Teaching, resources, references

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Visit to Michael Nelson in the Blue Mountains

This is one of those post I should have done a long time ago, but I've been avoiding teaching work during a massive long 5 week break. Back in December I went to the Blue Mountains to meet Michael Nelson . (this was also a good excuse to do a day trip to the Blue Mountains with Zac). Michael teaches web design in the IT area at the Western Sydney Institute. A while back I discovered his live and let learn blog and his teaching blog and a while back he discovered some of my stuff as well. What is really interesting about meeting Michael face 2 face was the way we seem to be on a similar wave length, we teach in similar content areas and have been teaching for a similar amount of time. What is really interesting is that this linkage with Michael was formed via blogs and sharing stuff !!!

The IT team a Wentworth Falls Campus has a great flexitrain style center, eg large room with lots of computers and then some break out rooms at the side with data projectors. What I love about these types of spaces is the that it makes it impossible to do "monkey see monkey do style" software training.

We talked quite a lot about Michael's move away from using an LMS. This combined with the new version of webCT has really inspired me to move more stuff outside of webCT. We also talked a bit about coaching and the good and bad things about an approach that is based around coaching.

We talked a bit about the wikibook on web design, which I would really like to start contributing more to this year. What was really exciting was talking about some join projects like the online roleplays that I've been dreaming of for a while and an online design student conference. As yet I haven't done anything to get these moving be I hope to get started on those projects in the next couple of weeks.

I hadn't planned on doing a interview, but I had my laptop with me and I used the time as a bit of a chance to do an interview with Michael. The audio is not great because I used the builtin micro in my laptop. Here it its (8.2mb)

location of files on webCT campus version 6

When I use webCT, I use a lot of "hacks" to work around the linear way webCT likes content to be organised. To do this I really need to know actual locations of files. Because campus version 6 is based around a database this is easier said that done. For a while I was starting to think about ways to get rid of webCT completely, and work totally beyond an LMS.

I went for a swim and come back and realise I could find the local of page via javascript. So this bit script gives the location of files.

<script>

theloc = location.pathname;

document.write(theloc);

</script>

The location ends up being some like

http://yourwebcturl.edu.au/webct/ContentPageServerServlet/javasctipttest.html

Now I'm sure I could hack together a piece of javascript that adds, http://yourwebcturl.edu.au/webct/ContentPageServerServlet/ to url's when they are uploaded to webCT but will allow me to preview the content locally in dreamweaver. hmm maybe I don't need this.

Still don't know if I still really need webCT.

update: Well there is another of doing this, in the file manager you just click on the control thing and then can get the href.

Tag Clouds

TagCloud - Home - This could be interesting thing to include in feedbook system.

Stock Art

Presentation Zen: Where can you find good images? I've had hate of stock art in the past but as I'm often having to produce two or three presentations a week I'm now starting to understand the need for it. Here is a list of some free and cheap stock art libraries.

Example student project

StreamEDU - ADOM e-Learning Center - This is a great example of a really amazing student project. I'm going to use it as an example of the level of projects my students should be developing. :-)

Aimia - awards finialist

AIMIA - Online Awards Entry - I have put this in list of stuff to check out later. I haved used these in past as a bit of time killer with students !!!. In some ways it's ashame most of the projects and would have had quite large budgets. I really should move these sorts of links across to del.icio.us, hmm maybe next week.

Flahs Typography site

A cool flash site using typography Not quite sure why I'm blogging this because I don't really like the typopgraphy used on the site but, there are some cute smart things about it and some students might like it. Maybe it's a good example of what can be done when you have limitations, in this case the use of type only to create images.

Feedbooks

Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ RSS_Writr Kisrty has been working on a feedbook example recently and Stephen Downes has just built his example of personal learning environment. Which is interesting because I'm looking at my own personal viewpoint and I don't think I would use Stephen's or Kirsty's solution. Maybe these type of things are good for newbies, or for the application of RSS and blogs for people that don't really need to understand how they work.

When I look a Stpehen solutions I think wow, I wish I was more of a web geek again !!!

Hosting

[ DreamHost Web Hosting : Home ] - Cheap hosting (7.95) that supports webDAV.

MTV motion graphics

MTVe.COM | Artbreak - some nice examples of work.

Mobile phone content

Universal Everything, Recent Activity > Leave No Trace, 3G Video Ringtones

Universal Everything, Recent Activity > Motion Garage, Japanese Mobile Movies

Forms

Creative Latitude: Resources: Downloads - great selection of forms for designs. This year I would like to the project forms a make over. Maybe I could get the studnets to make the forms ?

Windows XP

I was just reading about a podcasting solution for blackboard that was a turnkey system that meant the teacher just had to press a stop start button for doing a screen cast and then recording is automatically uploaded to the server. As I was reading this I was thinking if I was working on a MAC at TAFE I could build a system to do this, but I work on a PC at TAFE. After a bit search I found the some solutions to the lack of automating system in windows xp.

WindowsDevCenter.com: Automating Desktop Tasks in XP - includes links to software for windows xp that allows automation of the tasks.

Comic Strip Generator

StripGenerator - this is great, it's simple to use and the end location of it's just a url. I would like to try this instead of some the jack stories I used.

Tutorial outpost

Tutorial Outpost {Changing The Way You Design} - This is a good collection of links to great tutorials, the basic flash ones seem like a good collection. I'm not so sure about the actionscript ones.

Really should start to use del.icio.us for storing this sort of information, but there is something nice about having it all in one place.

The makes of the Quest of the Rest

Amanita Design I was just hunting this people out to look at samorost2. I didn't realise they also did the polyphonic spree. I think need to contact them about doing a interview for design cast.

After Effects for Beginners

DV Guru - this looks like it's going to be a use series of blogs. Because have taught after effects in the past I need to find some resources to help.

Principles of Animation

kirupa.com - Principles of Animation - I need to inlcude this in the resources that I give students when start working with flash animations.