Posts on E-Learning

Duolingo’s a free app for learning languages. There are versions available for the iOS and for Android and at the time of writing you can use it to learn French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.

The FELTAG (Further Education Learning Technology Action Group) horizon scanning report looks at what the significant technology might be in the next 5 to 10 years in the vocational, education and training (VET) sector. MOOCs, social media, telepresence (remote working) and learning analytics all get a look in. It’s a good summary of the different technologies.

1. Two million students doing vocation based learning online with ‘Alison’

2. London University signs up 200,00 students for 4 online courses

3. US plans global network of online courses

4. Spocs - Moocs on a small scale

5. XuetangX, online education in China - edX selected to be platform for China’s largest online learning initiative

If you got a nasty tummy bug back in the Spring then there is a pretty good chance that it was caused by a bacteria called Campylobacter. In 2010 there were more than 700,000 cases in the UK and it costs the UK more than £600m a year - that's more than Salmonella, Listeria and E.Coli combined. Campylobacter kills around 200 people a year.

I've read a few things recently about Tin Can and it's got me thinking about what happens when new specifications like Tin Can begin to emerge and how you decide when or if to dive in and start developing bespoke e-learning that supports it.

We're currently developing bespoke e-learning content for the National Association of Providers of Activities for Older People (NAPA) to support their Level 2 QCF Award in Supporting Activity Provision in Social Care. We're also working with Tribal and the NAPA e-learning content is based on Tribal's existing supporting materials.

Vi Hart's quirky YouTube videos are a million miles away from the maths I remember doing at school - it seems like a different subject (which it probably is). I mostly enjoyed maths at school because solving problems in things like algebra, trigonometry and probability was satisfying (as long as you could solve them) but I don't ever remember thinking that maths was a creative subject - basically maths was (and I bet it still is for most kids) sums.

We're pleased to announce the release of clickLearner - a new kind of video based e-learning and assessment solution that SkillsLogic have developed for the Sheffield based company of the same name.

If you're a training provider and you're thinking about moving from paper based or face-to-face course delivery and into e-learning then hopefully this post will give you some food for thought.

The Khan Academy is amazing. It's delivered almost 150 million online lesson, mostly in Mathematics but also other subjects such as the Sciences, Finance and American History. One of the intriguing things about the Khan Academy is the apparent simplicity of the content - the 3200 online lessons are all very simple videos, usually nothing more than founder Sal Khan talking while drawing on what's essentially just a blackboard.