RSS feeds in plain English

To answer Bronwen (in one of her comments) - I think understanding and using RSS feeds is quite important for the success of our module. You can subscribe all of our blogs (i.e. this blog, Wilhelm, Estelle, Bronwen) so that you get the updates and new posts and comments automatically.

To do this you can use Outlook 2007 (it has a RSS subscription function - the new feeds come right into your e-mail unread messages inbox!), or you can use Google reader (you already have a Google account - you might as well use that to sign in to the Google Reader service).

To help all of us understand RSS feeds, I suggest watching the following embedded Youtube movie from leefever of Common Craft! RSS in plain English - enjoy!

Let me know if you could add this blog and the others to your own RSS reader.

The magic of motivation

One of my regular "Blogs I read" is the Rapid e-Learning blog by Thomas Kuhlmann. His last post made me stumble on two wonderful short ideos about learning. The one is the fascinating Ted talk by Sugata Mitra on his "Hole-in-the-wall" experiments with technology in the poorest and remotest parts of India (children self-organise and teach themselves through technology). The other is the importance of motivation in the learning process, with a quick link to a short overviewby Kevin Kruse on Keller's ARCS Model for Motivation: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction.

Theories of instructional design

I found this wonderful overview of the aspects of Instructional Design theory on Slideshare.
Click here to view.