Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

Here is an awesome site. As we continue to look at our A'o Kumu program, the Learning Tools Compednium is an interesting section. It feaders the 25 Tools 2009 ; however, with being a few months into 2010 they have an updated side part with a Learning Tools Directory for 2010. Excellent resource for our A'o Kumu program.

John C. Ittleson gave a webinar today on the use of ePortfolios, specifically Acrobat 9 Pro and the PDF Portfolio tool. As I think about development of new ways to display and demonstrate the understanding for learning outcomes, this method of creating portfolios becomes an integral part of learning for professionals. In the A`o Kumu program, we'd like to see this used more as a method of reflection in addition to progression and understanding of learning outcomes. This may be something we think about as we move forward with Ka hua development. Ittleson uses the ePortfolio in his online graduate course, Interactive Multimedia for Instruction. With the PDF portfolio functionality, it enables students to aggregate digital artifacts that is evidence of their achievements over time, but it also allows instructors to embed comments and suggestions directly into the PDF porfolio so that students can view their work in the context of the instructor's feedback. Ittleson sets up his ...

Today I tried Snagit 9.1 for PC and Snagit for Mac Beta, each for about 10 minutes. I'm SOLD! Slick and easy. To C apture, on a PC a Quick Toolbar sits along the upper left edge of your Desktop screen and pops out when you hover over it. Choose your capture profile (area, window or scrolling window) and release the mouse. On the Mac, it's even better. Choose All-in-One-Capture and just hover over a window, or click and drag and area or the rolling window button. That's it! To Edit, the latest capture is in the active window. Others are placed in a bin below it unless you close them. Click to add premade arrows that bend, callouts or solid or hallow shapes that have opacity and shadow sliders. Effects are coming later. Your changes are saved in the bin version of your capture. Crop, zoom in, or use the time delay capture. Drag one capture over another to combine them. Drag them to your document. Excellent help tutorials and instructions at video.techsmith.com/sna...

In addition to Cassie's post on "What's New on Acrobat 9" from 10/20/09, I attended another webinar that concentrated on the specific aspects of collaborating in addition to it's administrative features. Full text index- Documents can be archived and put into the acrobat catalog. Take all pdf documents and organize them and allows the reader to search by keyword. It will pull all relevant indexes as a result. Collaboration Tool : email, internal server, sharepoint, Acrobat.com can also be used. You own the info. It's a repository for the collaborative layer. It includes many types of markup tools with the addition of audio and also has the ability to have document chat which can be synchronous or asynchronous with co-navigation as well. Fillable forms - detects eligible form fields through the form wizard. Data can be populated and answers are exported into a spreadsheet. Responses can be pooled. Forms distribution and collection process is one that we m...

Aloha all, In today's O wau session, we'll be taking a look at the Homeroom component in Bb 9. Where is your homeroom? It's where you are right after you log in to Blackboard and typically lists all the courses you are enrolled in. Homeroom in Bb 9 doesn't look much different and the functions are basically the same. You can add and delete modules, collapse, or rearrange them. There are some options to personalize your Homeroom with a photo and some personal information, but I think we can spend most of our time today deciding if we want to standardize the modules available to students and what modules we would choose. Here's a list of all the available modules (bold) and a brief description (italics) of each. I'm not familiar with all the functions of each one and we would probably need instructors to decide which functions they'd use first and then be sure to have the corresponding module available. We may want to use different modules for different audie...

This morning I attended the DevCon preview webinar on Brain-based learning. It was a nice review on some of the concepts we've had training on, such as Meyers-Briggs, DISC, and other personality/learning style profiles. I really like the way the speaker organized his PowerPoint & the background information on the brain itself that he was able to provide. He came up with his own system of brain-based learning that focuses on 5 graduating skill sets: Assess, Introspect, Engage, Reflect, and Share. Two points that he reiterates often throughout his presentation are: Engagement is an emotional construct; a condition that binds Autonomy is necessary in the learning process as learners must take responsibility for their own learning in order for it to be successful. At first learners may fight the process but that's where it's important to have them make some sort of positive, emotional connection. Here is the link to the PowerPoint slides from his presentation http://elearnd...

Mark Prensky is an interesting individual who writes many articles and books on technology in the classroom. He published a document that his view to the Essential 21st Century Skills. It is an interesting list of things that have to do more with life skills rather than the technology itself. Take a look at what is on his version of the 21st Century Skills .

A few months ago we discussed about what Adobe Acrobat 9 can do. Below are two link to demonstrate Adobe's PDF portfolio and digital signature fuctions.