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eGroups : ismho-general

The International Society of Mental Health Online general, nonmember mailing list is for the general discussion of issues relating to the Society. Please see our Website for more information about the Society: www.ismho.org. This is list is open to all interested individuals who want to learn more or participate in advocating how the online world can help promote mental health issues and services.

1394983

New Scientist: The end of history

fire

Chaos and disaster seem unpredictable. Not for much longer, says Per Bak, a revolution is under way

Ubiquity

by Mark Buchanan, Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Intriguing review, with something of a scientific slant on patterns we might see as psychological or synchronistic. Here are a couple o paragraphs:

The concept of “ubiquity” expresses the view that details are not important in deciding the outcome. In 1998, Don Turcotte and Bruce Malamud from Cornell University studied the distribution of forest fires in Australia and the US. They found that the distribution could be understood from a simple “toy model” developed in 1992 by Barbara Drossel and Franz Schwabl. This implies that the forests are in the self-organised critical state.

In 1996, Roy Anderson and Chris Rhodes of the University of Oxford took the same model and plugged in people in place of trees and measles in place of fires. The result explained the distribution of measles epidemics on the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. “If this does not bring home the point [of ubiquity], perhaps nothing will,” Buchanan concludes: “The ubiquity of the critical state may well be considered the first really solid discovery of complexity theory.”

I must admit now that I am not your usual unbiased, emotionally detached book reviewer. I was heavily involved with the discovery in 1987.

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An Overview of Online Learning: Preface
About this Overview

This Overview introduces you to online learning, and provides you with an overview of the key issues you need to consider when working with online learning. Specifically, this Overview:
Describes what online learning is and identifies its major uses
Identifies the four major types of online learning
Provides an overview of the technology needed to make online learning happen.

Lists the project issues–that is, management and learning issues–that need to be addressed when developing materials for online learning

Foolish Luddism?

Preview of an e-learning book

Beware of too much technology

Everything in moderation, nothing in excess the ancient Greeks taught us. E-learning is one of those areas where we might get excessive. An example of excessive use of the technology is seen in some courses where participants need to spend hours downloading files or reading documents online. In some courses students waste time working in groups. In other courses students are expected to read long documents on a computer monitor. It would be better to send them paper versions of the documents. Placing huge documents on CD-ROM, or DVD sounds like a great idea, but who reads them? Video conferencing appeals to the techie in us, but is it more effective than video tapes or even audio tapes? Is video conferencing worth the additional cost and the effort? You can get too much of a good thing. E-learning does not need to be 100% pure. It may be appropriate to combine leader-led courses, paper-based documents, video tapes and audio tapes with e-learning instructional materials.

One of the dangers of online learning is that we will try to do too much with new technology. We need to guard against replacing existing, valid approaches with new, less-effective ones.

Later: Thursday, April 8, 2010

They have gone, but will be here forever: http://web.archive.org/web/20020205132359/http://www.e-learninghub.com/effective.html

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elearningpost

“Daily Links to Corporate Learning, Community Building, Instructional Design, Knowledge Management, Personalization and more”

This is a great blog – have added permanent link on the left.