RoboBraille: audio, ebook, and of course braille conversion

Thanks to Alistair McNaught and David Foord for bringing RoboBraille to my attention.  Not only does  this free ( for individual study, employment or daily life use) tool convert electronic text to braille, it will also convert to mp3 audio , or to ebook format.  You can access the service through the web or email, so you could email a document from your mobile device, and receive an email containing an mp3 audio file to listen to on your headphones.  Simple but excellent idea.  http://robobraille.org

TEDEd, TED X, and flipping videos

Many people have been inspired by the TED talks on the web. My own favourites include the Ken Robinson and Hans Rosling ones.  The brand now seems to be extending its reach with more localised TEDX events e.g. TEDxCCN recently in Norwich.

The real focus of this post though is TEDEd,  a service which gives you the opportunity to make watching a YouTube video into a customised lesson, with your own added context, and questions.  This flip-a-video feature means you can add structure, by including links and other material to provoke thought and make the experience more reflective and meaningful..  Visit http://ed.ted.com/ to find out more.

Meetings and appointments sign up: Doodle

I have been searching for a while for an easy to use online appointment system.   This would have multifarious uses, including staff (and tutees) signing up to 1to1 sessions, or small group workshops.  After investigating Google calendars and forms, Eventbrite and others I have come to the conclusion that Doodle is probably the quickest and easiest way of doing this on a small scale.  Its primary function is as a meetings organiser tool, which it does very well too. However, if in the settings, you make it a hidden poll, only allow each participant to choose one option and  limit the number of participants per timeslot to 1 it becomes a nifty online 1to1 sign up sheet.  Well worth a look.

It should look something like this:

http://www.doodle.com/wnu4baan3psa2ru5

Music maestro

A recent online discussion regarding the use of popular music, and the complex copyright difficulties this can cause staff and students prompts me to remind readers about places to obtain royalty free music, and a plug for a blog I strongly recommend.  I first wrote about some sources for royalty free and creative commons sourced music  in this blog in 2009, including Kevin Macleod's http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/ .

Recently the US edublogger Larry Ferlazzo reviewed his most popular posts over the years, and in there amongst them was this post  "The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects" from way back in 2008,  but obviously still found very useful by educators across the world.  I have also added Larry's blog to my recommended blog listing, below and to the right of this posting.

Prezify your Powerpoint

I am just doing a live broadcast Prezi for beginners tutorial in college today, so a post about about how you can now turn your PowerPoint presentations into Prezi presentations is probably timely.  I am less of a fan of Prezi than some people, mainly because for me the quality of a presentation has less to do with software choice and more to do with presentation skills.  If you have a bad PowerPoint show, it will export to a bad Prezi show.  However I also have to say that Prezi does not force you down the linear route that PowerPoint does, and Prezi is also very effective in allowing you to look at the big picture before zooming in to the fine detail.  If you have not tried or experienced a Prezi, (it's online and free in its basic form) it is well worth a look, there are excellent tutorials on the Prezi website.
 (Thanks to James Clay for info on this, his blog is always worth, reading, link below on the right)



http://youtu.be/WZ5iWFYowI0

Visual Google image search

Do a Google image search, for say, "pingpong".  Nothing new so far.  But did you know you can drag one of the images you are presented with into the Google search box?  This then searches for places on the web where this image occurs!  You can also then search for visually similar images.  Once more I need to say that for me, in the college environment, this does not work in Internet Explorer, you need to use Firefox or Chrome.

infocus

Too much information?
Highlight the bit of a web page you want, and share it!
Infocus is an interesting tool that I can see having uses in education, for teachers and students.  I suppose it is another way of cutting through the blizzard of information to highlight what is important on a webpage.  So... teachers can highlight the essential message, but also students could be tasked with extracting the important part of a web pages message.  Drag it as a bookmark to your bookmark bar and it is quick and easy to create a highlighted page.  Try it, it's easier to do than explain!