ALN Web Center – Learning Networks Effectiveness Research

Posted on November 9, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

I ran across the ALN Web Center, Learning Effectiveness Research site today. They have assembled quite a resource community here. Once registered (for free), you have access to research articles posted by the community, with an opportunity to comment and discuss them. Looks quite promising..

The research articles in the database include:

“…empirical studies of the effectiveness of learning networks and have been published in a refereed journal or conference proceedings, in the English language.”

As well, they have links to a number of research instruments.

I’m thinking this site has launched recently as I have not seen any comments on the articles as yet.

I’ve just scratched the surface of this site, but am looking forward to digging into it some more!

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List of Links for Lecture

Posted on November 3, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

For EOSC 311: Metal Deposits 1: Copper and Iron

BC Mineral Deposits

Geology of Strathcona Park – Good overview of the park, including the geology, mining, environment… etc. Link
Map of Silver Deposits in British Columbia

Porphyry Copper
Nice animation of a rising magma body
http://www.dur.ac.uk/juliette.pavey/geology/lecture4.htm

Black Smokers
American Museuem of Natural History: Has a good explanation and videos… AMNH – Black Smokers
The coolest thing in this is the picture that has Dudley — showing scale.

Dive and Discover: Hydrothermal Vents (Woods Hole)
Hydrothermal Vents. This site provides a nice overview of the characteristics of hydrothermal vents. Nice use of figures for chemistry.

Axial Volcano Site — Just off the west coast. Erupted in 1998
This site from NOAA does an excellent job of combining Quicktime + Quicktime VR — complete with embedded “hot spot” movies.
ASHES Virtual Site

Iron and Steel
From the American Iron and Steel Institute:AISI Learning Center: How A Blast Furnace Works

Steelmaking
Occurrence and Distribution of Metals
Powerpoint presentation from Arizona State University Professor, James P. Birk on Metals and Metallurgy — including how steel is made.

Posted in Geology Sites | Comments Off on List of Links for Lecture

WebCT Vista and SCORM: press release

Posted on October 28, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

Just a follow up to the posting of yesterday on WebCT Vista 2.1 and SCORM LMS-RTE3 — WebCT has issued a press release about the certification from Plugfest.

What I found interesting is the teaser about their direction of compliance with SCORM 1.3:

WebCT has conformed to SCORM 1.2, LMS-RTE3 through a new SCORM Module Tool in WebCT Vista. The module tool adds features that support all the mandatory and optional data elements as defined by the SCORM 1.2 standard and for the first time helps transform self-paced content into courses that support instructor-led education. WebCT Vista lets users customize navigation controls for SCORM objects, providing consistent navigation across various SCORM objects. Because WebCT Vista 2.1 has been designed to help provide consistent navigation and delivery control to the designers, WebCT’s support for SCORM 1.2 has in fact realized some of the functionality of the planned SCORM 1.3 standard.

Something to check out at Educause!

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WebCT Vista 2.1 now a SCORM certified product

Posted on October 27, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

WebCT Vista 2.1 is now listed as SCORM certified (LMS-RTE3) on the ADL web site. See http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=certprodresults&certid=33.

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October E-Strategy Newsletter

Posted on October 23, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

Another excellent crop of stories appear in this month’s E-Strategy Update Newsletter. In collaboration with a diverse group of people acorss UBC, Krista Charbonneau (editor of the newletter), has pulled together stories that relfect ongoing activity at UBC. Included in this month’s batch are:

1) An article about Grid Computing (nice overview explanation!)

2) An overview of repositories and learning objects by none other than Brian Lamb

3) A few vignettes about the use of video/web casts over high speed networks – emphasizing technology’s role in building commmunity.

I like this newsletter a lot — the articles are well researched, and give enough information to get good ideas, and provide pointers to find out more. Previous months’ newsletters are also available from the site.

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Vancouver – o-pan-o-rama O’History -> oh my!

Posted on October 22, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

This is WAY more cool than cool. Check out the panoramas at the The Changing City – 1978 and Now site.

Make sure that you scroll right as the picture fades from left to right.

Not only are these amazing pictures of Vancouver over time, but the technology — WOW!

From my hubby Arne (via his friend Mike in Kamloops — > why someone from Kamloops has to tell us about something from our own city government is another story but…).

Makes you want to live here…

Wait… I do! Yee ha!

Posted in Fun Stuff | 1 Comment

Digital Games Paper

Posted on October 21, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

From NAWeb comes a paper from Bonita Bray and Bob Boufford entitled, Having Fun: Using Games in CMS training workshops.
Bonita and Bob have been conducting workshops with a Games flavour for several years now — always entertaining and quite effective.

This short paper provides some of the theoretical overview and resources for those interested in this area. A quick and good read!

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UK Learner Profile work progressing ahead

Posted on October 19, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

The CETIS article of Oct 10, “UK Learner Profile components to form core of European standard” points to what I think is going to be a really important document (PDF, 122 KB) for the e-portfolio, and most likely, the course management system space….

With the official acceptance of the CEN/ISSS “Guidelines for the production of learner information standards and specifications” workshop agreement, the first steps have been taken to establish a European standard for the transfer of learner information. The agreement will make it easier for learners of all descriptions to present their educational credentials and achievements to employers and colleges both nationally and at the European level.

Time to pass this along to our Enrolment Services and UBC CV project teams to see how the work compares to our approach to transcripts, etc.

A bit further in the doc they describe the importance of the effort …

The wider significance of the acceptance of the CEN/ISSS agreement is twofold: it contributes pretty directly to the EU’s fundamental freedom of movement of people, and, with the e-portfolio work in IMS, it signals a growing international consensus around the one learner profile data format.

Looks like control of my permanent record is getting closer and closer to my grasp… yee ha!

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Big Hair, Big Homes & Big Deals

Posted on October 15, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

Well, here I am in Dallas… and no lie, the hotel brochure dubs Dallas the land of “…big hair, big homes and big deals”. Funny — I have seen quite a few big homes and even bigger highways… but luckily have been spared the big hair…

I’m here to participate in a broadcast called “Putting it all together: creative ideas for using technology in the classroom”.

http://www.starlinktraining.org/programs/oct16.html

We’ve been planning this for a couple of months off and on. Never been on TV before… should be entertaining…

I’m looking forward to meeting my two co-panelists. Be fun to actually see people face to face. Funny how that is still the best part of the technology — allows you to contact, get to know and sometimes, meet people in person!

Loads of fun… I’m just a tad (OK loads..) nervous!

Posted in Fun Stuff | 1 Comment

A cool tool — needing some updating

Posted on October 6, 2003 by Michelle Lamberson

Blast from the past:

Gastropd in VRML

The picture above is two views of a VRML (Virtual Reality Model Language) file representing a gastropod (OK, snail)….

If you look at a number of shells – nautoloids, gastropods (snails), pelecypods (clams) — have a shape that can be derived from a log spiral function.

Harkening back to my geo-days — I actually am a geologist, I don’t just play one on the Internet— I was involved in assisting with the development of a really nice little learning module that focused on accretionary shells – specifically the Raup Model.One of the projects I was involved in brought a a team of students and a faculty member (Paul Smith, now department head) together to create a program that allowed students in the paleontology classes to modify 4 parameters, click draw, and then produce a VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling language) version of a shell. Using a VRML plugin, students could view the shape, then return to the form and re-generate the shape. Totally cool…

Only problem is, the program (a CGI program written in Perl) produces VRML …

which is not the easiest file type to find a plugin for these days. So.. the program has been sitting idle…

Good news is that I did find a new plugin …

It’s from a company called Parallel Graphics, and the plug-in is the Cortona VRML Client. You can download/install the plug-in by accessing http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortona, and following the directions provided.

However… I’m wanting to perhaps free ourselves of the CGI program and go standalone. I’ve seen some Java versions.. like the Gildner Paleo Home Page. Cool — but I am still looking for that ability to rotate, and to jack up the “W” to get the clams…

I’m wondering… does anyone have some good pointers on how to do something like this in Flash? Is this something Flash can do? We have the Perl program… I’m just loooking for some pointers as to where we might look to study this further…

Any ideas would be really appreciated!

By the way, if you have installed the plugin, and want to see some of these… they are so cool…
Trick with the plugin, click on “Fit” (lower right button), then switch to study mode (lets you rotate these easy…)

View an evolute ammonite

View an involute ammonite

View a Gastropod

View a clam…

SO COOL!!

Posted in Geology Sites | 3 Comments