I have not done a comprehensive survey, but found zohoshow come out on top in the case of live sharing and desktop sharing. Google Docs had lovely themes. 280 slides has a nice interface, just like Keynote. Slideroll will create an mpeg for authoring a DVD! Tagslides shows are vulnerable to javascript on pages it shows, which kill the slideshow. If the pages shown on a Tagslide show has javascript to remove the page from frames on another site, that is the end of the slideshow there.

As the camera showed up scenes from Brazilian slums, Indian scavenging grounds and Grand Central station, all the four adults engaged each other in a learning experience where everyone came out richer.

Two of us had lightly better general information about the context in which the scenes were shown. In a silent documentary, all four of us became narrators and educators. The scenes ranged from common sterotypes to rare nooks of earth which tested our knowledge. The air was thick with interpretation and the experience more interactive than any other before.

At the end, I strongly felt that this experience qualifies as a top notch sociocultural learning experience marked by the following characteristics:
1. Contextual interpretation
2. Richness of symbolism through noises, patters and color
3. Body of knowledge depending on the sum of the mings of us four viewers, the sum being greater than anything we could accomplish in isolation.
4. Guiding each other through blond spots and working like a team of sailors who are collectively responsible for positioning a battleship on the waters (to use Wortham's metaphor).

I could clearly see that the most efficient adult learning can happen under the flag of sociocultural active learning.

Good night!

The force that drives innovation in technology is human sensitivity, perception and enlightened thoughts. As we herald a new age of vLearning or learning within Virtual Worlds like Second Life, we face a wild and wide open domain of alternate reality. But alternate reality in itself is nothing new. 'Virtual Worlds' is our answer to the question posed above.

The extended entry follows:

"And now that I have opened the gate, all the Boxonians, like the ghosts in Homer, come clamoring for mention. But they must be denied it. Readers who have built a world would rather tell of their own than hear of mine; those who have not would peraps be bewildered and repelled." (Chapter V, Suprised by Joy, Lewis).

Lewis says a lot above with reference to creation of virtual worlds: Virtual worlds, once created, need to address the individual stories of all and any creatures within it. This is impossible to address in the written word. But if he were alive to see that every resident of Second Life can live and experience their own storyline within the virtual world, that would have greatly amazed him.

Yesterday I stumbled upon the "Last Lecture of a Dying Professor", Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon, who could be called a pioneer, not just of building virtual worlds, but more importantly an educator who has helped many others learn this craft in the best way possible. Through a course in virtual world, taught for ten years, Randy has addressed the eternal child within all his students who shared that timeless urge with writers like Lewis and Tolkien. That intense desire to tell a story in their own world, not in this disorderly and fate-controlled real reality. Here is the video that tells all, famously titled "Last Lecture of a Dying Professor":

Randy's accomplishments include being an imagineer who created the Alladin virtual reality ride for Disney. With the advent of Virtual Worlds, the time has come to pay tribute into that 20th century tradition of fantasy and rededicate it to learning objectives.

Vic Divecha
April 12th, 2008
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Footnote:
My introduction to virtual reality was through Michael Crichton's book, 'Disclosure' which was later made into a hit movie starring Michael Doughlas and Demi Moore. It was a fascinating but not an awe inspiring presentation of the basic capabilities of augmented reality and relied heavily on a virtual guide within the world. This remains true today in Second Life, with the difference that the helper avatars are for most parts driven by real people, self-driven and localized to their parts of the world.

I tried the tools in isolation and it has all the features one would imagine and the look and feel are more enamouring than Centra or WebEx. The UI elements are Flash and the requirements are Flash Player 9. Not bad at all in terms of a solo flight. Now I will see if some folks might be interested in going for a short test drive.

(Image from RIAPedia

1. Instructional Design is very important. Developing a good script for learning modules has no substitute. A good design here means lots of direct, relevant, performance based feedback.

2. Terrific content: Good teaching strategy, in the sense that the knowledge transfer is both organic and telescopic. Because the knowledge builds in the learning like a seed planted, sprouted, stemming, branching etc. towards the end goal. This holds true for the Pimsler approach too, which I am using to learn Portuguese.

3. USB Headset enforcement: This strategy validates, for me, the recommendation I strongly make to all our distance learners: use USB mic/headsets rather than rely on on-board sound cards. Rosetta Stone CD version ships with a USB headset and I am happy to have found a validation to my tech recommendation; especially because it has been challenged as a tech superstition on my part. I rest my case.

However, the downside is, if I go on to buy another Rosetta product, I will pay for another USB headset. Por Que?!

I already have one from my previous purchase. They will make me buy it, no matter if you already own the $30 USB headset they sold you with your previous purchase. Bad? Terrible.

Human learning is a vast field. Knowles book is a terrific attempt by him to wrap his head around, and lead the reader to do the same, in this field of knowledge transfer. A new theory is proposed, deservedly, from all his soul searching from Maslow to Carl Jung, trying to fathom human psychology before emerging out with his Androgogy Principles.

Androgogy is, crudely said, about the uniqueness of the learning in adults and it's implications, i.e. influence on design of instruction. An old classic, but quite an invigorating read.

I was sinking my teeth into this meaty concept of Androgogy and couldn't help reflecting. So far, in the middle of the book, I feel that Androgogy (adult learning) cannot be an institution separate from Pedagogy (child/youth learning). It can certainly be a prescribed way to approach and open minds of adults, but high class learning can take place in a pedagogical atmosphere.

To take one of Knowles' opening arguments in a chapter, he mentions how the great teachers of yore, i.e. Jesus Christ, Lao Tse, Confucious etc., were teachers of adults and not children. They were delivering instruction to minds which were quite occupied with daily chores, mores and mental blocks. Their approach to delivering what they delivered can be taken as the founding examples of Androgogy (I use Androgogy now to imply adult education learning models/theory and teaching styles). To extend the thread of these great teachers of masses, they did also profess their followers to rise beyond the characteristics that made them different than children. They urged them to return to the state of child-like innocence to truly absorb the message they professed.

In other words, although the approach to the new seekers was andrological by the ways of addressing their adult-issues, there was a constant reminder to rise above these adult-issues for efficient learning. Learning, where the rules of the games change BACK to pedagogy! The true masters did make it clear b alluding to purity of heart, purity of mind that the learners rid themselves of the adult-blocks.

In the modern world, where adults attempt to learn, the learning may or may not happen most efficiently. The con of embracing Androgogy too tightly might be the result that the adult-learner may get pampered, the standards of instruction and evaluations may fall. But that is a case when the instructors choose to let the learners get away. I have seen, so far, that by specifically not allowing separate standards for students in the executive degree programs (more scopr for Androgogy) and residential degree programs (more Pedagogically heavy), the faculty are challenging the adult learners to cope with the pedagogical framework. This is fair to all the students, residential or executive.

This is the place where the library can fill the necessary gaps in the imposed instructional method and the adult-learner's true capacity by making androgogical offerings in the form of supplemental instruction, higher accessibility to resources, better quality on-demand content and accomodation of learning style of the students.

On the faculty development front, the library would retrofit the pedagogical instructor's teaching style with enhancements inspired by androgogical teaching theories.

ps. As an after-thought, I realized that it is very easy for someone not familiar with the term, Androgogy, to associate it with less stringent educational standards. This is open to interpretation in my opinion. The open-ness and accomodation that Androgogy can provide to adults will help adults, but may make younger learners more lenient. So I feel that the strategies of adult learning applied to children may hinder their development. They do not have the life-challenges, so the accomodations may become a precursor to slower paced learning.

I remember, that I got better grades when I took 12 credit hours at grad school in a semester, than in the semester when I took 8 or 9. And I saw that the pressure of more work, at some equilibrium point, will produce higher quality work. Too little work is as counter-productive as too much work.

Back to UBC: There are many that relate directly to eLearning, but two caught my fancy which I review below:

1. Timeline Tool: Excellent implementation. Extremely useful for any webmaster. In their own words:

The timeline tool is a web based learning object template which allows an instructor to quickly construct an interactive timeline with audio and visual effects. The finished timeline can serve as a re-useable learning object which can be easily distributed and shared over the web. This learning object template is built in Flash, PHP and XML.

2. Multimedia Learning Object Authoring Tool (Video + Slide Sync Tool).

This would be a great tool for anyone needing to sync static slides with videos, and an additional media stream. However, does not beat Camtasia for the same purposes, but it is a good too to have for the zero budget eLearning startup. In their own words, again:

This tool enables content experts to easily combine video, audio, images and texts into one synchronized learning object. All assets are configured to be played back in a pre-configured order. Users do not need to perform any programming tasks, but rather going through a graphical user interface to generate the learning object. A much advanced WYSIWYG "click through" version is being launched in the short future.

This case study out of UCD (University College Dublin) has a lot to relate to: UCD is a research university, just like us and the beginnings of a e-learning culture beyond the LMS are now taking root. This is published at learnmag.org

It is interesting to see that the faculty at the medical school did not want outside intervention in the form of assistance by instructional designers or e-learning specialists for translating snippets of animations, movies and graphics from their courses into a wholesome e-learning course.

I think in a situation like this, the faculty should position themselves as SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) and let the professionals take care of the course conversion process parts, i.e. Breaking up content into correctly portioned learning objects, designing testing and evaluation, recommending strategies, dealing with technology limitations and exploiting advanced features of the learning environment, which could take the SMEs years to figure out.

Read it all here:
Bringing Online Learning to a Research-Intensive University

ps. I discovered this article within hours of publication using my new Web 2.0 approach to content aggregation. Feeding trusted site RSS feeds into my iGoogle page which comes up whenever I start a browser. I am beginning to love RSS, finally useful in the way it was intended to be.

http://www.wbtic.com
http://www.learnativity.com/
http://www.internettime.com/
http://www.elearnmag.org/
http://www.epsscentral.info/
http://www.learningcircuits.org/

Also, from previous literature searches, I came across one resource:

http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/

http://standards.edna.edu.au/standards/go

It is interesting how motivational coaches, gurus and consultants want to lay out knowledge in a nutshell: "The 11 mistakes to avoid when..." "7 ways to make _____ work" etc. They do have a lot of wisdom in them. So lets reflect on his four "C"s of e-Learning strategy success - Culture, Champions, Communication and Change in this blog post.

(Continued in extended entry)

Champions are continuously and definitely needed. Most of the e-Learning infrastructure seems to flow from that seed group of individuals who are the 'early adopters'. There is no dearth of them in certain departments. However, the infectious enthusiasm does not permeate inter-departmental barriers effectively. Unless the champions are recognized on an inter-departmental level and rewarded suitably, the culture will not built. No culture ever builds itself.

The champion for SPH came from a certain department and his interdepartmental colleages took the risk to go out on a limb and try new technology. However, if a study was done to do a frequency count of e-Learning and sync/async technology use, the e-Learning champion's department will be a distant first with very few enlightened lights in other departments.

Communication

Communication of institution-wide strategy that will involve e-Learning, to the institutional community is critical. Communication that comes from the top in a timely fashion inspires ideas and high quality content. Last minute delegation creates projects that are doomed from the start and insecure team-members worry more about the end-game of pointing fingers rather than deliver productively and professionally. Artificially flavoured emails glorifying work progress and collaboration are vital indicators that a project needs to be rethought and re-directed. I have seen some excellent vision, mission and execution in this first experience of being a team-member of a world class degree program that embraced blended learning. There was a champion from the faculty side, leading the cultural shift in measured steps to minimize risks. He communicated the vision and strategies to all team members and looked after the end-product's quality which lead to a successful pilot with lesser glitches and more student satisfaction than one can practically expect from a pilot program.

and finally... Change.

Change, when heralded by sandboxed efforts of measured risks, is easier to bring about. None the less, it is still difficult to change perceptions. But the motivational line was: If 30-year users of acetate film transitioned to the half-baked PowerPoint of the earlier years, people will similarly accept podcasting, clickers and other Web 2.0 tools. I think the response has been better than just acceptance. This semester i see a bunch of faculty not just accepting, but, with a little training, independently setting up their powerpoints to use classroom-response systems (clickers) and become stand-alone podcast producers. This is because they love their jobs, their students and are not shy to ask questions.

Overall, I feel there is no better place for witessing change management, other than an institution of higher learning. The motivations, culture and resources stimulate experimental projects that ultimately live on to become regular services. This is what the informatics wing of the Public Health Library & Informatics aims to achieve: support the fostering of a successful e-Learning implementation.

Without adding steps the only way to do this was to create a custom production profile. 11.025kHz, Mono, 16kBits/sec made the two hour lecture about 10Mb in size. This was good enough for CTools upload.

The quick-start guide for the instructor needs to improve:

Currently: Well illustrated; 3 pages long; single section

Improvements: 1 page; sectioned (prep, post-class)

The only reason I never seriously tried Linux, pre-Ubuntu, was my percetption that once I install the darn thing, I would have to go around hunting for drivers for every little screw installed/attached to my computer.

However, bad karma to blame, I did. But not with Linux, but Windows Vista Ultimate.To contrast, I installed Ubuntu to see what happens:

Driver----------------------Vista Ultimate----------------Ubuntu 7.xx
====================================================================
PCMCIA Slot Driver-----------Painful hours of Googling-----Automatic!
SD Card Reader Driver--------Painful hours of Googling-----Automatic!
External Firewire Drivers----Painful hours of Googling-----Automatic!
Tablet PC Recognition--------Automatic---------------------Not Tested
Sony Camera (DV Connection)--Movie Maker does not recognise the DV Camera
====================================================================

-- I have battled a Windows Update memory leak which sucked the juice out of my computing experience without respite. Every 2 or 3 minutes, wuauclt.exe will execute, eating up 99% of CPU. I had to kill the process and it would start up in a blink of an eye. Finally when I safe-mode started Windows and deleted the wuauclt.exe and wuausrv manually, svchost.exe came up as the hungry monkey. I went Bob Dylan:

"How many times does a man have to kill
wuauclt.exe before he can compute?"

Anyhoo, it seemed like an endless blackhole. Even worse, Vista refused to update on my TC4200 HP Tablet with Windows XP Tablet PC edition. I had to reformat the HDD before I could re-partition.

Would all of this be avoidable? Yes, if only HP would leave unallocated space on the HDD. The factory default is that the entire HDD is allocated to "C:\" which cannot be resized without destroying the current data. I pity the average users and "medium-power-users" like me.

Anyways, Vista is installed and Ubuntu is on its way. I have 4 beautiful partitions on my HDD, thanks to my sacrifice of wiping out my HDD (important stuff backed up on a Firewire HDD).

Here were some rude shocks:

-- Windows Movie Maker (Vista) refuses to work in Vista unless I get a fancy display card. Now that is not possible for everyone, so I guess for quick and homely video editing, I will have to run Windows Movie Maker (XP 2.6). I was actually surprised that Vista did not grumble about me installing a XP application.

-- HP's website does not list Vista Ultimate as an option for driver upgrades. Only Business and Enterprise (and Venti, hehe).

Ubuntu is installing on a 10G partition, just for fun. Hopefully it will not mess up my Vista installation and I will have a nice dual boot system. Lets wait and watch. I still have 1 Vista installation pending for this computer. Hope it works.

Now I formatted the entire 60G hard-disk on my Tablet and

Its described, by the author Catlin, as Haiku for ERb (rhtml) code.

I was a little turned off by swearwords used by the author while demoing the coolness of HAML over ERb (rhtml).