Highlights from the eLearning, edtech & Moodle links I reviewed this week.

• A visual of Bloom's Taxonomy applied to Web 2.0 - this illustration, created by Mike Fisher, has actually been my desktop image for the last two months.  Two other great links discussing Bloom's as a digital taxonomy can be found here and here.  This is a topic I am in love with & can't wait to apply more in my work.
   
• Looking for a conference to attend this summer? The Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research (CIDER) has compiled a list to easily locate events by month.  They welcome suggestions for anything not on their list as well.
   
• Seventeen Interesting Ways to use Voicethread in the Classroom is a great Google Docs presentation featuring tips for use and ideas for assignments with Voicethread.  Voicethread is a free collaboration/presentation tool.  The Voicethread environment allows you to mashup powerpoint, videos, and images with Voicethread-recorded commentary (audio or webcam) and a text/doodle/comment whiteboard-type tool.  Take these creative ideas & easily embed student's Voicethread work in Moodle.
   
• Free eLearning White Papers. Epic, a UK eLearning development company, provides informative white papers on the subjects of eLearning benefits, blended learning and learning design theory, pedagogy and motivation, innovation, implementation, and more.
   
• The 2 Minute Moodles channel on Vimeo was launched recently, featuring bite-sized Moodle tutorials created by Tomaz Lasic - currently at 33 videos!
   
• Future Trend Report: SLOODLE is an informative news-style video on Moodle, Second Life, and their love-child SLOODLE.  The beginning is a bit long and talking-head, but stay with it for a great demo of SLOODLE features and their cute take on a virtual news-reporter video.  It was created by graduate students in the Educational Media Design and Technology Masters Degree Program at Full Sail University - looks like a cool program.

• Are you Ready for an Online Course? A live recording of Michelle Pacansky-Brock's 60-minute workshop to students at Sierra College that discuses the differences between face-to-face and online learning, requirements to be prepared and tips to support success.

• Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites.   A goldmine of links for those on a quest to find relevant video resources to education, culture, society - anything deemed "intelligent."  Currently lists 40 different sites with a promise to update as more are contributed by readers.

Welcome to my new weekly link roundup!

Every Friday I will feature eLearning and ed tech links I've just discovered during the week, as well as revisit and correctly annotate the resources I have already amassed at my Delicious account (700 as of today!).

Many of these gems have been discovered via my favorite Personal Learning Network, Twitter.  Others are uncovered in my own research & reviews of the literature (something I'm doing a lot of right now as a graduate student). 

And without further ado....my eLearning Link Love for the week of 5-22-09!

What would Angel users really like to see in Moodle? Moodle's creator, Martin Dougiamas, began a discussion on this topic over at Moodle.org.  Anthony Borrow has contributed some solid suggestions put together from his experience with a Angel university.  Tune in & put in your own two cents to see how this conversation evolves.

My first encounter with Kineo was in January, when I stumbled upon their eLearning Green Room through an eLearning Pick of the Day from Jane Hart.  I was impressed with the quality of material shared in the Green Room interviews with eLearning professionals, & the ingenuity of their presentation of said interviews.  Since then, I have uncovered many rich resources from Kineo - most recently, a compilation of their eLearning Tips - they're at 23 now and there's no end in site for the growth of this resource, so definitely one worth watching!

Technology & Project/Problem-based leanring - the iSchool. Students at this New York City school are using social networking, video conferencing, digital acctivism and media creation to engage with and learn from peers and professionals around the world.  Their interdisciplinary curriculum is based on what they call learning modules with projects focused on real-world issues.  And yes...they use Moodle.  The article is an inspiring look into the work these students are doing & is worth signing up for to read it in entirety.

New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development, from the MacArthur Foundation.  This research sums up important characteristics of youth today.  It will not come as a surprise to many that one of the main conclusions is that learning is increasingly peer-based.

Two Twitter-related gems: ZaidLearn is compiling a list of the juiciest learning professionals and Moodlerific recently started a list of Moodlers on Twitter. The Moodle list is a bit short at the moment so if you Tweet and Moodle, speak up over there.

BMW's current research project presents the ultimate interactive job aid.  I am beyond excited about the possiblities of technology like this, also exhibited in MIT student's work to turn the internet into a sixth sense and the coolest toy I've seen yet - interactive tiles known as Siftables (also an MIT grad student project).

Are you one of the many wanting to see examples of best pratice use of Moodle courses?  There is a Wikispace devoted to this topic.  I've been slowly bookmarking these myself, and will take the time soon to update this Wiki with anything I have that they've missed. I totally sympathesize with the comment there about open access, and am always impressed when I find a good Moodle example site like this one on technology skills that lets you in without a login screen (this is not impossible to do with Moodle but institutions vary widely in their configuration of how this is handled). 

One more on the note of example Moodle courses - Miguel Guhiln also has particular interest in this issue for the K-12 sector.  He just launched his own project to compile example Moodle classes, aided by a plea to the Twitterverse to share classes with the #mymoodle hash tag.