Between the last post and today, I had a great time at Thattekad - one of India's finest bird sanctuaries down south. can't say it was the best photography tour - grey weather, rain and dark clouds never make for a good mix. did have a fascinating birding trip, having spotted 110+ bird species during those three days. Along the way, I got some good photographs but not too many to be frank. I'm hinging my photography fortunes on the next few trips this winter - hopefully my luck will come good somewhere. When your picture is optimally exposed, you get a great picture. Simple? Simple? MORE >>

A while back I posted on Facebook that LMSs were prisons for content because they tended to keep content inaccessible and unavailable for quick easy access. Well now their is a new kind of LMS that uses a Facebook type interface to conduct academic business. It’s called CourseKit. CourseKit instructor page. The concept is radical on two levels. One, it is a different look and feel to LMS systems and two, the customer is not the IT department of the university, its the individual faculty member. According to an article in Forbes called Will Coursekit Launch Up-End Blackboard? billion.) MORE >>

Originally published on ETC Journal. Connecting formal education to social media/web 2.0 tools is a relatively new area. Educational institutions hope that by purchasing a virtual learning environment (VLE) all of their learning technology needs will be met. However, the world moves fast, and some educators find that our suite of communication and collaboration tools doesn’t cater to our teaching and learning needs as well as they might. Interestingly, VLEs are usually more suited to managing rather than learning (but that’s for another day). This will give you a starting point. Diigo). MORE >>

In the midst of the Digital Age, we have instant access to knowledge that was once difficult or impossible to find. Just Google it”: a modern day mantra. Social Social media discussions have become a common way to obtain information. Relying on listservs to share information among a community of practitioners has evolved into launching social media networks. Educators, however, would argue that “informal learning”, although [.]. eLearning association distance learning elearning formal education Google instructional design Jon Aleckson social media Web Courseworks MORE >>

A colleague of mine, Dr. Jean-Marie Muhirwa, recently returned back from the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) E-Learn 2011 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher Education held in Honolulu, Hawaii on 18-21 October 2011. He told me about one keynote presentation that had a very high impact on the audience and after seeing it myself, I have to agree that it's one of the best prezi-type presentations I have ever seen. If you are new to Prezi, then check their website out. lot, I bet! There you go! If so, leave a comment below. MORE >>