...from the elab...

Speech recognition in Windows and Apple

2012-01-30T08:00:00.005Z

Is speech recognition software finally coming of age? Apple's Siri listens and responds to you, and the Dragon Dictation Apple app seems to work quite well too. There is also now speech recognition built into Windows 7, so staff and students can now access this at any Windows 7 machine, through the Start button and Control Panel. Watch this simple voice recognition example, or follow the excellent built in tutorial. As with any software there is a learning curve, and it is still no magic solution; you do need to have a certain discipline in speaking. However if for you a keyboard has always been an obstacle, it may be just what you have been waiting for!

mentormob

2012-01-23T08:00:00.006Z

As one door closes...
In the past I have found MultiUrl very useful, (see previous posting) in the way you could wrap up a number of URLs into one, so that you had a learning package. However you can now no longer create new packages with MultiUrl, although at present, old ones continue to work. As one tool disappears another arrives, and mentor mob offers a more sophisticated model. The concept is an admirable one of of a learning and teaching community, where you can if you wish open up your learning resources for others to improve and add to. At the very least it is a flexible way of rolling some web learning resources into a package; well more of a playlist actually. It is easy to swop the order of resources in the playlist just using drag and drop, and you can also incorporate Google docs. To demonstrate here's a package of screencasts around the use of images in Word 2010 wrapped together into a playlist using mentormob.

Learning Playlist Developing Image Skills In Word 2010 on MentorMob

thanks to Paul Kendrick for this

learnclick

2012-01-16T08:48:00.002Z

An easy to use online cloze test/gap fill creator is available at http://learnclick.com/.

As the site says,
"Take any text, mark the words you want to learn and learnclick.com transforms your text into a cloze dletion test"

Portable apps

2012-01-10T14:59:00.000Z

One of the (many) popular sessions in our elearning training day was on Access Apps, (thanks due to Catherine and Malcolm at the RSC Eastern) a suite of free apps around the theme of accessibility, including text to speech software to speak digital content, mindmapping, magnifiers, and a host of others. The great advantage of this is the portability this gives you, so you can work with your favourite apps on any PC, at home or in college. Portable Apps works on the same theme, with a host of popular software including dropbox, the chrome browser and skype all running from a USB stick. Take a look.

Google graph plotter

2012-01-04T09:05:00.001Z

Calling all maths teachers: Google will now draw graphs for you, just like that! Type the equation(s) into the standard Google search box (I just separated three equations by commas in this example) and hey presto you get a graph. Not only that, but it is a "live" graph, that you can zoom and scroll. It is then easy to grab as an image, but what I would like to do is embed this as a live object; have yet to discover if this is possible. Thanks to Paul Kendrick for pointing this feature out to me.

Happy Christmas to all my readers

2011-12-19T08:00:00.001Z

Regifting again... pre-used, but it is still useful to know how easy it is to make an animated gif with a webcam, so here goes...

fakebook

2011-12-12T08:00:00.002Z

That's faKebook, not facebook.
Quite a while ago here I blogged about Pride and Prejudice in the style of facebook, and also a "live " Samuel Pepys blog. Fakebook gives you the opportunity to challenge your students to synthesize modern social media with their topic of study, perhaps "to chart the plot of a book, the development of a character, a series of historical events, the debates and relationships between people" in the style of facebook. There is a 90 second tutorial on the site, and if you are using well known characters (such as my Lady Mabeth example here) it will go off and search for appropriate images for you.
Whatever next; someone tweeting the second world war? Well yes actually...
(fakebook is a find from the goldmine that is Larry Ferlazzo's blog)

View Fullscreen | Create your own

a web whiteboard

2011-12-05T08:00:00.005Z

A web whiteboard pure and simple: http://awwapp.com. Just what it says on the can, and you can get cracking using it without even signing up. Start drawing, and share the URL with others and collaborate. You can save the finished board as an image (png) file. Perfect for touch screen mobile devices. Really must improve my life drawing skills...

thanks to Ralph Holland from the champs list for this

LiveMinutes

2011-11-28T08:00:00.009Z

LiveMinutes is a new, free web conferencing software, incorporating a whiteboard, document sharing with audio and video. You can also incorporate Skype. I have not yet used it for real, but the features and functionality look really useful: as the name implies it even wraps up some minutes of the meeting for you! Well worth a look

Photo Albums in PowerPoint

2011-11-21T09:48:00.001Z

I am grateful to Dave Foord for his video below explaining how to use the photo album feature in PowerPoint 2007 to quickly and easily upload a whole bunch of large photos into a PowerPoint show, then compress them to a reasonable size, suitable for then sharing via email or a VLE such as Blackboard. Given that often public sharing is not appropriate in education, and that Blackboard is not very friendly towards images, this is a very useful procedure. It is also probably worth mentioning to colleagues here at City College that you can still right click on a picture (or pictures) in a folder and select resize picture if you just want to batch resize images you have captured.

NB the video uses Office 2007, but I am sure you can translate to Office 2010, it is very similar.

Ribbon Hero 2

2011-11-14T08:00:00.002Z

Learning Microsoft Office 2010 as a game
Microsoft have resurrected the incredibly annoying paperclip in an ironic way, to become part of a game approach to developing Office skills. We have this on our nework now at college, and I am sure both staff and students will find it useful to delop their skills. Who says Microsoft have no sense of humour?

Flubaroo and Google forms

2011-11-07T08:00:00.002Z

Most people know my enthusiasm for Google forms, and I am grateful to a new colleague Paul Kendrick here at CCN for bringing Flubaroo to my attention. This is a free script you can add to Google spreadsheets in order to mark the answers your students have submitted, so Google forms gains the functionality of a multi choice questions creator and marker. If you collect their email addresses in your form it will email them with their results too! To find out more watch their video:

A More Visual CV

2011-10-31T08:00:00.003Z

It's probably about time the CV had a makeover. Vizualize.me is an interesting idea, dragging the staid and formal CV kicking and screaming into the 21st Century world of infographics and visual impact. You can buld up your profile manually, or you can use your Linked in account if you wish, and import your information from there. Sign up and give it a go.

urtak

2011-10-24T08:00:00.004+01:00

Urtak is a simple survey tool, that only allows yes/no/don't care anwers, but with a twist: participants can add their own questions to the set! You still have control over the approval of suggested questions, and can embed the urtak into a webpage; (as below)Their website has a good explanation of what it is about, but hey, lets do it rather than talk about it, and feel free to add questions of your own, (although I will need to approve.) By the way, Urtak is an Icelandic word for a statistical sample!

Urtaks in education

My Brainshark

2011-10-17T08:00:00.005+01:00

My Brainshark is a web tool that allows you to add audio to some uploaded content, and publish to the web. This came from Russell Stannard's site, http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/ where you will find a number of instructional videos on use, so I thought I would give you an example of the finished product. Easy to add audio to PowerPoint, or a document, or an image, or a mix. You can then embed or link to the final product as here. Viewers can also review and comment on the experience, so a useful way to let students peer review their own presentations in preparation for the real thing?

MyFonts

2011-10-10T08:00:00.003+01:00

Perhaps a bit more specialist than usual, but if you have ever come across a piece of design on the web, or out there in the real world, with a fontstyle you would like to emulate, Myfonts is a useful website that will identify the fonts used for you. There is even an app for the iphone, so you take a photo of the font anywhere, to identify right there on the spot.
(Without becoming too geeky, I think I am right in saying Gill Sans MT, available in Word 2010, is not a million miles away from the London Underground Johnston font, but correct me if I am wrong)

Free ebooks: bookboon

2011-10-03T08:00:00.001+01:00

bookboon website

Bookboon is an ebook service, covering a range of topics (I think the textbooks are mainly HE level). The books do have some in-text ads, but hey, it is free! For colleagues here at City College, note they have just released some more manuals on Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2010. This site featured on the BBC's Click TV programme, itself always worth following)

Microsoft Maths

2011-09-26T08:33:00.000+01:00

Microsoft Mathematics is a very useful piece of software for Maths teachers. We have it on our network as a free-standing app, as well as a tab/ribbon within Word. This makes it much quicker and easier to embed graphs and expressions within a Word document. But it will do much more, factorising expressions, solving equations... I am still working up the steeper part of the learning curve myself. Here's a quick (4 minute) video introduction of some basics I have made. Don't forget to maximise the screen grab to cover my talking head! External viewers may like to go to the Microsoft free download page.
Once again, a real advantage of free software is students themselves can use it to create and learn, so tell them too!

OneNote

2011-09-19T08:00:00.001+01:00

Our move to Office 2010 here has meant a totally new piece of software available to staff and students: OneNote. This is a notebook/scrapbook, that means you can put together information form a wide varety of sources, and then annotate over. Just right clicking on a bit of the web allows you to send to OneNote, which also helpfully keeps track of where it came from. You can easily add from anywhere: ppts, email, word docs and so on. So for assembling resources for an assignment or putting together a portfolio it is well worth a look. There are tutorials on the Microsoft office training website, or start off with my modest OneNote introduction in 3mins 30 seconds

GoAnimate

2011-09-12T08:00:00.002+01:00

A simple animation programme, easy for staff and students to use. The free version restricts you to 10 lines of dialogue, but the discipline of that is probably a good thing. Lots of possibilities for students to create dialogues, and have fun. You can also export to YouTube. Here's one I made with a couple of CCN staff discussing what to do if they had questions about Office 2010...

GoAnimate.com: elab by Phil A

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

twijector

2011-09-12T08:00:00.000+01:00

Twijector is a Twitter projector (you see what they've done there?), so you can project the online discussion live whilst a conference or presentation is going on. Your audience can ask questions in real time, and make immediate comments with their mobile devices via twitter, and it will appear in the projected image. As the blurb says,
a "real-time twitter wall for conferences, events, cafe and classrooms"
Clicking this image should take you to the feed for #tourofbritain

Quizlet Flashcard Tool

2011-09-05T08:00:00.001+01:00

Quizlet is a simple to use online flashcard creator, free to use. Its most immediate and obvious use is with language learning, but it can also be useful for any study area, and ties in a number of online learning activities around the cards. As with most of these tools, the value comes from thinking about how you can incorporate it into the wider learning process, and the fact is is open to all to use. Perhaps start off with a set you create as teacher, but then ask your students to create and share their own resources using the tool. There are lots of sets of cards already available too. Here's the introductory video

Tour of Quizlet.com from Phil Freo on Vimeo.

History pin

2011-08-29T08:00:00.002+01:00

history pin is a fabulous resource that allows you to seach through old photos of places, and even superimpose them onto a present day Google streeview, to see how things have changed. My illustration shows the tramlines going down in Tombland, Norwich. Even better is the fact that this is crowd sourced, so you can join in yourself, and add your own photos to the resource. But for a better general idea take a look at their introductory video below

Youtube built in video tools

2011-08-22T08:00:00.002+01:00

I'm sure you use YouTube as a resource, but why not think about setting up an account (you can use a Google account if you have one) and becoming an author? Digital video cameras are very cheap, and YouTube now has all kinds of editing, annotation and transcript tools built in to the interface. In this quick demo I could not get the transcript to work, but as you can see experimented with some of the other basic tools. Just to emphasize, all this was done within YouTube, not using any other software. Give the tools a go: perhaps a quick introduction to this term's first module, or induction information for latecomers?

Some Geogebra Files

2011-07-18T11:33:00.000+01:00

Just to quickly follow up the kind of thins you can produce with Geogebra, here's a link to some files, that should give you Mathematical diagrams you can manipulate for yourself, and see the results:
http://www.rangercollege.edu/math/geogebra/geogebra_links.htm

Geogebra

2011-07-12T12:17:00.001+01:00

This is an early warning really, we will not have Geogebra on our system until our Windows 7 upgrade later this year. But what I have seen of this looks very interesting for Maths/Science teachers, and I am really looking forward to exploring further. Take a look at the Geogebra website to find out more.

timers in powerpoint

2011-07-04T08:00:00.002+01:00

For anyone like City College, moving from Office 2003 to Office 2010, this practical comparison of how you can create a timer to work within a PowerPoint slide hopefully kills two birds with one stone:

You can start to appreciate the different ways of working in the two versions of PowerPoint
You find out how to make the timer, to give your presentations more interactive possibilities!

Making a timer in PowerPoint 2003 screencast (5 mins)
Making a timer in PowerPoint 2010 screencast (5 mins)

illustration once more courtesy of Wordle

Peerwise

2011-06-20T08:00:00.001+01:00

I am grateful to Helen Walmsley (via the IT champions list) for bringing Peerwise to my attention. It is a multi choice question authoring tool, but the twist is that the students create the questions, and network around them. I am at the early stages of experimentation, but it is certainly worth a look.

video resources apart from YouTube

2011-06-13T08:00:00.001+01:00

YouTube is so dominant it can drown out other sources of video sometimes. I mentioned recently, the Teachers TV clips are available again in a number of places and it's worth mentioning some of the other video resources available, for free and through the JISC Collections. Try these for starters

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/

http://vimeo.com/

http://www.videojug.com/

The following JISC collections are free at present, but require a password (here at college through the ATHENS system)

Newsfilm online news film from ITN/Reuters archives

BFI in view "over 2,000 non-fiction film and television titles from the 20th century to the early 21st" and searchable.

wallwisher or lino it?

2011-06-06T08:33:00.000+01:00

I have been a fan of the online pinboard Walllwisher for some time, but do seem to have encountered some performance issues of late. Definitely worth a look, with additional functionality is a new contender: lino it at http://en.linoit.com/. One useful new feature is a calendar, so you can set to do dates, and receive an email reminder.

Teachers TV

2011-05-23T08:00:00.003+01:00

Following the demise of the Department for Education's provision of this service, the materials have now been picked up by a couple of providers, and should continue to be available free.

The TES ~~has some of~~ now has all of the videos available, and there are two websites also promising to make all of them available very soon:

http://www.schoolsworld.tv/

http://www.teachersmedia.co.uk/

take your pick!

Creative Commons picture from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/videocrab/116136642/

fill in any pdf online

2011-05-16T09:28:00.000+01:00

pdf documents are good for some purposes, but not for others. In particular, if you have some application form to fill in that's a pdf document, then that can be tricky. Perhaps the company are wanting to check your handwriting skills, and want paper copy, sent to them via snail mail. If not then you may find the website https://www.fillanypdf.com/ useful. It allows you to upload a pdf, add text to it in the boxes, then download the result. I have not looked in detail at the conditions of use, of the site, but worth a look.

Fun creative tools for learning

2011-05-09T08:00:00.005+01:00

There are a whole host of simple to use creative web tools, where you can add your own text/image to a template to create an arresting image. This may seem trivial, but making something memorable is an essential part of the learning process. You can also turn this around and give students the task to use them, for example to create a newspaper clipping summarising the key elements of a piece of learning. So in tribute to Tom Kuhlman, who brought most of these to my attention:

redkid.net do a host of sign generators, including a road (or freeway) sign generator.
fodey allows you to create a newspaper cutting from some text.
bighugelabs have a variety of templates, which include a motivational poster, popart poster and a "Hockneyiser".

Also don't forget the bus slogan generator I blogged about some time ago, and the dynamic Einstein picture.

Triptico Desktop App

2011-05-02T08:00:00.009+01:00

I have previously blogged about the Wordmagnets tool, which has had a very good reception, and is now installed here at college across our network. I am hoping to build into our new Windows 7 set-up the complete Triptico Desktop App, which includes WordMagnets as well as some other really useful teacher tools. My illustration is a team scoreboard for three teams, but the tools also include timers, and random student pickers with a variety of uses. Congratulations to David from Triptico for these free tools.

Also for WordMagnets afficionados, David has produced a screencast on using mystery magnets. Not sure what they are? Find out here

More Open Educational Resources

2011-04-26T08:01:00.001+01:00

Three more ideas for educational resources:

iTunes U has a tremendous amount of useful content. "More than 800 universities have active iTunes U sites. About half of these institutions — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and UC Berkeley distribute their content on the iTunes store". I still come across colleagues who think you need an ipod or Apple computer to access iTunes, this is not the case, you can install on a Windows PC, although at present this would have to be your home computer, as we do not have itunes within the college system.
Open Yale "courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University"
OER commons is a "structured database of links to high-quality resources found on other websites. OER Commons provides a single point of access through which educators, students, and all learners can search,browse, evaluate, and discuss over 30,000 high-quality Open Educational Resources."

The Khan Academy: Maths and Science videos and more.

2011-04-11T08:05:00.002+01:00

I had looked at the Khan Academy before, but thanks to Andrew Hill for reminding me about this impressive resource at the RSC Eastern Region e-learning meeting. There is a vast range of instructional videos and practice resources, particularly in Maths and Science. It has a particular pedagogical model which you may or may not like, but is well worth a look, and at the very least gives your students an alternative resource. If you sign up, you can watch the videos and then test your knowledge with examples. The range really is huge; for example, in the Maths section you go from single digit addition to partial derivatives and beyond. Watch what Bill Gates has to say about it.

Developing drawing skills: draw your own iPhone

2011-04-04T08:00:00.002+01:00

Looking back at Tom Kuhlman's back catalogue I found this recommendation of a Screenr screencast by Stephanie Harnett about how to create an iPhone image just using the Powerpoint drawing tools. This is an excellent learning experience even if you don't really want an iPhone image, as apart from anything else, you need to translate the instructions, as far as possible, from the later version of Powerpoint used here, to our ageing 2003 model! I am proud to say the illustration right is all my own work, and I have learned a lot more about using the drawing tools.

Watch the video below for some tuition and then have a go yourself, why you can even adapt and draw an iPad!

Photo fun with photofunia

2011-03-28T10:57:00.002+01:00

Whilst we are on the subject of photo manipulation... Some real fun can be had at the appropriately named photofunia.com. The image here required no skill on my part apart from uploading my standard web picture, all the magic is done for you. You can also put up advertising posters on the underground, or in New York, or become a piece of graffiti. All you do is upload your photo, and save the file produced

Online photo editing:pixellate yourself with fotoflexer

2011-03-21T08:00:00.001Z

There are now a variety of sophisticated photo manipulation tools just available on the web. The effects on offer make it very easy to let your imagination run riot. One that came up on the ILT Champions mailing list,the free fotoflexer.com even makes it easier for you to protect the innocent, so here's me looking slightly pixellated. You can experiment with the advanced settings to pixellate just a portion of the image, you can also set the degree of pixellation. This may well be useful to remove identifiable areas from photos, either individuals or settings. But that is just the start, there are a host of other effects and adjustments.
You might also be interested in the online Photoshop Express, or Picnik, that ties in with Google's Picasa (which requires a download, but I personally recommend and use on my home pc)

TodaysMeet

2011-03-14T08:00:00.008Z

Another gem I found from Russell Stannard is TodaysMeet. There cannot be a quicker way than this of opening up a channel of web communication, (which can include a twitter feed) for any kind of event. It immediately gives your audience or your students a place to discuss. No log on and no sign in (so not secure in any sense) but simplicity itself. If you are brave enough you could project it as you speak to a (connected) audience, picking up immediate feedback or questions from them live on the screen.

Open Educational Resources

2011-03-07T08:00:00.002Z

A couple of weeks ago I attended a course at NIACE looking at Open Educational Resources, which is where I was reaquainted with TES Connect. These are freely available quality resources available on the web, that you can use and possibly repurpose for your students.Some obvious starting places to look for access to top quality resources are

Open Learn from the Open University (free access to some OU materials with discussion forums)
MIT OpenCourseware (free lecture notes, exams and videos from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, introductory video embedded below)
Jorum: Learning and teaching resources, shared by the UK Further and Higher Education community, although many are open to all
NLN materials free bite sized learning you can combine into collections that your students can access through a single URL in the VLE or an email. Colleagues at CCCN contact me for the college password.

illustration from Wordle

TES Connect

2011-02-28T08:00:00.001Z

In the continued search for new ideas, sometimes well established websites can get pushed to the back of the queue, so thanks to Seb Schmoller for for bringing back to my attention TES Connect as a source for teachers to share their resources. As the promo says "Over 56,855 free teaching resources to use in your classroom ... today" There is also a forums section that I have not explored, but I'm sure is very useful.

There's a large searchable database, as well as a ratings system, so you can see the most popular downloads. You need to sign up to download, but it is free. So if you are looking for schemes of work, useful ppt shows, worksheets around your subject area it is well worth a look. You can also of course upload your own resources!

Twist our words

2011-02-21T08:00:00.006Z

A Channel 4 bit of fun, with a fairly limited but safe vocabulary, put words into the mouths of the celebrities. A surefire winner with students learning English? They can make and share their creations.
Twist our words

as I seem to be having embedding problems here, it's at present probably easier for you to link to the video I made

MultiURL and Ozge's blog

2011-02-14T08:00:00.002Z

Thanks to Russell Stannard I discovered a new blog to recommend: Ozge's blog, with lots of great ideas for using technology for teaching and learning. One tool I found there I have already used is MultiURL, which allows you to give out a link, which actually then leads to multiple links. It will count how many times the links are clicked, and can present the links in different ways, including a random mode, to add an element of chance to where you end up. So just to demonstrate, take a chance and end up doing some Excel Essentials training ( it will take you to one of 6 possible videos I have, all 3 minutes or under)

Yes I want to do some random Excel Essentials training but only have 3 minutes spare (get your headphones ready)

Safer Internet Use

2011-02-07T08:00:00.004Z

Tuesday 8th February is Safer Internet Day (SID11) and listening last week to another news report about online bullying, this seems a good time to mention the range resources produced by CEOP around a whole range of topics, including cyberbullying, sexting and general internet safety. The resources include materials designed for students with special needs and disabilities. There is also a dramatisation available with actors using British Sign Language.
A useful starting place for teachers is http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/Teachers/Resources/

thanks to Malcolm Bodley for bringing this to my attention

posterous apps and groups

2011-01-31T08:00:00.014Z

I blogged a long time ago about posterous, and have always liked using it as an introduction for blogging beginners, as it effectively makes blogging as easy as composing an email. That's because in order to blog, you errr... send an email. Before Christmas I started to draft a mention of the iPhone app, which allows you to post text, audio pictures and video to blog very easily (see posterous video below). Before I got round to publishing that, they introduced posterous groups, so you can share docs, images, videos among a private audience. The neat thing here is that this has been done whilst preserving the basic simplicity of just sending an email. If you are looking to branch out into blogging yourself it is well worth a look, and check out James Clay's blog post which looks at the groups feature functionality.

embedplus

2011-01-24T08:00:00.001Z

embedplus is a new (to me) entrant in the online industry built around YouTube. (See earlier posts on TubeChop et al). This embellishes the video with a number of features that are of use to teachers and students:

you can for example

set up chapters to jump to within the video
annotate sections with comments that appear at a particluar point
playing in slow motion
zoom in to a section

And it gives you the embed code to place in your blog or Blackboard course!

Well worth a look

Blackboard Users Conference

2011-01-17T08:00:00.003Z

Some musings from the Durham Blackboard Users Conference I attended last week

Blackboard taster and orientation courses are a useful idea to familiarise new students with the online environment. They can share the same basic structure of the "real" course, but have a simplified structure to develop understanding and engagement.
A" dropbox" video solution for teaching staff that allows you to upload any video format, deals with all the dull technical details and just give you a simple URL you can link to, seems like a good idea.
QR codes are interesting, but still seem to me to be a solution in search of a problem.
LTI (Learning Tool Operability) integration in Blackboard that allows different online learning systems to pass on user details and tracking information without a need to log in again looks a real step forward , if this becomes a commonly used standard.
Video needs to be SHORT! Single-take short clips of teaching staff, explaining their good practice can be very useful. Leave the how-to and other detail as separate but easily accessible resources for interested parties to access if interested.

Thanks to presenters Nichola Hayes, Andy Ramsden, Guy Pursey, Mike Cameron, Stephen Vickers for their inspiration.
Conference presentations link

CClicensed picture from Flickr: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2505/4171839827_6170824774_m.jpg

Demise of Delicious?

2011-01-10T10:25:00.000Z

I have previously recommended the Social bookmarking tool Delicious here, as a way students and staff can share use and discovery of websites as part of the learning process. I am not sure if Delicious is to be sold, closing or what, but it is another example of the ephemeral nature of some web 2 tools, even as well established as Delicious. So...you do need to think about back up if it is a tool you use with students. If you want to consider the alternatives, take a look a the Lifehacker article on the best alternatives to Delicious.

Happy New PowerPoint

2011-01-04T09:01:00.000Z

Tom Kuhlman's blog continues to be an inspiration in the inventive use of PowerPoint and high quality elearning generally. He also makes excellent Screeenr screencasts to explain and explore how to make the most of whatever level of resources and expertise you have available. His posting at the end of last year: "More than 100 PowerPoint Tutorials and a Free template" is jam packed with excellent materials to inspire you. So if you have made a new year's resolution to take your use of PowerPoint to the next level, I strongly urge you to take a look. In no time at all you will be creating iphone graphics, making photo corners to hold images, and creating a paper stack, to name but three of the hundred ideas.

Embedding TubeChop videos in PowerPoint

2010-12-16T10:13:00.002Z

I have previously blogged about TubeChop, which allows you to selectively crop YouTube videos, and it has been well received by staff and students. This means you can link to (or embed) just a portion of a YouTube video, rather than the whole clip. It was only a matter of time before someone asked the question: "Can I embed the cropped video into a PowerPoint show as well as my Blackboard course?" A quick Googling revealed the answer is yes, but it does involve a bit of work extracting the video location from the embed code TubeCrop offers you, not difficult if you follow the instructions available here...
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/66006434/Inserting-a-Portion-of-a-YouTube-Video

Random Acts...

2010-12-07T10:51:00.001Z

A colleague asked me for a random student generator, that's something to randomly pick students from a group, rather than generates random students to attend your classes. This hopefully reassures students they have been selected to answer a question or do a task purely randomly. A quick Google search found any number, and I went with this from Super Teacher Tools, , which picks from a list of names you have uploaded until they have been all exhausted. I also came across a PowerPoint slide that randomly picked a rectangular shape, from a set of 10, which I have adapted to include as many rectangles as you want. I thought this would be good because you could put your students' photos into the slide, to personalise it a bit more. The downside of this one was the fact that each click gives you a totally random choice, so it re-picks from those already selected. That's fate for you! Contact me if you want the PowerPoint slide.
(illustration courtesy Wordle of course)

Some More Christmas Ideas

2010-11-29T08:58:00.001Z

A bit more regifting of ideas... Gifup.com still is good fun, particularly if you have access to a webcam, but you can also upload images. I also still rate Wallwisher if all you want is a simple open noticeboard for people to add their thoughts, why, you can even stick YouTube videos on the board. And why not set your students of the task of putting together a Christmas Prezi, rather than a Christmas PowerPoint? All these have their own postings somewhere in this blog's past, but for quick reference
http://www.gifup.com/
www.wallwisher.com/
http://prezi.com/

Some Christmas Ideas

2010-11-22T08:00:00.001Z

No apologies being early, I need to give you some time before the term ends. Also no apologies for repeating some from last year, (is this called re-gifting???)
How about a Christmas quiz, using a Google form? (see below, complete with Christmas lights) You can link to, or even embed the form into your Blackboard course. You will need a Google account, so sign up first.
Wordmagnet ideas : very easy to produce a noughts and crosses game, or how about a Blockbusters board, using colour fill to show the right answers from your two teams? Or a maths challenge to drag digits and operations to give a pre determined answer? ( I am happy to give CCN colleagues the Wordmagnets files, just email me) In fact, if you can bear the sight of a festive me for six minutes, there is also a short xmas ideas video with Wordmagnets, Wordle and Animoto ideas illustrated.

Don't forget the jigsaw creator too, http://www.jigsawplanet.com/ is still a great tool to create and share jigsaws of your own photos, for both staff and students.

Mouse Mischief

2010-11-15T08:00:00.001Z

CCN Colleague Jaime Beaumont brought this to my attention , and it seems to be a neat and economical way to increase involvement in activities in classrooms that have just a single PC and projector, by allowing up to 25 mice to be used by sudents to answer questions, drag and drop etc etc. As we are still on Office 2003 I could not try it out within college(2007 and beyond required) , but a very limited home trial seems to prove the concept. Take a look at the promo video or visit the Mouse Mischief website.

Free web tools: frustration = learning opportunity

2010-11-08T07:32:00.002Z

I am a great enthusiast for the fabulous free web 2 tools out there. They can give great opportunities for creativity, collaboration and fun. Where would this blog be without them? However I do need to sometimes temper this with caution, and like with most things in teaching and learning, whether traditional or cutting edge, it is always wise to have a plan B tucked away just in case. Not always sure of the cause, network problems here or the chill wind of economic situation, but my recent failures include:

Discovering Xtranormal did not allow you to publish movies without purchasing credits in the middle of a training session
Finding the free WordMagnets on the web unavailable (temporarily I hope; glad we bought the very good value network version)
Recommending Vocaroo to an ESOL colleague, (following a Russell Stannard write up) only to find it had promptly stopped working, at least on my machine.
Problems with web based screen casting tools such as Screenr here in college

So use the experience for personal learning rather than an excuse for not using web 2 tools:

Look out for alternative tools, (Jane Knight's top 100 elearning tools is a good place to start)
Check if there is some way to download content, even simple screengrabs in an emergency
Sometimes it is worth paying for things!

CC photo of a sad gorilla from http://www.flickr.com/photos/lf-photodesign/1487925030/

Motion paths in PowerPoint

2010-11-01T08:01:00.005Z

I regularly mention here Tom Kuhlman and his rapid elearning blog (quick link below right). In particular he has fabulous PowerPoint skills, so if you want to take yours to the next level, his postings are always worth reading. The posting in September on using motion paths in PowerPoint was one to fire the imagination, using a tool I rarely use, but that has great potential for learning. Have a look at the original posting mentioning motion paths, (flash once looks an interesting effect, if you know what I mean) and the update featuring a motion path add in.

There's snow on the way...

2010-10-25T08:03:00.001+01:00

An emergency snow lesson? That's snow lesson, that's online learning!
A tip from an inadvertent posting on the excellent ILT champions mailing list I subscribe to. As winter approaches why not have in reserve an online session (or two?) you can release to students in the event of college closure due to whatever climatic or other unforseen emergencies? Pick a topic that lends itself well to an online approach, post the materials onto your Blackboard course but make it unavailable until required. You will need to brief your students beforehand that these measures are in place, and rather than going snowballing they will then need to log on and access the work. You may be spoiling their fun, but the learning continues unaffected.

Prezi Revisited

2010-10-18T08:00:00.001+01:00

I blogged about Prezi some time ago, the zooming, whizzy and new(ish) less linear alternative to PowerPoint. A central point I always make when addressing students or staff about doing presentations is to guard against the seduction of the plethora of toys and effects offered by presentation software. Think about what you are going to say, and how that works with what's on screen is my central message. However I now receive a growing number of requests for Prezi training, so it's time to improve my own skill levels. There is a good introductory training video, it offers embed code, and if you follow their advice to minimize motion, or check you audience have taken their sea sickness tablets beforehand, it is fun and easy to learn and use; embedded exemplar below.

Audio feedback

2010-10-11T08:00:00.002+01:00

Why not talk about a student's assignment as you are marking it onscreen? With a simple mic you can embed the audio snippets into the Word document as you go. Send the assignment back to the student and they can hear your feedback as they look at the assignment. CCN staff were inspired by a training session delivered by Nadim Bakshov of Highbury College during our sumer staff training day on the topic of audio feedback. You can even put a button onto the Word toolbar that brings up the comment recorder with one click. If you are interested have a look at this video on customising the Word toolbar.

Embedding revisited

2010-10-04T08:00:00.004+01:00

Bring the best of the web directly into your Blackboard course. CCN's new version of Blackboard makes for even easier embedding of YouTube videos, SlideShare presentations and Flickr images, as they are built in to the content building tool. However what about Google maps and forms, Videojug, Wallwisher, iPadio, to name but a few? (A quick browse of this blog will give you some ideas, it is littered with embedded elements) The skills needed to embed a million and one embeddable elements on the web are so quick and easy to learn, it really is worth knowing about. My video on embedding in Blackboard, (although using the older version of Bb) is still relevant if you want to know more.
text illustration created with Wordle

dipping a toe into mobile learning

2010-09-27T08:20:00.000+01:00

This post is via a mobile device, practising what i am preaching I hope (you will need headphones and two minutes of your time)

Creative commons illustration from http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharynmorrow/222401409/

Improving PowerPoint Skills

2010-09-20T08:00:00.002+01:00

I have discussed PowerPoint a number of occasions here, and despite all the bad press, and being the butt of jokes, it continues to be the classroom weapon (?) of choice for teachers. I don't see a problem with that as long as it is used imaginatively, professionally and more interactively. Dave Foord has produced a number of video tutorials on developing PowerPoint Skills that I strongly recommend (His blog is also listed below right). They are chunked up into convenient 2-5 minute blocks, so you can dip in and out as you go. I learned something from each one!

so take a look at

Google instant

2010-09-13T08:03:00.003+01:00

If you have a Google account you may have noticed that the way in which the standard Google search works has subtly changed this week, hopefully making search a bit easier and quicker. Results appear as you type, so you can refine your search as you go. So the illustration shows the live results showing as I Google " from the elab", but before adding the final "b". This sounds a fairly small change, but can help students to see the direction their search is going as they type, so hopefully they can then see how to improve it too. To try this out here in college you will need to use the Firefox browser, as the feature does not work on our default browser IE7 at time of writing. Now what am I going to do with that 2-5 seconds I have saved on my search?
Google's intro to Google instant

Drop box

2010-09-06T08:00:00.002+01:00

As we use a wider and wider variety of different devices to access our materials, the problem of keeping things in sync becomes worse. I think we have all experienced the situation of one version of a file living on one's work PC, one version on the home PC, one version on a mobile device and another on a USB stick just for good measure. Which is the most recent? I have been using DropBox for a while now, to give me access to files from a variety of devices, including mobile devices. It works well, and I particularly like the way that on Windows devices on which it is installed it just comes up as another folder within your Documents folder, so saving is exactly the same procedure as "normal". On devices where it is not installed (e.g. College machines) you access the files through a web interface. It also keeps things in sync a lot more easily that doing it manually! Well worth a look.

Word Clouds

2010-08-31T08:00:00.003+01:00

There are so many Word cloud generators now they are almost worthy of a Word cloud themselves. For an great overview, of the various interesting features and teaching ideas using them talke a look at the excellent Russell Stannard video tutorial.

Auto Twittering

2010-08-26T08:37:00.009+01:00

An interesting use of Twitter I saw demonstrated by James Clay at the Eastern Region elearning fair last term was automatic tweeting built into a PowerPoint. Basically, as you show a PowerPoint you can build in tweets that will automatically be sent out as particular slides are shown. If your audience has mobile devices they can pick up on a relevant link, image or anything else immediately. I have got this to work at home, but not yet succeeded in college, but it is an interesting idea.

To experiment with this (and some other ideas too) you need to use the PowerPoint show from here:

http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint-twitter-tools/

Hmmm, perhaps ther's more to Twitter than I first thought...

Ipadio broadcast from a mobile phone

2010-07-28T12:05:00.000+01:00

Apple app: audionote

2010-07-26T08:00:00.000+01:00

I have been experimenting with the Audionote app for Apple devices, a combined notes and voice recorder, which can then playback almost as a movie, which allows you to jump to the bit of the meeting you want to review. I am trying this out on an iPod touch, and it could be very useful for learners and staff on such a device, but on a iPad... fabulous!

Once you start investigating apps it can be addictive, I must also go and talk to IT services about Air mouse pro...

Google forms revisited

2010-07-19T08:42:00.004+01:00

We recently hosted our staff learning day, and it was another excellent opportunity to use the power of Google forms(part of Google docs),both for collecting what sessions people wanted to sign up for, and also to allow them to evaluate the sessions afterwards. The evaluation replaced a paper-heavy optical mark form, so it also helped to meet the green agenda. What I really like about Google forms is that they are easy to set up, easy to distribute and embed,so make it very easy to reach your audience. However when I go in I see everything ready for number crunching, in a good old fashioned spreadsheet.
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etherpad replacements

2010-07-13T08:49:00.000+01:00

If like me you are still missing etherpad, which gave you live collaborative editing for a group of people, then there are at least two alternatives you might want to consider:

http://sync.in/

http://typewith.me/

(You can even install the etherpad software on your own web server, but IT services were not keen here)

Tell me what you think

Google Wonder wheel and the Eastern efair

2010-07-05T08:06:00.001+01:00

The RSC Eastern Region e fair was excellent as ever last week. Great keynote from James Clay on the challenges faced by those trying to inspire staff to make greater use of elearning, and lots of teacher practitioners talking about down to earth classroom (and out of classroom) practice of elearning. One quick tip I learner from Shilpa Kotecha at Oaklands College is the Google Wonder wheel, another classic example of a feature that is very useful but easy to miss. It turns your search into a more fluid representation of possibilities, more of a map to explore rather than a linear list. Search Google as normal, then in the lefthand column under More Search Tools selct Wonder wheel. The wheel continues to expand and change as you make more selections, give it a go.

Tagxedo: rival to Wordle?

2010-07-02T09:47:00.000+01:00

Tagxedo

This looks wonderful, giving you the ability to make the design in the shape of ..., rather than the random cloud shape of Wordle. Unfortunately it requires a more up to date version of Microsoft Silverlight than we have in College, but definitely one to explore at home, and we should be up to date at CCN by Sepotember

http://www.tagxedo.com/

YouTube accessories

2010-06-28T07:49:00.000+01:00

YouTube enhancement sites continue to grow at an alarming rate. I have recently blogged about Youtube XL, and Safeshare TV but have just heard about TubeChop http://www.tubechop.com/ , which allows you to crop YouTube videos (like Safeshare TV) but also gives you the embed code (unlike Safeshare TV).

If it is the audio of a YouTube video which is important to you then (copyright permitting) Dirpy http://www.dirpy.com/ will convert a YouTube video into an audio mp3 file.

(illustration courtesy of Wordle)

Google or Microsoft for Education Apps?

2010-06-21T08:00:00.000+01:00

It is interesting to see the developing struggle between the giant corporations of Microsoft and Google to gain the upper hand in the Education market. Should you go down the live edu route (from Microsoft), or use the Google docs collaboration tools? What else are they offering for free, or for a fee?

To get a taste of what's on offer take a look at the Microsoft blog: Fun free Friday Resources (unfortunate titling there surely: who wants their Fridays to be fun-free??)

and the edudemic look at the Google offering. Also look back at previous posts here on the basic (free) Google docs

There's also a little company called Apple who may have something to say about this too...

(illustration from Wordle, inspiration from ILT champs list Nick Jeans and Rob Englebright)

Classy icons and images at iconFinder

2010-06-10T15:37:00.002+01:00

IconFinder
A useful website for classy icons and images, which seem to come from a variety of sources, but free for use: http://www.iconfinder.com/. Not just useful for websites, but download the images as png files and you can use them in your docs, powerpoint shows and the like.

( this particular illustration comes from the iconfinder site, original source from http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/ )

Oil spills, maps and mashups

2010-06-09T07:45:00.005+01:00

An interesting example of a maps mashup, allowing you to see what the BP oil slick would look like if it was centred on where you live! (see earlier posts on maps and mashups)

http://ht.ly/1URu8

(thanks to A for this)

tiltshiftmaker

2010-06-07T08:08:00.000+01:00

In my spare time I make 1/100 scale models of famous football stadia out of matchsticks, and illustrated here is my model of the Nou Camp Barcelona, just before a Bruce Springsteen concert there in 2008...or alternatively....

Here is a photo of mine I doctored using the tiltshiftmaker website, to interesting, what one might call model village, effect. Have a go with a photo of your own. Can anyone tell me why its called tiltshift and how you might use it in education?

(As a minimum I suppose it illustrates depth of field and perspective changes, and their effect on our perception)

More Free Audio

2010-05-31T08:00:00.001+01:00

Chill!

Click the play button below to have some soothing half term music whilst you read this:

This is a gymnopedie from Satie, courtesy of Musopen.com. The neat thing about their clips (mainly Classical) is that they give you embed code, so no need to download, you can put the code into your blog or Blackboard course, and play it direct. There is more information on embedding elsewhere in this blog archive

I am going to try to hit two birds with one stone here, so to find out some more of my recommendations for music and sound effects sites you can use legally, go to the delicious website and search for "ccnaudio". If that whets your appetite why not search delicious more generally for audio resources? Or get your students to bookmark useful sites to delicious using a a course specific tag? All they need is to set up an account.

(inspiration for this posting from the champs mailing list, and Megan Robertson in particular)

MyStudyBar

2010-05-24T08:00:00.001+01:00

MyStudyBar is a "...a tool which helps overcome problems that students commonly experience with studying, reading and writing. The tool consists of a set of portable open source and freeware applications, assembled into one convenient package". It sits over the top of whatever it is you are doing on the PC, giving you quick access to support. The key strength is that it will run from a USB stick (or frrom a folder in Mydocuments?) so the student can access the bar on any PC they are working on, at home or in college. Regular readers of the blog will recall a previous posting on Access Apps, and just like that this also comes from the JISC RSC Scotland N &E people.

For a quick intro have a look at their 2 minute introductory video, then head for the free download area.

Colour Coding

2010-05-17T08:15:00.008+01:00

I have just been reading the latest Newsbytes from the Eastern Regional Support Centre, which publicises the simple idea used by Ken McKerral at Huntingdonshire Regional College in colour coding his presentations. "Using an electronic presentation... (the tutor) keeps the slides simple with a white or light pastel background. The slide colour changes to yellow when the tutor wants the learners to engage in a bite-sized activity or
paired/group work. The yellow slide informs the tutor to stop delivering and allows the learners to complete the yellow slide activity. The title and rules of the activity are also displayed on the yellow slide. This becomes the Teacher/Learner Switch’. Once the activity is over, the white/pastel slides are used again. Ken has been using this method and has had fantastic feedback from the learners as they look forward to ‘their slides’."

More details availalbe at http://tinyurl.com/yc72rbo

Another simple but effective use is colour coding the gender of new vocabulary in Foreign Languages, but I am sure you can think of many other examples.

SafeShare TV

2010-05-10T08:00:00.003+01:00

I recently blogged about YouTube XL, which delivered YouTube videos without the comments and other distractions, useful for classroom presentations. James Clay recently mentioned in a similar vein SafeShare tv. This has the added advantage of allowing you to crop the video. It then gives you a URL linking to the cropped selection, rather than the full video. Excellent for education purposes!

Glogster posters

2010-05-04T10:28:00.001+01:00

Sketchcast

2010-04-26T08:04:00.001+01:00

Online Safety: Smokescreen

2010-04-19T08:01:00.000+01:00

Who can you trust online?

If you want to engage your learners about online safety you may be interested in a new "cutting edge game about life online" produced by Channel 4 www.smokescreengame.com

Flip Text

2010-04-13T11:40:00.002+01:00

I saw this mentioned a while ago in Jane's elearning pick of the day, and thought there must be some other educational use apart from the good old teachers trick of the answers upside down at the bottom of the worksheet: FlipText.net

Suggestions?

(illustration courtesy of Wordle)

¡ʇno ʞɔǝu ɹnoʎ ʇnd llıʍ noʎ ɹo 'lnɟǝɹɐɔ ǝq puɐ 'suoıʇsǝƃƃns ǝɥʇ ɟo ʞuıɥʇ oʇ ʇuɐǝɯ ǝɹɐ noʎ

Online Meetings

2010-03-29T08:37:00.004+01:00

At the Norfolk ICT in Schools conference I attended last week I was grateful to Johannes Ahrenfelt for bringing ShowDocument to my attention. It is a free online conferencing system, that appears to have some more features than the inbuilt Blackboard system I am presently using. I will be trying it for real in a few weeks, so will comment back on my experiences. You can also pick up some of the other web 2.0 tools Johannes spoke about on his blog

YouTube XL

2010-03-22T08:00:00.001Z

I have blogged earlier about how easy it is to embed YouTube clips into your Blackboard courses, as well as how to put them into your PowerPoint shows(slightly more geeky, but not difficult). One advantage of both these techniques is that for classroom use it avoids the comments pane that sits below the video , which can sometimes contain inappropriate comments. Thanks to Ron Mitchell for mentioning that there is now a new version of YouTube, YouTube XL "... a version of YouTube optimised for watching YouTube videos on any large screen." (e.g. TV screens, through games consoles etc etc) This displays the videos in a different way, without the comments pane, so even simple URL links to YouTube videos will be "safe". It won't be long before someone invents the television!

5 keyboard lifesavers

2010-03-11T15:47:00.009Z

Will the keyboard eventually die out? I'm not sure...even in this day of sophisticated graphical interfaces, driven by mouse and touch, there are still some keyboard shortcuts I cannot live without. Here are my most popular:

1. Ctrl plus V to paste is till essential, to reach some of those parts of Windows that the right click has not reached. (I am sure some of you know I am talking about inserting a hyperlink...)

2. Ctrl plus A to select all of a document or other file. Sooo.. much quicker than swiping over a sizeable document or list

3. Print Screen to take a snap of the computer screen and put it into the clipboard ready for pasting. (Alt plus Print Screen will just capture the active window

4 The F4 key to repeat the last operation: emboldening, italicising or whatever

5 One I just learned this week, from a link in Tom Kuhlman's blog: holding down the Alt key whilst dragging objects such as drawings in Word or PowerPoint allows you to drag smoothly rather than in lumpy increments. If that's not clear have a look at Hamtra's screencast on Screenr that demonstrates it.

(creative commons photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangeacid/204145200/)

Become a Microsoft Office Ribbon Hero!

2010-03-09T09:28:00.003Z

Learn Microsoft Office by playing games? Now there's an idea, from Microsoft Office Labs, a free download. (You do need Office 2007 onwards though...) Thanks to Rob Englebright for brnging this to my attention on the ever excellent ILT champs mailing list.

Sticking with PowerPoint

2010-03-08T08:00:00.003Z

Continuing the theme of PowerPoint, I came across another exemplar show with drag and drop capability, which is possibly more flexible for working with images or text. The downside is that the way it works is slightly different to the standard technique, in that you have to click and let go to pick up the object to move, but I think that's a small price to pay. I came across one version from Ron Mitchell, but also found another on MFL teacher Joe Dale's blog, where he states of his version: " ...the presentation which contains the macro was created by Hans Werner Hofmann / Ute Simon and.. is free to use for educational purposes. Instructions on how to apply the macro can be found within the presentation. " I have adapted the instructions I found on Ron's version slightly on my version here

I am also thankful to Tom Kulhman's Rapid elearning Blog (listed in my blogs list on the right)pointing me the way to this Screenr screencast by Jeanette Brooks on how to add "animated hands" to your shows. Here's a chance to develop more highly polished PowerPoint shows:

(Could not get embed to work, so here's a more conventional link:

http://screenr.com/yjd

Drag and drop in PowerPoint

2010-03-01T08:00:00.002Z

A recent posting in the discussion area of the LSIS eCPD programme gives a a very easy and useful way of integrating drag and drop into a live PowerPoint presentation. Nigel Davies's Powerpoint file includes the example, as well as instructions on how to achieve it.

Also don't forget Ron Mitchell's Picture Grid Editor, which you can download and then use to creat a drag and drop picture/word match. This outputs not just to PowerPoint, but to Word and web page format too. Best to look at the example here first, then download the software that allows you to create them yourself. (No install needed)

Screen grabbing and casting

2010-02-22T08:00:00.003Z

With more and more activity taking place online, software that allows you as a teacher to capture and explain an online process is becoming far less specialist, and far more an essential part of every teachers toolkit. So in response to a request from a lecturer, let me give you some of the "screencast" options there are available to you. I would probably start with Screentoaster or Screenr : no download and easy to use. For some alternatives have a look at Paul Andrews Paul's elearning resources list of alternative screencasting software.
(Things did not quite go to plan...you probably need to read the comment for this posting to understand the full story...)

Breaking News...English

2010-02-15T07:54:00.002Z

My periodic dip into the goldmine that is Russell Stannard's teachertrainingvideos.com website has once again found a 24 carat nugget. He says of Breaking News English "this is my favourite website on the Internet. Packed with great content and saves busy teachers loads of time...and also helps students too. There are multiple sites here for different levels and genres."

(Also follow the link to its associated site News English lessons, which uses easier English)

As the title suggests you get topical news stories, but also accompanying audio and a host of activities you can use . You can explore the sites yourself, or follow Russell' Stannard's video guide to some of the features.

Data and Mash

2010-02-08T08:18:00.000Z

Last month the government launched a one stop shop for their data http://www.data.gov.uk/ . The idea is that enterprising companies and individuals will take the data and experiment putting it together (mashing it up) with other data such as maps, to give new ways of looking at it, that can be useful from a personal and individual way.

So one idea that has been developed is a Postcode Paper, (yes, that's paper in the dead tree sense): "It's a newspaper which contains a bunch of statistics that might be useful for people moving into a new area. It has info on local services, environmental data, crime statistics, as well as local transport info, travel times and education and healthcare stats...perhaps the next time you move house, you'll get one with your first council tax bill..."

Another use, this time of CNS geography data close to my cycling heart is fillthathole.org.uk, that makes it easy to report potholes in roads that need filling.

This is at an early stage, but offers opportunities for the development of apps aplenty, that don't need any Apple device at all!

Graphing calculator app

2010-02-01T09:47:00.004Z

I promise non ipod users I will keeps these Apple specific postings to a minimum, but if you have an ipod touch/iphone the graphing calculator (cost me 59p I think) looks like a very useful application, exploiting the zooming feature of the screen. Highly recommended for maths staff and students lucky enough to have the hardware.

Is Cloudworks A VLE?

2010-01-25T08:46:00.000Z

Cloudworks: brought to my attention by James Clay. In some ways another interesting take on a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), being developed by the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University. From a quick look, its USP seems to be that it starts from the social , and builds from there. Is this a VLE? Is that question helpful?

A good starting point for anyone wanting to look at the debate on whether the VLE is dead, nailed to the perch, or living and breathing is the video of the ALT-C 2009 session on this very topic.

Interactive PowerPoint?

2010-01-18T08:57:00.000Z

Recently I have been experimenting with mixed success to encourage teachers to use wireless graphics tablets as input devices. They can be passed around a class to allow students to participate, and have always seemed to me to be a more flexible option (as well as cheaper) than an interactive whiteboard. I suppose the downside is they do require a bit of getting used to, as you need to draw on the tablet whilst looking at the screen. This morning I have just realised that PowerPoint offers a drawing tool within live slides (another of those features you half realise are there but never use, down in that bottom left navigation corner)) and using this on pre-prepared blank slides, or over the top of a "proper" PowerPoint, effectively gives you a simple whiteboard tool. Save a PowerPoint show with say 10 blank slides, open it as a live show and away you go. Illustration produced using a blank PowerPoint live slide and a Wacom bluetooth graphics tablet (£140 ish?). ( Yes you are right, my art education stopped well before GCSE). I bet this is cheaper than the Apple i-slate too...

etherpad revisited

2010-01-12T08:52:00.000Z

There was a flurry of protest last year when Google acquired Etherpad, and seemed to want to close it down. This does bring home again one of the dangers of working with here today gone tomorrow web 2.0 tools (see previous post) but since then Google has relented, and have actually open sourced the code. I heard at the Blackboard conference that it is now possible to "host" an Etherpad installation within one's institution, so I will be looking into whether this might be possible and useful here at college.

cc photo credit

And while we are on the subject of Etherpad, there is some experimental advice on how to embed etherpads (see previous posts on embedding ad nauseam) Haven't tried it myself yet, but is worth a look.

http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/embedding-etherpad

Durham Blackboard Users Conference

2010-01-07T14:54:00.005Z

A few musings from the very snowy but extremely enjoyable Bb users conference

1 Walking through industrial quantities of snow on a pavement, and soft sand on a beach are surprisingly similar, apart from temperature.

2. I began to use twitter for the first time during an event like this, and am beginning to see how this can be useful, if only sometimes to escape from the Corporate PowerPoint.

3. Really enjoyed a presentation from a local schoolteacher Mark Clarkson looking at a variety of tools he uses with his students.

4. We were definitely right to delay our implementation of Blackboard 9! Ouch...

5. ...but if/when we do move the new treatment of groups could really offer us some new opportunities.