What is E-learning 2.0

Theoretically speaking , E-Learning 2.0 stands for the second phase of E-learning based on Web 2.0 and the emerging trends in eLearning.


Acutually, the connotative meangings of E-learning fall in key functions.

1. Students create content, collaborate with peers through mechanisms such as blogs, Wikis, threaded discussions, RSS and others to form a learning network with distributed content creation and distribution of responsibilities.

2. It takes advantage of many sources of content aggregated together into learning experiences.

3. It utilizes various tools including online references, courseware, knowledge management, collaboration and search.

The traditional model of eLearning is that publishers created, organized and structured the content into coursesand to be consumed by students. This out-of -date learning modle has been turned on its head. Content now is used rather than read. In most cases, it is reproduced by students instead of producer. When it comes to structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual.
Therefore, the e-learning application begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students.

Important trends in E-learning
1. Lower effort to compose eLearning solutions based on Web 2.0 technologies and tools
2. Demand in corporate settings for training that requires time and that engages learners in the process over a course of time
3. Recognition in eLearning of the importance of blended learning
4. Student centered design
5. The theory of Connectivism
6. Free-Libre Open Source Software and open access
7. educational blogging

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New International Academic Event

An annoucement of a new International Academic event on the use of new technologies for e-learning has been released for May 23-24 at the Sheraton Centro Histórico in Mexico City, Mexico.
The event will be hosted by the Latin American Institute of the Educational Communication (ILCE). This is the first time an event of this kind has been held in a Latin American country. International experts will present their developments and applications and will hold discussions on the future of ADL technologies and requirements for international cooperation.

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How to Play 4:3 PPT on 16:9 Screens without Distortion

As the 16:9 HDTVs and LCD monitors become more and more popular in our life, how to play the 4:3 PPT presentations in full screen mode on these new babies without distortion is a big problem to many people. It seems impossible to make it on the face, but how about if we try to add something to fill the blank part of the screen. Please follow me, I’ll show you step by step.

Assume we have a 16:9 wide screen like the rectangular (the gray and the white) below.



The white part is the original presentation, and the gray part is the blank part of the screen. Be sure, if we display a presentation on a HDTV it won’t be showed like this, but two black (or gray) bars on the left and right sides of the screen. Here, we just consider the layout. What we should do now is to add something to replace the gray part. Until I use some PPT to flash conversion tools, I have no idea what is appropriate for the little gray.


Articulate Presentater, Wondershare PPT2Flash Professional, and Pointecast Publisher are powerful tools to convert PPT presentations to flash-based ones. Here, take PPT2Flash Professional for example to show how to use this kind of tools to solve our problem.

Firstly, after installed PPT2Flash Professional (the version I installed is 3.5.0), open the presentation in PowerPoint, we can find PPT2Flash on the menu bar, click the cascade menu, choose Player Templates, in Player we could see the player’s frame. In the full style mode, there is a panel at the left of our slide. It is exactly what we need. With this panel a 4:3 presentation becomes a 16:9 presentation (maybe not a perfect 16:9 proportion, but much better).

Then, let’s have a look at what we have on this panel, Company logo; Author Info, which includes E-mail, Bio, Name, Photo; Toolbar, including Flash Title, Attachments, Notes; Control Bar. Users can manually set which items should be displayed. After personalized the player template, and published the presentation, we get a flash presentation with 16:9 aspect ratio.

Now we can play the presentation on 16:9 wide screens by setting the aspect-ratio control to Stretch or Full.

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Impress Students with Interactive Presentations

An amazing interactive presentation always helps teachers and tutors to enhance their instruction. No matter you are a teacher or trainer, if you want to please your students or trainee with intriguing presentations, this the right article for you.

Many people may understand the value of a good presentation for knowledge delivery, but only few of them do know how to make such one. Usually, teachers or instructors use PowerPoint to create courseware. Without a doubt, this is an easy and efficient way to help clarifying and activating the teaching content. But, a presentation only with words and pictures is not attractive enough to get focus. Fortunately, MS PowerPoint allows user to launch an external program, e.g. exe and flash, while playing slideshows. These elements may possibly bring clarity and fun to classes or lectures, but the problem is how many non-computer-science teachers or professors know to build those elements to content their students or audience. For sure, there are few. Then, how to create those interactive elements becomes the main hurdle to author attractive learning content or presentation.


Consider .exe first. What do .exe programs help? Take physics class for example. Usually, a VB based exe program is used to perform some physical phenomenon, e.g. beats, in phase, out phase, interference, diffraction and so on. Remember, these demonstrations are not only show the phenomenon, but also demonstrate the laws, which is more important than the phenomenon itself. In other words, the related parameters should be allowed to change to meet specify needs, such as, wave length, frequency, initial phase, etc. If not, a video would be more helpful. Ok, now the sticking point is VB programming. Oh, god, what a jerk! Luckily, in most conditions, those programs are universal for familiar content, for instance, a program demonstrate the phenomenon beats. The basic parameters would be possibly changed are frequency, amplitude, and phase difference. A program satisfying this is suitable for any class about beats. And, this kind of demos are available on Internet by searching ‘** demonstration’. Since it’s easy to get one, why bother to make one.

Then, flash. Flash is capable to manage most functions .exe programs can. Besides, flash is easier to please audience by visual animation looking than the .exe programs, and it is more acceptable in programming skill. Thus, the flash demo is becoming more and more popular. Just like exe programs, flash demos can be downloaded from the web, but only one element would never get an appropriate one from the Internet. That is quiz. This must be distinct from different individuals. Even in the same course, teachers would like to have their own quiz. Now the problem becomes simple, build a flash quiz to enhance the interaction of presentations.

Why quiz?

Quizzes can help reviewing knowledge, and solidifying the instruction. What’s more important is quiz is absolutely interactive. Furthermore, a good flash quiz will get students’ focus. Beyond all doubt, Macromedia Flash is the best choice to create the most impressive and exclusive quizzes, but if we take a compromise on appearance, we are possible to avoid programming. Articulate, Tanida, and Wondershare all provide powerful flash quiz tools.

Articulate QuizMaker (QM), the most powerful, also the highest price $399, quiz tool among the three. It is capable to build BOTH online survey and graded quiz. Friendly interface, users could start to make quizzes without a guide. There are 21 question types to choose, 11 for graded quizzes, True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple responses, Match (drag and drop), Sequence (drag and drop), Fill In The Blank, Click Map (hotspot), Word Bank, Match (drop down), Sequence (drop down), Numeric, 10 for surveys and polls (Consider survey is not necessary for a class presentation, I only list the graded question types).

Tanida QuizBuilder (QB), $199, and Wondershare QuizCreator (QC), $99.95, less comprehensive than QuizMaker, are only focusing on the graded quizzes. The interface of QB is very neat, while the QC’s is very cute and pretty. The later one is more intuitive than the first. It is especially worth noting that only QC gives a question outline in the left part of its interface, it helps much on clarifying the quiz structure. They both provide 8 question types to choose. QB has the first 8 types of QM; QC has the first 7 types of QM, plus Short Essay.
Besides, Articulate and Wondershare provide robust flash authoring tools (make flash from PowerPoint), and they both can incorporate with their own quiz tools seamlessly. Turn PPT presentations to flash ones could reduce size dramatically, and can be played in computers without Office.

All of the three products are easy to use, require no programming skills. Comparatively, QM is more professional than other two, but the price is triple as the QC. QB is not bad; the only deficit is the company provides no cooperative products. To find more details about these products please visit their products website.

Articulate: http://www.articulate.com
Wondershare: http://www.sameshow.com
Tanida: http://www.quiz-duilder.com

Now, download and try. Build your own intriguing presentations, and then share them with your lovely students! If you have any idea please feel free to share your experience with me.

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Learning Using Moodle

1. What is Moodle?
Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It is the word to describe the learning philosophy of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to learners to do them. This is an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity In the technical terms, Moodle is Open Source LMS. It is a FREE learning management system that enables learning professionals (teachers) to create engaging online learning courses.

2. Top Ten Key Items for Moodle
1) Social constructionist pedagogy
It is the philosophy of learning that focuses on collaboration, activities and critical reflection. This “socio-constructivist” approach involves a strong “community oflearning” orientation rather than simply “putting courses and exercises online”.

2) WYSIWYG HTML editor
It is the embedded tool in Moodle for users to edit text entry areas like resources, forum postings and journal entries.

3)Activity Report
It is the full logging and tracking report for each student with graphs and module details (Access/Number of time read) as well as details of each student involvement like postings and journal entries.

4)Course Activity
The course activity in Moodle includes Forums, Journals, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops.

5)Custom Scales
Teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading forums, assignments and journals.

6)Mail Integration
Copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed in HTML or plain text.

7)Course Format
Teachers has various choice for course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focussed social format.

8)Management
There are site management, user management and course management for different users with different access.

9)Moodle Module
Each functional feature of Moodle can be regarded as a module. In general, there is Assignment Module, Chat Module, Choice Module, Forum Module, Journal Module, Quiz Module, Resource Module, Survey Module and Workshop Module.

10)SCORM and AICC
SCORM stands for Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model (SCORM), which is a set of specifications that, when applied to course content, produces small, reusable e-Learning objects. A result of the Department of Defense's Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative, SCORM-compliant courseware elements are easily merged with other compliant elements to produce a highly modular repository of training materials.

AICC standards apply to the development, delivery, and evaluation of training courses that are delivered via technology. AICC stands for the Aviation Industry CBT [Computer-Based Training] Committee (AICC), which is an international association of technology-based training professionals that develops training guidelines for the aviation industry.
Moodle has the SCORM/AICC Module which enables teachers and students to upload any SCORM/AICC package to include into the course.

3. Moodle Integration
Due to the SCORM/AICC module in Mooddle, learning content with compliance can be included in the Moodle course. User can use some external applications to create SCORM/AICC compliant course and then upload the content to a Moodle. The Standard compliance enables users to take advantages of both Moodle and external powerful earning tools.

4. Content Development Tools with SCORM/AICC Compliance
PPT2Flash Professional – Turn PowerPoint presentation to engaging LMS (SCORM/AICC) content
http://www.sameshow.com/powerpoint-to-flash-pro.php?sid=5

QuizCreator – Create Interactive Online Quizzes to enhance learning and track learning progress with support of SCORM/AICC
http://www.sameshow.com/quiz-creator.php?sid=5

Rapid E-learning Suite – Complete E-learning Solution to create E-learning Content
http://www.sameshow.com/quiz-creator/powerpoint2flash-quizcreator.php?sid=5

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Wondershare PPT2Flash 2007 Beta for PowerPoint 2007 Beta

The PowerPoint2007-Ready version of Wondershare PPT2Flash ， PPT2Flash 2007 Beta has been released in December of Year 2006. The public official release of Office 2007 will be available in this January and updates of PPT2Flash 2007 will also be soon released.


Here are some reviews of PPT2Flash 2007 Beta in PowerPoint 2007 Beta. More entries will be posted for users to delve into every nook and cranny of this new program.

This is a screenshot of PPT2Flash 2007 Beta in PowerPoint 2007 Beta 2.

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