April 28, 2005

RSS Mixer

RSS Mix - Mix any number of RSS feeds into one unique new feed!

Create a New RSS Mix

Mix any number of RSS feeds into one unique new feed!

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: RSS & Blogging, at 09:08 PM

April 26, 2005

Virtual Office Hazards Resource

link to website

Flash resource that helps learners to identify hazards and potential solutions.

1. Education & Training > Games > Virtual Hotel
2. Education & Training > Games > Virtual Kitchen
3. Education & Training > Games > Virtual Office
4. Education & Training > Games > Virtual Supermarket
http://search.workcover.com/search/search/taxSearch.asp?rootId=2&q=virtual+

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: , at 05:12 PM

Elements of Effective e-Learning Design

Getting it right the first time

accessibility resource

A bundle of resources developed through a LearnScope Project in 2004 tackling the issue of building in accessibility from the word go. Addresses issues for html, word, powerpoint, flash, forms, navigation, pdfs and more

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Learning Design, at 12:20 PM

April 19, 2005

electrocomms and energyutilities Industry Skills report - ANTA 2005

link to pdf

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Readings, at 01:26 PM

April 18, 2005

Book about Mentoring

eBooks.com - The Mentor's Guide eBook

The Mentor's Guide
By: Zachary, Lois J.
Published By: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Leadership, Change and Organisations, at 09:24 AM

April 12, 2005

Picasa

I'd come across Picasa very briefly last year when helping colleagues get photos into Blogger via Hello, but hadn't looked further at it because I already had a tool that would do what I wanted with organising my photos on my home computer. Since then I have experimented a little with Flickr for online sharing.

I got a request from a teacher about what alternatives there were for storing assessment evidence in the form of photos. Digital cameras are becoming more common and are used to gather evidence of learner's skills.

Picasa seems to meet most of the requirements:
- allow users to organise/ categorise photos eg tags, folder names, album names/ labels - such as student name, unit number, class group, qual name preferably more than one tag
- allow users to easily backup to alternative drives or archive to storage media such as cdrom
- allow users to print 'contact sheets' of whole/part albums of photos
In an ideal world the software would also smoothly acquire the photos from a range of cameras and not cost too much/ be free.

In addition I was able to install the program to a network drive rather than the C drive so that means a couple of neat things:
- backups are regularly done of the network drives, and
- teachers can access their files from any computer on the network

I now need to see if this solution is OK by the IT support area. I know many cameras come with software that can do all this - I use the Kodak Easyshare software for example. Having a piece of software that could be recommended for the whole organisation also means we start building more expertise in using the system, rather than each person learning a different piece of software and creating a maze of software support issues.

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Tools, at 11:17 AM

April 07, 2005

Duke Uni and iPods

Duke News & Communications

Duke to Continue to Utilize iPods for Educational Use
"Following a preliminary review of its year-long effort to incorporate Apple iPods into the curriculum, Duke University will continue distributing the devices to students next year, although in a more targeted manner, while also exploring other educational applications of multimedia technologies, school officials announced Wednesday."

and...
"We weren’t sure what to expect when we launched this project, but we’ve been pleased by how it’s succeeded in encouraging many faculty and students to consider new ways of using the technology in fields from engineering to foreign languages," Lange said. "We’ve been focusing on iPods and other mobile computing, but our wider goal is to integrate technology broadly into the teaching and learning process. The iPods have helped jump-start this process, and we plan to keep pushing ahead."

and... Interest also has grown among the faculty. "The iPod project got the faculty talking about technology, and not only about iPods," said Lynne O’Brien, who coordinated the project through CIT. "Some faculty are enthused about using iPods in courses, and others don’t see any real purpose for them. But without the iPods experiment, we wouldn’t be having such active discussions about what value new technologies have in teaching."

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Tools, at 11:48 AM

April 06, 2005

Including external pages in webCT

klink to website

"Create a new Organizer page (or you can place the blog on your Home
Page if you'd like). On the new organizer page, create a new upper
text block. Paste the following code into the upper text block,
replacing the dummy URL with the URL to your Blog:

id="weblog" src="http://www.myblog.edu/" width="100%"
height="600" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"
frameborder="0" scrolling="auto"> (within iframe tags)

This will give you an Organizer page in which your blog takes up the
entire width of the frame, and scrolls vertically automatically. The
beauty of this method is that it will work with any blog software at
all (Blogger, Radio, Manilla, Movable Type, Greymatter, BlogWorks,
etc), and indeed can display *any* external URL in your course"

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: WebCT, at 04:59 PM

Podcasting as pull technology

link to website
from Eric Tremblay
Podcasting and pull technologies

Eric suspects that the richnesss and potential for multilayered interaction through using is better than podcasting which he sees as unidimensional.

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Tools, at 04:50 PM

Attributes of a Tech Facilitator

link to website
"The Five Essentials of Technology Facilitators: Successful On-Site Help for Technology Integration

By Cheryl Whitfield

Many school administrators ask themselves the question, "What can I do to help my teachers integrate technology into their daily lesson plans?" Hiring the right person to assist and support the teachers is a step in the right direction."

And the five E's are:
Experienced Educator
Enthusiastic Technophile
Effective Trainer
Eager Mentor
Excellent Administrator

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Leadership, Change and Organisations, at 09:44 AM

April 04, 2005

Online sources of photo/images

link to website
from Robin Good "Finding quality images and photos for complementing an important article, essay or news report is already quite a challenge for many. Imagine when the goal is not just too find good images, but find some that you could openly and freely use without needing to pay royalties or one-time publishing rights to someone."

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Tools, at 02:50 PM

Ineen - Cross platform video conferencing

link to website
article from Robin Good. No review yet, but product information available.

Product website here. Free download.

"With Ineen, the first fully-featured open source and open-standards compliant audio and videoconferencing desktop tool is here.

Available for both Mac and PC users, Ineen allows nested conferences allowing unlimited number of people to join in real-time and talk."

Also in v brief websearch found reference to Pocket PC version which may be coming.

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: Tools, at 12:05 PM

April 01, 2005

to be filed

TEDI: Educational resource development

Multimedia development process

Posted by Kirsty, in Category: , at 04:22 PM