Haukie’s Weblog

a bit late, but…

Last week we held our presentation / groupwork about LMS and LCMS systems.

We started up with short definitions of LMS and LCMS via power point. After that we compared a real classroom and its learning setting with these more or less complex systems in general also via power point. The idea was to present a situation, which could make transparent, why such technology might be interesting to use for a teacher. Starting with the needs of the educational setting we wanted to present then the implementations, which could be used to support the organisational work the participants face in the specific learning setting. There had been some discussion about open source and free software in between when we introduced stine, blackboard, commsy and moodle.

After this short introduction we started the prepared group work (see power point) in three splitted groups, which should compare the systems later. After the whole presentation we discussed wether the timeframe was extended too much because of presenting three different systems in this group work.

The evaluation after it was more or less not going into deepth as i thought befor. To short time and maybe it would be better to use two or more seperated blocks for such an idea to go in the direction of developing quality standards with all participants. But there i listed while the discussion took place all the comments made about the different systems (the aim of developing quality standards was quitted in the first steps because of time):

commsy

+ pretty easy and logical
+ made up columns good
- to write a mail you have to do too many steps
- possibility for misusing (wrong name / account possible)
+ easy to get tasks done

moodle

- took a little while to start
+ tasks were ok to manage
- feature to use blog but noone use it, does not seem personal, just technical

blackboard

- does not went that easy, did not manage tasks done
- possible to send mail, but first to search user and to create mail account
- no outside mailaccount possible to use
- buttons were not easy to find
+ many possibilities
+ helpful to see what students do and not do
+ / – depends on the role you have to see specific content

The conclusion of the whole project for me is that a prepared presentation is even better if you tested it once befor, but that i feel allready firm enough to be flexible in coorporating groups and that for people who get confronted with a content first time it takes also a while to “digest” and that less content in more time is sometimes helping. On the other side it went good and i guess people had some impression afterwards, what might be real problems people face using technologies in their educational work. Therefor it was good to start a group work, but this extended the timeframe also a bit too much. All in all another step in the field of e-learning.

See you in around a week then and please add some more content at the evaluation of our project at the wiki quality standards page or as just as a comment to this post if you feel like and if you find time

Just a short sum-up of my handwritings i made at the presentation:

the presentation was held by susanne, luise and samuel

You can find another evaluation of the presentation at progress and reflection from levke and Micro-learning and Mobile Learning from sly and a third one at Micro and Mobile Learning from juliane.

methods used for the presentation: podcasts, powerpoint, videclips, fotostory

Microlearning

1st microlearning podcast (in german, sorry):
- Lerneinheiten
- Microcontent-Formen blogs / social bookmarking
- referenzierbare und strukturierte Inhalte
- Mikroebene ist nicht zeitaufwändig
- die mediale Umgebung kann über den Tag verteilt verwendet werden

An example for microlearning: Learning about Barcelona with pictures / pieces of content with short texts

second podcast:
- Karteikarte / Frage -> multiple choice ?
- push Prinzip: “nicht aufdringlich”
- “wegdrücken” des Lernflusses / auch Problematisch
- Zwischenräume zum Lernen nutzen

My critics on this: to get results, you need to invest time anyway, so do not think just because you have nice sounding methods learning is no work anymore

Mobile Learning

Example: sms coaches which send tasks to you

Different contents can be learned across locations and with the help of portable technologies

It is also a big business of companies

Does it make sense to use mobile devices in a classroom?

(never say “of course” in a presentation”)

Definitions and / or content of learning-types

Formal learning -> strict, aiming for diploma, grade etc., institutions

Nonformal learning -> intended learning, but not formal (the opposite of formal learning)

Informal learning -> not intended, daily life learning

critics: Isn’t it also a type of advertisment for commercial products to use “new” terms for things which are not new? If it is big business, suddenly everything is named with keywords which sound like innovation.

A question was: What type of learning is “microlearning” / “mobilelearning”?

Answer: It is intentional learning, but as f.e. sms coaching is nonformal, a presentation like here in the seminar is a formal learning setting.

Some more examples for microlearning were named:
- vocabulary words
- short poems

The intention of microlearning is to be used as an addition, as a modern way f.e. in languages with using the understanding of memorization and in companies for communication seminars, to integrate content in daily life.

Time for concentration is said to be no more than 30 Minutes and for memorizing it is important to use items and intervalls / rhythms.

Where could you use it in your practice?

One comment was, if you have no interest, you will not learn, whatever is the method.

Another: Learning in small sequences is not new, just the way to integrate IT in learning issues.

The integration of learning in daily life sounds to be easy via these methods, f.e. via i-pod for free learning foreign language

Fun and learning together is good, f.e. on the way travelling to university and to be time efficient is good

but multitasking seems to overcrowd and to individualise people

it can be a pressure so that informal learning fall apart

there are learning types and it is good to offer different types of learning, so good to know about technics

mixing traditional with modern methods makes a lot of sense