Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008
Technorati has released the first part (of five, one per day, I believe) of its annual State of the Blogosphere / 2008 Report. This figure explains something:
Blogs are more and more a living part of our society!
From MOOC and Mookies: The Connectivism & Connective Knowledge Online Course
This is the course I’m sort of taking these days. This week has been awful with work and I couldn’t follow the flock, but hope to catch it again next week. Anyhow, this is a short presentation of what the course looks like, and the basics (very bare basics) of connectivism. I need more thought on this all, but in essence I tend to agree with the concept that knowledge being “distributed” and not “stored” in any particular “place”, where learning happens as a sort of pattern recognition when traversing a network and attaching interpretations and meaning to its nodes.
Nevermind the theories: for now, I just found out that the plain organization of the course is very inspiring. Thanks George Siemens and Stephen Downes! I already modified some of my existing courses to shape them to the architecture you’re using! And I am happy about it! (So believe my students, too.)
To know more, go to the course miniportal: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/. Or go to Stephen’s website www.downes.ca.
sloodle – Virtual Environment Learning System
“One of the things that I’m most excited about is a mashup between Second Life and the learning management system, Moodle. Its called Sloodle.” – Joe Miller, VP Platform, Linden Lab
From Sloodle.org: Sloodle is an Open Source GNU-GPL project which integrates multi-user virtual environments such as Second Life with learning-management systems (VLEs) such as Moodle and helps the community of educators in virtual worlds test curriculum innovations and advocate those proven successful. Sloodle provides a range of tools for supporting learning and teaching to the immersive virtual world; tools which are fully integrated with a tried and tested web-based learning management system used by thousands.
Says Daniel Livingstone, one of the minds behind Sloodle, in the journal revista LearningReviews:
Sloodle es la unión del mundo virtual 3D inmersivo Second Life junto con el Learning Management System basado en web y de código abierto Moodle. Second Life es fantástico para los encuentros sincrónicos, discusiones, simulaciones y aprendizaje donde la gente puede encontrarse virtualmente. Pero cuando los usuarios están en línea a diferentes horarios, o cuando se necesita administrar clases, proveer soporte para los estudiantes fuera de los encuentros sincrónicos, o lidiar con grandes cantidades de texto, allí Second Life cuenta con debilidades. Los educadores ya utilizan un rango de sistemas web junto a Second Life en sus clases, pero nosotros creemos que atar estos sistemas puede enriquecer la experiencia de aprender en Second Life.
