away from others, children and teenagers (and their agitated parents) will have to find other ways to keep moving. This is especially important now, as a global pandemic with potentially catastrophic repercussions has a way of igniting fear.

The visual design of your eLearning course should help learners understand and retain the content, as well as minimize confusion. Nowadays, with all the relatively easy-to-use graphic design and eLearning authoring tools, all of us who don’t have a degree in design can create good-looking courses. Of course, if you want to create more complicated things, such as custom illustrations, custom animated videos, custom characters, etc., you need more in-depth knowledge and skills.

In a public-private partnership that could signal the future of higher education, the University of Memphis has teamed up with FedEx Express on a new initiative that will give more than 11,000 FedEx employees the opportunity to earn a tuition-free degree from UofM Global, the university’s online learning program..

When you think about Google services, apps such as Gmail, Docs, and Photos may be the first things that come to mind. I’d be willing to wager, though, that the Google service you use more than any other is one you rarely think about—because it’s woven so tightly into your life that it doesn’t even feel like a service anymore. It just feels like a utility, something that’s always there—like a faucet for metaphorical water.

I’m talking, of course, about Google Search, the gateway to an endless-seeming array of answers and information. But these days, Google Search can do a whole lot more than just look up simple queries. In fact, if you know all of its hidden powers, Search can be a Swiss Army knife that’s always within reach, even when you aren’t actively thinking about its presence.

Browse through these 40 advanced functions—and get ready to see Search in a whole new light.

We are generally mindful that PowerPoint presentations (PPTs) are utilized widely in organizations. But, do we utilize this material in places other than meeting corridors? PowerPoint presentations are considerably more than simple packs of valuable data – they are valuable sources of learning content that can be utilized to produce very viable online courses. Most of the time, these PPTs are used in classroom training sessions and later sent via emails to learners. However, we need to look at what the criteria are for deciding whether face to face course really is convertible to eLearning.

As a follow-up to our 9 Characteristics of 21st Century Learning we developed in 2009, we have developed an updated framework, The Inside-Out Learning Model.

The goal of the model is simple enough–not pure academic proficiency, but instead authentic self-knowledge, diverse local and global interdependence, adaptive critical thinking, and adaptive media literacy.

By design this model emphasizes the role of play, diverse digital and physical media, and a designed interdependence between communities and schools.

The Attendance activity allows teachers to maintain a record of students attendance online by replacing a paper-based attendance register. The teacher adds Attendance as an activity of a course, and then sets up the sessions for which attendance is to be tracked.

Teaching well takes time—time to prepare content and course materials, to interact with students in class, during office hours and electronically, to keep up with developments in the field, to grade and provide constructive feedback, and that just starts the list. Here are some time-saving strategies.

We’ll all be teaching infolit online for the foreseeable future (I hope) and it is, as anyone who’s done much of it will tell you, a very different experience to being in a room with people.

I do a lot of training online already for overseas audiences, so I have some familiarity with this. For what it’s worth, here are some tips for retooling your sessions to work in a webinar type environment.

AIM HIGH! Tips can help teens tweens, and adults enjoy a better life.

The phrase “desirable difficulties” was first coined in the nineties by psychologist Robert Bjork to describe learning conditions that introduced inconveniences to yield greater learner retention of material. According to the literature, the more work that is required to learn a concept, the greater the mastery (Sparks, 2011). To illustrate, a classical example of a desirable difficulty is found in the use of flashcards as study tools. Flashcards typically display only partial information, as a cue for the user to recall a more complete set of facts. When compared to lecture notes, flashcards require a student to work harder in recalling materials and are therefore especially effective study tools. As such, flashcards have been popular among students for decades.  

The modern corporate workplace is an amalgamation of sorts – you have the Gen X, Y (millennials), and the latest entrants to the workplace, Gen Z – each generation with their unique preferences for learning and working. Your organization might have a Learning Management System (LMS) that hosts some amazing online training resources, but is that enough to ensure learner engagement in eLearning?

Whether you’ve taught online a lot or a little, chances are you didn’t enjoy it as much as teaching in person. Maybe you didn’t experience that fizz after a particularly invigorating face-to-face class. Indeed, according to a 2017 Educause survey, only 9 percent of academics prefer to teach “in a completely online environment.” That means a whopping 91 percent of us don’t. And I suspect that a good majority of that 91 percent would prefer to teach anywhere but online.

Real learning happens when learning “sticks.”

Employing solid learning retention activities with your learners means using tools you can call on anytime to help students remember learning. The learning retention activities offered in the TeachThought article 15 Reflection Strategies To Help Students Retain What You Just Taught Them are among the simplest and the best for every teacher to use. Each one encourages the natural reflection process that helps our students absorb learning effectively.

15 Reflection Strategies To Help Students Retain What You Just Taught Them by Terry Heick Reflection is a natural part of learning. We all think about new experiences–the camping on the car ride home, the mistakes made in a game, or the emotions felt while finishing a long-term project that’s taken months to complete. Below …

Gwyneth Jones writes: "Sometimes, when you're sharing the benefits of a professional Social Media presence, it can become a bit bewildering and overwhelming."