IT Lesson

For those of you who have no idea what Ramadan is, you can click here for starters.

"...It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims do not eat or drink anything from dawn until sunset. Fasting is meant to teach the person patience, sacrifice and humility. Ramadan is a time to fast for the sake of God, and to offer even more prayer than usual. In Ramadan Muslims ask forgiveness for past sins, pray for guidance into the future, ask for help in refrain from everyday evils and try to purify themselves through self-restraint and good deeds."

Non-Muslims often think that fasting is a burden to Muslims, but we mostly look forward to it, and really enjoy the daily little struggles. Besides the obvious reasons (health, spiritual growth, empathy, bonding, sharing, awakening, discipline, etc.), I love this month because my brain neurons (or synapses) become more active, stimulating new creative connections during it. Also, my energy level increases. However, this energy increase does not seem to apply to many of my Muslim colleagues (I suppose I am bit different in that sense!). One reason could be that the blood circulation to the brain increases during fasting, while the stomach and digestion organs are taking food-free yoga lessons during the day (Can a doctor please explain why?). In short, I love the month of Ramadan for many reasons.


e-LEARNING eBOOKS COLLECTION
I suppose to continue with the spirit of learning and sharing during this special month, I have compiled an Amazing collection of free e-Learning ebooks in a quite visual stimulating chunked manner (Instructional Designers please evaluate!). Well, whether it is Amazing or not, I leave it up to you to decide. I suppose I used that word to attract your attention, and if you are reading now, I suppose it is kind of working. This time around, I have dumped SlideShare for SlideBoom to stimulate your mind to explore a bunch of interesting free e-learning related ebooks, and sites to find more ebooks:




Click here to download the PDF version (46 MB).

Here are the quick links (my favorite! Easy to access and replicate by others!):

1. LEARNING 2.0
   
2. Educating the Net Generation
3. Learning Spaces
4. Theory and Practice of Online Learning
5. Open Educational Resources Handbooks: One, Two, Three
6. The Insiders Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
7. Top 100 Tools for Learning
8. MASIE’s Free eContent!
9. FREE eBooks from The eLearning Guild
10. e-LearningGurus 5-Minute Summaries
11. ICT in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers
12. E-Learning Concepts and Techniques
13. Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New WWW
14. Knowing Knowledge
15. Moodle E-Learning Course Development
16. Using Moodle
17. FREE Guide to Online Education
18. Informal Learning
19. Engaging Interactions For eLearning
20. The Cluetrain Manifesto
21. Stephen Downes Papers, Presentations and Books
22. KINEO Magic!
    
23. Learning Technologies (250+ Articles!)
24. Horizon Reports
25. Clives 33 Columns
26. Creating Learning Communities
27. Digital Education
28. Web-Teaching
29. Brandon Hall Free Resources
30. elearningeuropa Papers
31. Learning Circuits Field Guides
32. eLearn Magazine Articles Archive
33. EDUCAUSE Books
34. Google Book Search
35. Project Gutenberg
36. Scribd
37. LearnOutLoud.com
38. LibriVox
39. Great Books Index
40. CIA World Factbook
41. FreeBookSpot
42. FreeTechBooks.com
43. OnlineComputerBooks
44. Free-eBooks
45. ManyBooks
46. Globusz
47. BookYards
48. The Online Books Page
49. Wikibooks
50. Free eBooks
51. Free Online BookStore
    

SLIDEBOOM ROCKS!
SlideShare is still my favorite free slide-sharing site, but SlideBoom is quickly becoming my next favorite one. What do I mean? I will be using both from now on. For the sake of giving SlideShare a wake up call, here are five things I like about SlideBoom, which SlideShare currently lack (hopefully they will upgrade soon!):

1. First, you can upload PowerPoint 2007 files (.pptx), meaning you dont need to convert to PDF or .ppt before uploading (if you are using Microsoft Office 2007).
2. Your original presentation keeps its features after conversion, including content style, animation effects, transitions, embedded audio and embedded video. This is a major weakness in the existing version of SlideShare, which really annoys me. To keep my presentations intact, I have to upload them as a PDF file.
   
3. The uploading process is faster and more pleasant (well at least from my notebook and network). I suppose they have fewer users and uploads to manage. It will be interesting to see SlideBoom tackle this, when the user/viewer tsunami comes.
4. The presentation seems to run smoother in the browser, and you can even create annotations (using pen, highlighter, eraser, etc.) to any SlideBoom presentation to point out its key ideas.
5. The heart of SlideBoom is based on iSpring (An add-in PowerPoint to Flash converter), which enables you to convert PowerPoint to Flash offline, speeding up the process, while retaining the presentations original effects better.

Having said that, SlideBooms presentation size is currently limited to 30 MB (easy to upgrade!), while SlideShare enables 100 MB per presentation. In terms of users and presentation views, SlideShare still rocks big time! For example, the most viewed presentation (as of today) on SlideBoom is only 3100+, while SlideShares most viewed presentation is a whopping 1.6 million+.

In a slideshell, I will not give up on SlideShare just yet, but you never know in the future. Anyway, why not use both! Perhaps I should consider a third free alternative. Got any suggestions?

Oops! You might be wondering, "what happened to the 101 OER presentation I was talking about in the previous post?" Coming soon hopefully. What happened to your non-blogging vacation? Al-Hamdulilla, Ramadan awakens again my need to share amazing learning resources quickly.

Oops, one more juicy item! I have updated the 140+ free learning tools list with one more juicy learning problem solver (in addition to SlideBoom). Hint: Unlimited storage :)