Just a quick note that if you administer and/or support people who use Desire2Learn, Kyle Mackie at the University of Guelph has set up a new Ning group called Desire2Share. It’s a private group and if you want to join us, contact Kyle. His credentials are on the site.
This site is outside of the official Desire2Learn community and is independent of the company. Just a bit of peer to peer support for all of us using and supporting D2L. So far there are 20+ members from around North America.
Online Course Peer Review at Lake Superior College just posted a nice D2L tip on how to personalize content in a D2L course.
By inserting {firstname} into any HTML spot in your courses (news, content, release conditions, etc), D2L automatically places your students’ first names into your message. This just adds an element of personalization to your class. This also works if you’d like a student’s last name or username inserted — {lastname} or {username}.
I have tested a few other variables and have found that these work as well.
- {OrgName} will show the name of the organization (in our case, Camosun Online).
- {OrgUnitName} will show the name of the course.
- {UserName} will show the login name of user.
I have checked the D2L documentation and can’t seem to find any reference or list of available variables so there may be more. Remember to include the brace symbol ‘{‘ and ‘}’ at the beginning and end of each variable.
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Well, I put this video together and demonstrated this technique at a video workshop for our faculty last week, only to have it fail miserably in Internet Explorer 7. Of course. Go figure.
I have embedded dozens of YouTube videos in blogs, wikis, discussion boards and in older version of D2L (prior to 8.3) and have never had a problem. But the D2L HTML editor (which I believe is based on the open source TinyMCE editor) strips out the embed tag when you cut and paste using IE7.
This is a brutal bug, imho, and I’ve reported it to D2L as well as posted it in the D2L user community.
At any rate, here is the video, complete with a spiffy annotation (my first for a YouTube video) explaining this does not work in IE 7.
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- Looking forward to watching @caparsons speak in a few minutes to our Comm students on privacy & social media 4 hrs ago
- Excellent roadmap 2 plan student video projects. Best practices for video assignments from Duke University http://bit.ly/blaBlx 20 hrs ago
- 12 days later, heard from tech support at uStream. You cannot change channel name once created so choose wisely & learn from my mistake. 1 day ago
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Latest delicious links
- Preceden - The Easiest Way to Make a Timeline
Preceden is a free web application that lets you make timelines. - 2009 Video Fellows best practices for video assignments
Planning on giving your students a video assignment? Here is a great primer on how to set up a video project for students. With assignment examples and rubrics. From Duke University. - Powerful Learning Practice, LLC
PLP is a professional development model that immerses educators into environments and practices that allow them to learn and own the literacies of 21st Century learning and teaching. - Online Video Editor - EditorOne Mashup Maker | Ideum
- TypeWith.me: Live Text Document Collaboration!
Instance of Etherpad, hosted by Chris Prillo. More at http://chris.pirillo.com/better-than-google-docs-etherpad-alternatives/ - EduFeedr
Promising looking project ind evelopment. EduFeedr is an educationally enhanced feed reader for blog-based courses.
Also see: http://www.scribd.com/doc/22965114/EduFeedr-%E2%80%94-Redesigning-the-Feed-Reader-for-an-Open-Education
and https://wiki.mozilla.org/EduFeedr_Blueprint - Cell phones in the classroom - O'Reilly Radar
The research was funded by mobile company Qualcomm, but still interesting to se the results that "classes using the smartphones have consistently achieved significantly higher proficiency rates on their end of course exams." - Coop's Word on EdTech / Video
Nice list of video resources, including some online video editing services - Catching the Google Wave by Bill Brandon: Page 2 : Learning Solutions Magazine
I've found this as well
“Waves need to have a specific focus, otherwise it’s just a chat, and there are better mediums for that.”
“Waves that don’t have a specific focus need roles to help manage the threads.”
“Waves need maintenance. Stuff can be consolidated/deleted/cleaned. It’s a collaboration tool – people have to work/negotiate with each other.”
“By virtue of sharing something in a wave with others, the default expectation is that someone WILL edit what you say. It is not an authoring platform to exchange ideas. It’s a platform to converge ideas.”
“Facilitated/hosted waves need organization, maybe even design or Wave “templates.” Much like #lrnchat (Editor’s Note: running discussions on Twitter about learning) is organized with a warmup question and three ensuing questions, maybe a good wave needs to use blips or wavelets as conventions for certain types of group discussion or group work.” - Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE
Many students, teachers, instructional technologists, and administrators consider the LMS too inflexible and are turning to the web for tools that support their everyday communication, productivity, and collaboration needs. Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, microblogging tools, and other web-based applications are supplanting the teaching and learning tools previously found only inside the LMS.
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