SNAPP is a software tool that allows users to visualize the network of interactions resulting from discussion forum posts and replies. The network visualisations of forum interactions provide an opportunity for teachers to rapidly identify patterns of user behaviour – at any stage of course progression. SNAPP has been developed to extract all user interactions from various commercial and open source learning management systems (LMS) such as BlackBoard (including the former WebCT), and Moodle. SNAPP is compatible for both Mac and PC users and operates in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
This post provides an annotated bibliography of some work on using social media (in particular Facebook) as a pre-registration/pre-university/induction tool. The references given can also be found at my Delicious site. Some examples of the use of Facebook for induction purposes are given at the end.
This list provides an overview on journals for the field of Advanced Learning Technologies that are indexed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) or the Science Citation Index (SCI). The impact factors specified in the list are taken from the Journal Citation Report 2005 and 2007.
"Despite the attractions of security (behind the wall solutions) and cost effectiveness (on someone elses’s yard), I conclude that there is no one best solution from the three I discuss above. Perhaps only dancing among the compleixty and simultaeously hosting all three solutions in every fromal education program creates the necessary blend of security, innovation and public presence that defines quality education in networked era."
Screw Blackboard... do it on Facebook: an investigation of students’ educational use of Facebook’ paper by Neil Selwyn, London Knowledge Lab. Paper presented at the ‘Poke 1.0 - a Facebook social research symposium’, London Knowledge Lab, University of London, UK - Thursday 15th November 2007
The Participation Divide: Content Creation and Sharing in the Digital Age Hargittai, E. & G. Walejko. (2008). The Participation Divide: Content Creation and Sharing in the Digital Age. Information, Communication and Society. This paper looks at the prevalence of creative activity and sharing in an age when the barriers to disseminating material have been considerably lowered compared to earlier times. Findings suggest that despite new opportunities to engage in such distribution of content, relatively few people are taking advantage of these recent developments. Moreover, neither creation nor sharing is randomly distributed among a diverse group of young adults. Consistent with existing literature, creative activity is related to a person?s socioeconomic status as measured by parental schooling. Once we control for Internet user skill, men and women are equally likely to post their materials on the Web.
The Portable Document Format (PDF) developed by Adobe can be made accessible, but it very much depends on how the original document is designed. If it is a poster created in a publishing application, scanned or saved from a Word document and locked down for copyright reasons then saved as PDF, it is liable to act in the same way as a picture. This means the text cannot be read by a screen reader or adapted for easier reading. It is appreciated that the concept of the PDF is to ensure that printed or saved versions of a document remain as the author intends, but there are ways to help the reader who uses assistive technologies or requires different formats of the text and graphics.
What are the questions we need to answer to understand the needs and demands of future learners? Particularly in relation to the use of technology and the implications that has for education. List them here.