Janine’s blog

A lovely site with examples about representations of information in visually pleasing ways - as the page says “form follows data - towards creative information visualisation.” Thanks to Jenny K for this link.

http://www.infosthetics.com/

Just finished reading the March 2006 Leading and Learning with Technology from ISTE. this journal. This article on plagiarism by J V Bolkan explores various tools that can assist in dealing with plagiarism but above all he emphasises the importance of good teaching:

“The final deterrant strategy, solid assessment and good teaching, can’t be over emphasised. If students understand that they will be graded not only on the artifact they produce (the paper) but also on their understanding of the topic expressed in an oral report, or an essay on “the making of my report”, they aren’t as likely tp copy someone else’s work because they are going to have to learn the content anyway”

 http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/Current_Issue/March_2006.htm#features

An 2005 article written by Stephen Corich for a New Zealand journal comparing Blackboard and Moodle from the perspective of a long term user who is facing migrating courses. In a nutshell, he found that Moodle could do what Blackboard did and in some cases more. Importantly, 80% of students preferred it. An excerpt from the paper sums up thus:

“During the evaluation, the writer moved from being a skeptic, who believed that Moodle adoption would be an unwise move, to an enthusiastic supporter of Moodle, despite its relative immaturity as a product. The way that Moodle encourages instructors to organize materials sequentially and the tools that Moodle offers instructors and students to encourage regular student participation in course activities, make it an attractive proposition as an institutional solution for supporting e-learning. The claims that Moodle was developed from the ground up with the principles of social constructivism in mind seem to be justified. The writer was so impressed with the Moodle approach that he has decided to stop developing the LMS that he has been using successfully in an intranet environment and move to Moodle.”

http://www.naccq.ac.nz/bacit/0303/2005Corich_LMS.htm

Published in January 2006, this article cites the Blackboard/WebCT as a monopolistic move, mentions Moodle’s potential K-12 and lists other trends such as podcasting. A useful list.

http://edugeek.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=122