Fabian Gebert
2008/11/21 17:40
News
Frank and I have just arrived back from the Campus Innovation, a conference about the topics eLearning, IT intrastructure and campus management.
It was not only very interesting to see the different projects, such as the library 2.0 project, beluga. Apart from that we had the chance to meet several people and head developers from the various eLearning projects from Hamburg, such as commSy.
For portability, Mediabird is most probably going to be offered as a plug-in to the moodle
and OLAT
platforms.
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!
Fabian Gebert
2008/10/28 14:35
News
I've just updated the online version of Mediabird. The minor update brings a new layout and a lighter design. In addition to that, it is now possible to discuss content cards of a topic that is shared with a group.
To try out the new discussion feature:
- Join or create a group
- Edit the topic and share it with the group you've created or joined
- Edit or study a card that belongs to the topic
- Use the "Discussion" panel on the right side of the card to post a message
Messages are shared among the members of the group they have been posted in. They are not shared among the groups.
Features very likely to come are:
- Discussion invitation
- Group voting on card navigation
- Ability to discuss flash cards
- Automatic refresh of message list
As always, feedback is most welcome!
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
Frank Wolf
2008/10/07 00:43
News
We are proud to present Mediabird's new release: version 0.4 is out! In the course of the new release, a lot of new valuable features have been integrated. Additionally, we improved the workflow and performed a major redesign of the application.
New features
Group management
- Group organization: users with common interest can collaborate with each other using the groups feature
- Topic sharing: topics can now be shared in groups. It is possible to specify the content license and content access
- Group access: groups can either be publicly available (where the group creator can specify if users can join with or without explicit permission) or private (invitation by email possible)
Topic management
- New main screen: separate own and shared topics for a better overview
- Search function: helps you to search your own topics and topics shared in public groups
- Progress overview: access recently or yet to work on topics from menu
- Content creation made easier: import content from a specific source, such as Word or Wikipedia or use templates to structure your contents more easily
Content creation
- New skin: more contrast and better visual separation of functional parts
- New map view design: take advantage of the new simplified interface: read names of cards more easily
- Prerequisites: you can specify prerequisites such as books or other topics that are necessary to understand a topic you are working on
- New editor design: separation of highlighting and insertion function and a streamlined interface make life easier.
Usability
- Intelligent assistance: important or related features are explained using yellow balloons that indicate the UI element they refer to
Check out the new Mediabird release -- and tell us if something is missing, so we can improve Mediabird.
