Author Archives: Kris McElroy

12 Days of Learning: Online Course Design

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. Today’s post looks at planning and designing an online course.  

When designing an online course there are several key elements you will need to consider. You will need to reimagine your course activities focusing on pedagogy first and technology second. It’s important to align your learning outcomes to your assessments and activities and pay careful attention to the selection of technology to achieve those outcomes without having it become about the technology.

Planning Your online course
This video from the University of New South Wales in Australia walks you through some useful strategies to begin planning your online course.  


 

Overview of the Course Design Process
This VoiceThread provides a brief overview of the eLIS course design process we use with Lesley faculty.

12 Days of Learning: Digital Storytelling

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. It’s Day 9 of our series and that means it’s time for digital storytelling.

Digital Storytelling is a way for students to create short stories using digital tools. These stories may include audio, video, images, and/or text. It is a way for students to demonstrate their knowledge about a subject in way other than writing a paper. The process of creating digital stories is often interdisciplinary requiring the use of research, analysis, planning, writing, media and technical skills to convey a story or content knowledge.

Getting started with digital storytelling in your classroom can seem intimidating. Fortunately, there are a lot of resources out there to help. The image below from the University of Houston’s digital storytelling site breaks the process down into steps. Visit their site for all the information on each step and check out the other resources linked below.

Digital Storytelling Resources: 
University of Houston Digital Storytelling
How to Design a Digital Media Assignment
Engage – University of Wisconsin, Madison
Media Commons – Penn State

 

12 Days of Learning: Designing Presentations

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. Day 8’s resource focuses on improving your presentation design.

We’ve all sat through boring, tedious presentations with too much text in too small of a font that we couldn’t read from our seats. So much so, that “Death by Powerpoint” is a thing.

Don’t do that. Instead, review these Atomic Learning tutorials on Effective Presentation Design below.

 

Effective Presentation Design

A. Presentations: What You Need to Know 

B. Getting Started

C. Communicating

D. Telling the Story

E. Getting Ready for Delivery

F. Resources

 

 

12 Days of Learning: PLN

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. Our Day 7 post will look at creating a Personal Learning Network.

A Personal Learning Network, or PLN, is a group of people and resources that you use to continue learning, growing, and developing your knowledge and skills. You can ask questions, get advice, share knowledge and build community. You probably already have a group of friends and colleagues for this, but many people have expanded their PLN online. A PLN may include people you follow on Twitter, blogs you read, learning communities and social bookmarking sites such as Diigo.

Never heard of a PLN before? Not sure you have one or how to start building one? Watch the short video below for an introduction to PLN’s. Then review the handy Building Your PLN guide at Edublogs Teacher Challenges.


 

12 Days of Learning: Library Tips

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. Today we’ll look to our colleagues at the Lesley Library.

Keyword Searching in Library Databases
Learn how to use keywords, AND, OR and truncation to create successful and more powerful searches in the library databases.

 

Scholarly Sources and Evaluating Information
Learn more about how to determine if a source is scholarly and will it be a useful resource.

For more assistance with these topics, check with Ask a Librarian.