Guest Blogger - Karen Schweitzer: 15 Web 2.0 Tools for eLearning Instructors and Students

The Internet is loaded with free web 2.0 tools to make eLearning more effective and productive for students and instructors. These tools are perfect for creating online courses, managing classes, web conferencing, file sharing, communication, collaboration, video streaming, and more. Here is a list of 15 web 2.0 tools for eLearning instructors and students to try:

MyiCourse - MyiCourse provides software that can be used to create and publish educational material online. With this site, users can create one course or a whole university that can be viewed publically or privately.

Yugma - Instructors looking for a free way to conference with their students need look no further than Yugma. This free web conferencing software allows you to conduct online meetings, desktop sharing, and conferences with up to 20 attendees.

Mikogo - Mikogo is a free screen sharing tool that works well for online presentations, demos, remote support, and webinars. This tool is free to both private and commercial users.

Twingr - Microblogs are the perfect way for eLearning students and instructors to collaborate, learn, and share online. Twingr is makes it easy to create your own microblogging community.

Diigo - Diigo is a free research and collaboration tool that allows you to highlight and add sticky notes to the web. This tool assists students in creating a pool of resources for projects.

JotSpace - This online whiteboard is a real-time collaboration tool for editing and sharing information. JotSpace allows you to use markers, photos, chat, stickies, and more.

WetPaint - WetPaint allows users to create a social website built on collaborative thinking. With this tool, instructors and students can build websites containing a mix of blogs, wikis, social networks, and forums.

OpenHuddle - OpenHuddle is a free tool that allows you to interact with as many attendees as you choose. With this tool, users have full access to the video, chat, audio, and drawing board tools.

KeepandShare - With over 700,000 users, KeepandShare is the perfect place for groups to keep, share, and comment on files. This secure site can store documents, calendars, photos, bookmarks, lists, and more.

Dabbleboard - Dabbleboard is a collaboration application that features drawing, chat, and uploading capabilities. Signing up for a free account gives you access to the whiteboard interface with unlimited collaborators.

Animoto - This site allows users to create free videos with user-selected music and video files. Animoto utilizes cutting edge technology to develop a high-end finished product in wide screen format.

Gimp - Gimp is free image manipulation software for enhancing and retouching images. This software package also includes a customizable interface and hardware support.

Viddler - Viddler is a free video streaming tool for sharing your videos with students or instructors. Your videos can be up to 500MB. Tags can also be placed in the timeline for explanation purposes.

CourseLab - With this free web authoring tool, users can create free e-learning courses with no prior programming experience. The courses can then be published on the web with very little effort.

Moodle - Moodle is an online course management system that can be used to create e-learning sites. With this free software, teachers can create assignments, blogs, chat rooms, forums, and more.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes for OnlineCollege.org, an online college resource.

How long it takes to design and develop one hour of eLearning?

I hear this question on a regular basis and I am thrilled that Dr. Karl Kapp and Robyn Defelice have put together this survey.

Their article is published on Learning Circuits. They also have posted great entries regarding this on their blogs:

http://karlkapp.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-long-does-it-take-to-develop-one.html

http://dishingdesign.com/blog/2009/08/15/dinner-is-served/

Didn't get a chance to weigh in? The survey is still open!

OT: Back and bigger than ever...

...and I don't mean that figuratively. My three month hiatus was on account of a, currently onion-sized, addition to our family.
That's right! We're expecting. Every little flutter and kick brings a new clarity to my life and priorities... and unfortunately this particular blog didn't land too high on the list. Not to worry, though! I've been getting the itch to post which started with our team blog at work and now includes Twitter updates, as well as updates to the Lung Cancer Awareness Blog.

I'm fixing to started posting here again soon. First I'm concentrating on kickstarting the fundraising for the upcoming Free to Breathe event in November. Read more below...

http://participate.freetobreathe.org/goto/rachel

Lung cancer is the #1 cancer killer of American men and women; it kills more people than breast, prostate, colon, liver, kidney and melanoma cancers combined. The Free to Breathe® event that I’m participating in will raise awareness of the disease and funding for vital research.

Please help me help my friend

I met Stephanie shortly after we moved into our new home. I was invited by one of our neighbors to a girls night out and Steph had the seat next to mine. We found out we both had an interest in music and it wasn't long before Steph had talked me into auditioning for the Susquehanna Valley Chorale. The picture to the left is us after performing last fall.

So besides being one of my first friends here and helping me get accustomed to the area again, Steph has also been a huge inspiration to me.

Steph was diagnosed with stage 4 Lung Cancer over a year ago. She has never smoked and doesn't have any of the other risk factors generally associated with Lung Cancer.

Steph is a wonderful wife and mother of two beautiful little girls. She is determined not only to fight Lung Cancer for her family's sake, but she has also become an advocate.

Her physical and emotional strength have inspired me to live life to the fullest. Instead of sitting around wishing I had more time, I am making time to do the things I want to. I am finally singing again - and its all because of her.

I am committed to helping Steph with this fight however I can. Will you please consider donating a few dollars to the cause? No amount is too small and all donations are greatly appreciated!

Thank you all for your support!

Rachel T.

eLearning OLF - eLearning 2.0 and Beyond: Session 201 New Media, So many options to try

I'm currently attending a session by Douglas E. Welch, from The WelchWrite Company. His presentation is a great overview of web 2.0, why you should test out different new technologies and included great links to tools:

• Audio Conferencing: talkshoe, Blog Talk Radio, FreeConferenceCall, Skype
  
• Video Conferencing: iChat, TokBox, Oovoo, Skype, Stickam
  
• Live Video Streaming: uStream.tv, Stickam, Qik, Mogulus
  
• Whiteboards and Wikis: DimDim, Meeting24.tv, PBWiki, MediaWiki
  
• Blogging and Microblogging: Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Twitter, FriendFeed
  
• Video Sharing: YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo, Viddler, Seesmic, 12Seconds, Utterli
  
• Link Sharing: Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Delicious
  

One thing I thought was missing from his presentation was a section on Picture sharing, so, I'll add some of my top pics: Flickr, Photobucket, Webshots, Tinypic, Twitpic, Dailybooth, and lots and lots more...

And to anyone out there that is overwhelmed with the incredible amount of tools coming out, pretty much daily, you're not alone! Trying new tools for a sense of awareness of what is out there is a great thing to do. You don't have to be an expert, but know enough to be able to brainstorm the possibilities!

I would highly recommend Douglas Welch's presentation/website/Twitter stream to anyone who is new to Web 2.0!

E-Learning 2.0 and Beyond – Practical Real-World Solutions Using New Technology Approaches

Today I am attending the eLearning Guild's Online Forum on eLearning 2.0 and Beyond. Tomorrow I'll be presenting!

Vote for the most Engaging & Popular Serious Game 2009

I know I still owe you all a few blog entries from the Online Forum from last week, but, since this is on the same topic I thought you might enjoy.

http://www.applyseriousgames.com/pages/entriesSG2009.htm

Demo 7 Serious games here and vote for the best!

eLearning Guild OF Serious Games: 201 Developing Entrepreneurship with Serious Games

The second session I attended was led by Joel Hobbs, President and CEO and Laura James, Director of Design from ViaVivo, Inc.

Joel and Laura presented several games they developed for the Acton Foundation's MBA curriculum. Their reasons for making games were excellent and are of value to anyone who is trying to get buy-in for incoporating gaming into learning:

• Learning happens as we interact with real-world situations
• Intelligence is not static, but emerges from interaction
• Transfer occurs when the learning is personal, meaningful and relevant
• Games enable learners to apply skills in a safe environment, collaborate with peers, manipulate complex systems relationships that are hard to grasp otherwise
• Games help players learn from discovery and mentorship

I'll be honest, I actually took so long to post this because I just spent the last hour playing Robo Rush. In Robo Rush, the player sells robots door-to-door and is able to tell via visual cues from the customer which robot would best suit them.

An important theme I saw here that I also saw in Dr. Hayes' presentation is discussion. After each of these games were rolled out, the team at ViaVivo did what they referred to as an "after-action review." This was their opportunity to discussion with the players how the game went, what they learned and how they could apply all of it to the real-world.

Definately some great information in this presentation! I've got notes from three more sessions to type up, so stay tuned and don't forget to go play some ViaVivo games: http://www.actonsims.com

eLearning Guild OF Serious Games: 101 Games, Communities, and eLearning

Dr. Elisabeth (Betty) Hayes, Professor at Arizona State University led a thought-provoking session on gaming, communities in gaming and what the implications are for eLearning. She based a lot of what she spoke of on the popular game, "The Sims", which is considered the best-selling game in history.

Betty's presentation was centered around gender differences in gaming. She presented the stereotypical differences to us:

Female gamers want:

• modeling of game play
• forgiveness of errors
• to benefit others
• to interact by talking
• to create things

Male gamers want:

• explanation of game play
• punishment of errors
  
• to win
• to interact by fighting
• to destroy things

Is this really true? She pointed out some studies, including research of her own that may prove otherwise, saying, "Gender differences in visual-spatial skills disappear after only a few hours of game play".

Betty also presented a case study of sorts in "The Sims" environment which demonstrated how through knowledge of the game, integration of game content, game play and social interaction a user was able to achieve learning about a significant social issue for thousands of participants.

Overall, this was an incredibly fascinating presentation. Betty is an excellent speaker and left a lot of time at the end for discussion, which as she pointed out in the case study, is the key to enhancing learning through games.

eLearning Guild's Online Forum: Let's Get Serious...Games!

I just attended the first session of the eLearning Guild's Online Forum: Let's Get Serious...Games! I have to say, I am thrilled so far! I am so glad I was able to attend and its making me even more excited to present later this month. I'll be posting some notes from each of the sessions below. Check back soon for more!

Web 2.0 Quotient

During his presentation at AG09, Thomas Stone mentioned a Web 2.0 Quotient test, put together by a colleague of his, Manish Mohan.

My score was 98 - Web 2.0 Savvy:

You are aware of social networking tools and services. You are open to trying the new tools and services. However, you chose your services and stay with them. You contribute to
the content being created on Web 2.0.

Take the test here and let me know how you scored!

Virtual Conferences

I've been looking into free and cheap tools, resources, etc and stumbled upon this excellent blog post from the Patins Project Rapid Fire Blog titled:

FREE Virtual Education Conferences, Literacy Today and Tomorrow, Tech Expo 2009!

Unfortunately for me, I have conflicts with all four of the conferences list, but hopefully one of you out there will be able to attend! If so, please let me know how it went!

AG09 - 409: Blending Web 2.0 Technologies with Traditional Formal Learning

I recently watched a recorded webinar led by Tom Stone from Element K. I really enjoyed it and am very excited to see him present live.

Tom opened with the following quotes:

"Asking what people are going to build with Web 2.0 is like asking what people are going to write on paper." -David Weinberger, co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, via Twitter, re-tweeted by Tim o'Reilly

10 years ago Wikipedia, Linux, and so on seemed impossible in theory. But they were possible in practice. -Paraphrasing of Kevin Kelly, of Wired Magazine fame, noted the above as a keynote speaker at the Learning 2008 conference

Find out your Web 2.0 quotient score (by Manish Mohan):
http://manishmo.blogspot.com/2008/10/web-20-quotient-version-11.html

Think of Experts and Expertise:
Discussion Forums -> Ask an Expert!
Blogs -> The Expert Writes!
Podcasting -> The Expert Speaks!
Social Networking -> Locate an Expert!
Social Bookmarking -> Experts share their favorite bookmarks!
Wikis -> Everybody's an Expert or Experts Share / Collaborate!

Web 2.0 technologies are best used for:

• Knowledge Base
• Informal Learning
• On-Boarding
• Brain Drain Protection
• Eliminate Bottlenecks
• Gen-Y / Millennials
  

Tom says that the internal wiki has been live for two years at Element K and he has yet to have to roll-back a page because of bad edits. Wiki was created with seeded content which forced users to visit the wiki as reference, which progressed to them editing the wiki.

A Wiki is a garden. Use "gardeners" to occasionally weed and clean up!

Tips for blending elearning with ILT:

• pre-class prep-work
• post-class follow-up
• post-class topics as elearning modules
• post-class performance support

Adding Web 2.0 to the Blend:

• links from course outlines/overviews
• link from within elearning courses
• pre-class use
• in-class use
• integration with extended formal learning events
• post-class follow-up
• have participants take notes on class which they would then share with their teams

Why a wiki instead of a flip-chart? It will live on after the class. More participation by those who may not raise their hands normally.

AG09 - 304: Leveraging Online Workplace Communities for Learning and Development

In a session with Omar Nielson from Genetech. They have rolled out an incredible networking platform call "The Gene Pool". The tool is called Clearspace, produced by a company called Jive.

Omar just made a great observation about users - learning 2.0 technologies help people who are "non-extroverts" contribute. These are the people who would normally be avoiding eye-contact, not raising their hand in class... So yet another benefit! You can use these technologies to reach (and engage) those who you might not be able to even in live on-site instruction.

Every hour there is a new blog post at Genetech!

Omar's criteria for"Low-Hanging" Opportunities:

• Highest attended courses
• Multi-day programs
• Phased / reoccurring training programs
• Popular enterprise resources

Three Golden Rules for Adoption:

1. Create a "SAFE" inviting community!
2. Allow "TIME" for adoption
3. Provide the option to create "FUN"

Community Rewarded:

1. Recognition
   
2. Validation of Ideas
3. Higher Performance
4. Increased Job Commitment

Success Factors:

1. Learning through others
2. Relevant contributions
3. Ideas exchanged
4. New employee connections
5. Growth

Awesome session!

eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering 2009 - Live blogging!! (kinda)

Ok, so I had every intention of blogging live during this conference. However, I learned on my flight to Orlando that the battery in my laptop was no longer taking a charge.

So, I've been taking notes that I am going to type up on my breaks. So some posts may appear out of order, but I'll fix that later!

Follow from home: http://www.elearningguild.com/content.cfm?selection=doc.1106

Good Tweets from AG09

http://twitter.com/EJagger:

• @bschlenker "Misinformation happens anyway. 2.0 just captures it." Right you sir! #ag09
• "Asking what people are going to build with Web 2.0 is like asking what people are going write on paper." D. Weinberger #ag09
• Thomas Stone, to have a session in Friday espresso learning session on overcoming roadblocks to implementing web 2.0 #ag09
  

http://twitter.com/jzurovchak:

• #ag09 B Schlenker just referenced Wesch's The Machine is Using Us video. Check it out if you have not already viewed it.
• #ag09...another theme from Brent - Web 2.0 is about doing - not just consuming.
• #AG09 Thinks BEYOND Second LIfe! There are many platforms: Protospher; Olive; Multiverse; VastPark; OpenSim; lots and lots of others..
• #AG09 Don't forget the Serious Games Institute or ThinkBomb for information and research.
  

http://twitter.com/oxala75: "

• Recall activities aren't usually helpful or necessary - people can look information up" P. Schank #ag09
• users over 45: fastest growing cohort on SL? #ag09

http://twitter.com/delanotho:

• #ag09 eLearning is about People, NOT technology. The "e" is for everybody - B. Schenkler, "Learning 2.0 for the Beginnr"

http://twitter.com/annemscott:

• 3 golden rules for online community adoption: create safe inviting community, allow time for adoption & provide option to create fun! #ag09

http://twitter.com/bearclau:

• @ag09 ID Zone: Storytelling notes http://tinyurl.com/bybfdv #ag09

http://twitter.com/rachelyvazquez

• A Wiki is a garden. Use "gardeners" to occasionally weed and clean up! - Tom Stone #ag09