Forum LAMS Newsletter: Newsletter 16, 26th Feb, 06

By: James Dalziel

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BECTA LAMS Evaluation released

The long awaited BECTA report on the 2004-2005 LAMS trial with the UK Specialist Schools Trust has been released - see http://www.becta.org.uk/research/research.cfm?section=1&id=5037

On behalf of everyone at LAMS, our thanks to BECTA, the evaluation team at CRIPSAT, SST and all the teachers and students who participated in this excellent trial of LAMS. The report contains many rich insights into how the LAMS approach transforms online teaching and learning in unique ways. This report makes a great complement to the higher and further education evaluation of LAMS conducted by Oxford University on behalf of the JISC during 2005 (see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=elp_lams ).

We are aware of several other great reports that we hope will soon see the light of day - there are some consistent themes emerging about LAMS, especially increases in student motivation arising from sequences of online collaborative tasks, and increased teacher reflection on pedagogy issues arising from use of the drag-and-drop LAMS authoring environment. These and many other interesting insights can be found in the reports - please feel free to discuss the findings here in the LAMS Community.

How to use LAMS: The animated guide

Many LAMS users will be familiar with the (text-based) LAMS Teachers Guide (see http://www.lamsfoundation.org/CD/html/support/LAMS.TeachersGuide.V1.pdf ) - which represents my valiant attempt to describe how to use the LAMS Authoring environment and its activity tools in words.

Now there is a better approach - the animated guide to using LAMS. Karen Baskett has painstakingly created animated versions of how to use LAMS (including all the features of all LAMS authoring tools!) - these are now available at http://lamsinternational.com/documents/1.0/winks/

The animations have been created using a great, no-cost screen capture and annotation tool called "Wink". This tool has allowed us to capture real-time examples of how to use LAMS which you can "play" to watch (including comments), as well as pause and rewind. Personally, I think this is a much better way to convey how LAMS works than words on a page (like my guide!).

A huge thank you to Karen for creating this excellent resource for all LAMS users - it is slow, often painful work to create good animations like these, but the benefits to others are enormous.

Live Weekly Education Q&A - Thu 4-5pm Sydney time

While the (asynchronous) forums of the LAMS Community are always helpful for discussing LAMS and asking questions, a number of users have asked if we could set aside a time for "live" educational discussions with LAMS experts. So we've decided to provide one hour each week when one of the LAMS educational team (Robyn Philip, Karen Baskett, Bronwen Dalziel, Angela Voerman, and me) will be available for discussion, questions, etc.

The time for this session will be Thursday 4-5pm (Sydney time) to try to catch European/Middle East/Africa and Asia/Pacific LAMS users at the start and end of their days respectively. Apologies to American users for the not-so-great timing. If there is significant demand (let me know), we can work on another time to suit America users.

During this hour, we'll offer three ways to contact us
(1) A new (asynchronous) forum within the "Getting Started" section of the LAMS Community (with a new thread for each week) where we'll try to provide quick responses to postings
(2) A Skype account (named: lamsedsupport )
(3) An MSN Messenger account (named: lamsedsupport@melcoe.mq.edu.au )

This is a bit of an experiment for us, so we'll see how it goes and let you know. Please forgive any teething problems or slow responses if we get overwhelmed at first - we'll post feedback on the experience in the new Getting Started forum after the session.

....and remember, you can always ask questions via the forums at any time, not just Thursday 4-5pm Sydney time!

Posted by James Dalziel