Fabian Gebert
2009/05/24 18:09
Technology
E-Learning does not mean instant learning
There are various aspects why classic learning can be interesting. Photo by darrenstone.
When talking to my fellow students at university, I can tell the expectations towards internet access have changed a lot. Once I was happy when establishing the Compuserve connection (an internet provider that was) cost less than a minute. File needed ages to download and there were hardly any well-connected and well laid out pages as we've got today. In particular, the internet feels more like something that instantly reacts to what you do rather than something you wait for.
Considering E-Learning, this can lead to misexpectations. E-Learning in terms of studying isn't McDonalds in terms of food. Expecting to get things on demand isn't compatible with the idea of learning something that is more complex than a single vocabulary or a date of history. At this level, people need not only to combine all their cognitive skills and actually concentrate on the subject they are studying. Moreover, they will have to spend time. In terms of E-Learning, this means spending time online.
As a result, I cannot recommend trying E-Learning at the first place to those people that cannot stand reading a PDF file on the screen, including me. I am more the paper reading type of student.
However, we still must take into account that we can accellerate the paper work that learning involves. I didn't believe this either but trying out Google Docs was the first step for me to get the impact of collaborative internet applications: It allows you to simultaneously work on the same document without the need of meeting at the same place or exchanging files. You wouldn't do this at the first place, but imagine you were to hand in a paper with a few friends and you need a quick review. Uploading your files to tools like Google Docs (there's Zoho, thinkFree and others as well) allows you to get this done really quickly.
Where the internet can help non-computer students
Apart from sharing documents, using the internet can ease up your study life in the following fields:
-
Documenting the things you've learned
-
Asking your fellow students questions
-
Learning things by heart for an exam
-
Managing your study schedule
And further aspects, of course.
Web2.0 applications can support your learning without dictating to you how to cope with your studies
There are several small applications on the web -- including the one on this site
-- that can help you to improve your study turnout without changing you way of studying.
For getting an overview, you should check the following resources:
-
Facebook apps: Enter something like "study notes" or similar to get an overview
-
Getting answers: Yahoo Answers. Answers are not kept in the group sphere though.
-
Managing your bibliography: EasyBib
The field we're working on is taking notes in a study group, getting questions answered and learning things by heart. And to be honest: We haven't found such an approach on the internet yet. So please drop me a line once you've found a Mediabird-like app.
Just comment if you want more links to be included.
Fabian Gebert
2009/01/13 22:46
Technology
Assume you are using the following route
Router::connect('/:language/:controller/:action/*', array (), array ());
in a multi-language CakePHP installation as the only rule in the routes.php and still
$url = Router::url(array('controller'=>'example','action'=>'index','language'=>'en','show_all'=>'true'));
yields
'/example/index/language:en/show_all:true'
instead of
'/en/example/index/show_all:true'
Note that
$url = Router::url(array ('controller'=>'example','action'=>'index','language'=>'en'));
works correctly (gives '/en/example/index/').
So the problem only exists with named parameters.
The simple solution is to state
Router::connectNamed(array('show_all'));
Fabian Gebert
2009/01/09 17:08
Technology
In order to motivate the team members, we have implemented a credit point based task management tool as a controller in our CakePHP application.
It allows us to manage current tasks and suggest new tasks that others can assign to them and work on afterwards.
The main difference to standard task management tools is that it allows setting a credit for completing the task. For instance, I got 10 credit points for writing this post. On the one hand, this allows me to estimate how long the task should take to avoid too much effort. On the other hand, it motivates me to do it as soon as possible such that I can do the next task.
The credit points itself are just for motivation and do not serve as a base for a financial compensation. But this would be possible for commercial teams.
Anybody interested in what the task management looks like can just let me know.
Fabian Gebert
2008/11/12 07:21
Technology
There is a 15 minutes "how do I program a blog in CakePHP" tutorial at http://book.cakephp.org/view/219/Blog.
15 minutes is not too long just to get an idea of CakePHP, is it? And I must say it is only 15 minutes if you adjust a few settings in your ubuntu installation prior to following the tutorial.
All you have to do in case you're using Ubuntu is to install a web server using
-
Run
$ sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-mod-auth-mysql mysql-server php5-curl php5-gd dvipng phpmyadmin
from the terminal.
-
After that, execute the command
$ gksu gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
and change line 11 from 'AllowOverride None' to 'AllowOverride All'.
-
Enable the mod_rewrite module using
$ sudo a2enmod rewrite
-
Change the permissions of the web server root folder using
$ cd /var
$ sudo chmod o+rw www
-
Now, download the CakePHP source from http://www.cakephp.org/
and put it in /var/www/cake
-
You can then use http://localhost/cake/ in your browser and start with the CakePHP Blog tutorial!
Frank Wolf
2008/10/16 13:58
Technology
derStandard.at/Bildung, the online subbranch of an Austrian newspaper coping with educational subjects, has recently published an article titled "eLearning Trends: Knowledge in digestible bits" [German]. It reflects the results of the Learntec Forum of this year putting emphasis on individualization by examining the trends in eLearning. These are:
- Learning in bits
- Autonomy of Learners
Learning in bits - a bit cumbersome described as "micro-learning" - means learning of small units consisting of text, audio tracks or video clips requiring about 2 to 5 minutes each to be studied.
Autonomy of Learners is understood as the learners ability to freely choose from these bits. An exemplary implementation is a Blended Learning system created by the Austrian police which is to train police officers with current knowledge about criminal procedure.
Why Mediabird is better.
I want to use this occation to provide you with some explanations of principles that Mediabird uses as announced in my last article.
The principle of the moment
Is not new to psychology that learning of bits the best strategy.
All our perception happens in moments. So our perseption of the present happens in nothing else than a serie of moments. Consequntly learning is nothing more than a subsequent understanding of bits: one per moment.
So it's clear that learning according to this principle works best. Mediabird utilizes this principle using content cards (for learning) and flash cards (for training).
If we instead try to learn with the help of full text, our brain is busy splitting the content into parts while being disturbed by all the other content that is not to be learned and distracts from the essential facts. This happens to be one of the main reasons of frustration in the process of learning.
If we make no or only slow progress while studying something, the reason is most probably that we are subliminally disturbed by content that is not in the time of learning. Furthermore, this sometimes results in a feeling of misunderstanding although we are unable to really say what we did not get.
Thus learning in bits is totally intelligible: simply to make transparent what has been understood and what has not and to systematically repeat missing content afterwards.
Mediabird and the principle of the moment
According to the above mentioned article of derStandards bits take 2 to 5 minutes - a lot too long for the a smallest unit. Of cause spending 2 or more minutes learning is good - but not to just one bit. This is far to much to be learnt.
Another missing point here is the necessity of content structuring (realized in Mediabirds-MapView-Concept), embedding content into context (Mediabirds-Marker-Concept) or linking content to a question (Mediabird-Flash-Card-Concept).
Although these are no new principles, Mediabird represents a unique and successful combination of all these.
Mediabird and the Learner's autonomy
Mediabirds meets perfectly all requirements to support the learner's adequat choice of content he wants: Topics can be searched. The separation of topics content into illustrative, main and advanced cards according to its relevance and meaning makes life easier. The learner can slip as deep as he wishes into his topics. Additionally features for an autonomous learning style in Mediabird are:
- Prerequisites to topics, helping to choose the topics which the learner is capable to understand
- Marker concept: e.g. annotation or definition marker provide additional content, that can be displayed on demand but does not disturb the course of reading
Mediabird and collaborative learning
above all Mediabird offers features for collaborative learning and thus offers more than most other learning systems according to American trend. The group support outrageously helps small or big groups to work and learn topics collaboratively: everybody profits from everybody's effort. Notes to specific text passages - normally straight away on expense of later searching same things again - can be placed and saved using markers and than be used by everybody of the group.
Conclusion
The derStandart article points in the correct direction, but illustrates like a lot other articles and books about learning that there is still to little conversation between the areas of psychology and education - otherwise a lot other aspects would have had to be described.
However, we clearly see that Mediabird is in trend. An other advantage as Open Source Tool is that Mediabird is for free. |And with its additional functions for collaborative Learning it will potentially contain a vast amount of different contents in near future.
Convince yourself of Mediabird's unique and innovative concept just now at www.mediabird.net/mediabird/start or contact us at team@mediabird.net.
All the best for your studies,
Your Mediabird Team
1 | 2 Next
