Virtual Learning Environments
Extend learning by exploring physical and virtual environments.
Learning shouldn’t just be contained within the four walls of your classroom. A virtual learning environment can be equally powerful in supporting the development of a range of 21st Century skills, such as collaboration, team work, decision making and planning, as well as enhancing cross disciplinary knowledge, connections and understanding.
Providing opportunities for extended learning that:
- Exposes students to a wider range of experiences
- Develop 21st Century skills
- Lead to more active and meaningful learning experiences
Take advantage of the latest technology and allow your students to’ go out’ into the world form the safety of your classroom or bring the world ‘in’ to them.
Related content (4)
Latest posts
Virtual Learning Environments
Encouraging staff to use the VLE (Fronter)
What strategies can be used to encourage all stakeholders to fully use a VLE?
What makes a VLE a different and unique forum to a website?...
1
comments
Virtual Learning Environments
Is your virtual learning environment an obligatory passage point?
Michael Callon defined the term "obligatory passage point" to describe the essential element that enables a function to occur.
For example, search engines have become the obligatory passage point for finding facts, replacing encyclopaedias and other reference books. Facebook has become the obligatory passage point for connecting with friends, replacing post cards, telephone calls and catch ups. Email has become the obligatory passage point for business communication, replacing letters and faxes...
Virtual Learning Environments
Taking a look behind the curtain of an effective virtual learning environment
To date we've largely discussed how students are using virtual learning environments. Today I want us to take a look behind the curtain and discuss what needs to be in place to ensure that our use of virtual learning leads to higher student learning outcomes.
What policies do you have in place?
When implementing your virtual learning program did you have to examine any of your policies? What was needed in your privacy and cyber safety policy? What other risks (if any) have you identified? How ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Learning Circle Sessions Online
Does group work online seem mysterious to you? Have you wondered about how you might flip a university classroom using online tools? When you move online, professors often find that their role shifts more towards providing direction and feedback to students who become more active in the learning process. The availability of learning materials-- lectures, animations, articles, tutorials, books, movies, TEDtalks and podcasts--is so rich that students could most likely find many different ways ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Learning Circles- An Innovative Structure for Collaboration
The is an innovative structure for group collaboration. Online Learning Circles are being used effectively in cross-classroom collaborations by many thousands of students around the world at all levels from primary to graduate school. This short video draws a contrast between two approaches to group work: committee teamwork and facilitated small group process. In committee teamwork, a task is divided among participants each doing a part of the work. In facilitated small group process, the ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Is curriculum a compromise we still need to make?
In my previous post , I was called out my a commenter:
"The student must have knowledge that is established by the curriculum. Everyone needs knowledge required for work, because the more prepared we are by formal education, the more likely we will find meaningful employment." (Note: translated as best I could from Spanish)
It is a fair comment because I've been promoting in this blog, a use of technology that promotes self directed learning, inquiry-based learning and social learning but I ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Rethinking the MOOC by Dr. Idit Harel Caperton (Ed.M. Harvard, Ph.D. MIT Media Lab)
MOOCs are at the cutting edge of new education… right?
Not quite.
No doubt about it, online learning is the education experiment du jour. Investors and media organizations are elbowing their way into the ed tech market, and academic entrepreneurs want to provide free education opportunities for the poor.
But it seems to me that some recent online learning models, like MOOCs -- which at the outset appear exciting and promising -- overlook what we know about what constitutes effective education: ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Would you share your search history?
I've been exploring (pronounced social), an "experiment in open search" created by Microsoft's . The community is for 18+ so it is not one you'll probably be able to use with your students anytime soon but I want to discuss it because the way it uses search is very interesting.
So.cl posts are created from edited search results. You type in a search term, in the screen shot below you can see I've searched for "social search", which produces results as web results, videos, images or news. The ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Reimagining feedback and intervention
When do your students receive feedback and intervention?
If they're like most students in a traditional classroom, there are probably three possible opportunities:
When the student submits their work for assessment on completion of the task or project.
When the student realises they need help and directly asks for it.
When the teacher recognises that the student needs help and intervenes.
Modern technology offers new opportunities for feedback and intervention. Publishing is no longer the end...
Virtual Learning Environments
What is happening in your virtual learning environment?
In 2009 we worked on a professional learning program for 100 teachers in Victoria, Australia who were part of a student netbook trial. As part of that program Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach of created a private online community in which the teachers could share ideas and discuss issues around the project. Over the course of the year more than 3500 posts and comments were made in the community.
At the end of the project we wanted to know:
What were the teachers discussing?
And, what role did the ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Why is Microsoft Word better than paper?
In my previous post, , I discussed how the data that Microsoft Word automatically generates can be used by students to make better decisions about their own learning. Today I want to keep that theme going at look at some other reasons why having students use Microsoft Word is much better than having them use paper.
Microsoft Word can combine documents.
Modern technology has seen a move to a remix culture. Very rarely to when writing in real life do we start with a blank document. Rather, when ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Peering Inside the Black Box of Classroom Learning
Synopsis:
It is often very difficult to see what students are doing when they work; you have to stand over them, crouch down, lean your shoulder in. Your mere presence changes the students’ behaviours – they freeze under observation, their thought processes get interrupted and many can be physically and emotionally uncomfortable with your close presence and observation. To differentiate instruction and to ensure that students are progressing with their learning, we need to be able to see their ...
Virtual Learning Environments
New year's resolutions for modern learners
Happy new year. My hope is that 2013 is a great year for everyone.
Maybe you have made some new year's resolutions this year? Unsurprisingly the was to "lose weight." Over the last year I've been fascinated about how modern learners are using technology to tackle goals such as losing weight and in particular I've been exploring learning communities such as the .
The Quantified Self movement use a variety of gadgets and smart phone applications to track their exercise routines, their calorie ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Virtual Learning Environment Give students equal chance
We are Salesian School in Hong Kong. We use Cloud Computing Technology to build up a seamless learning environment for students.
Aim:
Ensure all students have same resources and environment for learning.
Breaking the digital Gap
Linked the school and home to become "one" environment for students and teachers. They can teach and learn no matter they are at school or at home.
Help students to develop 21st century skills.
How to do this?
We build Virtual PC in our school server. The ...
Virtual Learning Environments
What Virtual Learning Environment do you use at your school?
In the deep dive sessions at the Global Forum in Prague, a number of schools expressed interest in hearing about what technologies other schools are using.
If you have used a Virtual Learning Environment in your school please use the comments to briefly describe your experience.
Thanks. ...
Virtual Learning Environments
What does limitless capacity make possible?
Shortly after I started teaching a colleague from a nearby classroom left the school on maternity leave.
She generously gave to me twenty large boxes that she had amassed over time, full of teaching resources, including play scripts, fiction and non-fiction texts, and much, much more. Unfortunately, the resources turned out to be not useful at all, as there was no way of knowing what was in those boxes. It would take much longer for me to go through the boxes, than it would to create or source ...
Virtual Learning Environments
Understanding modern virtual learning environments
In this first post, I want to introduce a three step methodology for understanding modern Virtual Learning Environments.
Step 1: Identify the new possibilities of the virtual learning technology
Modern technologies are more than a substitute for previous practice. They offer new possibilities beyond the practice they are replacing. Unfortunately, these new possibilities are not always easy to recognise. To assist us in identifying them, it is useful to ask three broad questions:
Does the ...
