If you want to understand how you can make the best use of graphics to engage the mind and stimulate learners to think, I simply can't think of a better expert to engage with than the awesome Connie Malamed!Title : Your Brain on GraphicsDate : 12th September, 2012 Time : 10:00 AM, Kuala Lumpur (Check Time Differences)Venue : Online (WizIQ) Description:Tune in to the power of visual communication and how it facilitates learning and thinking. Learn to design visuals that focus on what you really want to communicate. In this interactive and lively webinar, Connie Malamed explored visual design principles that are based on how learners perceive and process information. Speaker:Connie Malamed consults, writes, and speaks in the fields of online learning, visual communication, and information design. She publishes the popular website, The eLearning Coach and is the author of the Instructional Design Guru iPhone app and the book Visual Language for Designers, which presents visual design principles based on cognitive science.  RECORDINGWOW!

How do we engage and inspire students/educators/learners to really learn, and then empower them with the belief that they can learn on their own (without needing to be always spoon-fed)? Self-learning and learning how-to-learn are probably the two ultimate things we need master to survive and be successful in the 21st century, which will eventually be known as the...Source (Webinar recording)THE FLIPPING CHALLENGE!Are you familiar with the 'Flipped Classroom' approach to learning?Here is a video to introduce you to the biggest global learning trend and buzz word in education for the last few years (besides MOOCs, which is probably the learning buzzword for 2012): In one sentence: You view the lecture (recording) at home, and then you come to class to do the homework (or learning activities), whereby the teacher(s) (and fellow students) are there to provide guidance and support (when necessary) during the learning process. WOW!Source (Infographic)That sounds great for school-level learning, but what about higher education? Jackie Gerstein's masterpiece graphic below (and articles/resources) provides some great ideas on how to make it really work for higher education.Source: Collection of resources/Articles from Jackie Gerstein If you ask me, I would argue that the flipping 'Flipped Classroom' challenge is not making your lectures available online (which many are already doing), but creating electrifying and inspiring learning experiences during the face-to-face (F2F) learning sessions itself that is the ultimate challenge (and differentiating factor to give you a competitive advantage).Also, in higher education, especially at Master and PhD level should we be spoon-feeding students with lectures (recordings) telling or showing them A-Z, so that they can replicate (or vomit out) the same stuff during their exams or assignments?THE LECTUREI suppose it depends on what you are teaching, but we also need to rethink what the real purpose of the lecture should be, and how we can make best use of it to engage and inspire learning beyond the spoon-feeding paradigm.DON'T MISS THIS LECTURE!Alright, after exploring for a few centuries, we finally get the lecture right (for what we are teaching)! What do we do with the students when they come for the F2F (or online) learning sessions? If the lecture recording is already online (hopefully not outdated!), I suppose repeating it during a F2F (or online) session would not be the most productive way to go about it, would it?But, before we get into that, have your students actually gone through the lecture recording before the F2F session?  I suppose so, I told them to do so (Keep on dreaming!).You can assume that, but the reality is often very different unless you have infused some mechanisms to ensure that they view (and also understand) the recorded lecture(s) before they come to class.Changing the students' learning mindset (and habits) to explore lectures (or resources) online before class might take some time, especially if they are from the good old spoon-feeding paradigm. To deal with this, you could for example keep track on who access the recorded lectures (especially if you are using an LMS) before class. However, clicking on a link doesn't mean that actual learning has taken place. However, having an online quiz after (or during) the recorded lecture could encourage more students to explore it, especially if it is a requirement to do it before the F2F session.Adding a discussion forum, requiring for example all students to ask at least one question (or reflection) before class could help, too. Or you could construct a few online learning activities/challenges/assignments (e.g. WebQuest) to encourage students to think before the F2F session.Finally, if you create sizzling online lectures, many students might even explore them without requiring any 'carrot or stick' measures.  The lecture becomes the carrot!As you see there are many ways to get students on board in a 'flipped classroom' approach, and if you explore your creative mind, I am sure you will figure out even better ways to activate your students' brain to think before they come for class.Cool! But, what should we do with them once they come...?CLASSROOM LEARNING"If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over." -John MediaDesigning inspiring 'Learning Spaces' will increasingly be required as we want to move F2F (or online learning) learning sessions beyond the lecture format to empower more effective student learning experiences.Changing the physical classroom is probably more complicated as that would also require extensive monetary investments and time to make it happen. Let's assume that you have your good old classroom or computer lab, which by nature might not be really conducive for interactive or collaborative learning (e.g. seating arrangement).If you ask me, I would argue that we can still do learning miracles in a boring classroom setting if we stretch our imagination beyond our usual 'Blame everything else, except ourselves'. So, what can we do during a 'Flipped Classroom' session?Q&A Encourage students to ask questions to clarify what they didn't understand from the recorded lecture (or required readings).Case Study (or Problem-Based Learning)Yes, even Harvard uses Case Studies to empower deep learning and understanding of the subject matter. We could discuss a Case Study with the students, and even break up into groups to encourage more involvement and diverse opinions.Learning ActivitiesBuild learning activities to apply what has been learned in the lecture. Here students don't have to be stuck in the classroom. They could always be asked to venture out individually or in groups to the library, labs, outdoors, etc. and then return to share their discoveries and findings.Online ClassroomIf you can't afford the transformation of your physical classroom, you could always use a  web-conferencing tool to engage students to learn using a variety of features (e.g. poll, whiteboard, chat, screen/application sharing, etc.). It is an alternate and cheaper solution that has no borders. Etc.I leave that to your imagination!All these approaches above can be useful to empower more effective learning experiences. But, personally I want the students learning experiences to be more challenging, competitive, inspiring and fun, so I would...GAMIFY CLASSROOM LEARNING! "Gamification is using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems." - Karl Kapp  Gamifying learning fully online in mind boggling 3D worlds with collaborative challenges beyond the borders of Earth is really cool. However, how many academics are ready to take the online 'Gamification' pill to make that happen?For starters, let's try gamifying learning in the classroom! I did actually try this during my two 2-day OER workshops at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in June and August (2012).My main mission for the 2nd day's hands-on learning activity was to inspire USM Academic staff to use social media and web 2.0 technologies to develop Open Educational Resources (OER).I could have given a boring show-and-do workshop (interactive lecture format) on using a variety of learning tools (and put them to sleep!), but instead Prof. Karim and I showed them briefly a variety of learning tools (Edmodo, Blogs, Google Sites, Udemy, etc.), and how they can be applied to learning and teaching. We didn't spend much time teaching them how to click, because that was left to the...CHALLENGEA mission learning activity/task/check list was created for the OER challenge. Basically any course that has learning outcomes can be broken down to learning related tasks, meaning this can be applied to most courses (if not all). So, in this context this is what we wanted participants to achieve by the end of this learning activity: GROUP WORKParticipants were assigned to groups based on random numbering (group size: 5 to 7), but were allowed to change group (Not the army!). However, we tried to ensure that the participants with some technology or blogging experience to be divided into different groups (where possible), so that they could play a critical role in helping, or guiding the other participants to achieve the tasks. We also emphasized the learning formula: If you know how to do it, check whether the person next to you knows, too. If not, show him/her how to do it. Teaching is awesome learning!As they had 14 tasks to achieve, most groups divided their work among the members (divide and conquer) and then got back together during the end to integrate their items into a learning masterpiece. During the process they helped one another, and interestingly the facilitators were hardly needed for help. The groups seemed to work out their issues by themselves probably 95% of the time.  GROUP PRESENTATION AND Q&AAfter they had completed their mission, each group was required to present their work to the rest of the participants (10 - 15 minutes each), so that everyone could learn from one another. Participants were encouraged to ask questions after the presentations, and the 2 facilitators (Prof. Karim and me) shared their feedback and recommendations.VOTE FOR THE WINNERTo make it more exciting and competitive, participants were requested to vote for the group winner (based on the learning tasks given) using Poll Everywhere, which enables you to use any mobile/computer device to vote (great tool to empower student engagement...Clickers on steroids!). As Poll Everywhere provides live updates as participants vote, it becomes really exciting, especially if it is a close call. Other voting/polling tools you could use, include Facebook (Ask Questions), Socrative, Polldaddy, and Twtpoll.    CELEBRATE! It is not really about winning, but using the gaming approach to engage and inspire the participants to really explore the learning with a bit of oomph (effort). The winning part is just an icing on a splendidly delicious learning cake. And you know what, I have never seen so many engaged academics embracing a learning activity than during these two workshops. I have been training academics for more than a decade, and this formula has proven to work best for me getting full commitment from participants to do a learning activity. We even had difficulty getting some of the participants to eat lunch. They were so engrossed. Here are some pictures from both workshops to prove it:  JuneAugust The best thing, it is quite easy to gamify classroom learning, especially the way I have done it in this approach shared above. Of course, your classroom session should be perhaps 2 hours or more to empower all these learning activities without needing to rush through. But developing a learning (activity) tasks list (easy), and learning how to use Poll Everywhere (5 minutes max!) is seriously less difficult than you probably realize.More importantly, instead of spoon-feeding them how to use social media (and web 2.0) tools, we have probably made them realize that they can learn on their own, too. Based on the feedback I got from USM was that the participants learned a lot, were engaged, had fun, and wanted the OER workshop to be conducted again, which I did exactly two months later.     "The LESS you teach, the MORE they learn!" - Zaid Ali Alsagoff Finally, great learning and teaching goes beyond the 'Flipped' or 'Gamified' Learning approached, and here is what I mean about that: Gamifying Classroom Learning from Zaid Alsagoff So, are you going to gamify your classroom learning? Hopefully, you are already doing it :)

OER TALK! I will be giving (Insya-Allah)  a talk on Open Educational Resources (OER) at MEIPTA's (Malaysian Public Universities e-Learning Council) 16th Roundtable Meeting at UTeM (in Malacca) on the 18th September, 2012.This talk will explore OER and how we can find, reuse, remix, create and share them. It provides a lot of excellent resources and tips, too. It also shares TWO BIG IDEAS on how to create awareness and inspire OER development in Malaysia. Please explain? I shall say no more :)PRESENTATION SLIDESHere are the presentation slides for my OER talk: OER Talk to MEIPTA from IMU (International Medical University) I am really looking forward to my OER talk and the whole-day event trying to make sense of OER and how to move forward with it in Malaysia. If you have any suggestions/recommendations, or feel that something is missing in my presentation slides (166 slides! Most are just examples of OER...So, not so overwhelming as the number might seem!)  that you would like me to include, please speak (write) up! Slides can always be updated :)

On Wednesday (19/09/2012), I will be conducting (Insya-Allah) a lunch-time workshop (first of six) entitled 'Facebook for Learning'  at  Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (Unirazak)!If you didn't know, my e-learning adventure interestingly started at Universiti Tun Abdul Razak way back in 2001 (working as an Instructional Designer at its subsidiary company called United Multimedia). It is a long story, so I will cut it short by saying no more.*Poster: Visualized by Dr. Dewi Binti Amat SapuanWORKSHOPToday, nearly one Billion people are using Facebook to connect, communicate and share. How can we use Facebook also for learning and teaching purposes? In this workshop, we will explore how we can use Facebook to facilitate learning and teaching. LEARNING OUTCOMESAfter this workshop, you will be able to:Use Facebook to facilitate learning and teaching.Create Facebook Groups to engage students and conduct assignments.Create Facebook Pages to build learning communities.Support Pages:Facebook for Educators Facebook GroupsFacebook PagesHands-on:Facebook Group Facebook Page SLIDESHere are the presentation slides for the 'Facebook for Learning' workshop: Facebook for Learning at Unirazak! from IMU (International Medical University)   Until you have tried it, you will never know! Try it out and have fun with it! If Facebook didn't work for you, try Edmodo :)

WOW! Today, I am promoting IMU and an Open Educational Resources (OER) workshop that I will be conducting on 22-23 November, 2012 (Insya-Allah).  Should you go? If you are clueless of what OER, OCW, CC and MOOCs are, then you are lost in the (e-learning) past, and you are strongly recommend to attend this workshop. Besides this, we will have a lot of fun, and we will even gamify the learning experience discovering and creating OERs. WOW!OER WORKSHOPThis 2 day hands-on workshop will equip participants with the necessary skills to find, reuse, remix and create Open Educational Resources (OER) for their courses. During the first day, we will explore and discuss together the concept of OER, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Creative Commons (CC), business models, and variety of OpenCourseWare (OCW) case studies and content development tools. During the 2nd day, participants will be required to work in groups (hands-on) to create a course topic/module (of choice) by reusing and remixing OER from a variety of resources. In the final session, we will discuss how to move forward with OER at our institutions. LEARNING OUTCOMES After completing this workshop, you will be able to:Discuss the benefits and challenges of OER.Explore Creative Commons as an alternative to Copyright.Find OER and OCW using a variety of search tools.Identify a variety of web 2.0 and Social Media tools to develop OER.Reuse/Remix/Create OER using a Blog, Wiki or LMS. ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM CLICK HERE to DOWNLOAD the OER workshop registration form.More details:OER Workshop at IMU (22-23 Nov)FACILITATORZaid Ali Alsagoff is the e-Learning Manager and Fellow of IMU Centre for Education. He has been a practitioner and promoter of Open Educational Resources (OER) since 2005 (Evidence!).  He has more than ten years’ hands-on experience with e-learning in higher education.  He is most known worldwide among learning professionals and educators for his learning adventure known as ‘ZaidLearn’. Looking forward to see you there :)

CHALLENGE!Today, educators are overwhelmed (literally drowning!) by thousands of web 2.0/social media/apps that they can use for learning and teaching. But, where/how to start? How do we choose the right solution for a particular learning context or activity? The LMS can certainly not solve all our learning and teaching needs and requirements. Actually, compared to some of the amazing learning possibilities out there, most LMS I have explored (especially Moodle and Blackboard) are not only very limited, but used alone can even kill creative expression and learning in so many ways.  One way to find the right tool (or app) for a learning context/activity/situation, is to look through the eyes of Bloom's taxonomy. Although, I am not a fan of dumping a tool within a level of Bloom's taxonomy, which is often very misleading, it can be helpful for educators to discover new tools and possibilities.But, please keep in mind that many tools/apps can easily be used for all the levels of Bloom's taxonomy with an open and creative mindset. Therefore, don't be fooled by these Bloom's digital taxonomies shared below, and use them instead to discover new tools and ways to inspire more engaging and creative learning.BLOOM'S DIGITAL TAXONOMIESHere is a collection of Bloom's digital taxonomies that I have discovered until now:* Click on the image to view the full size, or the 'Source' under each version to discover more about them (origin).Source Source WEB 2.0/SOCIAL MEDIASourceSource  SourceSourceSourceSourceSourceIPAD   SourceSource(The following three diagrams below are not Bloom's Digital Taxonomy stuff, but included anyway!)  SourceSourceSourceGOOGLE Source  Source ANDROIDSource MOODLESource (Download the PDF version)Besides Bloom's digital taxonomies, you might also want to explore Bloom's Taxonomy Wheel for Writing Learning Outcomes.MORE EXAMPLES?If you have discovered other useful digital Bloom taxonomies, please share them in the 'Comments' section below (URL), and I will add them above (if they are useful). However, if you ask me, I would prefer having a tool/app taxonomy according to type of learning activity (Lecture, individual/group assignment, quiz, tutorial, etc.) rather than many of these Bloom's digital taxonomies above. Any awesome one to suggest? :)

This will be my second lunch-time workshop (out of six) at Unirazak on Wednesday, 3 October, 2012! We will be rocking Twitter for learning this time around. Twitter is certainly my favorite tool to connect with amazing people around the world. Let's hope we can inspire a few more educators to use it both for self and student learning!  *Poster: Visualized by Dr. Dewi Binti Amat SapuanWORKSHOPDid you know that over 500 million people around the world actively use Twitter today? Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has become one of the top 10 most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet." In this workshop, we will explore Twitter, and how it can be used for learning, teaching and research. Twitter is also a great tool to engage students in the classroom, and during large lectures.LEARNING OUTCOMESAfter this workshop, you will be able to:Use Twitter to facilitate learning and teaching.Create unique Twitter #hashtags for programmes, courses and events.Use Twitter apps to engage students in the classroom (and beyond).SLIDES Twitter for Learning from IMU (International Medical University) Hands-on: Twitter Hands-on Activity sheet (Not 100% updated) Twitter rocks! Can you rock with Twitter? :)

I am really looking forward to my 'DNA of a 21st Century Educator'  talk on the 4th October (2012) at Institut Pendidikan Guru Kampus Bahasa Melayu (Kuala Lumpur). Mimma Sayuti Mat Khalid, thanks for inviting me to give this talk! Insya-Allah, I will be able to engage the teachers attending, and inspire those who are not already inspired to explore a new brave and open world of learning and teaching.Actually, it is never too late to embrace it, and when we do...WOW! 21ST CENTURY EDUCATOR?During your lifetime you have probably experienced inspirational educators, or witnessed inspiring lectures. But, what about you? Are you such an educator? If not, why not? In this talk, I explored some of the ingredients top educators in the 21st century have, and how we can learn from them, and reinvent ourselves to reach our true potential as an educator. SLIDES DNA of a 21st Century Educator (v3) from IMU (International Medical University) If you try, you can! Belum cuba, belum tahu! Trust me :)

 This will be my third lunch-time workshop (out of six) at Unirazak on Wednesday, 17 October, 2012! We will be exploring blogging for learning and teaching this time around. In terms of reflective learning and meta-cognition, I simply can't think of a learning tool that has had more impact on my learning, thinking and writing skills than blogging. *Poster: Visualized by Dr. Dewi Binti Amat Sapuan WORKSHOP Why use blogs in education? Blogs can provide an empowering and engaging communication and collaboration space for educators and students to share and reflect their discoveries, ideas and research together. Actually, the possibilities for using blogs for learning and teaching are mind boggling. For example, you could set up a course blog to keep students updated with the latest trends and news in a particular learning domain. Why do it yourself? Assign students to manage the blog. More importantly, blogs are great for empowering students to improve their reflective writing and thinking skills in a more social and engaging manner compared to hard or soft copy submissions to the lecturer (only). In this workshop, we will explore a variety of ways to use blogs for learning and teaching, and participants will be required to create a blog and conceptualize a strategy to make it work.LEARNING OUTCOMES After this workshop, you will be able to:Discuss how to use blogs to facilitate learning and teaching.Set up your own blog using Google Blogger. Customize your blog for educational purposes.SLIDESLet's BLOG!!! :)

To Attend the Webinar!We thrilled to announce that our next speaker for IMU Webinar Series is Dr. Nellie Deutsch, who is an amazing Educational Technologist and e-Learning Specialist (Founder of IT4ALL). She, is also the Ambassador for WizIQ and an expert on Moodle. At IMU we are using Moodle, and in the process of inspiring more lecturers to use WizIQ, so having her give a webinar to IMU, is simply awesome. Yes, this webinar is open to anyone (in the world)! Please attend by simply clicking here (or the icon above) on the 2nd November, 10:00 AM, Kuala Lumpur time (Check Time Differences). No registration is required this time around.   WEBINAR DETAILS Title : Authenticity & WizIQDate : 2nd November, 2012 Time : 10:00 AM, Kuala Lumpur (Check Time Differences)Venue : Online (WizIQ) Description:Can we trust the products and people we hear from in online webinars? What makes online communication authentic? Dr. Nellie Deutsch will discuss what it means to be authentic and where we stand when it comes to leading with authenticity in online learning environments such as WizIQ. Speaker:Dr. Nellie Deutsch is a Canadian e-Learning expert, course designer, presenter, author, and mentor to thousands of educators worldwide. Nellie is passionate about improving learning and promoting teaching as a way to learn. Nellie has a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership specializing in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Phoenix. She researched instructor experiences with implementing technology in blended learning courses in higher education worldwide.Nellie provides e-learning and blended learning mentorship to educators, manages a few Moodle websites where she coordinates and facilitates professional development workshops on Moodle for Teachers, Teacher Admin for Moodle, WebQuests and Professional Electronic Portfolios. Nellie founded Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL), a volunteer network of educators from around the globe. Nellie has facilitated/consulted for Open University, Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Canada & WikiEducator/OER New Zealand. She manages connecting online (CO09-CO13) annual free online conference on WizIQ and is editing the first CO12 book based on chapters by the presenters of the conference. Nellie also coordinates the annual online Moodlemoot (MMVC11-MMVC13). Nellie has edited books on Moodle such as Moodle 2.0 Multimedia Cookbook by Hillar, Mary Cooch and other Moodle books published by Packt Publishers and written chapters in books. Also, don't forget to follow her on Twitter, too: @nelliemuller RECORDINGHere is Dr. Nellie Deutsch's recorded version: The IMU recorded version will be made available soon :)