No, it is not an Airport! It is more like a space station! If you ask a true learning professional, he or she will probably articulate Moodle as a virtual learning environment (VLE), or course management system (CMS), or worst case a learning management system (LMS). Whatever Moodle is, in this post Moodle is an ‘Airport’ (figurative speech that is!).

However, I am not going to spend the rest of this post proving the ‘Airport’ theory, but I will share some of my experiences and ideas on how we can get the best from Moodle, and not fall into the pitfalls (that I have faced over the years). As for the ‘Airport’ visualization, I will leave that to your creative imagination of reading between the lines. Let’s begin!

MOODLE IS NOT…

• A total online campus management solution for your University. If you are planning to use Moodle as a total online learning solution covering everything from online course registration, semester results generation, intelligent class scheduling, to alumni management, you are going struggle no matter how many Moodle plug-ins you discover and use. Instead, explore using other online tools out there (or perhaps let your team develop the tools necessary), which can be integrated with Moodle providing all the needs your online campus management system requires.

• An excellent content development tool. In a nutshell, use it for uploading, managing and tracking your content, but please use other web 2.0 or rapid e-learning development tools to develop engaging and inspiring multimedia learning content. Although, you can create some simple web-pages, a crappy online book, who-ha podcasts, and a few other stuff using 3rd party Moodle plug-ins, many other content development tools out there can do a much better job than Moodle. No question about that! Since Moodle supports ZIP file upload and the SCORM mambo-jumbo, your options are pretty good to use practically any content development tool out there.
• A concurrent users’ king! I have felt it, and I have heard from every corner of the world that Moodle increasingly becomes a pain when the concurrent users size increases (say 60 or more!). I have heard and read that people have solved this problem, but again and again the number one complaint about Moodle is that they struggle to deal with scalability and large concurrent user sessions (e.g. 200 students doing online quiz at the same time). So, what is the problem? Is it the CPU or RAM specs issue, perhaps its’ the network, database, or even a combination of things mentioned, or what? Click here for a white paper (PDF) from Moodlerooms to help you deal with it. But, Moodle should really simplify and be creative about informing and guiding Moodle administrators on how to deal with the concurrent users issue. If there was a wizard embedded in Moodle dealing with this issue, I would be really happy. Any other suggestions?
• A web 2.0 sensation. I suppose Moodle 2.0 will be pretty good, but let’s face it, purpose-built web 2.0 alternatives (e.g. Wikispaces) are worth considering before you get lost in Moodle’s crappy blogging, wiki, etc. tools. They are usable, but no match for the real deals out there. Click here, to get some saucy tips on whether to use Moodle’s embedded Web 2.0 tools, or go for the purpose-built web 2.0 alternatives. Yes, you might want to also check out Jane Hart’s amazing list of +3000 potential learning tools to facilitate your learning environment. Finally, ZaidLearn’s filtered down learning tools list, might be a good starting point.

In short, Moodle is an Airport, not a total solution!

WHY MOODLE ROCKS?
Although, Moodle sounds quite bad until now (in this post), it is certainly better than most other Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) tools that I have tried over the years. If you need a tool to facilitate your online course and learning environment, Blackboard is certainly out, unless they have dramatically improved since the last time I tried it (2008). Anyway, Blackboard is a commercial tool, and you certainly don’t want to get into a mess spending tons of money, getting confused with all their product options, and finally ending up buying exactly what you don’t need. A-Z, Blackboard is not my cup of VLE.

Sakai with its Java code and messy interface is out (unless I got some Java dudes to mess it up further!), no matter how many features they have. Angel? Looked at it once, and that is it. There are tons of other VLE tools you might want to explore, so perhaps you should use EduTools to assist you to get the right alternative or combination that meets your unique learning requirements and needs. EduTools is a pretty good free course management system comparison and selection tool to use, compared to the commercial alternatives that Brandon Hall and Bersin provide (last resort, if EduTools fails!).

If you are looking for a free hosted VLE (or LMS) alternative, CLICK HERE! If you are conducting your own little programs or courses, then a free hosted VLE might be worthwhile, but I would not recommend Universities or Colleges to adopt such tools on a large scale, because of the what-if scenario (collapses, becomes commercial, system failure, New Pro-version, etc).

Though, no matter how frustrated I have been with Moodle over the years, compared to other VLE tools, Moodle simply rocks (based on my experiences).

So, what is so special about Moodle?

First, the Moodle community is worldwide and nearly as fanatical as the Apple mafia. You will find fanatical Moodle fans and support (including excellent documentation and facilitation tips) wherever you practically go in the world, and that is really a major plus. And often the greatest fans, are actually the educators themselves. Ironically, educators are often the ones that make the most noise when it comes to using other VLE tools (e.g. Blackboard).

I believe the main reason, is that Moodle is easy-to-learn, easy-to-teach, easy-to-build and easy-to-use. Also, its embedded constructivist learning framework, and excellent set of basic learning tools are really powerful reasons for using Moodle.

Personally, I really like Moodle’s:

• Quiz Engine
  Developing quiz questions in Notepad and reviewing the results using the ‘Item Analysis’ tool.

• Calendar
  All your learning activities and events (if added) is directly visible and automatically linkable from the calendar, making it easier to see how active your upcoming week or month will be.
• Glossary
  Once I used the Glossary tool to develop a search engine, which enabled users easily to search 100+ Courseware down to the topic level (Now, you might instead want to use Google Custom Search). It also allows people to comment and suggest entries, and even configure your glossary to become FAQs, Encyclopedia, Entry List, etc. Not bad!
• Tracking
  It generates complete and summarized reports on the students’ progress, results, and utilization of Moodle. Although, it is not perfect, it gives you quickly an idea of students usage patterns, and whether they are really trying or not. The same applies to educators, too. Yeah, administrators can easily find out, whether the educators are really trying or not to explore Moodle. I have experienced educators who complain about using Moodle, without ever logging in.
• Peer-Learning
  It allows you to customize your rubrics (Scales), comments and rating scales features for many of the Moodle tools, including Workshop, Forum and Glossary. To facilitate deep learning you got to include a lot of reflection, peer-learning and (role) modeling, and Moodle has that intuitively embedded in many places (without many really realizing it!).

Besides these five basic giants above, the forum, questionnaire and assignment tools are also really useful and powerful.

Also, it is really easy to customize, design, and restructure courses in Moodle to meet our basic learning needs. Some educators get the thrill out of making their course homepage more attractive with some mind stimulating images.

Moodle courses only show what lecturers are using, so you don’t get all those juicy buttons (e.g. quiz) that are totally empty when clicked. You can structure course content and activities according to the course outline, making it super easy for students to zoom in on what they want. Yes, you can edit, delete or move the course resources and activities straight from the course page, without needing to go to another webpage. Just click ‘Turn Editing on‘.

But I suppose what really makes Moodle super juicy and the defacto VLE, is that it can easily be integrated with so many other types of relevant learning tools, which include web-conferencing tools (e.g. DimDim), learning activity management system (e.g. LAMS), anti-plagiarism software (e.g. TurnItIn), 3D virtual worlds (e.g. Sloodle), and much more. As Moodle is used by millions of people around the world, you will find many really cool web 2.0 learning tools that have developed integration modules for Moodle (which makes totally sense).

However, how you implement Moodle depends a lot on your needs, requirements, available resources, and importantly who will actually be using it. So, tailoring your ‘Moodle Airport’ requires you to re-examine the learning context and sufficient human/financial/technical resources at your disposal. It is tough, but with Moodle you have many unique and valuable possibilities.

So, are you now realizing why Moodle is really an Airport, and not a total learning solution.

If you ask me, Moodle is a good meeting place (airport or space station), or a starting point where we get together to discuss and share ideas, before taking off using both inbuilt and integrated learning tools to experience engaging and enriching learning adventures beyond any single VLE can provide.

But then Joseph Thibault (in the comments section) crushes my Airport analogy, by saying, “…that “starting point” is probably the best. It’s like a hub, where teachers can tie in all their other resources (and track their students use of them). That’s the real value.“

First, I was crushed by this valuable reflection, but then I was inspired to synthesize this latest reflection of the Airport analogy, into the “Airport-Hub” analogy. Lovely!

Finally, I have come to realize that the more I use Moodle (although increasingly discovering weaknesses and areas to improve), the more I love it, the more I want to use it, and importantly the more I want to promote it to educators and people around the world.

Until a more cost-effective, user-friendly, web 2.o friendly, and feature rich VLE for higher education pops-up, Moodle is probably the best way to go. Yep, if I want to fly, I would certainly prefer flying from a Moodle airport hub. What about Elgg?

I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” - Muhammad Ali

Yes, it is frustrating attending or participating in T/W sessions that are not tailored to exactly what we really want or need to learn, especially if our time is really precious (which is the case for most educators!). On the other hand, it is quite difficult to tailor T/W sessions to meet all the requirements and expectations by all the participants, especially if the group size is substantial (say 25-40 participants), or consist of participants of diverse learning fields and backgrounds.

But, let’s face it T/W sessions or large lectures are quite efficient methods in disseminating information and knowledge. But are they really effective in facilitating relevant or authentic learning?

Assume that for example we want to train educators (teachers and lecturers) to use new learning tools, apply instructional design principles, master online facilitation methods, and rapid e-learning skills. What could we do besides the typical scheduled T/W sessions mostly tailored for larger groups (15-40 participants)?

For starters, developing user manuals or content development standards and guidelines would probably be high on the list. Let’s create these guidelines, and hope that educators would actually use their precious time to actually read, reflect and practice all the super tricks and tips we share. DREAM ON!

You certainly need to develop (or reuse) manuals and guidelines that includes best practices, tips and tricks (including quick reference guides), but that alone will not transform educators into rapid e-learning pro’s. Unless you can make these learning aids really short and super intuitive, many educators would probably never go beyond the attractive front-page cover (alright they will scan through the table of contents!).

Besides manuals and guides, we could develop online FAQs, which are searchable, allows comments, suggestions, ratings and rankings, etc. Now surely that would help, and it probably will. But again, how many educators actually use FAQs to improve their teaching and learning skills?

What about experts systems or know-it-all 3D avatar chat bots? Cool, but unless they are really smart and not insulting to human intelligence, though… If we could simply feed it with content, and it could synthesize and come up with the most appropriate suggestions, now that would be really efficient and useful. Any really good artificial intelligence 3D talking teacher tools to suggest?

Why not screencast or record everything an educator might want to learn? Now that would be really efficient way to disseminate skills training, and perhaps it could turn out to be effective. Record once for everyone at any time (Try Screenr!). Cool! I love learning through screencasting sessions, but unless the tutorial developer is reasonably good at it, it can sometimes get really annoying.

Say I want to learn how to ‘bold’ some text, but then have to go through a 5-minute step-by-step video tutorial, now that would be really annoying. It is just like calling an automated customer service system, which will take you on a roller-coaster ride for 5 minutes to get you where you want to go. If we could actually talk to a real person instead, it would probably take us 5 seconds! Also, unless the video tutorial has a comment section, or is linked to a Q&A forum, how is it going answer the next question to clarify this and that.

As it might take a life time to screencast everything an educator might want to learn, we should perhaps instead (or in addition) use a web-conferencing tool such as Adobe Connect (educational pricing is reasonable) or DimDim (open source and free) to conduct live online tutorials, whereby we interact and do exactly the things that educators might want to learn. Better yet, we could record and archive these online tutorials as learning content. You want to learn this, watch this recorded learning session. Wow! But then again, some educators will never bother or find the time to gobble through a short or long recorded online tutorial to find what they want to learn.

Besides these alternatives discussed, we could facilitate online forums, join learning communities, immerse our learning into Second Life, use wikis and blogs, reuse/link to free learning tutorials, etc. until we go blue, but some educators still want to learn the art of using technology to facilitate learning through face-to-face learning. So, let’s deal with it!

So, in the coming months, we at IMU (or the e-learning department) will be introducing something I refer to as Drop-By-Learning. It is not very different from just-in-time-learning (often used in relation to corporate learning), so I suppose it is not an innovation, except for perhaps the way we will approach it.

Besides the scheduled weekly 1-hour e-learning sessions (exploring new learning methods and tools), major e-learning workshops and our juicy Learning Innovation Lab (interactive online learning resource/discussion space organized according to learning tools and methods), we will select one day a week (rotating the days), whereby our educators can drop-by to learn exactly what they want in small learning nuggets.

Of course, we don’t know everything, so we will provide a learning nuggets laundry list of all the things that they can learn from us. In addition, they can always suggest new learning nuggets to include. If we don’t know and cannot learn within a reasonable time, we can always link them to a free online tutorial out there (if any).

To avoid us wasting time, and educators dropping by at the same time, we will encourage them to e-mail or call us to book a learning nugget session (5-30 minutes). As our e-learning team is rather small (currently only 4 staff catering to around 200 educators), and have tons of other tasks to deal with besides training, we need to be efficient with our time.

Yes, we also manage the virtual learning environment (Moodle), facilitate content development, do research into new learning tools and approaches (more practical, less paper!), and involved in several e-learning projects blossoming here and there at IMU. We are enjoying the e-learning passion blossoming at IMU, but let’s hope we can manage the increasing workload. I am predicting an e-learning exploration tsunami at IMU over the next 12 months (can feel it!). So, we kind of got our hands tied down hard in a stimulating and motivating way.

To make the drop-by-learning sessions really near to my desk, and to avoid all this booking computer labs time-consuming nonsense, it is set up closely, approximately 3.5 meters from my desk. A notebook with a projector and small whiteboard will be ready for action at any moment.

Of course, it would be cool to drop-by the educator’s place to facilitate learning nuggets, but at IMU we have adopted an interdisciplinary open learning cluster approach, whereby most educators do not have their own rooms, but sit in open clusters (cubicles) to facilitate open learning and sharing. So, having dudes like me going to educators and making some noise (kind of loud!), might not be appreciated by others, who are not requesting for drop-by-learning.

If a small group wants to come for a learning nugget session, we have 5 learning spots (at the moment only comfortable chairs) ready for action. Also, we provide free candy to stimulate the brain (something like Google in small chunks!), and have set up a dartboard within striking distance, should they be stressed or lack focus.

This is certainly not an efficient approach to facilitate new learning and facilitation skills and methods, but when we soon add drop-by-learning webinars (using Adobe Connect or DimDim), we can slowly facilitate a more effective learning environment, whereby educators at IMU learn..

• Exactly What they Want
• How they Want
• When they Want
• Wherever they Want

Today, educators seem busier than ever juggling teaching, research, and administration, and by providing them a drop-by-learning option, it will hopefully enable and motivate more educators to learn the skills needed to facilitate effective learning in the 21st century. Can drop-by-learning be implemented effectively? …Until we have tried, we will never really know

Congratulations Obama! Don’t blame it on Obama for getting the award (Though, he could reject it, but why should he?). I have always thought that Norwegians (or their government to be fair!) are peace loving people (I am 50% Norwegian and reasonably peaceful, too!), but very naive in dealing with peace efforts and conflicts around world. And I am still puzzled with the wisdom of Obama getting it so soon. If he lives up to his vision and mission, no doubt he should get the award, but give him some time to earn it the right way.

Also, we must not forget that he is the ‘Commander in Chief’ of the deadliest army since the 2nd World War, which has blasted several countries back to the Stone Age. Yes, let’s not forget he is still at war in two countries, and things might not blossom into peace as soon as we might hope. If you know anything about Afghans (I do!), they will never surrender until the US Army is out of there. Hopefully, they will eventually learn from the mistakes the Soviet Union dudes did last time. But, the way they are going at it, it certainly does not look like it.

Anyway, let’s hope that the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ selection committee had an inch of wisdom behind the selection, and thought by giving Obama this award, it would remind him throughout his President-hood that peace is the only way forward, and that going to war with such a title is simply not acceptable. Just wondering, once you become a Nobel Peace Prize winner, can you lose it?

Let’s forget politics, and return to the learning juice!

If you haven’t noticed, I launched another blog a few weeks back (Why?). Except for Stephen Downes (who ironically referred to it as ZaidLearn) and a few others, it has hardly picked up any attention in the Blogosphere. But, that is cool! For those of you who missed out on ZaidSwoosh until now, here are the first 30 stunning posts from it:

In short, ZaidSwoosh is dedicated to sharing juicy learning resources and ideas in daily ’swoosh’ chunks (1-3 short posts every working day).

I like to keep ZaidLearn for more ‘article’ like posts (1000 – 5000 words, the boring stuff!), whereby I reflect (80%) and add some spice or fun (20%). However, with ZaidSwoosh, it will be 80% juice and fun, and then 20% reflection. So, those used to ZaidLearn and long juicy boring stuff, will continue to have it that way.

As for those of you who want to experience the juiciest stuff I discover on a daily basis, then ZaidSwoosh is worth subscribing to. How do I find time to ‘SWOOSH’ blog? I don’t smoke, meaning I should be healthier and can use my puff-breaks to swoosh some learning juice instead.

So, what so special about this ZaidSwoosh? Until you have tried, you will never know

A couple of weeks back (16th September), I attended a Future Learning Finland one-day seminar & networking session. Finpro had invited a few dozen people from Malaysia for this session. Their goal was basically to share and market their world class Finnish education system and related educational products and services, and also gain more insight into the current and future learning trends and needs in Malaysia. Basically, it was an opportunity to learn, network and explore potential educational business/collaboration opportunities with each other.

Though, how come they invited me of all people? I found out during the seminar that one of the Finpro consultants had actually discovered me searching for information about e-learning in Malaysia. I suppose they saw me as a good source to find out more about the current and future e-learning trends in Malaysia. Anyway, whatever reason, I was just happy to be part of it, and make some noise.

But before sharing with you some of the things I learned about the world class Finnish education system, I would strongly recommend that you explore Amran Noordin’s excellent 6-part series, where he compares Singapore and Finland’s schooling models (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6), summed up nicely in his diagram below:

In short, Singapore and Finland have become world renowned for their education systems, but interestingly they have achieved their success using quite different approaches (to say it mildly!). To get the juicy details of both, please read Amran Noordin’s 6-part series mentioned above.

MY LEARNING NOTES

During this one day session of sharing, networking and exploring opportunities, I learned a lot (and scribbled a lot of notes, too) about why Finland’s education system is so good (well at least according to them and many others around the world).

The first clash of cultures (Finland and Malaysia) started even before the learning session began. The main representative from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOE) came 30 minutes late, and the seminar could not start before he came.

If you don’t know, Finnish people in general are very time conscious, and you should have seen how stressed out they were waiting for the main dude from Malaysia. Since we started 45 minutes late, most of the Finnish presenters swooshed through their presentations, and made a point reminding the audience that they will be on time, and not overuse the time been given. In short, even though they were extremely polite, I could see on their faces and body language that they were rather pissed off with the scheduling being put to shambles due to the initial delay.

Though, I found out later that the MOE representative actually had to attend another meeting earlier in the morning, and was delayed because of that. But, keep this in mind, especially with Finnish people (and Germans, British, Americans, Japanese, etc.):

Yeah, and if you want to present and convince Finnish people, please use research data and findings to back up your ideas and proposals. It was also interesting to compare MOE’s presentation about Malaysian education with Dr. Heikki’s presentation about the Finnish education system.

While the MOE’s presentation talked about vision, mission, and some current student mobility programs (the objective was probably more to market the Malaysian education system, rather than tell the full story), the Finnish counter parts covered basically everything about their education system, including a few centuries, current and future scenarios, and reasons why its education system evolved that way, and the secrets behind its current success. Although, it was comprehensive, it was told in a very constructive and time-efficient manner.

Based on what I saw, Finnish people strive to be very efficient in whatever they do, and that includes giving presentations. No swimming here and there, just get to the point and solve the problem. We have a lot to learn here, as we often let our emotional feelings and ego take control, and forget about solving the real problem.

If you ask me, I felt most of the presenters lacked a bit in terms of exciting the audience with what they had to offer. In layman terms, they were a bit stiff, monotonous, and perhaps too efficient in delivery (the initial delay is probably one reason). Don’t get me wrong, they were very well-rehearsed (like a program), but you need some emotional outbursts and connections to really touch the audience (well, at least me!).

Oops, let’s get back on track…

SECRETS TO SUCCESS
What is the secret to Finland’s success (5.3+ million citizens only)? NOKIA! Besides that?

Basically, due their tough environment (just look at their neighbors and climate!) and limited natural resources (except for large forest reserves), they have had no choice but to invest in educating their brains (Just like Singapore!).

Here are five reasons, why Finnish people have been, and are successful:

• Quality education with equal opportunity
• High level of investments in R&D for technology development
• Good regulatory framework and efficient public service
• Open economy: competition has to prevail
• Social model: social market economy, welfare society

As we are talking about education in this post (and blog), I will limit my observations and reflections to that next. If you want rough notes regarding the rest, click here for more details.

Besides free and universal high-level education from comprehensive school to university (6% of GDP directed to public education), Finland stresses also equal opportunity for all, irrespective of domicile, sex, economic situation or mother tongue. Teachers are required to be trained in dealing with low-achieving students, as well as students with disabilities and learning difficulties.

The fact that education is free, including travel expenses, welfare services, accommodation, books and other school material, means that students can focus more of their time on learning, rather than all the other distractions that might come with it.

However, besides all the student rights to this and that, students also have three main duties that they must fulfill, which are to attend classes, obey discipline, and complete their courses and programs. I suppose most education systems will have something like this documented, but in Finland it is strongly emphasized, and it is probably working better there than in most other countries.

They are really proud of their students’ PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) achievements, where they are ranked number one in the world in most categories. To be honest, I had never heard of PISA before this event (Except the Italian one!). How ignorantly ignorant can you get! I am still learning!

Interestingly, a teacher must have a master’s degree to teach in Finland, and also have a lifelong learning program mapped out for them. They emphasize a lot on lifelong learning, and it is kind of embedded into the their learning culture.

More importantly, the teacher profession is highly valued in Finland, meaning more people with the right attitude, mindset and skills will apply for such jobs, and in the end you will get better qualified and passionate people educating the future people of the country. I suppose that is why the Norwegian education system (where I studied), especially the schooling system is really crap (hopefully better now!). I remember most of my teachers as miserable creatures, who had failed in what they set out to be in life.

For example, my music teacher really wanted to be a singer (But her voice was horrible!), and due to her failure we students had to suffer. She really hated our guts, too! I had a gym teacher that used to throw his huge key chain after us, every time we pissed him off. He even threw a hammer after one student, but luckily he missed. If you wonder why Norway until today cannot create and innovate globally renowned products and services like the Swedes and Finnish dudes can, I suppose their lack of appreciation, dedication and emphasis on education is one reason for that. But then again, Norway is blessed with all sorts of natural resources (especially oil and gas), and therefore is one of the richest countries in the world. I can’t imagine what Norway would be today, without their oil and gas. Let’s get back to Finnish education…

In contrast to Singapore (please read Amran Noordin’s articles. Links above!), Finland don’t rank students or schools, and they don’t emphasize on standardized nationwide examinations that drive students, teachers and parents nuts. I suppose Singapore’s model is good for nurturing a competitive mindset, and encouraging students to work hard (and memorize everything you can think of). However, I believe the side effects are too many, and we need to question whether they are really preparing students for the 20th century, or for the 21st century (now and future)?

I personally believe (based on my shallow understanding) the Finnish education system has managed to infuse discipline, hard work, and competitiveness, but at the same time also infuse the right balance to nurture critical skills required for the 21 century, which include communication, collaboration, creativity (innovativeness), critical thinking, problem solving, digital literacy, flexibility, adaptability, global care/awareness, and emotional intelligence.

In addition, the Finnish education system is rather decentralized and schools are given a degree of freedom (independence) to develop their own curriculum. The problem with having a centralized system and curriculum, is that if you get it wrong, the whole country will suffer. Also, with a top-down model, it is difficult to quickly innovate and spark changes to the curriculum that is needed to deal with the increasingly disruptive learning world that we are experiencing today. However, in a decentralized system, schools can easily change and adapt as they learn, and also they have more freedom to explore and try out new things, without needing to worry about ranking of this and that.

Actually, ranking of schools and students is a disaster (if you ask me), if you really want to encourage universities, colleges, schools, students, and teachers to openly share, learn, discuss, reflect, and collaboratively innovate. It can be done, but it is very difficult because of our internal urge to be the best, or be better than our neighbors. In the world of sports, I can understand it, but for education I believe that might not be the best solution to move forward.

For example, If I want to be higher ranked than you, then probably I would want to keep some of the juicy stuff secret from you. Otherwise, you might overtake me, and if the government is nasty, give me less funds to innovate further. However, if ranking is put aside, we can instead focus on transforming the education system, nurturing dynamic learning clusters, and becoming a learning nation together.

Finally, Finland emphasizes big time on research and development (around 4% of GDP), and have interlinked companies with the Universities to collaborate on new innovations. Whatever they do, their approach is very scientific, which of course includes how they are continuously improving their education systems.

The only thing I felt was really missing from this seminar, was learning more about Finland’s e-learning initiatives and success stories, which was not really discussed.

MOVING FORWARD

Can we do it? Yes, we can! But do we really want to? You decide? If you ask me, my answer would of course be…

As we move closer towards 2010, you will increasingly see new posts or articles screaming here are the top 8, 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, etc. blogs or sites of this and that. Most of them just vomit out lists, without putting much effort to justify their claims, or at least say why the selected blogs should be on the list. Actually, what I would want to see is simply what so special about the blog selected, and why should I follow it. Is that so hard to ask for?

If you first are going to claim that these are the top blogs at least tell us why they are selected, and what is so special about them. Let’s face it; any idiot can create a top list copying a bit from here and there (or from their RSS reader!) within 10-15 minutes. I suppose we will get a lot of hits doing so, but we might also get into trouble…

MY TOP LISTS = TROUBLE?

Trust me, I have been there! Though, my first top list ‘10 Top ETL Blogs You Simply Don’t Want to Miss!‘ was a peaceful affair without much trouble. Probably because my blog at that time (2007) was rather unknown. In this list I shared my top 10 favorite ETL (Education + Technology = Learning) blogs. Yes, I did write why they are so special to my learning

Then in September (2008) I published another list entitled ‘25 EduBlogs You Simply Don’t Want to Miss!‘ on my blog, but this time around it turned into a battle of the sexes. Without me realizing it, or consciously thinking about the gender distribution of my selection, the list was…

Janet Clarey discovered this male dominated distribution, and it happened of course during a women blogging conference, and you can imagine what happened next. Also, I said some silly things in the online discussion that got them even more worked up (at least a few of them!). And then all hell broke loose (discussion here!).

Here, I was just sharing my favorite bloggers with ZaidLearn readers, and suddenly I have become famously infamous women bla, bla, bla. But the beauty of disasters and problems, is that they are actually opportunities to do something good and make a difference. Since I have been in such situations so many times in my life (probably my fault on many occasions!), I kind of dealt with it by going the extreme opposite (ego aside!).

A couple of weeks later, I published 27 Inspiring Women Edubloggers (and Karl Kapp! He was pretty surprised to be included!) on my blog, and within days I had become a hero. Even Stephen Downes and George Siemens noticed my effort to get myself out of trouble (besides learning a few lessons).

“Last month, Zaid compiled a list of top 25 edubloggers. The weighting was male-centric (22-3). He has now corrected the omission with a new list of top 27 female bloggers. Nicely done.” – George Siemens

And Michelle Martin went even further, by saying,

“…Instead, he showed the courage of the true learner and used our observations as a springboard to expanding his own thinking–and ours as well. – Hat’s off to Zaid on this one!”

The great thing about creating these lists, is that I have learnt a lot through discussions and reflections, and discovered many more interesting learning blogs (especially the female ones!), which I have added to my RSS reader. Click Here to see my updated collection of learning blogs that I really like.

In short, publishing your top something lists (especially involving people) can get you into trouble, or make you into a legend, or both if you are lucky. So, before creating a list, please think wisely

Also, besides gender distribution, you need to also consider racial breakdown, age range, religion, nationalities, etc. What was the purpose of the list again? Just be honest about what you like, and if people can’t take that, then too bad!

The great thing about discovering new blog lists, is that we might discover new blogs that we can subscribe to via our RSS reader (please use one! I use Google Reader). My advice is to follow a few hundred learning blogs in scanning mode, and 5-15 exceptional ones in reading mode. So, where to find at least a hundred learning blogs to follow?

Alright, I cannot resist! While we are at lists, here are a few sizzling and exceptional learning bloggers that I have to mention. And if they are not in your RSS reader, and you are in the learning business (sad for you!). Here we go (just numbering, not ranking!):

I know the male-female distribution of learning bloggers just mentioned is 12-4 (please don’t ask about the racial breakdown!), but these are those blogs that I would like to appreciate with a ‘Special Mention’ (whatever that means!). If you are looking for other great learning blogs, please check out my previous lists (above), and all the other great lists I have shared in this post. I am pretty sure you will discover a few interesting blogs to add to your RSS reader.

Let’s just enjoy blogging brilliance beyond gender, race, age, religion, and whatever. Is that so difficult

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
– Albert Einstein

Firstly, you might get annoyed with the term ‘World Class’ and I would perhaps, too. But at least it got you to this sentence, so it is working (until now!). Think of ‘World Class’ in this context as delivering exceptional or inspiring lectures, talks, presentations, etc.

Secondly, you might argue that we should get rid of lecturing all together to revive University learning to be relevant to the world beyond, as its’ learning effectiveness is being questioned by many.

With that I totally disagree! If you argue that lectures do not facilitate effective learning, I can to a certain degree listen. But, that is if the criteria for lectures is only to disseminate knowledge. But if you ask me, I would argue that lectures is much more than simply vomiting out facts, concepts and ideas.

Besides that vomiting stuff, it is also about tickling the mind, nurturing curiosity, and inspiring students’ to learn (how to learn). It is about discovering the joy for learning. It is about creating a connection and bond. It is about a learning exploration with the students, and sharing with them a story that means something. It is about presence and being a role model, letting them experience a way of how ideas and knowledge can be articulated, and so on.

In short, the lecture is the place where we should be inspired and triggered into a learning journey and adventure that is full of joy and obstacles. If we can inspire and nurture that learning passion into the students’ mind, the rest is reasonably easy today, as they can basically access all the knowledge and tools (in many cases) they want with a few searches and clicks. Increasingly most of the amazing learning resources are becoming free (democratizing the access to knowledge), which you might discover even more so, after reading the rest of this article.

But the sad fact based on years of learning experience, and listening to all the noise around the world, education is increasingly becoming just a business, and students increasingly all over the world are experiencing crappy lecturers, lectures and education in general.

Let’s just tackle the lecture for now. If we get the lecture right, students will be inspired to learn on their own…

Read articles about it (Search yourself!), visit and explore Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, or any other freely available online resources from teaching and learning centres around the world, or perhaps attend training or tons of teaching and learning workshops.

These are all useful options, but not my cup of tea to real excellence. Especially, training and workshops often require heavy investments, if you want to get excellent educators to teach you a trick or two. Not all of us can access such opportunities, and if so, we have to wait for the workshop to happen, and that might be months down the pipeline.

Why wait? Why blame it on the University if our lecturing ability stinks. Why do we have to blame it on everything, except ourselves? The truth of the matter, whether the University is simply ignoring this issue, or being stingy, or perhaps don’t give two hoops, is that we need to take action ourselves to make it happen.

So, why wait, let’s master the art of lecturing with or without the University’s help. Let’s be lifelong self-independent learners. Isn’t that what we expect from our students? No more excuses, let’s be responsible for our own learning and lecturing. Welcome, to the…

This learning cycle can happen within minutes using your mental reflection and visualization, or perhaps days, weeks, or months in the real world, depending upon how you apply this flexible learning approach. Actually, these steps are just indicators and do not need to be followed step-by-step. Just use them how you feel like it, or what works best for you. I am still learning, so these steps or phases might change even by the time I really finish this article. Alright, let’s move on!

Besides all the other methods, content and junk mentioned, here is your new learning curriculum to master lecturing (No ABC, just have fun exploring and learning):

Oh man! Where to start?
Alright, since I have been exploring such lectures for a few years now, I will share with you some of my favorites to get you started. Below is basically a cocktail of educators (variety!), inspiring all sorts of knowledge in their own way. Please click on their names below for more of their videos or resources. For your convenience (to access real juice!) I have selected one lecture (or short talk/presentation) from each of the amazing educators below, which is worth exploring and reflecting. Please, focus on how they present and engage the audience (besides the content itself). Hopefully, you can pick up a few tricks on the way that will over time transform you into…WOW! Here we go (Not ranking, just numbering):

Besides all these amazing educators, you should not hesitate to explore the likes of Stephen Downes, Obama, Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton, Garr Reynolds, or whoever (perhaps in your preferred language) that you find to be amazing. It is amazing what we can find freely available somewhere in the online learning galaxy.

Talking about online learning galaxy, here is bunch of other great collections of amazing lectures that you might want to explore:

• Lecturefox – Free University Lectures (Andreas and Ellen Petersen)
• 100 Free Ivy-League Lectures You Shouldn’t Miss
• 50 Awesome Ivy League Lectures All About the Future
  
• 100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists
  
• Project Tuva (Lectures by physicist Richard Feynman)
  
• 60-Second Lecture Series (University of Pennsylvania)
  
• 5 TED Talks on Science That Will Blow Your Mind (Andrew Maynard)
  
• 100 Awesome Classroom Videos to Learn New Teaching Techniques
  
• Free Lectures & Courses from Great Universities (Open Culture)
• List of Computer Science Video Lectures (Over 200 Videos)
• 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World (Heather Johnson)
• 50 Awesome Online Lectures for Social Media Masters
• Online Neuroscience Lectures

Now, you might be asking for video examples of poor lecturing or presentations, but that I will advise you instead to visit some of your colleagues’ lectures and talks (or perhaps your own! Record it!) and I wouldn’t be surprised if you discover some great infamous examples there. If you do, please advise and guide them gently, but please don’t keep quiet. It is going to hurt, but their poor performances also puts our profession to shame. Please, keep that in mind.

Last year, I wrote a 5-part series (using conversational language and humor), whereby I reflected specific teaching habits that inspire students out of learning. This 5-part series, basically reflects back the 5-6 worst lecturers that I ever had during my student days. Here we go:

• Part 1 – Whiteboard And I Are One!
• Part 2 – I Have Bragging Rights, Because I Am …
• Part 3 – Is PowerPoint Evil?
• Part 4 – No Stupid Questions! I am Serious!
• Part 5 – Show Up to Throw Up! 21st Century Thinking?

Let’s together solve this growing lecturing menace

Interestingly, after reading tons of articles about becoming great educators, I have noticed again and again that all the great ones, have in their own student days experienced great teaching themselves. In short, for us to become great educators (or to know what that really means!), we need to experience great educators and lectures ourselves.

However, now that we have free online access to hundreds if not thousands of amazing lectures (a few shared above), I believe we all have the opportunity to experience them at least virtually. It is not exactly the same, but we have access to more. I can live with that! And by doing so, we can try (let’s ignore our struggling ego here!) to benchmark ourselves with these giants using whatever criteria we might set.

The trick here, is not to look first for their weaknesses, but to be open and immerse ourselves with all the positive little things that they do to inspire us. After digesting all the juice and picking up a few tricks here and there, we should also explore possible weaknesses in their presentations, which we should perhaps try to avoid in ours. But, please remember not to get too preoccupied initially with looking for weaknesses in their lectures (so that we can make our ego feel good!), and then miss out on all those little things that really matter. It is difficult, but let’s try!

No one has ever become a great footballer by simply watching and reflecting videos of great footballers. The same goes for lecturing, so besides watching and reflecting, you need to explore, experiment, and continuously practice new things with your students to find the right algorithm(s) that makes them tick into action and learning joy.

I am not going to tell you what to try, instead just enjoy exploring great lectures, note down mentally or physically all the little positive things they do. And most importantly always have the guts to try out new methods in your learning sessions. Some methods might go horribly wrong, and some might be successful, or some might even have no impact at all, but that is a risk you have to take if you really want to improve.

Though, if you really try, trust me, students will eventually appreciate all your efforts. Especially, the Y and Z generation I believe will love it. In Y and Z shell, they love people that have guts, try the unexpected, and engage them to learn.

Innovating your lectures is not enough! You also need to continuously try to seek feedback from every single corner you can imagine, whether it is fellow-educators, students or strangers on the web (that have perhaps watched one of your lectures shared on YouTube or any other video channel available).

There is no harm in telling the students that we stink (perhaps in a gentler manner), and asking them for some verbal or written feedback, which could for example be posted in a online course forum (if you have one). Or perhaps ask them at the end of the class to write on a piece of paper the things they learned, or liked about the lecture, or things they didn’t understand, or areas that could be further improved. If you make them feel safe about being honest, it is amazing how much constructive feedback you can receive by simply asking the people that really matter in the learning process.

Let’s not take ourselves too seriously, and instead let’s have some fun being criticized, including receiving those little negative feedback nuggets that really hurt our crumbling little ego. These negative feedback nuggets are actually the seeds to improve faster.

How can I:

• Engage students more?
• Nurture curiosity in the learning minds?
• Facilitate more AHA-moments?
• Create more interest in the subject?
• Be clearer and more concise (writing this article!)?
• Prepare better illustrations and PowerPoint slides?
• Make the lecture more relevant to the student?
• Etc.

I suppose now I should be focusing on getting my PhD, but there is simply too much to learn at the moment to even consider this (Postponed to 2012 at least, unless I can find a way so that it gels with my love for discovering and learning about learning and using all sorts of educational technology).

After all my crappy learning experiences as a student, I have set a 99.9999% impossible mission (but possible in my imagination) for 2010, which is:

I suppose you might argue, why not start right now. I suppose this post is a fire starter, but seriously I have to deal with myself first. And after exploring some of the educators and lectures I have shared above, I believe I need to spend the rest of 2009 to first improve myself. In a lecturing shell:

Let’s together make the University (Colleges and Schools included) a better place to learn. It is amazing what we can do together if we collectively set our minds to it. Let’s start with improving our ability to engage and inspire our students to learn

This article is still in a Beta version mode, so please come back again soon as it will probably evolve further over the next couple of weeks

If you are Usain Bolt, YES YOU CAN! Although, I have never been thrilled about eating chicken nuggets, I somehow feel like eating some right now. Since he went to McDonalds, I suppose… Nope… I will stick to eating chicken rice at the Mamak stall. A couple of juicy chicken legs with rice, and a mixture of different vegetables, curry and red hot chili peppers. Now, that is something I can’t resist!

BOLTELICIOUS

So, what has that got to do with Keyboard skills…

KEYBOARD SKILLS

In short, to improve the success of any e-learning or online facilitation initiative, I believe it is vital that educators (and students) have good keyboard and typing skills (say at least 30+ words per minute), so that they can efficiently answer e-mails, forum posts, chat sessions, develop content, projects, assignments, and so on.

If you don’t have great keyboard skills already, don’t worry. Just ignore your stubborn ego, and start practicing. You don’t need to spend money, because here are a bunch of free learning tools to assist you:

• keybr.com
  Take a typing speed test and practice typing online.

• Peter’s Online Typing Course
  Provides a set of free online typing lessons and typing exercises for beginning typists, and frustrated hunt-and-peckers who want to move from four-finger typing to full-blown touch typing.

• Goodtyping
  Free online typing course. Please try it without registering. If you like what you practice, then bother to register
• TypingWeb
  is a free online typing tutor & keyboarding tutorial for typists of all ages. All skill levels will benefit from TypingWeb’s free keyboarding lessons.
• Rapid Typing
  A typing game, where the training takes place in a “virtual picturesque underwater world” adding some fun to the learning.

• PowerTyping
  An online free typing tutor for kids, students and adults alike!
• BBC Typing Tutorial
  Aimed at the younger kids, but is great fun for anyone learning typing.

Have fun mastering your keyboard skills, which will empower your potential and ability to really enjoy online facilitation in a ‘Boltelicious’ way. Just remember to practice and ignore your stubborn and lazy ego (if so!)

Today we basically have FREE access to millions (if not billions) of videos on the Internet (my personal favorites!), and surely among them you are going to find some mind stimulating videos that you would like to infuse into your face-to-face learning sessions (like this amazingly funny video: Learning English Pronunciation).

Now, I am going to share with you two (2) juicy ways to insert your favorite YouTube videos (or videos from other sites) into your PowerPoint presentations. Personally, I prefer the second (2) option.

If you know that you are going to have a great Internet connection and are comfortable with the possibility of buffering and Internet loss during a face-to-face learning session, then running a live YouTube video in your PowerPoint is alright. So, how can we get the job done quickly?

Simply install this YouTube Video Wizard (YTV) dude. You can download versions for PowerPoint 2007 and 2003 (and earlier), so having an old PowerPoint version is totally alright.

This amazingly light tool allows you easily to insert live (streaming) YouTube videos into a PowerPoint slide. When installed, all you need to do is to provide the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar, the rest is taken care of by the YTV Wizard. Installation instructions are provided on the YTV homepage.

But then again, some of us don’t like installing PowerPoint plug-ins, and like doing it the hard way. Here are two video tutorials showing you how to get the job done less efficiently, but perhaps in a more ‘IKEA’ satisfying way.

If you prefer reading a brilliant article about this instead, CLICK HERE (Yes, it even tells you how to Get Videos from Google Docs into PowerPoint. Cool!)

2) DOWNLOAD AND PLAY VIDEOS OFFLINE IN POWERPOINT

But, then again not all of us have the luxury of having great Internet access in the classroom. And obviously we would like to minimize the possibility from anything going wrong, which often happens when we are dealing with live video streaming from the Internet. So, to be on the safe side, I always download the videos that I want to use, and show them in offline mode.

Of course a few nutty copyright gurus are going to scream foul here, but for once please ignore them. Why should only those people that have excellent Internet access have the freedom to show amazing videos in class, while the less fortunate educators must suffer. Lets’ instead fight for a better world, where Internet is free for all (Read this!).

Today, we should think of Internet as oxygen for learning, and if it is not there, then we have to find other ways to breath, like showing videos offline (but giving credit and linking to the rightful creators). Ops, let’s get back on track…

First, I recommend that you download RealPlayer (the free Basic Player and remember to select the Download Video option). RealPlayer enables you easily to download videos from any video sharing site you can basically imagine. You simply need to mouse-over a video, and the ‘Download This Video‘ option will pop-up. One click and it is basically downloading.

However, it will download the video in FLV format, and that format does not work well with PowerPoint, so you would have to convert the downloaded video into a more appropriate format.

To convert the downloaded videos (in FLV format), I use Format Factory (to convert the videos to AVI or WMV formats). Format Factory (multifunctional media converter) is simply an amazing free video converter.

If you like video converting the difficult way, perhaps you should convert online using Zamzar.com or MediaConverter.org. It is really up to you

After you have converted the video to WMV or AVI format, you can now insert it into PowerPoint ( Insert > Movie > “Movie from file”). I prefer running the video using the full screen mode (total immersive viewing experience!).

In addition, please remember to save the video in the same folder as the PowerPoint slides (just do it!), and remember to bring along both files (in the same folder), if you are using another computer device in the face-to-face learning session.

Personally, I always try to use my own laptop, because then I minimize the possibility of unnecessary hiccups. If you don’t have any choice, hopefully my advice above helps.

Finally, if you do have a better way of getting this job done, please share it with us.

We are still LEARNING

“We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day Just you and me…”

- Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie