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November 18, 2005

Holmberg-DistanceEducation

This week I did some historical reading and present notes on Börje Holmberg's Distance Education. This book presents a good look at the ideas of distance education and the theory of transactional distance and guided didactic study.

See notes.

Posted by vvarvel at 10:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 11, 2005

White & Weight - Online Teaching Guide, 2000

Each year, the number of books about online teaching seems to geometrically increase. Back in 2000 though, there were not that many. One of the easier reads in this category comes from 2000 by White and Weight. Although there is not (and was not at the time) a lot of empirical research backing to some of the points, ideas such as the WRITE principles of communication and attention to practical skills make it a useful text. I therefore hope that you enjoy and find useful my notes on this book.

See http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/weblogs/varvel/pdfs/White-OnlineTeachingGuide.pdf for my notes.

Posted by vvarvel at 09:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 08, 2005

2006 Illinois Online Conference

The Illinois Online Conference Call for Proposals runs through December 7th. Below is more information about the conference quoted from http://www.ilonlineconf.org/content/about.cfm. This conference is not affiliated with ION, but I recommend it especially to beginners in online education.

Join your colleagues from around the world in a state-of-the-art conference hosted by Illinois' P-20 education community.

The 2006 Online Conference for Teaching and Learning features keynotes, presentations and discussions based on the topics of: Innovation, Technology, Leadership, Teaching and Learning, Current Issues in Illinois Education.

The conference will be held February 15-17, 2006 (TBA CST), with Preconference January 31, 2006 (TBA CST).

This conference is held entirely on the Internet using: email, the Web, synchronous chats, discussion areas, and other Internet technologies. This premier online conference was created to focus on issues and concerns of K-20 classroom faculty and related technology support, learning resources, student services, and workforce development trainers . We want you to share experiences, successes, and failures with your colleagues from around the State of Illinois. A Conference Community has been created as an online environment in which groups of conference participants, both small and large, can gather electronically to work on, participate in discussions on, or learn about the same thing at the same time.


You can find the call for proposals at http://www.ilonlineconf.org/content/callForProposals.cfm.

Posted by vvarvel at 01:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 01, 2005

Hine's Virtual Ethnography

Although the title of her book may be an oxymoron, Christine Hine presents an account of how the Internet can be both a cultural artifact and culture itself. Although presented in a way as a user's guide to doing ethnographic research on the Web, I felt that this book had some valuable insight into Internet activity in general. Having finished my reading, let me know present my notes on this book.

Posted by vvarvel at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack