ThingLink

Ok I've tried out ThingLink and I did it quite quickly on juries ... but can't really see there being much more to it than this:

 

You upload an image and can add 'tags' to the image, which link to another website. I think the idea is that you have lots of useful websites all together on one page and one thing leads to another. 

You can add lots of different tags, I've just added a YouTube video and newspaper articles mostly, but you can add SoundCloud links and other photos etc. It could be a nice way to put lots of useful links all together on one page.

There is a ThingLink blog here that provides lots of examples of this tool being used (all of which are infinitely better than mine) 

I really like the Grammy one:

Useful website

Found this website and thought it might be useful and was worth sharing:

The website can be found here, it is entitled:

"Presentation Tools for your Classroom"

The author has presented  a range of applications and software that can be used in the classroom. She discusses lots that I hadn't heard of before. (Although I know Mandy has shown us loads already it can't hurt to see what else is out there). 

I like the idea of 'ThingLink' so will try it out and get back to you...

Importance of audio on my VLE

 

Physical appearance, tone of voice, inflection, humour, pauses in speech, volume - these are just some of the wealth of attributes that all have an impact on how your students see you, how they interact with you and most importantly, how they learn from you. When you take away the physical presence of the teacher (and therefore, all their valuable attributes), how effective is the teaching that's left? Does it not suffer?


My thoughts:

The VLE does not replace the teacher, it cannot just be somewhere you upload files/documents and it cannot teach your students for you. The role of the teacher is not diminished, it is perhaps even more crucial to establish the role of the teacher when using a VLE because of the fact that you are not physically there when your students are.

Therefore, I think it is vital to inject as much of your personality into your VLE as possible - and one way to do this, is be 'there' as far as technology will let you. To achieve this, I have been using audio on my VLE.

I know from personal experience that when I have missed a lesson and accessed the PowerPoint hand-out, simply reading the PowerPoint does not teach me anything. It does not help me catch up on a lesson and just reading through notes is not enough - I, and many others, benefit from hearing the speaker/deliverer of the lecture themselves. So I have added audio to my PowerPoint presentations when I can and I have embedded Podcasts where possible.

I found this useful website that discusses the use and importance of audio in learning, it also gives some advice on how to use audio.

Trying out a podcast

I'm currently researching for my e-learning essay and have found an incredible amount of academic articles on the subject.

I found one article which had conducted a study on something I had not thought about previously: the posting and non-posting behaviour online, sometimes referred to as 'lurking'.

I was going to write a short post about this but then this is an e-learning after all, so I've made a short podcast* instead discussing the article, that you can listen to here:

listen to ‘Article Review’ on audioBoom

In anyone wants to read the article then here's the reference: 'What do the numbers say? The influence of motivation and peer feedback on students’ behaviour in online discussion' by Kui Xie,  British Journal of Educational Technology 2013) Vol 44 No 2  Pages 288–301

*I've made my Podcast using AudioBoom, which is a free app.

GoogleSites

First issue with GoogleSites. You cannot make sub-folders.


KOS|BOH confirmed it.

The dilemma of choosing a VLE...

As part of our e-learning assignment our task is to create a VLE (a virtual learning environment - click here for a description of a VLE and why it is becoming crucial to education).

I already have a number of ideas of what I want to include, how I want it to look, ways to make it interactive but before I could get to any of that, I had to choose my VLE. Which was not easy.

In one of our earlier e-learning sessions, we each had to research a VLE and present our findings back to our group. This was very useful as it majorly cut down my sampling time and I could tell that just by looking at some potential VLEs that they were not for me (particularly wiki dot)

The ones we looked at included:
- Wiki Spaces
- PB Works
- WordPress
- Google Sites


Unfortunately, I felt I had to sign up to all  sites and actually start uploading things to see whether I liked the website. For me, this is the only way I can really tell whether a website will be for me. This took a lot of time and I came to quickly realise that I hated some.


My quest for a VLE boiled down to finding a website that did what I wanted so I made a list of things I am looking for in a VLE. I came up with the following:

- ORGANISATION

That's really all I wanted. Just somewhere I can upload files but in an organised way, I just wanted somewhere that I could create folders and put files in with headings and sub-headings and so forth.

(Little known fact about me, I like to be organised.)

Like I said, I have a lot of ideas of WHAT I want on my VLE and I just needed something that let me upload my material HOW I wanted.

So after a LOT of time testing each site, I settled on Google Sites. And for now*, I'm happy.

*Check back here in two weeks time where I will undoubtedly write a post about Google Sites making me want to put my fist through the screen. 

Quizlet

Quizlet is quite useful as there's already lots of quizzes available for Law, so I just choose the one that suits me best and I can share it/embed it as you can see above.

You can embed it in the format you want (i.e. test,flashcards, pair matching etc) but unfortunately when you share it as a link, you can't select the format in which you want it to appear in, which is a bit of a shame because I've made one that is best suited for the 'test' format and won't work as well in the other types.