INFORMATION NOW

• Higher Education institutions that are succeeding in Internet-supported Learning have strong motivations to do so.
• Institutions successful with Internet-supported learning have a strong commitment to the initiative.
• Successful institutions measure themselves in a variety of ways depending on what is important to them; quality is at least or more important than growth (atudent outcomes, student satisfaction, growth in enrollments, and faculty satisfaction).
• Students and faculty are well-supported at successful institutions through a set of well established capabilities that are being constantly improved.
• The secret sauce of achieving success in Internet-supported learning varies from institution to institution, however, a programmatic approach with a commitment to fully online programs seems to be most critical.
• Institutions successful in Internet-supported learning have gone beyond the technical issues and are much more focused on achieving a better educational product.
• The greatest challenges by far concerned the development and delivery of effective online learning materials and environments.
• The successful institutions are addressing strategic, cultural and process issues that will help them perform their mission more effectively in the future no matter what direction technology takes."

Please find some time to at least read section one (Executive Summary of Findings), and then perhaps select what you find is most useful for your area of specialization or work. If you ask me what you should focus on (if not all) I would recommend you to read or browse through the following sections (in other words all , except the introduction sections):

• Motivations for Moving Online (Section VII)
• The Role of Leadership (Section VIII)
• Measures of Success and Expectations (Section IX)
• Student and Faculty Support (Section X)
• Delivery Format (Section XI)
• Best Practices and Innovations (Section XII)
• Challenges (Section XIII)
• Future Priorities and Expectations (Section XIV)
• Action Recommendations: Where Do You Go From Here? (Section XV)
• Perspectives on Adoption: Some Ideas to Consider (Section XVI)

Although this research is mostly based on higher education in the USA (21 institutions), it is of great value to us (or anyone involved with education), as they are still the benchmark when it comes to online learning or e-learning. Also, this paper was published on February 1st 2005, which makes it really hot; "straight out of the oven".

<div align="center"><a href="http://aturntolearn.blogspot.com/" title="What Did They Say!?"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIhmtxluCS0/ULwEfazkl1I/AAAAAAAADpM/MMMzxm23B0Y/s320/What+Did+They+Say+Wednesday.png" alt="What Did They Say!?" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

1. Share a story that one of your kids said on your blog!  If you dont have a blog, leave a comment with your story!
2. Use the HTML code at the top of this post to link back to the post!
3. Comment on the two blog posts before yours!

• Link to P2PU

• YouTube EDU
• Via Jeff Cobb

Link to article
"The purpose of any good presentation is to communicate your subject matter to ensure that your students understand the information being presented to them... I have listed some helpful hints for teachers to remember when creating PowerPoint presentations:

• Focus on your content. Write the text of your presentation, and then focus on special effects.
• Use sound sparingly. Using too much sound is distracting and annoying.
• Limit the amount of clip art on each slide.
• Limit the amount of animated clips lest your audience be so impressed with the clips that they lose the content of your presentation.
• Pick a format and stick to it. Although PowerPoint offers many types of designs, dont change from one to the other - try to be consistent.
• Use no more than four to seven lines of text per slide. More makes it difficult for your students to grasp the information. If necessary split up the slide into two slides.
• Control the entrance of all your text. This allows full control over when your students will view the text.
• Be prepared with speaker notes. Do not read word-for-word from a slide. "

• TV Lesson
• SuTree

"I only know that I don’t know anything" (Source)

TV LESSON?
TV Lesson presents one of the worlds largest, most all-encompassing libraries of how-to content online. Lesson content covers every conceivable topic and delivers the definitive online "encyclopedia of lessons" (Source). They also invite anyone to join and share their own wisdom and know-how by uploading videos. You can also win prizes of you are really popular!

SUTREE?
SuTree (Sutra + Tree) is a knowledge community and an aggregator of instructional & educational videos. "It is a social bookmarking site that aims to be the "Digg" of e-learning. The site lets users bookmark and organize free video tutorials, video lessons, video how to and DIY from all over the web (Source)."

(SuTree = Sutra (from Sanskrit): (literally) a rope or thread that holds things together, or(metaphorically) a collection of knowledge in the form of a manual + Tree: Symbolizing the growth of knowledge.)

Interestingly, TV Lessons currently most viewed video (GMAT - Math) has only been viewed 5575 times (Added on March 22nd, 2007). So, it has a long way to reach YouTube kind of viewing numbers. For example, Evolution of Dance video (No. 1) has more than 65 million views now! I did come across an interesting short Michael Jordan video (49 seconds only) in TV Lesson, which taught me some secrets about becoming a great jumper, leaper or dunker. GOD given ability and a lot of practice! In a nut shell, Michael Jordan (When he speaks about jumping you listen! Air Jordan!) says you need to jump (a lot!) and keep on trying to dunk (also, riding a bicycle helps!). It reminds me of how we often complicate education, when it is really quite simple. It lies in the word of what you want to teach/facilitate/coach/etc. Just add the word "Practice to it (e.g. Writing = Practice Writing), or simply change the tense (Writing = Write, Write, Write, etc.). Not sure if I agree with that one! I agree with that!

As for SuTree, I like the social-bookmarking and community dynamics of it. SuTrees growing community has managed to discover, organize and tag more than 10.800 educational videos, up until now. So, I am sure you will find some juice there, too (Wisdom of the Crowds!). According to the sites owners the goal is reaching around 20,000 lessons in the first year (Source).

Finally, SuTree or TV Lesson? Which one do I (or you) prefer? No idea! But based on slogan, SuTree wins hands down (My humble opinion!).

SuTree - Knowledge Community: Watch. Learn. Share.
TV Lesson - The World is Learning

Though, what is important (in terms of learning!), is that they both can add some form of value to our learning adventure. If not, we certainly have many more options (Hint - Look to the right!) :)

Link to article
"Learning objects make it unnecessary to have thousands of iterations of the same teaching point. Metadata makes it possible to select and integrate relevant learning experiences from a relatively small library of learning objects. Reusable learning objects permit lessons to be generated and customized for specific groups or even for individuals. Extensive research and development has led to a vocabulary of specialized terms to define learning objects. Rory McGreal provides a rationale to relate variations in terminology into a single practical definition of Learning Objects.

"(Conclusion) As course developers gain experience and as the number of online resources grows, the importance and necessity of LOs and the metadata standards that support them becomes more apparent. Efficient learning using the ever-expanding multimedia resources of the Internet will require the creation of LOs and the metadata to describe them. From anything and everything to specific digital learning resources, the future of learning is inextricably linked to the development of quality LOs."

• SlideShare Version
• SlideBoom Version
  
• PDF Version (77 MB)
• IMETC Event

• TeacherTube version
• YouTube
• Google Video

PART 1
In part 1, I explore 4 (of 10) secrets to great teaching, or ingredients to become a great teacher. What are the ingredients of a great teacher? Well, when I complete the 2-part series you will at least know my standpoint on this issue. My findings is basically based on what I have observed, read, experienced and learned over the last few years in Higher Education.

Yes, you are certainly free to agree or disagree with all my ideas and thoughts about great teaching. What really matters, is not being right or wrong, but taking this wonderful opportunity to be part of a messy global conversation (in audio format) about this issue.

Here, enjoy part 1 (not sure about that!), and hopefully part 2 will be out sometime next week:

ZAIDLEARN EXPLORES AUDIO & VIDEO
This is probably the first time most of you hear me speak. I have to admit that I speak much faster normally (I tried hard to slow down, and probably sounded a bit too slow this time around.). Also, I did not use any script, as I wanted it to be as natural as possible.

I used PowerPoint to create the slides, and interestingly (exploring!) used Adobe Presenter to record the audio (Recommendation: For audio recording, use Audacity, which is easy-to-use and has more features). Finally, I used Windows Movie Maker (first time using!) to integrate the PNG converted PowerPoint slides, and the audio (MP3) files from the published Adobe Presenter presentation. Although, Windows Movie Maker is quite limited in terms of features, I actually enjoyed using it.

To explore uploading possibilities, I uploaded my 10-minute presentation to YouTube, TeacherTube and Google Video. The Google Video output is not good, but the YouTube and TeacherTube outputs are alright. I suppose I will explore slidecasting on SlideShare later, after I have completed part 2.

SELF-EVALUATION
My voice is a disaster and the PowerPoint slides need a face lift! Yes, perhaps I should include more music (to spice it up!), pictures, and flower it with a bit more animations. A video showing me babbling would be interesting, too (not really!).

Though, I really enjoyed exploring my voice, and hopefully I will create many more videos (learning nuggets of 10 minutes or less) sharing my ideas, thoughts and reflections about learning in the near future. Hopefully, someone out there will be listening and joining the conversation.

I suppose it is about time that ZaidLearn speaks out, besides rambling this and that with written words only.

I AM STILL LEARNING, and hopefully I will evolve. In the meantime, please be patient as I learn how to talk (on the Tube) :)

• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• del.icio.us
• Earlier Post on Mahalo

If We Digg Together...
Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by their users.

...We Will StumbleUpon...
StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. It uses ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like-minded stumblers have recommended. This helps you discover great content you probably wouldnt find using a search engine.

...Some Del.icio.us...
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking (collection of favorites) website. The primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders. In addition, you can share your favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.

...Mahalo Soup!
Mahalo (Hawaiian for Thank you) is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Their search results only include great links (or links filtered by humans!).

• RealPlayer
• YouTube Video Wizard
• Format Factory

Updated Version:
The Real Way to Download-Convert-Insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint!

Today we basically have FREE access to millions (if not billions) of videos on the Internet (my personal favorites!), and surely among them you are going to find some mind stimulating videos that you would like to infuse into your face-to-face learning sessions (like this amazingly funny video: Learning English Pronunciation).

Now, I am going to share with you two (2) juicy ways to insert your favorite YouTube videos (or videos from other sites) into your PowerPoint presentations. Personally, I prefer the second (2) option.

1) PLAY LIVE YOUTUBE VIDEOS IN POWERPOINT

If you know that you are going to have a great Internet connection and are comfortable with the possibility of buffering and Internet loss during a face-to-face learning session, then running a live YouTube video in your PowerPoint is alright. So, how can we get the job done quickly?

Simply install this YouTube Video Wizard (YTV) dude. You can download versions for PowerPoint 2007 and 2003 (and earlier), so having an old PowerPoint version is totally alright.

This amazingly light tool allows you easily to insert live (streaming) YouTube videos into a PowerPoint slide. When installed, all you need to do is to provide the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar, the rest is taken care of by the YTV Wizard. Installation instructions are provided on the YTV homepage.

But then again, some of us dont like installing PowerPoint plug-ins, and like doing it the hard way. Here are two video tutorials showing you how to get the job done less efficiently, but perhaps in a more IKEA satisfying way.

POWERPOINT 2003



POWERPOINT 2007

If you prefer reading a brilliant article about this instead, CLICK HERE (Yes, it even tells you how to Get Videos from Google Docs into PowerPoint. Cool!) :)



2) DOWNLOAD AND PLAY VIDEOS OFFLINE IN POWERPOINT

But, then again not all of us have the luxury of having great Internet access in the classroom. And obviously we would like to minimize the possibility from anything going wrong, which often happens when we are dealing with live video streaming from the Internet. So, to be on the safe side, I always download the videos that I want to use, and show them in offline mode.

Of course a few nutty copyright gurus are going to scream foul here, but for once please ignore them. Why should only those people that have excellent Internet access have the freedom to show amazing videos in class, while the less fortunate educators must suffer. Lets instead fight for a better world, where Internet is free for all (Read this!).

Today, we should think of Internet as oxygen for learning, and if it is not there, then we have to find other ways to breath, like showing videos offline (but giving credit and linking to the rightful creators). Ops, lets get back on track...

First, I recommend that you download RealPlayer (the free Basic Player and remember to select the Download Video option). RealPlayer enables you easily to download videos from any video sharing site you can basically imagine. You simply need to mouse-over a video, and the Download This Video option will pop-up. One click and it is basically downloading.

However, it will download the video in FLV format, and that format does not work well with PowerPoint, so you would have to convert the downloaded video into a more appropriate format.

To convert the downloaded videos (in FLV format), I use Format Factory (to convert the videos to AVI or WMV formats). Format Factory (multifunctional media converter) is simply an amazing free video converter.

If you like video converting the difficult way, perhaps you should convert online using Zamzar.com or MediaConverter.org. It is really up to you :)

After you have converted the video to WMV or AVI format, you can now insert it into PowerPoint ( Insert > Movie > "Movie from file"). I prefer running the video using the full screen mode (total immersive viewing experience!).

In addition, please remember to save the video in the same folder as the PowerPoint slides (just do it!), and remember to bring along both files (in the same folder), if you are using another computer device in the face-to-face learning session.

Personally, I always try to use my own laptop, because then I minimize the possibility of unnecessary hiccups. If you dont have any choice, hopefully my advice above helps.

Finally, if you do have a better way of getting this job done, please share it with us.

We are still LEARNING :)