Make Space: Tools

Make Space is a book about space and how it is used for learning. It's organised along five themes:

• Tools (useful things that fill up a space)
• Situations (quick, repeatable configurations or patterns)
• Design template (breakdown of the elements at play in a space, or the game behind the game)
• Space studies (first person dispatches from the front lines of space design), and
• Insights (kernels of understanding we've discovered through our 'trials and errors')

Here are some of the great tools from the book:

Transit trolley where the G clamps holding it
together form handles

Rear projection screens

Bar clamps with eyelets used to hang displays from.

Modified clothes rack becomes a 'z rack' or
mobile whiteboard / screen /divider.

Hanging screens could be combined with suction
cups/plungers to be affixed to  walls/windows etc.

Portable 'scoop stool' screen

T-walls for portable display space.

T walls in different configurations
can create many different spaces.

Moodle and the pedagogical progression

At the NZ Moodlemoot recently, Martin Dougiamas used a slide in his presentation that was entitled 'Pedagogical Progression' It's a list of online/blended learning activities in the form of a progression or taxonomy, but it's also a really good checklist for the way we use online learning environments. How much time do you spend on the first three activities? Martin estimates about 90%.

1. Publish content (pages, SCORM, video, audio)
2. Assess via quizzes and assignments
3. Provide a passive forum
4. Wikis, glossaries, databases (collaboration/media)
5. Facilitate discussions in the forum. Questions!
6. Combine activities into sequences
7. Introduce external sites, activities, games, networks.
8. Use survey tools and log to study/reflect
9. Give students more power (structure/grades)
10. Research, custom code, communities of practice.

Freemoodle:
Also at the Moodlemoot, Stuart Mealor announced the launch of http://www.freemoodle.org/ , a site that hosts (free of charge) teachers and learners using Moodle courses. The one catch is that the course must be free for anyone to enrol in and use. Sound like a good deal to me, and I'm going to be uploading some of my courses over the coming weeks.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

One of the great things about being part of the community of Moodle users (that numbered 50 million last time I checked) is the wealth of third-party add-ons available. One module I think is great is the Game module. It takes any normal quiz, glossary or questions and turns it automatically into any one of 8 games, from hangman to sudoku to something similar to 'who wants to be a millionaire'. One of my great tricks is to get students to build a glossary of key words and definitions for a topic as we go. With the quiz module, you can then turn that student-developed resource into a game that everyone can play: it's like the students build their own interactive learning tools.

Record and play back classes

One of the difficulties still facing educators (who have embraced ICTs or not) is the problem of making learning resources available to students who are not physically present in the classroom. Traditionally this has happened through the use of copied notes, and more recently through electronically captured and distributed resources. The problem with this is the fact that the majority of the intangible 'magic' of learning happens in the discussion and questioning that surrounds the resources. This 'magic' has been difficult to capture, except in a monolithic, podcast or video podcast which is not searchable or integrated with the notes, handouts and presentations being used.
Enter Synote. Synote is a web-based teaching tool that allows one to record video and audio of a class, run it through voice recognition to transcribe the conversations, then make it available for others to play back. Fast forward the video and the transcript fast forwards too. And it's available for full text search too.