Review of AB and LO on Transparency in Online Education

My review of an Annotated Bibliography will be on Hugo Domingues’s work, posted on his blog in http://hdelearning.blogspot.com/2010/05/transparency-in-online-education.html

Hugo presents a very useful bibliography, with four different references. Each of these references are presented with a sequence, as Hugo built his bibliography to ilustrate his reflexion on the subject.

The first reference is an LO created using GoAnimate! which provides an introduction on the theme. To know more about the concepts involved, Hugo refers another LO, which is more theoretical. To help understand how to put this into practice, Hugo gives us an article and a presentation with an example of a strategy to promote transparency in Online education.

I found very interesting this idea of creating a bibliography that suited his reflexions on the subject! Hugo gives a summary of each recourse and presents his thoughts and reflexions on them.

My only remark for improvement would be including the article from Dalsgaard & Paulsen, as it is mentioned on his comments about the 2^nd resource.

Well done, Hugo!

The Learning Object I reviewed was a very funny but accurate animated movie created with Xtranormal which shows Larry King interviewing Sarah Palin… about transparency in Online Education. The author is Carla Elias:

In this LO, Carla gives complete information about what Transparency in Online Education is and how it promotes quality.

I thought Carla managed to give the important information on the subject, making us want to watch the sequel with the promised interview with Prof. Morten! This touch of humour was nice and integrated with the situation. As for improvement, during Sarah’s speech about the subject, I think Carla could have showed some of this sense of humour.

Overall, it is another excellent LO. Congrats Carla!

Review of AB and LO on Online Teaching Techniques

I´m going to review Fernando’s Faria AB, posted on his blog in http://mpelejadores.blogspot.com/2010/04/ppel-unit-2-task-1.html

I appreciated the references chosen by Fernando. I find the bibliography presented very complete and useful when studying the subject Online Teaching Techniques.  On his annotations, Fernando gives us a short synthesis of the article, sometimes using other information to complete the article’s theme.

As an improvement, the AB could be more diversified as for the type of Bibliography chosen, instead of only articles, although, in terms of content, the articles chosen are diverse.

As for the LO, my review will be on Juliana’s Learning Object, presented here: http://julianantunes.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/online-teaching-techniques-2/

This is a very interesting presentation, with a lot of information. Sometimes, it is refreshing to go “back to the basic” and watch a more simple (technology wise) LO, but witch gives us a synthesised but quite complete understanding of what Online Teaching Techniques are.

I think this presentation could be improved with the use of graphics and more images, maybe by dividing some of the information and showing it with appealing images. There are a lot of articles and videos published on the web about this subject, I particularly like this one: http://blog.slideshare.net/2009/02/03/4-multimedia-learning-principles-that-will-improve-your-slides/

Review of AB and LO on Cooperative Freedom

When choosing a colleague’s AB and LO to review I tried to choose one that hadn’t already been reviewed. Because I’m behind schedule that wasn’t an easy task!

My Annotated Bibliography review is on Isabel Manteiga’s work, posted on her blog: http://isabelmanteigas-elearning.blogspot.com/2010/03/cooperative-freedom-annotated.html

Isabel built her annotated bibliography around the differences between Collaboration and Cooperation and she tried to present different authors. On her annotations, Isabel stands out the core of each article, giving the reader her interpretation of it. I think it is a good compilation of articles with significant personal insights on the definitions of Collaboration and Cooperation.

As for improvement, I think the fact the AB focused on the differences between the two concepts, ended up limiting the insights on each article to these notions. But it also gave it a more directed sense!

Concerning the Learning Object, I chose the Marina’s work, posted on her blog: http://marinampel04.blogspot.com/2010/03/cooperative-freedom-toonlet.html

Marina did a cartoon using toonlet.com. In it, she described what cooperative learning is, simulating a student’s conversation at the café. This Learning Object is very complete in terms of the concepts included in it: it covers the definition of cooperative freedom, flexibility, the learning partner and other aspects of cooperative learning.

I enjoyed the light colours used in this cartoon, especially because it has a lot of information. This is precisely the aspect I think could be improved: the amount of information per square and overall is, sometimes, a little confusing.

A final note to all my colleagues (Isabel and Marina in particular): I really enjoyed reading and watching everyone’s ABs and LOs! I think there are very good peaces and, all together, have significantly contributed to my learning process in these matters. Thanks to you all!