To be truly learner-centered we must present course content in a number of different formats (video, audio, text, interactive media, etc.) Doing this gives students of all learning preferences equal opportunity to be engaged by the content. This is sometimes difficult in online courses. The web is still very much text based. (and here I am typing this entry - sigh)
I like to use multiple media types for the asynchronous content I present in my courses. At CDLI we use Desire2Learn (D2L) as our learning management system and it is oftentimes awkward to embed multimedia rich content into this LMS.
I recently watched a video made by Barry Dalh in which he talks about how he has embedded a ProtoPage into his D2L course pages. Great idea! Thanks Barry. I set this up in my courses today and here is how I did it:
I created a page in www.protopage.com with some widgets that would be useful for my students. Next I found an iframe HTML code generator (I used this one). I placed the URL for my ProtoPage into the code generator and was provided with the iframe code I needed. Then in the D2L news widget of my course I created a new item, placed the code in the content window, checked the "In HTML" box and saved. I also tried www.pageflakes.com, but found ProtoPage to be more appropriate for my students' needs.
Now I can serve up RSS feeds, YouTube, slide shows, VoiceThread, etc. easily into my D2L course pages. Sweet. Thanks Barry.
Andrew
