TeachersFirst Wiki Walkthrough: The path starts with the basic What in the world is a wiki? and continues with Who uses wikis? and What is the difference between a wiki and a blog? For teachers is important to know So how do I use wikis with my class(es)? or What benefits are there from student wiki participation? Some examples can be seen on the wiki walk through some sample wikis. We can even play with some wiki tools on the Which wiki tool will you use? section. A visit to the TeachersFirst wiki is also recommended. Here we can find more ideas on how to use a wiki as a learning tool.

TeachersFirst is offering two free meetings at OK2Ask Guided Wiki Walk, today and July 29 at either 3 pm or 6 pm Eastern time both days (with a little homework in between).

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Wiki Walkthrough: Wikis FAQs answered by TeachersFirst (with examples)

Possible Related Posts

• Innovate: Collecting, Organizing, and Managing Resources for Teaching Educational Games the Wiki Way
• Article: Pedagogical Affordances of Syndication, Aggregation and Mash-Up of Content on the Web
• WiZiQ – Connecting Teachers and Students
• Wikiversity – The Knowledge is Free
• Wikis Everywhere
• Wikis and Online Collaboration

From Search to Research: Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills (PDF). A very useful e-book, understandably a little biased into Microsoft’s tools, particularly Bing, full of good references to critical thinking resources, accompanied with a vast selection of links to related sites.

From Conclusion: ‘The Internet is a river of information that seems to grow wider and flow faster every day. Web content, including this e-book, reflects this ongoing process of expansion and change. To stay current, you have to intentionally keep moving along with it. Online web literacy discussions are great places to find the latest tips, techniques, examples, and strategies for teaching students essential web literacy skills that help them develop as critical thinkers capable of engaging the world intelligently and creatively.’

Microsoft Teacher Guides: Critical Thinking in the Classroom. Applying critical thinking skills through web research can help students improve search skills, evaluate the information they find and incorporate them in their work. It contains a critical thinking and web research curriculum developed in cooperation with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

The Critical Thinking Community: The Role of Socratic Questioning in Thinking, Teaching, & Learning

Critical Thinking Toolkit: a list of nine strategies for students to help them developing a practice of critical thinking. (Other study toolkits from this University of British Columbia site are also recommended)

Critical Thinking Compendium: a wiki about teaching critical thinking and Internet literacies maintained by Howard Rheingold and other educators.

Critical Thinking on the Web: a huge list of quality links to a wide variety of topics on this subject.

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Microsoft Teacher Guides: Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills

Possible Related Posts

• Two Interesting Reports from CDW-G: 21st-Century Campus Report and 21st-Century Classroom Report
• TechLearning 2007 Leaders of the Year and Awards of Excellence
• Microsoft Supports Education Through Technology
• Learning with MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environment)
• Jane Hart’s Top Ten Tools: My Contribution
• Google for Educators: Google Certified Teachers

Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS): The Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a free tool that enables the Microsoft Learning community to create high-quality, interactive, online courses. The LCDS allows anyone in the Microsoft Learning community to publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactive activities, quizzes, games, assessments, animations, demos, and other multimedia.

The latest version of LCDS is available to download (free registration needed). This new release has been updated to be compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Silverlight 2.0. You will find new features such as spell check, the ability to output courses to a Microsoft Office Word document, indexing to enable search functionality, and new templates.

See also LCDS Frequently Asked Questions and LCDS Sample Courses.

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

New Version of Microsoft LCDS

Possible Related Posts

• Learning Content Development System (LCDS) from Microsoft
• WiZiQ – Connecting Teachers and Students
• Moodle 1.7 Released
• Moodle
• Interactive Tool for Those Who Wish to Teach Online
• Elluminate Live! and Moodle Integration

Google Apps Education Edition. ‘Google Apps Education Edition is a free suite of hosted communication and collaboration applications designed for schools and universities. Google Apps included: Gmail (with voice and video chat and mobile access), Google Calendar, Google Talk (free calling VoIP/voicemail box, file transfer, group chat), Google Sites (website creation), Google Labs, Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, forms, presentations, mobile access) and Google Video.

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Google Apps Education Edition

Possible Related Posts

• Peer-to-Peer (P2P): The eLearning Future?
• LAMS Foundation
• Jane Hart’s Top Ten Tools: My Contribution
• IMS Common Cartridge Standard
• Google for Educators: Google Certified Teachers
• Education 2.0

Edmodo – Free Private Microblogging For Education. From the FAQs:

Edmodo is a private microblogging platform that teachers and students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other.

Teachers sign up for accounts, and then create groups. Each group has a unique code which is distributed by the teacher to the class. Students then sign up (no email address required) and join the group using the code.

More on Edmodo Blog.

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Edmodo: Twitter for Teachers and Studentes

Possible Related Posts

• Scriblink: A Free Digital Whiteboard
• More on Web 2.0 in Education
• Google for Educators: Google Certified Teachers
• Education 2.0
• Xstreamulator: An Example to Follow
• WiZiQ – Connecting Teachers and Students

Scriblink – Your Online Whiteboard. ‘Scriblink is a free digital whiteboard that users can share online in real-time. Sorta like pen and paper, minus the dead trees, plastic, and the inconvenience of being at the same place at the same time.

We are all about collaboration. Whether you’re here for pure artistic enjoyment or more practical matters such as layout planning, concept diagramming, or tutoring a friend in math, Scriblink brings you the power of free hand expression with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world.

On the homepage you’ll be immediately directed to a Scriblink board, which is free and requires no registration. The board allows you to invite up to five people at a time to join you, either through email or directly by copying and pasting the URL.’

Scriblink: The Official Blog

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Scriblink: A Free Digital Whiteboard

Possible Related Posts

• Edmodo: Twitter for Teachers and Studentes
• WiZiQ – Connecting Teachers and Students
• My View on EduLearn 2010
• More on Web 2.0 in Education
• LAMS Foundation
• Google for Educators: Google Certified Teachers

The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a tool that enables you to create high quality, interactive, online courses. Virtually anyone can publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactivities, quizzes, games, and assessments—as well as Silverlight-based animations, demos, and other multimedia.
Note that a free registration is needed to download the LCDS.

LCDS Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Learning Content Development System (LCDS) from Microsoft

Possible Related Posts

• New Version of Microsoft LCDS
• WiZiQ – Connecting Teachers and Students
• UNESCO Free and Open Source Software Portal
• The Economist Debate Series on Education
• Stephen Downes: Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge
• Peer-to-Peer (P2P): The eLearning Future?

ICT Results: Attention please! Next-generation e-learning is here. ‘Take an e-learning platform, mix in a large dose of social networking, sprinkle liberally with intelligent software agents to stimulate users and, according to a team of European researchers, you have a recipe to keep students’ attention even during the most testing training courses.

Recent trials of two new software platforms based on this new approach show substantial promise in overcoming one of the biggest problems that has dogged e-learning: how to keep students motivated and attentive. The platforms, developed in the AtGentive project, are designed to aid students in the classroom and to help them continue learning and collaborating long after classroom sessions have ended.

“The first generation of e-learning platforms focused on replicating online the classroom model of teaching, but this approach has not been all that successful,” explains Thierry Nabeth, the coordinator of AtGentive at INSEAD’s Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies in France. “The biggest problem is that students often lack motivation both inside and outside of the classroom, and fail to dedicate their attention to the learning programme.”

In an effort to overcome that problem, the AtGentive researchers incorporated artificial agents and social networking into their approach toward e-learning, employing, in the case of one of the platforms, similar techniques to those that have made websites, such as Facebook, so popular as a means of staying in touch with friends, relatives and colleagues.’

AtGentive: Attentive Agents for Collaborative Learners. ‘ The objective of the AtGentive project is to investigate the use of artificial agents for supporting the management of the attention of young or adult learners in the context of individual and collaborative learning environments.

Practically, this project consists in the design of artificial agents that are able to coach the learners in reaching higher level of performance in managing their attention in the learning process. These agents, which appear as embedded characters, are able to profile the state of the attention of the learners (short or long term) by observing their actions, to assess, to analyse and to reason on these states of attention, and to provide some proactive coaching (assessment, guidance, stimulation, etc.).’

ICT Results. ‘ICT Results is an editorial service created for the European Commission to showcase EU-funded ICT research and activities.’

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

How to Keep Students Motivated and Attentive

Possible Related Posts

• CALIBRATE (Calibrating eLearning in Schools) Project
• To Have the Skills or Not: A New Digital Divide?
• Interact Learning Community Environment
• Insight – Observatory for New Technologies and Education
• E-Learning Community 2.0: A Social Site for Knowledge Seekers
• CAMEL Project Outputs

Multiply. ‘Multiply gives you an easy way to share all kinds of digital media, including photos, blogs, videos, music and more, all in one convenient place: your own personal web site. With Multiply, you can share and discuss your stuff with everyone in your “social network,” and also be alerted whenever they have something new.’

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Multiply Your e-Portfolio

Possible Related Posts

• More on Web 2.0 in Education
• Elgg – An Open Source Social Networking Platform
• Edu 2.0: The Next Generation Education
• Art Education 2.0
• WiZiQ – Connecting Teachers and Students
• The Economist Debate Series on Education

Wikia Search Alpha Launched. ‘Wikia is working to develop and popularize a freely licensed (open source) search engine.

Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.

Right now, the most important thing you can do is help with the “mini articles” that appear at the top of popular search terms.’

Recommended: Selected Science News and Resources

This is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog with quick links to the world of e-learning and educational technology.

Wikia Search Alpha Just Launched

Possible Related Posts

• UNESCO Free and Open Source Software Portal
• UK Database of Theses (EThOS)
• Sharing Open Resources at The Bazaar
• Second Life + Moodle = SLoodle
• Schools + Web 2.0 + Open Technologies = Education 2.0
• Schoolforge