10 Different Approaches to Creating Digital Learning Content

Very useful post form EmergingEdTech! Check them out and use in your teaching.

  1. The perennially popular technique of screencasting
  2. Narrating over PowerPoint
  3. The low-tech FIZZ method
  4. The web app mysimpleshow
  5. The high tech (but probably not as challenging as you might think) approach of using a light board
  6. The use of Blendspace as a tool for assembling digital content for flipped or blended lessons
  7. The powerful ed.ted.com platform
  8. In our last post, we discussed the use of the Learning Management or Course Management system as a vehicle for flipped or blended lessons
  9. EdPuzzle (you can insert questions into any video!)
  10. Illustrated, Hand-Drawn Notes

Free learning design kit

St. Petersburg College and Smart Sparrow have partnered to launch the Learning Design Starter Kit, a free tool designed to help faculty create their own digital learning resources.

“Smart use of adaptive learning has to start with faculty-led planning and instructional design,” said Dawn Joyce, professor of communications at St. Petersburg College, in a prepared statement. “The Learning Design Starter Kit is an important resource because it gives faculty an opportunity to see how engaging adaptive learning technology is for students. Change is always intimidating, but the Learning Design Starter Kit helps faculty in this transitional phase by providing resources and support every step of the way.”

“With the toolkit, faculty will learn how to design online resources rooted in cutting-edge learning science, capture user data to evaluate student engagement, and create rich, interactive, and adaptive courseware,” according to a news release.

Features of the toolkit include:

  • Resources on learning design;
  • Adaptive lessons focused on planning and designing for each student;
  • Case studies from faculty and instructional designers;
  • The opportunity to create rich, adaptive and interactive courseware; and
  • Other tools and support.”

Details about and access to the Learning Design Starter Kit is available here.

Webtools: no registration needed for students

Very often we would like to use a tool quickly, but are put off by a registration process.  Here you can find a neat list of tools indexed in 18 categories which do not require registration. Ready, set, explore!

QR Codes
Surveys and Polls
Online Whiteboards/Corkboards
PDF Tools
Charts
Word Clouds
Maps
Schedule
Reference (dictionary/thesaurus/concordance/corpus/citation)
Calculators/Converters
Documents (webpages/text/paste/view)
Annotation
Stories (create/read)
Chat/Conferencing
Presentation
Audio
Screencapture (image/video)
Video (view/edit/create)

Create Video Lessons in Minutes by Annotating Screen Captures with this Free Windows App

From Practical EdTech:

“Microsoft appears to have taken a page from Google’s playbook, encouraging employees to “turn their wild ideas into real projects” and calling the effort Microsoft Garage. One of the results of this initiative is the new “Snip” tool for Windows. Snip is a screen capture and annotation tool (or just a ‘whiteboard’ if you want it). It makes it really easy to create instructional videos by writing or drawing on a screen ‘snip’ and saving the resulting video as an MP4 file”. Read the full article.