Web content + Email + 30 boxes = open online learning
I’ve been thinking of ways to use freely available web tools to deliver e-learning outside of a monolithic LMS like Blackboard. Here are some thoughts on using 30 Boxes as a course interface.
- Use a blog and/or wiki and/or Google docs and Spreadsheets and/or an online notebook and/or del.icio.us to create and gather content.
- Compile all those resources using del.icio.us; use a course-specific tag, like SOC101
- Add these resources to 30 Boxes by emailing them to the add@30boxes.com address, specifying the date. Be sure to tag these “events” with the course tag in 30 Boxes, too
- Give your students the URL to your shared course-specific calendar
Here’s a sample event listing. If you send people to that page, they don’t see the contents of your email, just an associated URL. If you send people to an actual calendar, they see the contents of the mail, but they are also shown all your other web stuff (RSS feeds) as if they were events, rather than the way it works on a main calendar, which is that the RSS items are only shown when you hover over a day that has web updates. Weird. Anyway, check out the dates 3/26 and 3/28.
Obviously I’m fixated on 30 Boxes as the interface. I’m focusing on how an instructor might make archived content appear new again, much like with the “scheduled delivery” of RSS that Tony Hirst and I have been thinking about.
In the end, I suppose it’s just easier to use a free wiki or online office app. Oh well, 30 Boxes would take care of the calendar–you could just take a course inside your favorite RSS reader…
