See how Eliademy is perfectly tailored for the needs of your nonprofit.  Want to know more? Read this article on how NGOs use e-learning and join the hundreds of nonprofits already using Eliademy by requesting a free update to Premium account.

Osmo, a gaming platform that can bring Leap Motion-style gameplay to anyone with an iPad. The goal of Osmo is to bring a physical and social learning experience to the iPad. In front of an iPad, Osmo can create a shared space between friends, and between humans and the machine. It transforms the human-device interaction... Read More ›

Design from JabberwockyGood that we have the radio to listen to, news and weather reports - how convenient it is to hop on a bus to work in the morning - I must post that letter before last collection today - how lucky we are to receive medical care when needed - what an amazing thing to send kids off to school to learn something before bedtime - so convenient to be able to book movie tickets on the Internet - isn’t it a great asset to switch on a light in the black of night and check a window rattling in the wind?The list goes onWe live within a complexity system called society. What’s listed above is some of what we expect from the place we live in. It’s as if it’s always been there, and always will be. If it collapsed tomorrow, the things we accept, and indeed rely on, might vanish.This is exactly what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992. Apparently it is something that can happen to any society, within any country. It’s only a matter of time.In a conversation on the radio this morning, someone suggested that efficiency within a society could be looked on as a threat that could precipitate collapse or at least make for a less robust society in the face of possible collapse. Funny enough, less efficient societies tend to be more resilient and more resourceful in crisis, or so mathematicians tell us.ComplexityLess efficient societies tend to possess repetitiveness within their makeup. They embody many processes within processes that are duplicated throughout their entirety. This feature of being recursively elaborate appears to be a strength within a society rather than a weakness.Contrary to expectation, high efficiency makes a society vulnerable. Maintaining efficiency means that the administration of resources is fine tuned, so there are fewer margins for adjustment. When things get financially or operationally tight, high efficiency can become a critical, vulnerable weakness.Close to crisisA society always runs close to possible crisis and collapse when it relies on a single provider of essential commodities. The hierarchical nature of the management of these commodities means that the job of managing them becomes more complex. Unfortunately, societies tend to evolve by developing hierarchies of control like this.Ultimately one person has to embrace the complexity of the whole system, a task that sooner or later becomes impossible and therefore unworkable. A decentralised or distributed network structure for administering such a task would be more vigorous and manageable.If we look around for a stable, vigorous and safe system built on a distributed network structure, we need look no further than the Internet. It has no central hub. It consists of many independent, yet interlinked nodes. If one node is knocked out, the operation of most if not all of the remaining nodes can continue as before.CompetitionFrom a lay perspective, and not being a mathematician, I look on complexity in a system as something that’s unpredictable, yet recognisable. The collapse of the Soviet Union occurred because of its high degree of complexity - true. My hunch tells me that, perhaps, the Soviet Union contained elements that actually reduced its degree of complexity. High complexity does not necessarily mean vulnerability.For instance, I wouldn’t consider the existence of monopolies as being a feature of complex systems. Their existence is a feature of how societies have evolved over time. Monopolies comprise complicated engines around which whole systems depend. They represent vulnerable nodes within any system.Oligopolies contribute to what are recognisable parts of complexity systems. As a group of nodes, they fit one of the key characteristics of a complexity system, that of being recursively elaborate. If one such node becomes extinct, the system can still function comfortably by using the other nodes.Education as we know itMight it be that the maintenance and preservation of future society is brought about by tending a degree of recursive elaborateness within that society? It’s what has kept education simmering for hundreds of years. Yet in many countries today, the signs are that education as we know it appears to be reaching a crisis point.Is there something to be learnt here?

Finding a quick solution to expedite work and improve accuracy is a win/win solution. According to a study conducted by the Microsoft PC Accessories group, American workers expend an average of six hours per day on the computer at work.  Much of that time often involves digital communication (e-mail, various online channels, etc.). What if you could reduce that time?  You can!Microsoft’s autocorrect tool can quickly replace long phrases with just a few key strokes. Here’s how set it up: In Word 2010, from the File tab, select "Options," then "Proofing" from the left panel. From the right pane, click the "AutoCorrect Options" button.A new window opens with a section to create your own abbreviations and replacement text.  Under the "Replace text as you type" section, enter your abbreviation in the "Replace" box and the full text in the "With" box.  Next, click the Add button to move this entry into your list of AutoCorrect words. When you have completed all entries, click "OK."Using the example provided, note that whenever "DSHS" is entered, "Department of State Health Services" will now appear in the document, reducing keystrokes from 31 to only 4.This tool can be useful for names (using initials as the abbreviations), businesses (such as government agencies), or complicated titles (such as people in the military). It helps prevent misspelling names of important people, businesses and locations, avoiding embarrassing situations while improving accuracy and speed.  Microsoft Outlook using this same feature. So, abbreviations entered under AutoCorrect in Word will automatically be available in Outlook.Tip provided by MicroAssist - Brandy Sommer.  Check out their Course Schedule for upcoming open enrollment classes on Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 and contact Brandy Sommer at 512.794.8440 or bsommer@microassist.com if you have any questions.

Eliademy has been selected among 2015 Awards Finalist by the internationally renowned Edison Awards™. Edison Awards recognizes the game-changing products and services, and the teams that brought them to consumers. Award winners will be announced April 23, 2015 at the … Continue reading →

The fundamental premises of personalised learning have been a part of the writings of educators for decades but have become a realisable dream in recent years, thanks to the advent of new digital technologies. What does personalised instruction look like in practice? First and foremost, it means putting the individual student at the center of the learning process and expecting them to achieve high standards.... Read More ›

Police department of City of Nampa in United States, Idaho chose to use Eliademy training 135 sworn and 50 non-sworn Police officers. They are delighted with Eliademy Premium service and eager to jump start their training and offer 21st century skills to officers who serve and protect in … Continue reading →

In his book, Where Have All The Leaders Gone, Lee Iaccoca claims common sense as one of the Nine Cs of Leadership.The Ninth International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, Commonsense 2009, took place this year to explore one of the long-term goals of Artificial Intelligence, that of providing computers with common sense.Stephen Downes claims common sense is what’s needed to avoid or prevent some Internet fraud.In 1776 Thomas Paine published anonymously a best seller 48 page pamphlet, Common Sense, challenging the authority of British rule in America.Have you ever thought about what makes up common sense?Have you ever tried to explain what common sense is?Seemingly, it’s an awareness, like the ability to judge temperature, recognise directions close to the vertical, or the talent for dress sense.Difficult to measureWe hear a lot about common sense today. It’s something that every school teacher admires. Possessing common sense seems to be one of the key attributes for achieving success - in any walk of life.Each of us has a quantity of it - some of us have more than others.Yet it is extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to measure, let alone define. We are more often made aware of common sense as an entity by its absence than through its occurrence.Intelligence & noticing the obviousThe brightest and most knowledgeable among us can succumb to a lapse of common sense. Even trainee doctors can suffer a lack of it. When it comes to recognising simple clues, it’s clear that what’s required is more than just expert knowledge or even skill.One of the most celebrated American scientists, Linus Pauling, undoubtedly possessed a fair amount of common sense in his day.His researches and passion for what is right earned him Nobel prizes in two disciplines.Common sense drove him to pursue research into vitamin C and the common cold in directions that have since been proven unequivocally fallacious. This is not a criticism of Pauling. I have a huge respect for all that he did in his life. But his efforts show the illusive nature of common sense and how it can direct or mislead decision making.Is it instinctive?If common sense is innate, does this mean that it cannot be acquired by someone who begins life with a less-than-average amount? This idea suggests that it’s like the gene for eye-colour - you are stuck with whatever calibre of common sense you had at birth.There’s a lot to suggest that common sense is instinctive. In action it tends to be intuitive rather than contrived. Generally the common sense decision is not brought about through a process or processes involving logical thinking strategies, though the use of these cannot be discounted when common sense is brought into play.Can it be learnt?If it isn’t an inborn trait, how can a person ensure that a useful amount of common sense is acquired?I’m only too aware of the rhetorical nature of these questions,but I’m going to ask them anyway:Is it possible to teach/learn common sense?Can common sense be assessed?If so, how can it be measured?Should common sense be included as an essential part of the school curriculum, like literacy and numeracy?

This title highlights that we believe xAPI profile design, implementation design and reporting design should be considered at the same time, when you are planning your xAPI implementation. About learning and teaching, everything works, but how well? John Hattie has led a team at Auckland University, New Zealand which compares the effect on learning of over... Read More ›

Sookmyung Women’s University (Korean: 숙명여자대학교(淑明女子大學校)) is a private university in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea. Founded in 1906, Sookmyung is Korea’s first royal private educational institution for women. It has long history of educating female leaders in history. Sookmyung’s name come from ancient characters with meaning … Continue reading →

This is a bit of a double post with some free resources for all! First up, I found out this week that an article I submitted for publication - Flipped Learning in the Workplace - was finally published in the Journal of Workplace Learning. You can download the very pretty final version of the article […]

How to be Effective when Studying - Best Study Apps, Tools, Tips & Techniques by Open Colleges

This 2 Minutes Lesson that explains how invite your team Private Learning space and enroll students. One of the features of Eliademy Premium. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive new lessons, or start using Eliademy right now.

This month’s theme from Paul Cornies’ Green Pen Society iswriting about a wall you would like to see come down.In Wellington, New Zealand, just after 6 am on 12 September, 2001,I learnt of the World Trade Centre Twin Towers collapse.In New York City, it would have been just after 1 pm on 11 September.At that time the original 7 World Trade Centre building was still standing. More than four hours passed before it too collapsed.Official reasonThe official reason given for the subsequent disintegration of the 7 WTC building described that it was damaged by debris when the nearby North Tower of the WTC collapsed. Fires were ignited on the lower floors, which continued to burn throughout the afternoon. The 7 WTC building collapsed catastrophically when a main column buckled causing structural failure throughout.Expectations don’t stack upThere were features about the collapse of the building that puzzled me.One was that the initial damage was caused by debris, apparently ejected during the collapse of the North Tower at speeds close to 100 kilometres per hour.Material ejected at this speed could only have been assisted by huge amounts of energy, driven from some source other than just the collapsing of the North Tower. Any bright year-13 Physics student can prove this.Video footage screened on television in New Zealand clearly showed the 7 WTC building fell extremely rapidly. It looked like a controlled demolition using explosives.Recent investigations from video footage have shown that the disintegration was what’s known as a free-fall collapse. It took just over 6 seconds for the top of the building to fall onto the collapsed pile of rubble that was all 47 compacted storeys.Only an explosion-assisted collapse of the type used in controlled demolitions could have caused such a free-fall collapse. The explosives would had to have been detonated on almost every floor.Pancake collapseIn a so-called pancake collapse of a building, the floors remain more or less as discrete layers. Contrary to expectations, however, the rubble from the collapsed building showed no sign of layering of floors at all.Instead, it consisted of crushed concrete, dust and twisted steel.Danish scientist Niels Harrit carried out rigorous investigations of the debris from the collapsed WTC buildings and published a report in April this year. He and his co-workers found evidence for a significant amount of a substance known as thermite in the debris.Thermite can consist of fine aluminium dust and powdered iron oxide. When well mixed and ignited, these substances react rapidly, forming aluminium oxide, molten iron, smoke and huge amounts of heat.Thermite was used for welding tram tracks early in the 20th century.Molten ironObservations from videos taken just before the collapse of the towers showed the ejection of huge amounts of molten iron. Experiments have confirmed that these quantities of molten iron could not have come from steel structures melting in the burning building and aviation fuel. Steel girders, roasted in a burning building, do not melt and flow freely.Until 11 September 2001, no high-rise steel constructed building had ever collapsed because of fire - yet on that day, three WTC buildings collapsed.There has been a series of consistent analyses conducted by independent analysts. Compositional analysis shows that the molten iron ejected from the building was what’s expected from iron made during thermite ignition.A wallExamination of footage of the moment of collapse of the South Tower shows clear evidence for a descending series of explosions, preceding a floor-by-floor collapse - an occurrence that could only be brought about by synchronised detonation of a type used in building demolition.I find it almost unbelievable that the publicity surrounding the collapse of the 7 WTC building was so scant. It’s only recently, in reading about the emerging evidence for the presence of thermite in the tower debris, that my initial suspicions have been wakened.What these facts and other evidence point to is a cover-up of some huge dimension that was apparently enacted at the time of the towers disaster, and maintained over the years since. They leave questions hanging over why the planes were involved in what seems to have been a large scale and extremely well-planned operation.Somehow a wall appears to have been successfully built around what really caused the collapse of the World Trade Centre buildings. I would dearly love this wall to be demolished so the truth of what happened in New York CBD on 11 September 2001 is revealed.A Green Pen Society contribution

Some say I have a chip on my shoulder about education.At 9 years old, I returned to Scotland with my parents, having spent almost 3 years in Nyasaland (now Malawi). While in Africa, I was home-schooled for almost a year. I then attended St Andrew’s Primary School, in the Capital City of Blantyre, for the remainder of my stay.I had no education in the traditional sense during the months-long journeys to and from Nyasaland on Union-Castle liners. The unusual long routes round the Cape of Good Hope, were taken at the time of the Suez Crisis when access through the Suez Canal was unsafe.My childhood experience of living in Africa was an enriching one, but my traditional education fell sadly behind. When I re-enrolled at Dunfermline Commercial Primary School in Scotland, I sat beside the classmates that I’d been with three years before.They were all so far ahead of me by that time. I had real difficulty catching up. My schoolroom behaviour took a turn for the worst.I was soon to be classified as a boy much in need of counseling, and was made to attend a series of Tuesday afternoons with Mrs Len, a child guidance counselor.My visits consisted of sessions of being helped through tests, mainly so-called association tests and intelligence assessment, presumably to determine my state of mental health and my ability.A beautiful glenI recall one session in particular. Mrs Len began by asking what I did on Saturdays. I explained that I spent fine-weather days down the beautiful Glen in Dunfermline. I loved the Glen and would have spent every Saturday and most Sundays there if I could."Why don’t you go to the films on Saturday mornings?" was her response to my story. "That’s what lots of other children do."I explained that I didn’t like the movies that were on at the local cinema."Why not?" she asked. "These films are specially chosen for children!"Gangster cadillacsI explained that I didn’t like watching cowboys and Indians killing each other, or wars with ‘Japs and Gerries’, or gangsters hooning about in Cadillacs, or cops and robbers blasting themselves to bits.That was in 1957. I was ten years old.Not that long after the war, it was still acceptable for children to see all this violence. Mrs Len’s assumption was that it was good for me to be subjected to hours watching movies of people shooting at each other.I had a different opinion.Educational assumptionsIn fact, in discounting the years of my lost education, she made a number of assumptions.Based on the results of the tests she gave me, one assumption was that I was unfit to attend High School. Luckily I had caring parents who insisted that there was ‘nothing wrong’ with their son and that he would attend High School no matter what.The long and the short is that my parents eventually removed me from Commercial School to enrol me in Pittencrieff Primary School nearby.A year later I attended High School. In 1965 I became a student at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. I left that place of education in 1972 with a Doctor of Philosophy degree.So I’m not knocking Scottish education. All things considered, I firmly believe that the system served me well. But when I think of my last months at Commercial School, there were several odd and perhaps invalid assumptions made by my teacher, the school I attended and the child guidance councilor, Mrs Len, about where I stood in relation to ‘education’.Abominable assumptionWikipedia defines assumption as a proposition that is taken for granted, as if it were true based upon presupposition without preponderance of the facts.This means it’s a preset notion with no factual foundation.Assumption can present barriers and can lead to disastrous decision making. It has dogged the view of where Earth is in relation to the centre of the universe since before the time of Ptolemy. It seeded the reason why Shakespeare’s Romeo took the fatal poison.The legal maxim that a person is innocent until proven guilty was initiated by the recognition of its fallacy. Yet assumption is often used mercilessly by legal council in leveraging notion and supposition while swaying the opinion of a jury.One of the greatest barriers to learning is initial and erroneous assumption in the mind of the learner.Another is initial and erroneous assumption in the mind of the teacher.

A portable document is a collection of content items (e.g. pages, chapters, modules, articles) structured as a single, self-contained logical unit. Individual items can consist of text, images, graphics, possibly interactive mathematical or chemical formulae, as well as audio and video. These documents by definition have a default, linear "reading order", however the user may... Read More ›

The Global Workers Justice Alliance story is amazing, was founded by Cathleen Caron to challenge a developing and unaddressed crisis in the globalizing economy: abused migrant workers being shut out of the justice system because they went home to their … Continue reading →

How do you tell if a learning resource is successful?You have to use it of course! Or at least, it has to be observed being used by learners who may benefit from it in some way.But there’s more to it than that . . .A game-based resource can be seen to be popular and for this it gets a big tick in a check-box.But does a learning resource need to be popular to be successful?Does the popular resource assist the learner to meet the target learning objective?Extensive research on a whole series of resources might throw some light on these questions. But let’s just limit the discussion here to one resource.How do you know if a learning resource is effective in helping learners reach the objective or objectives the resource was designed to meet?This needs more than just observation. Learner focusAttention must be focused on what the learner has gained by using the resource. This acquisition has to be very specific if the resource is to be regarded as a useful ‘learning object’.Oops, I’ve used that term!I know! ’Learning Object’ is not a popular term among some educators. At least the term implies that the resource actually has an objective associated with it. Whether the resource assists learners to meet the objective is quite another matter.In fact, some very good learning resources are often found to meet objectives that are not necessarily directly related to the objective or objectives that the learners were supposed to be reaching. That’s life! Sometimes it just happens that way.So how do we know when a resource is meeting its objective?It’s taken me a few hundred words to get to this nitty-gritty stage.How do we know the resource is really achievingthe learning that was intended to happen?As obvious though the answer may seem to be, it is often something that’s completely overlooked when a resource has been planned, crafted and produced for learner use.Follow upOne of the important stages in the development of any course module, or even one of its components, is the time consuming and difficult process of assessing its real worth. It’s one of these stages that teachers and developers would rather not get too far into, for it is both complicated and complex. And it takes a lot of time.But it is obviously very important.It means that a series of analyses has to be performed involving the learners.As well, it has to involve a thing called ‘learner assessment’. Oops! Another not too popular term.That’s right! The learner has to be tested. And this is difficult, for how do we know that the assessment item designed to test learner achievement assesses effectively the objective that it’s meant to?This brings us more or less back to where we started.Sorry folks! It’s the dogged chicken and egg story all over again.Before we can be sure that the assessment item is any use, first it must be tested! And of course, this always means learner involvement.Compounding problemsWe now have learner assessment as well as learning resource design to deal with. It’s a bit like the collective effect of errors, if you’re familiar with how that works.Small errors that occur at stages of a process tend to be cumulative. They add up to one significant error in the end. Often this error can be big enough to discount the whole process.Catch my drift?"What does it all mean then?" you say.Frankly, it means that teaching and learning is a difficult process to assess. The learning that could possibly take place through the planning, building and subsequent use of a learning resource by learners is actually very difficult to assess.Can you imagine the tasks involved in checking properly a whole course made up of multiple series of resources?Time consuming? Yes! This alone is a factor that puts teachers and developers off the whole idea of attempting that all-important final stage of checking to see if it all works.If you think that building a successful learning resource is a quick and easy thing to do, then maybe you should think again.

Northon Union Secondary school is located in a small Caribbean island.  At this institution, students are taught various subjects and skills. Teachers seek to integrate Information Communication Technology(ICT) in the classroom & according to their opinion: Eliademy is the ideal … Continue reading →

This past week in the blended learning MOOC I’m participating in, we discussed interactions in a blended learning classroom. There are a few key points that I think are important for anyone creating any class, whether blended, online, or completely face to face. Types of interactions There are several types of interactions that students can […]

When was the last time you laughed at a joke? Where did you hear it? Was it on TV? Or was it on a video clip or podcast? Susan Greenfield says, "Everything that happens to you will be seen in terms of previous experiences."Your brain "can see one thing in terms of something else and that’s your unique perspective", even when it comes to appreciating a joke.Here’s what she says:If you are a scientist or if you are just interested in Science, you may also be familiar with the erroneous opinion that Science is humourless. A joke is a cognitive jolt based on your previous experiences. This jolt can happen even if these experiences are to do with Science. So let yourself go! Abrogate your sense of self and have "a cognitive time" with some Science humour from Brian Malow.

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The goal of the Mississippi School for the Deaf is to provide for early language acquisition and to facilitate the development of two languages, American Sign Language (ASL) and English. This goal is accomplished with the belief that for most Deaf students, … Continue reading →

Courtesy Google AnalyticsIt is usual for a blog post to attract nearly all its visitors during the first few days after being published. This is so much so that the term‘the long tail’ is often used to describe the shape of the visitor profile of a typical post.Courtesy Google AnalyticsNow and again a blogger may spot an exception.‘Digital Natives? Digital Immigrants?’ is a post I published in mid-July this year. It was popular and attracted a couple of comments.Normally even the tail of a popular post would dwindle quickly over a period of less than a week. After two or three months, only the occasional visitor would be registered by visitor tracking.I use Google Analytics (GA) to track one sector of visitors to my blog.It gives a fair indication of comparative popularity.The July post is an exception to the long tail trend. Its visitor profile is at the top of this post. It has received recent attention of a magnitude not unlike what might be expected of a newly published post, yet it was published over four months ago.I first took note of its unusual visitor profile when comments started to appear, again, as if out of the blue. It has since attracted a significant number of comments.Occasionally posts generate very long tails that never really dwindle to nothing. Working With Online Learning Communities is such a post, published 1 April 2009. Its visitor profile shows recent steady traffic.Courtesy Google AnalyticsPosts with visitor profiles of this type tend to have been cited and linked on popular blogs or web pages.Isn’t it heartening that not all posts receive the same fate as a time-capsule?Courtesy NASArelated posts - >> ( 5 ) ( 4 ) ( 3 ) ( 2 ) ( 1 )