Saturday, January 07, 2012

Design and Teach Your Course

Carnegie Mellon provides information for designing and teaching a course here...

Astronomy in Second Life: A User’s Perspective

While a bit dated, the following information can be a guide to developing a learning environment at virtual worlds for your astronomy class...
Second Life (SL) is a multi-user virtual environment that is not limited to adult social entertainment. SL is also a 3D playground for innovative instructors and education/outreach professionals in the sciences. Astronomy and space science have a presence in SL, but it could be so much more. This paper describes some of the current astronomy themed spaces in SL and briefly discusses future innovations. Review more, click here...

Friday, January 06, 2012

It’s All About Social Media. Or is It?

Just not for students any more...Collaboration is a valuable learning tool. By enabling a rich collaborative experience, the organization as a whole can benefit from captured intellectual property and a more engaged workforce. Social media can help bridge the gap between people and solutions, building stronger communities and relationships. In this article from the Winter 2012 issue of Training Industry Quarterly e-magazine, we will examine how to build a sustainable and productive social experience to increase satisfaction and retention. Click here to review several articles on the subject...

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

How the Brain Learns

Donald Ford, PhD, notes, "We have known since antiquity that the seat of learning is the human brain.  But it has only been in the last decade that neuroscience researchers have been able to go inside the brain and observe how learning actually occurs at the molecular level. " Click here to read more...

Learning is not sufficiently valued...

For centuries, trainers have believed that the classroom is the optimal mechanism for transferring learning. Today's digital revolution is challenging this long-held assumption. To read more, click here...

Key Trends for 2012: New Era of Personal Learning is Transforming the Training Industry

You may not have noticed, but a new era is quietly dawning on the training industry. It represents a change that is both profound and permanent. For more...click here.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Instructional Design ~ The Foundation

Robert M. Branch of University of Georgia wrote. "Instructional design is a process for generating strategies devoted almost exclusively to seeking ways to close a performance discrepancy (gap) that is caused by a lack of knowledge and skills. The displayed drawings illustrates a performance gap and the three categories of reasons for such a gap." Read more...

Grids gain 915 regions; InWorldz is busiest...

The top 40 OpenSim grids gained 915 new regions since this time last month, bringing the total number of regions on these grids to 21,595, a new record high." Read more...