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Archive for the ‘Online Resources’ Category

Five and a Half Reasons to Introduce ELearning into High Schools

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

Five and a half reasons to introduce elearning into high schools.

Up to now, elearning has been the preserve of tertiary education (colleges, universities) and industry. I want to explore reasons why it could be useful in secondary education as well. I have called this post 51/2 reasons (5 and a half reasons, not five half-reasons) because I’m not fully convinced the final reason is a valid one.

Before I start, I feel a need to clarify what I mean by ‘eLearning’. It has become clear to me that there is some confusion over the term as different people take it to mean or to include somewhat different things. My definition of elearning is largely learning that is done online. In this definition, I do not include using computers and software in a classroom as part of a lesson. To me that is what I have been doing and promoting for years; it is now the norm in teaching(*) whereas online learning is not, or not yet, part of the norm.

So, what are these 6 (or 5 and 1/2) reasons we should introduce elearning into high schools?

1. Teaching less popular subjects and/or additional subjects. Let’s say you have a group of students who want to learn economics or parapsychology or African biology but you’ve not got a teacher or a classroom or a timetable slot to allow this, what can you do? The traditional answer would be that you don’t offer those subjects and tell your students to pick another subject, which also risks potential students opting for another school which does offer those subjects. Elearning offers the opportunity to provide such courses in a number of possible ways, such as linking with another institution and sharing teaching resources online, buying-in courses provided by outside educational bodies or sharing a teacher from another institution. In this way, elearning can enable a school not only to offer a wider range of subjects but also to make the school more appealing for potential students.

2. Teaching difficult to reach students. There are a range of students who might be considered ‘difficult to reach’ and for whom elearning may hold some potential. Let’s consider students who cannot physically attend school or who can do so only on a restricted basis, such as traveller children, sick or hospital students, young carers and excluded students. while these students remain on the attendance books of a school, the school has a responsibility for their education. Where such students acnnot attend school, then elearning has the potential to reach them and to provide them with a level of education despite their chosen or enforced circumstances.

3. Sharing teacher capacity. We know that teachers are expensive but also important. Yet schools cannot always ensure the availability of quality teachers able to provide teaching across all subject areas. Schools may experience either temporary or long-term teacher shortages. Elearning has the potential to mitigate this by allowing teachers to teach groups in different institutions. So a school with a teacher or teachers particularly skilled in teaching a particular area or subject, say advanced calculus, can offer the teaching services of a teacher to teach advanced calculus, online, to students at another school which does not have such a teacher. In return for part payment of the teacher time or for the the second school offering online teaching in another area or subject. Of course, this arrangement need not apply only to the sharing of a physical teacher but also to any range of teaching resources a school may have to offer online which another school may lack.

4. Alternative to Homework. I know this is a thorny issue but homework in its traditional sense is largely an out-dated concept which, even in its heyday, rarely reflected sound educational practice. Traditionally, homework, where the teacher remembered to set it, usually involved reading a passage from a book, writing an essay, doing textbook exercises, all of which usually reflected or repeated what had been taught in class and rarely provided the student with extra insight or learning. Elearning has the potential to offer students much more than this by becoming an extension to class teaching and an enhancement to student learning. The only caveat is, of course, that the student should have access to online resources out of school hours.

5. Timetable flexibility. Anyone who has ever had to face the task of timetabling or scheduling will know it can be a nightmare to match subjects, teachers, classrooms and groups of students together. By incorporating elearning options within subjects, a school may be afforded greater flexibility in its timetabling. A class does not always require a teacher to supervise or lead elearning, therefore one group of students studying a subject may do so online for a period while another group is led by a teacher.

6. Saving money. This is the half reason. I know some people in schools will jump at an opportunity to save money and I’d sympathise with them if I had responsibility for budget control. However, I’m not fully convinced that elearning will always be money saving. Sure, providing learning online can be cheaper than paying for a teacher but there is also a lot of finance and time that has to be supported in setting up online facilities, developing online resources and monitoring/maintaining systems and these should not be overlooked in a rush to engage in elearning. Nevertheless, in a long term, elearning may have the potential to save money and if anyone can achieve this and maintain a delivery of quality learning then I’d be more than happy to talk to them!

Bonus. Extra Support Learning. We all recognise that there are some students who have the potential to learn but who learn more slowly than their peers or who sometimes need materials presented in certain ways in order to better grasp their significance. Such groups of students may include those with special needs but not exclusively so; it could also include those with language barriers and those with attention difficulties. For such groups, elearning has the potential to offer extra learning opportunities in addition to their regular class-based sessions. Elearning also has the potential to offer resources in particular ways or formats (such as audio podcasts) for students who find it easier to learn in such ways. Even for your high-flying students, elearning has the potential to offer extra learning support in which to extend their thinking and knowledge within the subject.

I’m sure there may be many other reasons or benefits of elearning in secondary education, if you know of any, please add them as a comment.

 

 

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A Second Look at Second Life

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

3766460866 f8e7dae3cc m A Second Look at Second Life

image by Learn4Life

A few years ago I first tried out Second Life and, to be honest, I didn’t like it at the time. Nevertheless I decided to give it a second look recently to see if things have changed.

Let me try to explain what it was that I didn’t like the first time. At that time I had a Pentium processor in my machine, a good deal of memory and, for the time, a top range graphics card. Even so, I found Second Life to be quite unusable. The graphics were very crude (rough not rude!) and took a long time to display on the screen. Moving your avatar appeared tricky and cumbersome, in fact doing anything with your avatar appeared tricky and cumbersome, even getting him to look right. As for the flying option, well that just cheesed me off … I wanted to walk properly before I learned to fly!

What I really didn’t like was that you were very restricted in the way you could name your avatar. Although you could give yourself any first name you wanted, your surname was either chosen for you or you could pick from a limited choice. Consequently, I ended up with a name I could never remember and that was not particularly useful when you had to type this in to login each time! Besides, I really wanted the option to use my real name!

When I did get Second Life working (slowly) I found that there wasn’t much you could do with it. Okay, you could meet people but I really just wanted to explore and find out things, after all I don’t talk to people I bump into on the street in real life, except perhaps to say ‘sorry’.

Finally, what really hacked me off was the need to buy virtual currency. You had to pay real money to buy virtual money that you used to buy virtual goods; I’m sorry but that just seemed like a scam to me!

Anyway, that was then and recently I’ve decided to take a second look at Second Life. So what has prompted me to do so? Firstly, I had hoped there would be more to see or do now, I had, in particular, heard about the Learn4Life island which seemed more relevant to my work. I also now have a much more powerful computer and graphics card. I hoped also that many of my other niggles may have been resolved by now.

There certainly have been improvements. I found that Second Life remembered my original Avatar name, which was good because I had long forgotten it, even so, I decided to create a new one from scratch. You still cannot use your real name or even one you completely make up yourself. This is a shame but I did find the choice of surnames a bit more usable than previously, so I was able to come up with a name that sounded a bit sensible!

I still found a problem with the graphics in that they didn’t always render quickly, despite the much faster graphics card. Perhaps my slow urban broadband connection is the problem here (but don’t get me started on that issue). I was also surprised that some of the graphics seemed very poor, almost 1990s style, particularly in the landscape, textures and objects such as trees, but maybe that is a legacy issue.

I still found creating a reasonable Avatar to be tricky, the limited options really didn’t quite match what I wanted to produce. However, it did seem quicker this time around. Moving the avatar was also much easier than before, flying also seemed easier, though I found less need for that.

Second Life has recently introduced a new ‘viewer’ interface tool, which makes it quite easy to use and navigate around the virtual world.

There did seem, however, to be far fewer people in the virtual world than I experienced in the past. I don’t know if Second Life is losing popularity or if more people were now spread over a much larger world.

I did venture a few times over to the Learn4life island and there are certainly a lot of interesting things going on there, except that I didn’t find anyone else on the island. I guess it is the place people visit only when they know something is planned. Even so, I’m quite intrigued by the possibilities on offer there.

The virtual currency still exists and even has a variable exchange rate! My membership to Second Life is still the free level and, I hope, you can do a lot with that. There is a premium level which gives you a few (it seems) more features such as a virtual house, virtual money each week, online help and access to virtual adult facilities (no thank you!). Of course you have to pay real money to get these virtual features which you can only use in the virtual world, which still seems like a scam to me but then, on the other hand, if you can earn virtual money and convert that to real money, it may be more useful. Of course the services offered by Second Life and its developers do cost them money and nobody should begrudge them earning a living; perhaps I just wish there was something more tangible on offer for your real money.

Overall, my second experience of Second Life has been much more positive, the recent changes to the viewer are a great improvement over what went before. I do feel there is a steep learning curve to be gone through before you can fully use Second Life but that is part of the fun of it. There are still a few niggles with the choice of names and avatar design but they do seem more flexible than in my previous experience. Second Life still appears very ‘resource hungry’ and you may find you need a high end machine to make best use of it,m you also appear to need a good broadband connection and I guess some of my problems may lie in my poor urban broadband connection (I told you not to get me started on that…)

If you’ve been put off by earlier experiences of Second Life or not looked at it for a while, I would suggest having another look at it.

If you are on Second Life and see a sullen overweight avatar walking around in a denim shirt and shoulder bag, please say ‘hi’ but don’t be offended if I don ‘t reply; I’m either shy or haven’t yet mastered the speak options!

If you are interested in the Learn4Life island on Second Life, there is a short video introduction here http://blip.tv/file/3404585/

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10 Tips for Effective eLearning

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

2264195999 c4cc2c9ef7 m1 10 Tips for Effective eLearning

Image by alice_c via Flickr

Some of you will now that my current work has been involved in running synchronous elearning courses using Elluminate. This blog post is largely a reflection on that work so far and also my own experience of using Elluminate as an elearning tool.

I am attempting to draw up pointers or tips for users in how to deliver effective synchronous (live) elearning sessions for teaching and also for student revision. The tips presented here have been drawn from my observations of various people leading sessions and, as such, have been drawn upon different approaches or styles they’ve used. This post is very much a ‘first draft’ and I’d be grateful for any comments.

1) Teachers need a reliable internet connection with good bandwidth

Elluminate is intended to be used with even the poorest of dialup connections but this does not mean the experience will be equal to that delivered via a solid fast internet line. A poor connection can only acceptable, and sometimes unavoidable, at the client’s end. For the teacher a fast and reliable connection is essential to maintain delivery.

The lack of a reliable connection can lead to participants being dropped from the session and needing to reconnect. This may be unavoidable for students on a poor connection but it is not acceptable from a client viewpoint if the teacher drops out of a session through a poor internet connection.

2) Teachers need the support of well-designed resources

Many sessions have been supported by teacher designed PowerPoint slides. These are generally well based in the subject matter and pedagogy but usually show poor design and do not ‘engage’ students.

Teachers will rarely have the time or resources to design, from scratch, effective materials to engage the students, while also respecting commercial copyrights. In order to do this, it could be advantageous for a professional designer to be engaged to work with teachers to create engaging materials.

However, pretty resources on their own do not engage the students; they need to be appropriate and used in effective ways. Presenting a large number of colourful resources can be just as disengaging as presenting a few poorly designed ones.

3) The secret to a successful online course is interaction

The most effective sessions appear to be ones where there is a degree of interaction or participation from the students. This interaction can be with the teacher, with the resources or with each other. Sessions where the student appears to be just a passive participant tend to be less successful.

However, it can be difficult to generate interaction if the session has only one or two participants. In such cases, the level of participation and interaction can be adversely affected by the personality of each student and also their confidence/experience of using the system.

Equally, a session with a large number of students can be made more difficult to manage if there is a lot of interaction.

In my experience, if there are more than a dozen participants, it is difficult for each one to feel engaged. Consequently there is usually a lot of people dropping out during a session where there are more than a dozen participants. An ideal number would seem to be between 3 and 6 to allow for participation and interaction between students.

4) A successful course is usually a well-planned one

Isn’t this always the case? In a classroom, a successful lesson is usually one that has been well planned; the same appears to be true for online sessions. It is the session that is poorly planned and poorly supported by resources that appears to be the least successful.

However, of course, we all know that being flexible and being responsive to our students are also important to success. Following our plan rigidly during a lesson even when the students are not engaged, does not make for a successful lesson. In face-to-face sessions we can observe the students, their activity and responses. This is much more difficult online.

5) Intended outcomes need to be clear

Successful sessions almost always have intended outcomes; the most successful lessons are those where these outcomes are shared with students and have the agreement, or ‘buy in’, of the students.

In online sessions, it is useful for the teacher to tell the students what the intended outcomes for the session are, what activities are planned in order to achieve those outcomes and what ‘behaviour’ is required/expected from the student

6) Online learning is more than repeating previously learned material

Seems obvious really, but online sessions should not be just a repetition of subject matter previously covered in class. There may need to be some elements of revision but most successful online sessions allow students opportunities to investigate or explore materials in further depth or in new ways..

7) ‘Something for nothing’ is always good

We all like to think that we are getting ‘something for nothing’ no matter how big or how small. Sending students materials which they can use offline, is nearly always beneficial. Such materials might be sample questions, links to online activities, pdf texts etc.. There needs to be something extra that students gain from attending online sessions which could not be gained from face-to-face sessions.

8) Don’t allow time for questions!

I know this sounds almost counter intuitive but it is perhaps good practice not to allow time for questions. We all know the scenario where the teacher tells the pupils that at the end of the lesson there’ll be time for them to ask questions, that’s if there’s enough time of course! This usually gives the message to students that their questions are not really important and we can use them at the end to fill any remaining time, if the students can remember their question until the end and assuming they can withstand the peer pressure to stay quiet as everyone wants to finish early.

Rather than setting time aside for questions, taking and inviting questions should be an integral part of the session. Students should feel free to ask questions or raise points as the session progresses. This leads to better interaction and engagement in the session.

9) Use the tools

I am sometimes heard to be critical of Elluminate, as also with other services, in that they provide more tools for the teacher than for the learner. It is more frustrating, though, when teachers don’t make use of those tools available to them and resort to just basic text presentations on the whiteboard, which they then proceed to talk through. If you have ever suffered ‘death by PowerPoint’, I can assure you ‘death by Elluminate Whiteboard’ is worse. There are several tools available to the teacher, such as ‘application sharing’, ‘breakout rooms’, ‘web tour’ or multimedia sharing, get to know them and explore how each could be used in an online session.

10) Online teaching requires new skills

Online teaching requires new skills, not just in terms of handling technologies but also in terms of delivery. It is clear that a good classroom teacher does not necessarily make a good online teacher, so not every teacher will feel suited to it.

Delivering effective learning online requires practice, training and the development of a range of practical and interpersonal skills. An opportunity to teach online provides a professional teacher with an outlet to develop new skills and acquire new experiences which could hold them in good stead for the future.

This is not to say that a one-size fits all approach is required. Far from it, online learning can benefit from a range of teaching styles/approaches/resources just as face-to-face teaching does. It simply indicates that such styles/approaches/resources need to be different in many cases to fit an online scenario.

This final point is probably one which needs to be developed further. Having said that online teaching needs new skills, it is not yet easy to define those skills. Having said that online teaching may not suit all classroom teachers, there is an implication for ‘blended’ learning approaches. As I say, this post represents very much a ‘first draft’ and your comments are most welcome.

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Free Internet Resources

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

http://www.senteacher.org

This site, SEN Teacher, has been going for a number of years now and I am surprised it is not more popular than it is. The resources here are excellent and free. In my teaching days, I used to use the letter fans and number lines, which could be customorised and printed off. Now there are many more resources for the teacher to use.

The site says it is for SEN teachers but believe you me, almost any primary teacher could make use of the resources in their teaching.

So the site is well worth a look if you are a primary or special needs teacher in need of quick simple tools or worksheets for use in the class.

http://www.senteacher.org

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Paper.Li

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

paper.li 150x150 Paper.Li

I first mentioned Paper.li in an earlier post http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/four-twitter-services-you-may-not-have-seen/ where it was one of a few new twitter services I was trying out. Since that time, Paper.li has grown and developed further. However, as from today I have decided to stop tweeting about new editions of my paper.li newspaper.

Essentially, paper.li is an online newspaper created from twitter tweets. You can select to create a daily paper from tweets by the people you follow, by a twitter list or by a hashtag. Each day a ‘newspaper’ will be created based upon the criteria you have chosen. Please note, though, that you do not have any control of the content other than initially choosing the criteria nor can you select the time or frequency of publication. These are two factors which I felt were a limitation on the service.

The tweets selected will appear in a daily website ‘newspaper’ which looks very good. Indeed it is the look of the resulting page that first attracts users. In appearance it appears much more interesting than similar services such as twitter times. The newspaper will contain articles, adverts, videos and images, the amount and content of which will depend upon the number of your followers or twitters using a given hashtag.

It is important to note, though, that the articles are not written by the people who tweet them, they are often written by someone else but are associated with the people who tweeted about them or linked to them in a tweet. This has caused some confusion with people emailing or messaging me to say that they did not write the article that was associated with them.

Initially I created just one newspaper based upon the tweets of the people I follow. This was very useful and created a very interesting newspaper, mainly because I follow quite a number of people and so the content changed regularly. I also created a newspaper based upon one of my created lists, this too was interesting but as the list had fewer people it had less content each day. More recently I created a few newspapers based upon hashtags, generally these have been less successful and the amount of content has varied depending upon the popularity of the various hashtags.

What, you might ask, were the reasons for creating these ‘newspapers’? Firstly, I wanted to see if they were of any use and, yes, I was seduced by the look of them. Secondly, I felt that they would be useful to catch up on tweets I may have missed during the day. Thirdly, I wanted to see if there could be any educational use for them.

My reason for creating newspapers based upon hashtags is that, initially, I thought these could be the most interesting and the more useful in education. My first hashtag newspaper was created to follow the #ukedchat discussions on a Thursday evening. I felt that this would be a useful way to present all the tweets that happen in what is often a very rushed hour of discussion and exchange of tweets. I realised that the paper would come out each day but that only the Thursday or Friday editions would reflect the week’s discussion hour. However, it was not as good as I had hoped. Although many people were taking part in the ukedchat discussions, they were only picked up by paper.li if they had links to websites, videos or photos; general tweets using the #ukedchat hashtag were usually overlooked.

I wanted to try to create a paper.li newspaper which might be of use in a classroom, for this I created a ‘newspaper’ based on the #flood hashtag. This was at the time of the Pakistan floods, though it would also pick up other floods if the #flood hashtag was used. I felt that this was a worldwide event which would be worthy of use in a classroom on geography or current affairs and might be a way of introducing twitter into lessons.

Fairly recently, Paper.li introduced the facility to automatically tweet when new editions of your newspapers were made available. I took advantage of this and used it to tweet whenever a new edition of each newspaper became available. The effect of this was in part to publicise further the tool being offered by paper.li and I am aware that many people signed up for the service as a result of my autotweets. It also led to an increase in the number of people following me. However, it also meant that my twitter stream became populated with more autotweets; something which annoys many people.

I am still using the paper.li service but I have decided to switch off, for now, the autotweets. There are a number of limitations in the service which make me question its current usefulness, though I do accept that it is still in alpha stage so may address these issues later on its development. Firstly, I became frustrated that some newspapers contained far more content than others, I guess this is understandable but regrettable, it might be overcome, though, if the user could select the frequency of each publication; say, daily, weekly or monthly so that only those with a lot of regular content could be published daily but others could accumulate content for weekly or monthly publication.

I have already mentioned that, apart from selecting the criteria for the content, the user has no control over what appears in their ‘newspaper’. This was a concern for me, especially on the very few occasions when I found disagreeable content being presented or adverts for something I don’t like being displayed. It would be nice if the user had the option to remove any content they did not like before publication.

However, this really raises the question, who is each newspaper for? Who is/are the target audience? is it the creator, is it the followers of the creator or is it someone else? I think you can make a case for each but without the creator having some control over content and publication schedule, it is difficult to use it effectively with users other than the creator themselves.

Another feature I would very much like to see is the ability to archive issues. At the present each new issue replaces previous issues, so links only direct the user to the current issue and previous issues are lost. This is a shame as I feel that an archive of past issues could be of great use, particularly in an educational setting.

So in conclusion I would say that the paper.li service is a very interesting one and one which has lots of potential. It is still in alpha stage of development and really needs to add new features to increase its usefulness. I know that part of the idea is that it is an automated service but I really would like to see greater control of content by the users. I’d also like to be able to determine the frequency of publication and have the ability to archive issues. If these features could be introduced, I’d recommend anyone to have a look at the service and explore its potential further.

My newspapers are still online, changed daily and available for anyone to see, even though I have turned off the autotweet function.

http://paper.li/deerwood

http://paper.li/deerwood/edtech

http://paper.li/#ukedchat

http://paper.li/#flood

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Web Apps for Education (in a Time of Financial Constraint)

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

300px Mobile handheld device2 Web Apps for Education (in a Time of Financial Constraint)
Image via Wikipedia

Web Apps for Education (in a Time of Financial Constraint)

There always has, or should have, been a desire among schools to get value for money from their ICT purchases. I guess this is even more important nowadays in a climate of financial constraint. There has always been the desire though to balance financial commitment with getting the best for the learners. The best has not always proven to be the most expensive, or perhaps I should say that the most expensive services on offer have not always been the best.

We work in the world of education and I’m sure we would all appreciate suppliers offering their products and services, recognising this. Schools are not generally industries or services that utilise software and hardware to make money or to enable them to run more efficiently. Schools use software and ICT services to enable learning to take place. Whilst we do not object to people and companies making money, if they are offering their products within the education market, I think it only reasonable that we expect them to offer them in the spirit of education and not simply for the purpose of making a quick buck.

Recent years have witnessed the increase in services and products offered via the web. Not all of these have been aimed at schools but many are certainly useful for schools to use. Many of these products are free or have a free service, often with restrictions. Schools have certainly been looking at these and many are making use of them; that is where they are not blocked by overzealous filtering.

Where increasing bandwidth and download speeds are available, these web applications are proving very useful. Though, where connectivity remains poor the use of web tools can be problematic especially for large files such as video or music.

One major problem with web based applications has been that you cannot always rely upon them remaining available. There have been numerous instances of useful applications appearing but later being withdrawn and, more commonly, of applications starting out as ‘free’ but later becoming a paid-for or subscription service. An application may be withdrawn if development funding is insufficient, if development work proves too difficult or if it fails to attract sufficient users. In some cases, a company developing and offering a free service might be bought up by another company, which no longer wishes to offer the free service. Even where a service develops from a free one to a paid one, there is often, though not always, a basic free service which users may be able to continue using.

Users of free web-based services should always be aware of the possibility of the service changing in its nature and should ensure that critical work is not vulnerable to loss or future charges. Of course, there is always the possibility that the usefulness of the free service is clearly demonstrated to the school and that you may wish to take full advantage of the service by moving to the paid for service at a later date. In this way, the web based services might be seen as a form of ‘shareware’ in which you are allowed a free trial before parting with any money. In this way, web based apps may have an economic advantage for schools compared to commercial software packages.

Another aspect of web based applications is that they are usually available to users from any location. Pupils can use the application in school and continue their work at home. This is useful for a teacher setting course work in that they know the pupils each have equality of access to the same tools, provided they have a computer and connectivity at home. Web based applications are usually device independent, some will also work on handheld devices, so a teacher need not be concerned if a pupil has a Mac or even a Linux device at home or school rather than a PC.

Not only is location independence significant for work between school and home, it can also be significant globally in that pupils from across the world can work on the same web based application. This can lead to work being shared with other users around the world and be used to support collaborative projects across cultures and time barriers.

This collaborative aspect is an important one for it demonstrates that even in times of financial constraint, we are still able to extend education across new boundaries by using educational technology.

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New Ways to Learn

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

I discovered a great blog post at http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning2-0/10-ways-to-learn-in-2010/ which lists 10 new ways to learn. It includes the old one about using visual search engines; these have been around for a while and I womnder whether 2010 will be the year the visual search engine goes mainstream?

It also includes learning from wordclouds, these I thought were ‘old hat’ by now but I guess some people may not yet have come across them. Wordle for me is almost a waste of time, just because a term appears a lot in an article does not make it significant and, for me, a word cloud or tag cloud that is not hyperlinked is not very worthwhile.

Asking Questions, which is the third new way listed in the post, is hardly a new way at all. Asking questions is possibly the oldest method of learning known to man, so it is surprising that websites devoted to allowing people to ask questions have not become more popular. Then again maybe it is the silly answers that you often receive on such sites which has led to their demise.

Thinking visually and using mindmaps is again not new. What does appear to be new, however, is the ability to collaborate and share mindmaps online. This could become a great new tool for collaborative learning; it just remains to be seen whether people take to this approach. I have long been a user of mindmaps, myself, and I feel that such maps are personal; it is notr always easy for another person to interpret one person’s map, so I’m not yet sure whether collaborative maps would be of great use.

Hanging out with professors and watch documentaries are again hardly new ideas but the web is making these a lot easier than in the past.

It is very pleasing to see the growing popularity of TED talks and videos and this blog post lists a few others of a similar nature.

Using Twitter is well worth while in my experience so I wholeheartedly endorse this method of learning.

There are twoi more worthwhile tips for learning in 2010 which are mentioned in the blog post. I recommend that you pop over and have a fiull read of the post for yourself.

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