Regular readers will be aware that I am currently undertaking an online Rapid eLearning Development programme which is being facilitated by @robhubbard. One of the assignments this week relates to the use of text within elearning and requires a number of assignment to be undertaken and then posted to the blog section of the Ning site that acts as the portal to all the other brilliant content. However, as I have my own blog I prefer to post my assignments here as it:
a) provides more opportunities for wider feedback
b) helps to promote what is a fantastic online learning programme.
There were 3 assignments this week, the first being:
Find some text that is difficult to understand and that contains jargon and or acronyms. Ideally this should be some of the source written content for your final assignment. Alternatively Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page is a great source of content written by experts for experts. Click on the ‘Random article’ link on the left-hand side until you find some content that would benefit from rewriting.Follow the Plain English guidelines to rewrite about 200 words of it in Plain English.
Here is my submission for assignment 1:
The original article is below:
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.
Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”.[1]
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.
As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.[2]
My reworked article:
Social bookmarking is a method for you to store, manage and search for bookmarks of online resources. Unlike file sharing, it isn’t the resources themselves that are shared, just the bookmarks that reference them.
You can add descriptions to these bookmarks so that other users can understand the content of the resource without having to download it for themselves. These descriptions could be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags which are words or phrases that generally describe the resource.
i.e. a bookmarked website on ‘implemeting social media policies within Blue-Chip organisations’ would probably be tagged with the following
By adding tags both you and other users can search for different websites, all on the same subject just by selecting a tag of interest.
In a social bookmarking system, you would save links to web pages that you want to remember and/or share with others. You could make these bookmarks open to the public, save them privately, share them with specific people, shared them only inside certain networks, or a combination of public and private areas.
Many social bookmarking sites have added extra features such as being able to import and export bookmarks from directly from a web browsers and the emailing of bookmarks to other.
The 2nd assignment asked us to:
write two SMART learning outcomes for your final assignment.
One of the many elements of the ReD programme that I have found to be quite innovative is the way in which Rob has used the Mindmeister mind-mapping tool to visually portray the learning outcomes, but to also use the linking features of it to link to the various resources that are in place to help achieve that outcome.
So here is my attempt at writing the learning objectives. (quite blatantly borrowing Rob’s idea!)
The 3rd and final assignment required us to:
write two multiple-choice assessment questions based on your learning outcomes
I’m still not sure whether these questions will be pitched as a stand-alone multiple choice assessment (not my preferred option) or as part of a scenario (my preference), but either way they will look a little something like this:
1. Which of the following is the correct web address for the Diigo homepage?
a) www.diigo.co.uk
b) www.diigo.net
c) www.diigo.com
d) www.diigo.gov.uk
2. What is the user name which you will need to log into the Diigo account?
a) Tayloring.it
b) Tailoringit
c) Tayloringit
d) Tayloring it
So over to you Dear Reader, what are your thoughts?
Was the reworking on the Wikipedia article clear enough?
Were the objectives SMART enough?
Were the multiple choice questions relevant and challenging?
As always, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated…
View the original article here
Question mark made out of coloured poins on a cork board
Close up of a Zeiss scope