Podcast: http://www.beyondutopia.net/podcasts/animations.mp3Flash-based animations, simulations using virtual worlds such as Second Life, and learning management system-hosted interactive quizzes and assessments have become mainstays of many training programs, college courses, and professional development experiences. Animations and simulations are clearly effective in technical training, but

Image by Jim Bumgardner CC-BY-NC-SA. The Center is brought to you by +@ONE Supporting Online Community College Faculty Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 19th3:00pm PacificLIVE - Google+ Hangout on Air!Click for Google EventView on YouTube --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9FRP9fAUfE&feature=shareJoin The Center's Community for follow-up discussions --> tiny.cc/TheCenter Join us for a #CCCLEARN Twitter Chat on the topic --> Thurs, 3/27 3-4pm PDTCalifornia’s Community Colleges are leaders in distance education. In 2011-12, distance education courses comprised roughly 27% of the state’s total student headcount and each of the 112 community colleges in the state offered an average of 10 online degrees (CCC Chancellor’s Office, Distance Education Report, 2013). Supporting faculty with training and resources to teach online is foundational to ensure students have successful learning experiences and persist in their online classes. In this Hangout, Katie Datko, will share an overview of the growth and development of the resources Pasadena City College has created to support the training and development of their online faculty.  Using the screenshare feature, Katie will provide a tour of some of these resources and discuss the challenges and opportunities the college has experienced along the way.The Q&A feature will be enabled during the live Hangout on Air to allow viewers with a Google+ account to submit questions through a web browser. The Hangout on Air will also be archived and and shared with a Creative Commons license on The Center Hangout Archive playlist at: http://tiny.cc/CenterArchivesThis Hangout on Air will feature:Katie Datko - Instructional Designer for Online Learning, Pasadena City CollegeMichelle Pacansky-Brock - Community Coordinator of The Center; Associate Faculty, Mt. San Jacinto College; Instructional Technologist, CSU Channel Islands, Author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies 

New ways to share knowledge take advantage of innovative social networking. Welcome to an interview with Josh Little, CEO of Bloomfire. 1. What is your name and affiliation. What is your relation to e-learning?My name is Josh Little and I'm the CEO of Bloomfire. Bloomfire is the third online learning company I've started. The first is Maestro eLearning, a creative agency focused on building

High-quality animations and immersive experience captured from virtual worlds that can be accessed on all forms of mobile devices, ranging from smartphones, tablets, laptops, as well as desktop systems, are vital education, training, and professional development on emerging science, technology, and equipment. An example of a high-quality multimedia developer is PetroEd. E-Learning Queen is

Inclusive Learning: Lightbulb Moments from 2 Online Faculty Thursday, April 3rd4:00-5:00pm PacificLIVE - Google+ Hangout on Air!Click for Google EventView on YouTube --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJkREZ-eYqo&feature=shareJoin The Center's Community for follow-up discussions --> tiny.cc/TheCenter Follow The Center on Twitter --> @Center_EdJoin me, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, and +Deborah Lemon  as we engage in a reflective conversation about their growth and development as online educators. Deborah and I will share how we have come to value the rich, community-oriented learning environment in our online classes that supports our students' learning differences and encourages them to make relevant connections with the curriculum. We will share tips and strategies, show examples of our own VoiceThread and Facebook learning activities, and take questions from the live audience. The Q&A feature will be enabled during the live Hangout on Air to allow viewers with a Google+ account to submit questions through a web browser. The Hangout on Air will also be archived and and shared with a Creative Commons license on The Center Hangout Archive playlist at: http://tiny.cc/CenterArchivesThis Hangout on Air will feature:Michelle Pacansky-Brock - Community Coordinator of The Center; Associate Faculty, Mt. San Jacinto College; Instructional Technologist, CSU Channel Islands, Author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies and How to Humanize Your Online Class with VoiceThread+Deborah Lemon  - Professor at Ohlone College, Instructor of Building Online Community with Social Media at @ONEAll Center events are brought to you by @ONE.

With tablets, smartphones, and "go everywhere" laptops, interactivity and situated learning opportunities are transforming courses and curricula. For degree programs in social and behaviorial health and courses dealing with personal and community health, it's now more feasible than ever to take a "personal trainer" approach, thanks to robust m-learning. This incorporates situated and

Here is the archive of Inclusive Learning: Lightbulb Moments, a Hangout on Air from The Center. In this Hangout, +Deborah Lemon and I share and reflect on our own growth and development as online educators and discuss how the integration of social tools into our online learning environment has fostered community-oriented learning that nourishes our students' learning differences and creates personal, relevant learning. Deborah showcases her online Spanish class which is taught in Facebook and I share my online ice breaker designed in VoiceThread and examine how the option to express oneself in voice or text is impacting my students' learning. What are your two takeaways? I'd love to hear them! #CCCLEARN  Thanks for sharing with me today, Deborah! I always learn so much from you. 

Welcome to an interview with Janet Gifford, Linfield College. This interview is the first in a new series at E-Learning Queen which will profile colleges, universities, and other institutions using what they have determined are the elearning approaches and instructional technology appropriate to their institutions in order to respond to the quickly evolving needs of learners, the economy, the

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app Yesterday, I returned from three days at the Sloan-C/MERLOT Emerging Technologies Symposium for Online Learning in Dallas. I am still processing! But here are some reflections. My key take away at this moment -- aside from reflecting on the deeply amazing humans I met and spent time with -- is that some of the significant organizational changes that have been bubbling up throughout higher education surfaced in different ways this year. This is good! I felt that the presentations this year were topical and compelling. In short, there was discomfort and debate -- more so than in previous years. This too is good! Some presentations even delved into subjects that have become indiscussable at some institutions. And that, to me, is a significant moment in the process of organizational change.  According to Argyris (1999), when individuals in an organization are confronted with change they find themselves forced to deal with topics or issues that challenge their traditions.  These traditions are governed by mental models, which are undetectable, yet salient, conditions that inform how a person thinks and acts.  When a mental model that guides a tradition in an organization is challenged, a person will behave in one of two ways. Most commonly, a person will exhibit defensive behavior. Defensive actions may include exhibiting signs of frustration or simply avoiding the topic all together. For example, "That's not how we do things here" or "That wouldn't work because..." These behaviors build upon each other and after enough repetition, the members of an organization become familiar with the expected response and stop raising the topic. The questions (that is, the new ideas, the innovations, the curiosity) stop being introduced into the organization and the status quo is reinforced.  The topic, therefore, becomes indiscussable and the tradition, whatever it may be (even if we all dislike it) remains intact.  We all have seen this right?  Think about when a new person in your organization is hired and asks that uncomfortable question that nobody else asks anymore because everyone else has learned the answer. If defensiveness can be overcome when a person becomes aware of his/her mental model, however, the mental model can be seen in a new light. A person can begin to think critically about why and how it became so powerful and start to have a deep conversation about alternative actions. This is when an organization begins to become a learning organization.  This is when awakening can lead to meaningful changes. And it starts with conversations about difficult topics. Reclaiming LearningView the presentation here.First, Jim Groom @JimGroom shared an important keynote that I both think and hope awakened the minds of many attendees.  View the Storify archive of Tweets here.  Groom's keynote to me, illustrates, the model of organizational learning I described above. Groom's talk took the audience through a historical look at web culture when geocities offered users the opportunities to easily cultivate their own web presence and connect with others.  This open, communal experience was contrasted with the LMS, higher education's "go to" learning landscape. It is as if we don't even think beyond what's outside the LMS today in higher education. It is as if we think we're teaching online but we aren't -- we're teaching inside a walled garden.  And how does learning inside an LMS prepare a student for live in our digital, mobile society? These were some of Groom's points.The LMS has become our tradition. The open-web has become the uncomfortable change -- the flood waters that the administrators of our institutions try to keep out. This is the indiscussable topic that Groom took hold of in his keynote.  Throughout the past several years, I have worked with many faculty who have shared with me that they wantto teach with this tool or that tool to promote more engaging, collaborative learning for their online students but their institutions will not allow them to because of this or that.  Or they immediately pause and become filled with caution and concern at the thought of integrating a tool into their students' learning that is not included within the LMS. I realize my words may be stirring up emotions within you as you read this and I am fully aware there are topics to discuss and learning that needs to happen in order for us to facilitate learning with web-based tools (which is the crux of my book, Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies).  The point is that we can work through these topics together, as a community of online educators, if our top priority is our students' learning, as opposed to maintaining and controlling them.  Groom's points dug deep. If we teach inside an LMS and only inside an LMS, are we truly teaching "online"?  If our students only experience interactions within the controlled, secure walls of an LMS, are they truly experiencing what it means to be online? Are we, as educators, leveraging the educational benefits of the internet if our learners do not engage in activities outside the walled garden of an LMS?  Are we as a system of higher education embracing even a small percentage of the power of this "learning revolution" we appear to be occurring around us?  How is learning online improving students' abilities to think critically about media? To create original media and share it for re-use in a digital, mobile society? To locate, evaluate, and re-use media effectively? And as we, more and more, strive to design "learner-centered" online learning environments, the LMS is designed to lock students out from their own learning contributions after a term has ended.  As Groom so eloquently put it, when students learn in an LMS, they learn in an environment that has no relevancy to life after college.As I reflect on my own teaching, the more I have ventured outside the LMS to designed an online learning environment for my class that incorporates a tapestry of student-centered media projects with web-based tools the more inspired, relevant,  and active my students' learning has become. And that topic has been the premise of this very blog, my book, and my other related work.  In fact, I became so passionate about this topic that it led me in 2009 to leave my safe, tenured position as a full-time faculty member and eventually begin my life that same year as a free-lancer. In many ways, teaching outside the LMS led me to a life as an academic outside the academy. Hmm. Interesting connection. The LMS is a helpful tool for providing a secure place for having students authenticate as registered students. That is a function I rely upon it for. The LMS is also a valuable tool for communicating grades to students, which must be done securely to comply with FERPA.  I also use my LMS to deploy periodic traditional assessments for learners, because they provide students with automated feedback from me, as well as opportunities to learn from their mistakes when assessments are allowed to be taken multiple times.  I have much more processing to do about Jim Groom's talk. But, for now, I'd like to thank him for taking us to this level of learning.  Mess in Online EducationImage by Cy TwomblyThe plenary presentation at #ET4Online, Mess in OnlineEducation: How It Is, How It Should Be, was delivered by Jen Ross @jar and Amy Collier @amcollier.  Their presentation reframed the culturally derogatory term "mess" into a positive vision for online education.  Yes, your teaching should be messy.  Why?  As the presenters reminded us, learning is messy.  If we could visualize how each of us learns, we would be able to see that each of us learns in an entirely different way. I was reminded of a Cy Twombly drawing while listening to this presentation. Some may see it as a mess; some see it as beautiful. Either way, it's art. But mess is more than supporting learning differences.  Mess involves designing for and allowing for learners to experiences the challenges, stumbles, and failures involved with the real world, as well as building in flexibility to allow life to intervene. Right now, my online students are embarking upon a project that involves locating a practicing art photographer (anywhere in the world), interviewing him/her about his/her work, and creating a VoiceThread about the photographer's work.  I have this project chunked out into three steps, each with a deliverable, clear criteria, and a due date, to keep students on task.  The experience is different for each student. For example, some students identify a photographer quickly, others reach out to several before they make contact with one who is available to be interviewed, and I have had two students (over two years) who have needed my help finding a photographer. Most students relish in how incredible it felt to be in touch with a "real" photographer and learn about his/her experiences. Some have maintained connections with them and even been sent prints from the photographer after the project's completion. One photographer asked my student's permission to share her VoiceThread on his blog (nice turn of the tables!) and another student received an email from a photographer letting her know that her project had "validated his career."The project is messy. I never know how it's going to turn out or what problems we are going to encounter. The important thing is that my students know I'm in it with them and I'm there for them -- and that they remain in communication with me. I have had semesters where I've thought, "Maybe I should end this." But after listening to Amy and Jennifer's presentation, I feel empowered to continue this project.  It truly is real-world learning that will foster skills for life, more so than any multiple-choice test, discussion forum, or assigned blog post.  Learning outside the LMS is real world learning. And that is why we need to embrace it.In the presentation, Collier and Ross also noted one recent trend in edtech that is discouraging mess in online learning -- the proliferation of technologies that simplify the teaching and learning process.  In their presentation, they included many screenshots from promotions and writings about products that promote their ability to save teachers time, to minimize assessment challenges, etc.  While I agree that the focus on lifting the teacher from the student experience has been overly celebrated in the MOOC heyday -- and I shared early reservations of employing MOOCs widespread in community colleges here-- I hope the presentation does not throw cold water on the many innovations surfacing in educational technology today that will continue to improve upon the sterile, tidy LMS-driven experiences Groom critiqued in his presentation.As I already noted, it were not for the emergence of web 2.0, I would never have ventured outside my LMS.  I would still be teaching my visually-centric art history courses using text-based discussion forums (ouch).  I enjoy not only the opportunity to continue to explore new tools emerging on the edtech horizon, but working directly with entrepreneurs who want to learn how to improve education.  I support more dialogue between higher education and edtech startups -- not less.  Entrepreneurs need to learn from online educators --. and those who will survive are those who are willing to learn. Questions for reflection:"How is your online class preparing your students for success in the 21st century?" "How does the design of your online class generate opportunities for students each go different ways, encounter unique challenges, and identify their own solutions?" Thinking Ahead to 2015Next year, I will be conference chair for the 2015 Sloan-C-MERLOT ET4Online Symposium.  The event will be in Dallas once again on April 22-24, 2015.  Send me your ideas and your suggestions so it can continue to be an engaging, thought-provoking experience and advance the conversation about the role of emerging technologies in online learning.References:Argyris, C. (1999). On organizational learning. Malden, MA: Blackwell Business.

Today, there is a lot of potential to leverage mobile devices for engaging and enriching learning. The challenges are in understanding how to ensure learners don't get excluded in process, keep costs low, and, of course, support effective pedagogy.Recently, my good friend +Vicki Curtis who teaches ESL at Ohlone College mentioned to me that she was experimenting with the use of a new tool called Presentain in her face-to-face class. The features of Presentain at first sounded confusing to me but the outcomes of the experience (for both instructor and students) made me curious enough to listen and want to learn more. So Vicki and I stayed in touch while she continued to try it out and she soon let me know that she felt confident she was on to something good.  Last week, she joined me as a guest for a Center Hangout on Air. And it was awesome! Here is a quick overview of Presentain but if you really want to check it out, view the 40-minute Hangout embedded above. In it, you will see Vicki engage the live Hangout on Air audience in an interactive demo of the tool, as the virtual audience members play the role of students in her class (to be clear, Presentain is not intended for distance presentations -- it does not synchronously relay audio, in other words).Presentain is available for free but you will find the need to upgrade if you like the product. The free version is pretty limiting, enough to get a taste. There is no "education" license, per se, they offer a staggered pricing plan based on features included. Click here for pricing information.For the "presenter," Presentain requires use of their web app and free mobile app (available for Android and iOS). Prior to a live presentation (before a face-to-face audience), the presenter (let's use the word "instructor" for our purposes) loads one's presentation into the web app in PDF form. The presentation is stored there. At this point, the instructor can also create and store polls within the account (paying attention to the poll and presentation limitations of one's account type).At the time of class, the instructor enters the classroom, takes out her mobile app (this could be a smartphone or tablet), and launches the Presentain app. Also, she logs into the Presentain web app from the computer in the front of the room (connected to a projector for the students to view). At this point, students are entering and settling in. On her mobile, she is able to view thumbnail views of the presentations she loaded previously. She selects the one she wants to present for the class and indicates whether or not polls will be included and, if so, pulls those into the queue. Then Presentain provides a PIN number to enter into the web app. Now the presentation appears on the computer screen and the Presentain web app provides a simple, unique URL to share with students!Students are now ready for class. The instructor greets them and asks them to take out their internet devices (smartphone, tablet, or laptop -- anything with access to WiFi, provided there is WiFi in the room -- or else a network connection would be required on the device, of course) and go to the URL displayed on the screen. From there, the students view each slide on their device.Presentain allows any student to view the instructor's presentain on his/her internet connected device, regardless of platform, via a URL (no account or log in required).  as the instructor clicks through her very few, slides that are beautifully designed with sparse amounts of text and Creative-Commons licensed images (grin). The instructor moves throughout the class, bending down to engage closely with each learner. She makes eye contact directly with each student as she moves through the room.  She holds her mobile device in her hand and swipes the screen -- yes, it is acting as a remote. She doesn't even need to think about it.Presentain turns the instructor's mobile device into a remote.As she pays attention to her learners, that mobile device in her hand has also been transformed into a recording device. The microphone is picking up her words as she speaks and the app is recording the presentation as she delivers her content to the students.Presentain turns the instructor's mobile device into a recorder.Now, after three slides and ten minutes, the instructor pauses. She activates a poll on her mobile. It projects on the screen in front of the class and simultaneously the students see it appear on their mobile devices. They read the prompt and click their response. As they respond, the results of the poll appear dynamically in the form of a pie chart on the screen. The instructor enthusiastically engages with the responses and the students start to inquisitively ask questions about the concept that had just been covered. Together, they engage in inquiry to understand why most students chose A, while some other students chose B and C.Presentain enables an instructor to use dynamic polls from a mobile device that students respond to on their internet connected devices (no log in or account required).One student is still confused. He is embarrassed and does not want to raise his hand. So he clicks the "return to Dashboard" link on his iPhone's screen and from there Presentain gives him the option to submit an anonymous question. He types his question. The instructor receives an indication (that is not seen on the presentation screen) that a question has been received. She clicks the notification to review it and chooses to display the question to the class.  She notes that she felt similar confusion about the topic when she was a student and then proceeds to clarify things using a real world analogy. The instructor prompts the class to submit questions if they have more, as time is running out.Fifteen minutes have now passed. The instructor knows that's enough presentation time. It's time to move on to an activity. So, she stops the presentation on her mobile device using the Presentain app and requests the app to publish the recording. Within moments the recording is available and the link may be emailed to students and/or embedded directly in an LMS.Presentain instantly provides an embeddable video of an instructor's presentation, enabling students to review class sessions or experience sessions that were missed. Intrigued? Watch the Hangout. You can learn more at Presentain.com.  Vicki Curtis can be followed on Twitter @LearningGuide12.The Center is brought to you by @ONE.www.tiny.cc/TheCenter@Center_Ed