"Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments", is the best paper I have read on Learning Design by far!

Essentially, Learning Environment Design is the missing link. I agree. Tools within the LMS are rudimentary and not generally exposed to Students as creators. The paper introduces the Mash-UP Personal Learning Environment (MUPPLE) system and a Learner Interaction Scripting Language (LISL) which works as a Domain Specific Language (DSL) behind the scenes. LISL is powerful, making it easy to combine content and activities which can then be deployed, shared and adapted (evolved). LISL just needs a GUI addon to be super intuitive and adaptable.

OK so now I think I have worked on something similar. A tool called Interactive Media Enhanced Teaching (IMET) that was available in QUT’s inhouse built OLT system. The M in IMET had a different meaning depending on who you spoke to - M for Media or Multimedia and now I’m thinking M could actually have stood for Mashup. A paper entitled “Putting the ‘me’ into media: Exploring different strategies to embed the integration of streaming media with cognitive tools, into learning activities” was presented at the OLT 2003 conference. I’m not an author of the paper, but I was the developer of IMET. I did present a Flex powered version at Ausweb 06.

"Empowering Online Learning - 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying and Doing" is set to be an amazing resource for Academics, Tutors, Teachers, Students and Learning Designers. I have not read this book yet, but really like the approach taken. The learning design model (reading, reflecting, displaying and doing) just makes sense at a very practical level and rather than just remaining theoretical sample activities are listed (100+ to be exact). The activities seem like ideas to me, ideas that could inspire….

…Now would it not be great if the LD model (reading, reflecting, displaying and doing) was available as an idea explorer within an LMS or something more social like Facebook, where activities could be selected, customized and then deployed.

May the force be with those who use it

Calling all Learning Designers, Educational Designers, Instructional Designers, Educational Software Developers and Academics…

Take the Connected Academic Quiz?

My results:

Grainne Conole of e4inovation.com is the co-author of a must read paper entitled "Using learning design as a framework for supporting the design and reuse of Open Educational Resources". I think the use of Compendium, a mind mapping tool, as a remix tool may just work…

It must be a good day - I have after all encountered two EDU 2.0 apps. Cohere, from Open Uni UK, takes concept/idea mapping to a new collaborative level. Add ideas, make connections and then discover related ideas and people.

Research paper on Cohere: Towards Web 2.0 Argumentation.

Webducates’ Dragster fits the bill as a EDU 2.0 app. Check out this example activity where users can not only classify existing topics but add new ones as well. The emphasis here is on the fact that this activity can be completed by multiple users asynchronously.

Looks like Compendium has been enhanced to further support the Learning Design process - CompendiumLD. Wonder when it will be available for the rest of the world to see?

George Siemans has written an insightful paper entitled "Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers". Definitely worth a read!

The University of Adelaide has a situational project underway. So what exactly is situational learning? I’ve not heard the term before! It seems to encompass all things Learning Designer cool - simulations, case studies, scenario based learning and online role plays.

The situational learning site has examples. The Mekong eSim  seems to be implemented entirely in Blackboard — at least thats what I can tell from the screen grabs.

You may also find Project EnRoLE of interest. EnRoLE as in Encouraging Roleplay based Learning Environments.

Stumbled across some refreshing and amazingly creative edu apps created by Futurelab. They seem to have pulled of creating applications that take advantage of mobile devices, games based learning and inquiry based learning theories.

• Create-A-Scape
  Create a Mediascape - “location-based experiences, games and tours on a handheld device”. Take a map, define regions (eg landmarks), add multimedia related content to your regions and then export to a mobile device format. If the mobile device has GPS, the multimedia will be automatically triggered. The mscape site allows mediascapes to be shared.
• Exploratree
  A tool to create thinking guides - brainstorming/problem solving templates. There are many templates to download.
• Moovl
  Moovl is a simulation tool that allows kids (primary school) to draw and animate objects with physical properties.
• Newtoon
  Build and share games based on Newtonian physics on mobile devices. Well thats what the description says - I could not give this one a try as it is not yet released.

Futurelab looks like a great place to work!