planning active elearning: antidote to info dump

Cathy Moore has a slideshow about how to plan for active learning – whether online or not. The key: concentrate on what people need to do, not what you think they need to know. Her slides would make excellent wallpaper for any  instructional design atelier.

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/?p=215

In the same post, she also says how she uses Compendium for doing her mind mapping. A quick download (Open University and others are behind Compendium) and peek later, I have it on my list of things to play with later. It looks pleasantly easy to use and flexible (you put down your ideas first, then connect them -  no hierarchical connections from the start to deal with).

Cathy Moore uses and reviews Dragster

Cathy Moore is an expert in making elearning activities, well, active, or as she says lively. Dragster, an online app from Webducate, lets you create drag and drop activities in Flash without having to know the Flash part. Put the two together and you get an online learning exercise to check how human some dialogue is, plus a review of Dragster as a tool.

I’ll quote her review here, but do go to the dialogue exercise and check that out too.

Here’s Cathy Moore’s review of Dragster:

Dragster mini-review

To create the activity, I used version 3 of Dragster, an easy-to-use web tool that creates Flash drag-and-drop activities that are SCORM compliant. A basic version of the tool is available free; the version I tested costs £45 a year.

The workflow is intuitive and fast. Once my graphic was ready, it took less than 15 minutes to create and publish the activity in Dragster.

I got confused once, when I thought I could save some draggable labels and edit them later. Apparently, once you’ve saved the labels, you can’t change them, though you can add more labels.

The technique for defining target areas will be familiar to PowerPoint and Keynote users: you draw an invisible shape over the target area. Because your shape can have an almost infinite number of points, you can accurately define complex “correct” areas. You can also set up “close, but not quite” areas. (I just used super-easy rectangular targets.)

The draggable items can be images or text labels. You can save learners’ scores, and learners can also collaboratively work on an activity and add their own labels. One feature I would recommend for future versions is individual feedback for each dragged item, such as a hint that appears when the learner drags something to the wrong spot.

Your customization choices are limited, but that’s a fair price to pay for speed and ease of use. Learn more at the Dragster site.

Flash Activities Part 2

As a follow-up to a recent post about a few Flash activities available for download: the author, Jeremy Fitzpatrick, hasn’t been able to continue developing the activities, but will send source files if you contact him directly. Nice guy!

You can send him an email at

Jeremy.Fitzpatrick_at_wintec.ac.nz

(Replace _at_ with @ of course.)

Learning Activities Made with Flash

The folks behind the Te Kupenga site in New Zealand have made several made-with-Flash learning activities available free for use under a Creative Commons license. Eight different types are offered, represented by their names: Categorize, Folders, Image Labeller, Matching Pairs, MP3 Player, Sort Order, Story Time, and Visual Multiple Choice.

Here’s a quick sample made with the ImageLabeller activity. Drag the dot over to the corresponding satellites:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://nte.unifr.ch/blog/data_flash/imageLabeller/imageLabeller_05.swf" height="360" width="600" base="http://nte.unifr.ch/blog/data_flash/imageLabeller/" /]

Each activity has a demo to look at, plus a download link, and most of them have instructions available. Though the site and it’s forums (it’s a Moodle course) have been quiet for some months, the activities do seem to work. A closer look at the Image Labeller revealed a problem with the printing functionality, but otherwise the activity itself seems to work stably. Maximum image size is limited to about 500 px wide by about 300 px high.

Initial efforts to contact the developer have gone unanswered, unfortunately, as these activities could offer a good starting point for further development. (The source files are not available on the site.) All the same, they could prove to be quite useful for engaging learners in online activities.

To see all the demos and download the files, just sign up for the course called Instant Activities at the Te Kupenga Moodle site.

Flash-Based Learning Tools (online or downloadable)

At the UBC Arts Group flash-based authoring tools are available for creating a timeline, multimedia learning objects, vocabulary trainer, a pronunciation tool among others.

Check out all the tools at http://www.learningtools.arts.ubc.ca/

The Timeline Tool lets you create a timeline with images and audio pretty quickly.

The Multimedia Learning Object Tool allows you to offer recorded video with corresponding powerpoint slides.

Via Edtechpost

questiontools.com for creating content

No coding required. There’s a free version, maybe something to check out…

http://www.questiontools.org/

online crosswords and quizzes from sol robots

Sol Robots has a crossword builder called Crossword Forge, and a quiz generator named Quiz Press. Both products can be used to create a Flash version for publishing a crossword puzzle or quiz online.

Available for Mac and PC, around $50 each, easy to use, trial version available. Nice product, I gave one to my godchild so we can exchange crosswords.

NZZ Lernset Eigene Meinung

http://www.eigene-meinung.ch/

Intended for gymnasium/collège level, uses material from NZZ to expose students to current issues. Something to check out…