At the Moment

At the moment I'm taking part in the NOW Conference. This is a free 3 day online conference exploring online collaboration and creation for schools K-12. Its been really interesting hearing from teachers around the country and how they use E-learning and Web 2.0 with their students. It was also fun trying out video conference using Elluminate. I found out about this conference through twitter. I love twitter. I learn so much from it and continue to make some really useful connections with other teachers. Its my favorite Web 2.0 tool at the moment. My second favorite is Glogster. This is an interactive poster mash up tool. Lets you use video, links, photos, music, artwork to create an interactive poster. This would be useful to display links or other info to a class instead of the usual boring word document. What I like about it is that it's so visual and interactive. Try it out. Here's a great example of a Glog.

I've been playing with Ning, setting out a dummy digital photography course, seeing how it compares to a dedicated Learning Management System like Moodle. I like the visual look of Ning and the tabs set out used to find things. Students can set up their own blog/ page and upload photos easily and incorporate this into a slide show. Video is also easy to upload. This would be a great advantage for my digital photography class. However it would be hard for some students to follow lesson activities especially some students not well versed in the Internet etc.... Moodle has the advantage in this respect. The week by week activities layout is easy and clear to follow in Moodle. I hate the ads in Ning as well.

Here's a great example of a free online learning course called Work Literacy set up in Ning. So it can be done!!!! It's a course set up by the Elearning Guild on Web 2.0 tools for the learning professional. Check it out here.

I'm going to continue to compare Ning and Moodle and their effectiveness as learning tools but I'm also going to try out Studeous which is another dedicated Learning Management System. Like Moodle the software is free to download but it includes free hosting as well. I'm also going to look at another social networking site called Grou.ps. It's suppose to be like Ning but without the ads. Will see! See all my list of links here!