Rod’s EdTech Review

moving to rodcorbett.posterous.com

2011-01-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have just moved my blog over to Posterous.com. I was able to move the archive of posts from before to this site. I have been posting to twitter for a few months now and will start blogging here again.

I choose this tool because it makes it much easier to post to. I can use the Android apps and email to post to it allowing me to post more often.

Rod

Blogging on Twitter

2010-12-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

The reason I have not been posting anything new to this blog for some time is because I have started to post my news on Twitter. I have found that it is much easier to share the things I shared here on Twitter.

If you are interested in seeing what I have been posting lately go to http://twitter.com/rbcorbett.

Rod

Using games in teaching Chemistry

2010-10-12T09:48:00.001-06:00

I am making a presentation today on how to use games to teaching chemistry. Go to http://goo.gl/epcK to access the hand out of links and resources.

Rod Corbett

Easy Annotator for your Presentation

2010-09-06T10:28:00.003-06:00

If you don't use PowerPoint, or even if you do, to make presentation, check out this little freeware gem. It is called Pointofix and it allows you to capture any screen during your presentation, annotate it, print or save it for archiving or sharing with your audience.

It is a German product so the web site is in German but enough of it is in English that you should be able to find the Download and install the English translation of the menus. You can always use Google Translate at http://translate.google.com/ to translate the website into English. It is worth the trouble.

The way it works is that you run it and leave it in the upper right hand corner until you need to annotate the screen. Then you click the Start button and it will freeze your screen and allow you to annotate, magnify and save it to a png or jpg file for sharing. You can also print or copy the screen to the clipboard ready for pasting into another app. When you are done, click on the Done button and it goes back to sleep and gives you back control of the screen.

I really like it because:

You don't have to install it. It is small and even runs off of a USB Drive.
It is easy to use and free, so you can make copies on all of the computers you use.
It will even allow you to capture screens of video and annotate on them.
It is designed to be useful during a presentation when you are in front of an audience with little fumbling.
You can also use it in your office to prepare screen shots for other purposes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't run on Macs.

Teaching applications

Use this for capturing and annotating any screen during your class room presentations and share with your students by posting the png files on your course website .
Use it for preparing illustrative images for inclusion into course materials.
Capture still screens from videos and add captions to them.

New Features to Mention

2010-07-10T12:19:00.000-06:00

I just received three significant new features on some of the tools I used that you may be interested in.

Gmail: You can now add multiple signatures with Rich Formatting and images for each of your email addresses. I have been waiting for this as I use Gmail for at least three email addresses regularly including my work email address so now I can set up a signature line that is specific with my work contact information.

iPod Touch OS4: Unfortunately, I bought my iPod Touch too early last year and missed getting the 3G model. Consequently, when I upgraded to OS4, I was not able to get the multi-tasking feature but the new Folders feature for apps was well worth the trouble. Now I can stop deleting apps in order to explore new apps. Yes, I have filled up my quota of 11 Apps pages. Now I can go beyond that limit, until I hit the next.

Google Forms: This the forms or survey tool in Google Docs. They just added the feature that allows you to set a Goto Page for each option in the multiple choice question type. The power of this is huge. This makes the tool a lot like Quandary where you can design scenario based learning activities or branching story lines. I have used Quandary for this a few years ago to make role-play activities that the students can work through to challenge their problem solving and critical thinking skills. Although Quandary provides a bit more tools for this, you can't monitor the choices the students make as they walk through it. In Google Forms you can. Very interesting.

Rod

Creating Books from Wikipedia

2010-06-19T14:48:00.003-06:00

Most of us all know a bit about Wikipedia but did you know that you can create your own books from Wikipedia pages? And since you can add to existing pages or add pages yourself, this is an interesting and new way to create and publish books.

How do you do this? Go to Wikipedia.org and get to any article or the Main Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Then look for the option on the left tools menu that says Create a Book. You may have to click on and open the Print/export submenu. You have three options here, Create a book, Download as PDF and Printable Version. The latter two options are also useful and self-explanatory but it is the first that is really interesting.

After clicking on Create a book option, you will see the Book Creator page with directions to follow. Essentially you just need to click on the Green button that says "Start Book creator" Then you go and look for articles that you want to have in your book. When you find one you click on "Add this page to your book" button that you will now see at the top. Add as many pages as you like. There is no limit that I have found.

When you have added all of the pages you want for your book, you can click on the Show Book button and look at the pages you selected. Oh, if you need help finding pages, click on the Suggest Pages button and Wikipedia to suggest some pages based on the pages you have already selected.

Once you have clicked on Show Book, you should now see the Manage your book screen. This is where you can do the following things with your book:

Give your book a title and subtitle
Remove a page
Change order of the pages
Order hardcopies of your book to be printed and sent to you. This costs but you can see how much before you commit.
Best of all, you can download you book into a PDF file that you can then distribute to your students or whoever you want to receive your book.
You can even choice to have it downloaded in Open Office Writer format that you can then edit afterwards.

I also learned that if you sign up for a user account on wikipedia and make 10 contributions, you get extra privileges with your books. Namely, you can save your books on the site and have more than one book in development. And naturally you can then share access to your books so you can share them while they are still in development. I haven't tried that yet but I believe you can contribute 10 photos to the Media Commons and get the credit for that.

Applications for teaching:

You can create your own book, reading pack or textbook and provide it to your students in PDF for free.
Your students could create a book as part of a project or assignment.

If you have tried this, please post a comment about how it went.

Rod

Another Free eBook on Teaching with Web 2.0 Apps

2010-06-14T16:42:00.002-06:00

Here is another free ebook on how to use free Web 2.0 or Cloud Computing apps to enhance your teaching. This ebook is by Ana Maria Menezes

Very interesting. Some of the tools were covered is the two books by Michael Zimmer but there are always new ideas to be gleaned.

Two free eBooks about teaching with new Web 2.0 tools

2010-06-10T08:37:00.001-06:00

I ran across two very good ebooks about teaching with some of the newest Web 2.0 tools. These tools are actually Cloud Computing based tools that are free to use, as are the ebooks. Michael Zimmer is the author of both books. The ebooks are short and only take a few minutes to flip through. They are hosted on a site called issue.com, another cloud app that allows you to publish ebooks like these.

I can even embed the books in this post. This first is titled: "Tools for the 21st Century Teacher"

And the second is titled: "A New Way to Lecture" and focuses on new Cloud Apps that you can use to lecture, without using PowerPoint.

But, these are in Flash format so you won't be able to read them on your iPhone, or iPad. :-(

Open Ed Disc

2010-06-05T08:36:00.001-06:00

If you haven't heard of the Open Education Disc or Open Disc read on. There is an overwhelming volume of open and free software applications available for anyone to explore out there but what educator has the time or experience to harvest that effectively. The people behind the Open Disc have done a great service to all educators. Basically, they have surveyed what open software applications are out there and selected the best that could be used to meet the needs of students and teachers and assembled them on one Disc, which is now a DVD. And the list of free applications is great. You can see the list at http://www.theopendisc.com/education/

The disc also comes with a menu that helps to guide you through the 50 odd free applications that you can install on your computer today, legally.

A great scenario that always comes to my mind is that brand new college student, armed with a brand new laptop that has practically no software installed, but the student has no budget for being computer applications like MS Office even. This Open Ed Disc is exactly what they need. It will give them all of the software they will ever need to complete their studies and these are tools they can use on the job after they graduate. It is free, legal and they can pass the disc to a friend.

To get the disc, you need to download the ISO file to your computer. This is a large file and will take awhile. This file is an image of the 1.3 GB DVD, compressed all in one file. Then you need a DVD burner and software that knows how to burn an ISO file to a blank DVD. This is not as hard as it may sound. If you have a DVD Burner but the software doesn't seem to know what an ISO file is go to http://infrarecorder.org/?page_id=5 and download the InfraRecorder program and use that.

The only downside to this is that this disc is for Windows and not Macintosh computers. I found Macintosh versions of most of the same programs on the disc at http://www.opensourcemac.org/.

iPad Review

2010-06-05T08:18:00.000-06:00

The Apple iPad has been available in Canada for a week now but I have had one to try out for about three weeks. I have had a lot of people ask me if I would buy one and No, I would not. For the following reasons:

Too expensive - for the low end price of $550, you could get a real pretty computer real computer. Or get an iPod Touch for less than half of that.
I have an iPod Touch which I use all the time. The iPad is too much like it and doesn't fit into my pocket.
The iPad lacks several key functions that I need in a computer:

Flash player - it sounds like it never will support this.
Multitasking - I never realized how I have taken this for granted until I don't have it.
Web cam - even $300 netbooks have this.
Can't edit Google Docs docs probably. I use Google Docs a lot.
VERY Limited file sharing between applications. I can live with this on my iPod but this is one thing that keeps the iPad from being a computer.

Better alternatives on their way. Thanks to Google Android OS, there are several Android Tablets that are about to enter the market and some of them look very good. Dell even has one coming out this summer. And they have all of the missing functions that I need for less money.

Who would like to own an iPad? I do think there is market for these, it just doesn't include me. If you are looking for a personal e-book reader combination media player and you need the larger screen than you will love this. It plays movies, audio, music wonderfully. You can read books, newspapers, magazines it very well, but not websites with Flash objects so makes it poor for students.

The applications for iPad are similar as those for iPhone which can give you some very productive tools but you are still limited by the limited file sharing between applications. One way that App producing get around this is a Wifi network connection to your primary computer but if you work in an environment where this is blocks, this doesn't help.

EtherPad Clones

2010-05-29T08:19:00.001-06:00

Etherpad is a very interesting tool for collaboratively writing on the web without anyone having to register and set up accounts. It has some wonderful features to make this easy but Google has decided to take it off-line. But Google has allowed its code to be shared and so there are several clone sites appearing on the web. Click here to see a list of clone sites.

One of the best clone sites that I have found and will experiment with in my teaching is TitanPad.com. This one seems to be hosted in Europe and they told me that they don't remove inactive documents.

What I like about this resource:

It is free to use.
There is no registration required.
It is simple to learn and use.
You can export to Word and other document formats.
It keeps track of all of the collaboration events and you can play them back.

What I plan to use this for in my teaching:

Brainstorming with my class or small groups.
Collaborating on writing notes.
Collaborative story writing.
Create worksheets ahead of time and work through them in class

Mashpedia - The Real-Time Encyclopedia

2010-05-29T08:11:00.001-06:00

Here is another gem that Leon shared with me. Mashpedia claims to be a real-time encyclopedia. What it really is is a meta search tool.

On the front page you can see what are current news items, trending topics, people and brands. And you can see links to the current movies out.

When you enter a search string in the search field what Mashpedia does is searches the following sites with that search string, which is also what is does if you click on any of the links on the front page:

Wikipedia - for a definition or description about the topic.
Twitter - so you can see what tweats are being posted about the topic today.
Youtube - for videos posted about the topic
Digg - to see who is bookmarking sites about the topic
Flickr - for photos posted about the topic
Google News - for news items about the topic
Google Images - for more images
Google Blog Search - for what is being said by bloggers about the topic
Google Books - for any books about the topic

You can also see comments and post comments. And you can put a link to this page on your website.

The educational application of this is that you can create some of the search pages for you students and place links to them on your online course site. When the student browse them, the pages will be automatically updated with current information.

The down side is that you can't turn off any of the sources so if you are not a fan of any one of the above sites, then you may not want to use this with your students. But you could still use it.

Rod

Big Huge Labs (Education Edition)

2010-05-29T07:55:00.002-06:00

I have been playing around with Big Huge Labs site for a bit now and it is worth a deeper look. If you are using digital photography in your teaching and you are looking for some fun things to do with your photos, this site provides an array of tools that you can use. And there is an educational feature that makes it easier to work with your students as they use it.

Why I like it:

It is free to use but with the parts where you order gifts to be made, but you can skip that one.
There are tools there to appeal to all ages.
If you already share photos in Flickr this connects to that.
I like the Motivator, Movie Poster and Jigaw maker tools.
There is also a Big Huge Thesaurus tool that has a built in idea generator. Very cool

Rod

Brainstorming in the Clouds - Edistorm

2010-05-22T11:55:00.002-06:00

Here is a gem I just found and I am eager to use in class and a workshop on Tuesday. It is called Edistorm. It is a brainstorming tool that using the metaphor of using different coloured sticky notes on a wall to collect, share, sort and rank ideas. What I like about it is:

It is easy to use because we all know the metaphor.
You can collaborate on your storm with anyone and everyone but they will need to register. (it is free)
There is an idea generator built-in to help you generate more.
Your storms are saved and can be accessed any time from any where.
It is not Flash based so I can use the iPad. (haven't tested that yet.)
Collaborators can post visidots to vote for ideas.
I believe you can use your google or fb login to sign up.
You can export your storm in a XLS or PDF
This tool is an Alberta grown tool. Based out of Edmonton.
Oh, yah, and it is FREE for solo and public storms (you can't do private storms without paying)

Cautions:

It doesn't seem to work as well in IE and Firefox as it does in Safari and Chrome. A good reason for everyone to switch to Chrome.

Teaching Applications

Your class could use this a brainstorming and planning tool.
It could be used as a project management tool for team work. The instructor can easily monitor the team's progress.
You could use it on the present computer in from the of the class and come back to it in succeeding classes to make sure questions were addressed.

Dropbox.com

2010-05-15T19:16:00.005-06:00

I just recently discovered this gem. Dropbox.com is a free (has a free level of use) cloud based file backup and retrieval tool. But it does a lot more:

You get 2 GB (or 2,000 MB) of storage space to start with. I only have 10 MB on this Blog site.
You can get more space, up to 3 more GBs, by inviting friends to sign up. You get an addition 250 MB for each referral that joins and they get that also. Go to https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTMzNDY3MTE5 and sign up and we will both get 250MB.
You can download and install clients for Windows, Mac, Linux and iPhones that create a dropbox folder on your computer that you can just drop files into and they are automagically backed up and synched with the other computers you used. I have this installed now on my office Dell, my work Netbook, my home Mac and my iPod and it is wonderful.
It even has a web access site so you can access your files from a computer without the client being installed. For example if you were on your friends or a public computer lab.
You get a Public folder in your Dropbox that you can get the URL for files in that folder and use this to share files to anyone without a dropbox account. I tested with with an eXe website module and it worked.
You can also share any of the other folders with other dropbox users and use this for collaboration.
You can put any types of files up in the Dropbox, even video clips, so if you have a large file too large to post on your blog or portfolio site, you can put it in here and link to it.
You can also share your photo files using the photo albums in the Photos folder. I am using this to distribute photos to my students.
It even keeps a log of the changes to your files that you make and allows you to undelete a file.
Did I mention it was free. You can pay and get more space. $10 a month gives you 50 GB and $20 gives you 100 GB. Last summer I bought a 1 TB (1000GB) USB external harddrive for $130, and I will use that for backing up most of me stuff. But, for files for projects that I am working on day-to-day and my course docs, I am going to use Dropbox.

Give it a go, https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTMzNDY3MTE5 and provide some feedback.

Rod Corbett

Presentations with Prezi.com

2010-05-15T19:08:00.000-06:00

Prezi is a new kind of presentation tool. It is quite different from PowerPoint and slideshow based presentations tools. It allows you to approach preparing and giving presentations in very different way.

What I like about Prezi:

It is free.
You don’t need to install any software to use it. You need Flash Player but you should already have that installed.
You can access your presentations from anywhere.
Share your presentations with anyone and collaborate with other Prezi users on creating them.
If you don’t have an Internet connection for your presentation you can download your files and run them off a USB or hard drive.
It is very easy. The online tutorial are great.
It support both linear and non-linear presentations.
It supports YouTube videos and other flash objects very well.
You can use other people’s presentations, when they have allowed it.

Resources:

Prezi.com – the main website where you can access Prezi, tutorials and a gallery of presentations that others have made public.
Click here to sign up for a free educational license for Prezi.com Instructors and students are eligible.
Prezi’s Educational Exchange is a site where you can share your prezis with other educators. Prezis are listed by topic.
7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools – report from Educause.
Product Review Prezi | Layers Magazine
Prezi Is The Coolest Online Presentation Tool I’ve Ever Seen

What others are saying about Prezi.

Hello Prezi – So Long Powerpoint! by Michelle Pacansky-Brock
An alternative to PowerPoint: prezi.com by Dr. Marty Crossland
Online Mind Mapping with Prezi? by Michelle Pacansky-Brock

YouTube.com presentations about Teaching with Prezi

Cloud Computing for Your Classroom

2010-05-12T08:13:00.004-06:00

There are many useful cloud computing applications that are emergingthat you can easily use in your classroom to engage your students and supportcollaborative learning. Cloud computing applications are tools that reside totallyon the Web and you can access through any computer with a Web browser andInternet connection. Many of these tools can be used with very little investmentof time to learn and set up -- and, most of them are free. In this session, we willreview several of these resources and how you can employ them to enhance your teaching.

Resources:

Prezi including links to my three top ten lists.
Shared Typewith.me document.
Go2Web20.net- Cloud Computing Applications Index
Growing list of Free Cloud Computing Teaching Tools that I and others are compiling.
Click here to sign up for a free Dropbox.com account and get a 250MB Bonus.

If you are using a free cloud computing app in your teaching, share it with us. Post a comment.

Rod Corbett

Beginner's Guide to Mahara

2010-04-03T10:14:00.006-06:00

I have reviewed a brand new book from Packt Publishing that is a very good beginner's guide to how t use Mahara 1.2. Mahara is an open source e-portfolio system coming out of New Zealand. Go to Mahara.org to learn more about it.

We are just finishing a pilot project at Mount Royal University using Mahara 1.2 as an e-portfolio and e-journalling system. I have been the lead on this project, which means I had to learn how to use the software fast. I found this book to be a great resource for an faculty and students that need to get up to speed on using Mahara quickly.

I like the book for the following reasons:

It is an easy read. I have used several Packt books before to learn software and this one works very well.
It has several examples, hints and tips that will help anyone get comfortable with Mahara.
The book is also organized in a very logical way so it can be used a reference book for looking up how to use features when you need it.
I really liked how it explained how to set up your views. This is probably the most challenging feature of Mahara to grasp, but the screen shots in the book are view useful.
You can acquire the book electronically as a lower cost. E-books have the advantages that you can carry it around on your computer or USB drive and you can search the text electronically with the search function on your PDF viewer.
There is also a demo site that you can use with the practice activities in the book if you don't have access to a Mahara site.
For the techy people there are also appendices about how to plan to install and install Mahara.

If you are at all interested in learning more about Mahara, I highly recommend you acquire this book. Go to https://www.packtpub.com/mahara-1-2-e-portfolios-beginners-guide for more information about it.

If you would like to download a preview a sample chapter click here.

Rod Corbett

Using Games in Class

2010-03-05T17:02:00.003-07:00

Games can be used for many aspects of teaching but they can be great for reviewing content. Here are a list of free web-based resources that will make it easy for you to create a game for doing a review activity.

Parade of Games in Powerpoint - free templates for several types of PowerPoint games
JeopardyLabs - create Jeopardy games without PowerPoint
Novel Games - embed flash games in to your course pages.
Five Free Crossword Puzzle Builders -
Free PowerPoint Templates
Free PowerPoint Games
More Games Templates

Jeopardy Labs: Make Your Own Online Jeopardy Game

2010-03-05T16:05:00.003-07:00

I just ran across this cool cloud-based tool. It is a website where you can create your own Jeopardy games to be used in class.

Jeopardy Labs: Make Your Own Online Jeopardy Game is a post about it but you can go directly to the website at http://jeopardylabs.com/ And if you don't what to build a template yourself, there are several there already to choose from.

Things I like about it:

It is free to use,
it is very easy to use,
no software installation required,
no registration required and
you don't need PowerPoint.

Rod

Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time! (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

2010-03-03T20:12:00.003-07:00

Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time! (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Here is an interesting article that describes several very interesting ideas for creative innovations that we could implement at our institutions.

Many of the ideas are not new and focus on the value of collaborative learning and teaching. The authors do emphasize the importance of re-inventing our universities or they will become obsolete.

Check it out and post comments.

Rod Corbett

Give Away of the Day website

2008-08-12T13:54:00.002-06:00

This is an interesting site. Everyday, they give away a software tool or utility that you can download install and try out. Check out at http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

All the offers I have seen so far are for Windows computers and it appears that you have to download and install on the "give away" day in order for the license keys to activate.

Rod

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning 2nd Edition

2008-05-31T06:54:00.003-06:00

Terry Anderson's second edition of his book on the Theory and Practice of Online Learning is now out. This is an excellent resource for learning about online learning. And it is available as a free e-book.

If you are teaching a course about online learning, you may want to consider using this as your textbook. Students can buy the hard-copy if they wish or they can save the dollars and download it.

Terry Anderson is a Professor in the Centre of Distance Education at Athabasca University and he holds a Canadian Research Chair in Distance Education. Click here to go to his online portfolio. Terry also posts to a blog or two. Check out his Virtual Canuck Blog at http://terrya.edublogs.org/

http://www.aupress.ca/books/Terry_Anderson.php

10 Trends to Watch

2008-05-24T09:15:00.001-06:00

10 Trends in e-Learning that are worth watching.

Cloud Computing
1. Sub Notebooks based on Linux that are primarily designed for cloud computing. http://eeepc.asus.com/global/
2. Cloudo where your desktop is online. http://www.cloudo.com/
3. Storage on Websites is cheaper. You can get 125 GB for $10 a month
  1. www.CanadianWebHosting.com
4. Google, Yahoo and MSN for online computing
  1. 6.7 GB of email space in Gmail.com
  2. Online Offices
  3. Notebook and sharing
    1. www.google.com/notebook
  4. Calendars
    1. http://www.google.com/calendar
Communications -
1. Email effectiveness is decreasing. As a communication channel it is clogging up with volume and spam.
2. The server load to filter spam is becoming enormous.
3. RSS Feeds and readers could become a second channel of communicating but it still have low acceptance. www.google.com/reader
4. Instant Messaging is not taking over yet. www.pidgin.im/
Social Networking is growing.
1. Using social networking to enhance learning is emerging with significant potential – www.facebook.com
2. The central principles are very interesting.
  1. The learning is in control of their postings and how has access to them. Personal Learning Networks.
  2. Centralizing on lifelong learning journals
  3. Wiki like technologies are maturing into full power collaboration tools for
    1. Writing
    2. Calendaring
    3. project management and coordination
    4. Content Repositories and Knowledge Management system.
3. Second Life and simulated learning environments. Www.secondlife.com/
FOSS
1. Technologies that are developed and maintained by large communities of users and not vendors.
  1. Open Office is becoming a real alternative. - www.openoffice.org
2. Tools like Drupal and Joomla that allow for very powerful online learning environments to be developed and used. - www.drupal.org or www.joomla.org
  1. Based on Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP platforms.
3. First emergence of Linux based commercially availability personal computers with only free software on them. http://eeepc.asus.com/global/
  1. Expansion of the One Laptop per Child initiatives. http://laptop.org/
  2. Royal Bank giving them away.
4. Older and more mature systems are becoming too large and unwieldy and difficult to maintain and keep nimble.
  1. Blackboard is one and Windows is another example.
  2. $500 laptops where Windows license is about half of that. and MS Office is about the same.
  3. Windows is bogging down with Virus, spyware and firewall security
Open Content movements
1. More and more expertise is being shared for free.
2. Creative Commons Movement http://creativecommons.org/
3. MIT, OU UK and my other PS institutions are sharing their course content with the public. http://www.opencontentalliance.org/
4. Electronic libraries and books being available to public for free. http://books.google.com/
Portable Apps and PC
1. USB Memory flash drives now 8 GB and affordable.
2. USB Hard Drives pocket up to 250 GB – Put your whole life on it and carry it in your pocket.
3. USB Not pocket size 1 TB and affordable.
4. Open Office and other apps that can run from a USB drive and
  1. Portable Apps Linux coming soon. http://portableapps.com/ or http://www.portablefreeware.com/
Smart Phones
1. Personal Media Players, Cameras, PDA and merging with Cell Phones
  1. Dell stopped making their pocket computers.
  2. Smart phones are emerging as significant players
    
    http://www.blackberry.com/
e-Learning authoring tools are more sophisticated and affordable.
1. Authorware 12 years about was $3000 now there is eXe for free and Captivate for $500.
2. eXe request less time in training and free http://exelearning.org/
3. MS giving one away. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/tools/lcds/default.mspx
Generation of learners that have grown up with computers, computer games, the Internet.
1. My 6 year old is already using Webkins. http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/
2. Other online metaverses like
  1. Second Life http://secondlife.com/
  2. World of War Craft and many more. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml
  3. The Sims http://thesims.ea.com/
  4. What are they learning in these environment?
  5. How do they find learning in school?
Time shortage
1. Everyone is so busy
2. 5 Minute presentations
3. Little time for reflections
4. Greater demands on instructors and learners.
  1. Multitasking
  2. Scope of knowledge required is growing.
5. Connectivity to knowledge is becoming more important than knowing the knowledge.

Royal Bank Giving Away Free Computers

2008-05-10T13:06:00.003-06:00

I have blogged about the new ASUS Eee PC computers before on this blog site and I am still really enjoying the one I purchased. I am watching for the arrival of the new model with the 9 inch screen and 20 GB hard drive, due any month now.

But this week I discovered that the Royal Bank is giving the 2G Surf models away for free is you switch over to one of their accounts. Click here to check it out. So now you can get one for free and try it out.

I recommend that you get one of these low end models and if you do like it, buy the 8G or 900 models as they have the memory you will need. Then give the 2G Surf to a child as they make great computers for children.

Rod

26 Learning Games to Change the World

2008-05-05T20:15:00.001-06:00

Check this out. 26 learning games that are designed to change the world. And most of them are free to use.

Rod

Classic Menus for MS Office 2007

2008-04-23T14:27:00.006-06:00

For all of you who are struggling with getting used to the new menus, or lack of, in MS Office 2007, there is an interesting solution. Addintools (http://addintools.com/)has a plug in for MS Office 2007 that restores your familiar office 2003 like menus. It is not free but may be worth the purchase, if you are frustrated with the new menu system.

Click here to learn more.

Blackboard's new Grade Center

2008-04-21T12:00:00.002-06:00

Check out this short Flash movie that high lights the cool new features of Blackboard's new Grade Center. This is an overhauled grade book that is coming out in Blackboard 8.0. Click here to play the clip.

Adobe Photoshop for Free?

2008-04-07T08:53:00.002-06:00

Adobe has released a free online version of Adobe Photoshop. It is called Adobe Photoshop Express. Sure, it doesn't have all of the power of the original version but it is free and online so you can use it without having to install anything, if you have Flash Player already installed.

I have taken it for a quick test drive and it looks great. Check it out at http://www.photoshop.com/express/

Rod

Free Synchronous Webconferencing

2008-03-21T11:54:00.003-06:00

While organizing the Canadian E-Learning Conference for June of this year, you are all going to come, right? http://conference.adeta.org

... I have run across a free web conferencing system that we are exploring using at the conference to provide live access to the presentations by the online participants. It is call WiZiQ and the URL is at http://wiziq.com

Besides being free it has the following features that I like:

It only requires you to have Flash Player installed to use it and most everyone has that already, how else would you watch your YouTube.com programs. This also eliminates the majority of the problems that users have using other systems that require propriety software to be downloaded and installed.
It records the sessions in Flash format so they can be viewed afterwards with just Flash Player.
It appears to have all of the functionality of the other systems and it very simple to learn to use.
There are also features for sharing content files and having tests online.
it is Free, did I mention that already?

We have been doing some testing and it seems to work very well, is there anyone reading this that is using it? Please let us know how it is working for you.

Rod

ASUS Eee PC Sub Notebook

2008-03-15T08:49:00.002-06:00

I now have one of the new ASUS Eee PC units to try out and I really like it. They can purchased from Memory Express or from The Source by Circuit City starting as low as $299. I now have the 8GB model for $499. A student pointed out that I can double the RAM from 512 MB on the 4GB model to 1GB by replacing the RAM chip for a $25 1GB chip.

I have also found a couple of interesting sites that help you to learn more about this unit:

Asus's own learn about the EeePC site.
Here is a easy guide from the site above
Here is a EEEPC User Community site. complete with forums where to ask questions about the machine.
An online simulation of the software interface, menus and apps on the unit.

This is the machine I have been waiting for, because:

It is small, light weight and inexpensive.
It is Linux based and liberates me from MS.
It comes with Open Office installed which I am getting to like much better than MS Office.
It is designed to be a portable Web browser. I now use more Web-based apps than installed and this would work great for me.
It is flexible, you can change the software on it, add SD Memory and it comes with 3 USB 2 ports.
This also would be a great computer for my daughter, who is in grade one. It is easy to use, durable and comes loaded with lots of software.

I find this unit is a lot easier to pack around then my laptop and so I tend to take it to more meetings for note taking and access the Net. I have also hooked it up to my 17" LCD monitor and it works great set at 1280x1024 with an external mouse and keyboard.

Earlier in March, Asus announced that they are coming out with a 9" screen version in June (the current version has a 7" screen) that will come with 1GB or RAM and 8 GB or 12 GB of SST Hard Drives. Not only is the screen better but the resolution on it will be 1024x600, while the current one is 800x480. As best that I can tell, the size the unit is only slightly larger.

If you have one, let us know by posting a comment.

Quick Media Converter

2008-03-15T08:26:00.003-06:00

I have been hunting for a free video converter for a long time now and have finally found one.

Quick Media Converter, is a free very powerful video and audio conversion tool. Converts to and from most formats including : FLV, AVI, DIVX, XVID, MPEG, MPEG2, MP3, Real Media, TS, Quick Time, PSP, Ipod, Iphone, WMV, VCD, 3GP, 3G2, M4A, AMR, H264, and H263. It also allows you to record videos or take pictures from your Web cam or DV Cam flux, in avi format and convert it to any format you want.

Included are two users mode - Batch Conversions Mode 1 for all users: Easy intuitive includes standard conversion settings to allow users to convert without having particular skills. Mode 2 Advanced: For skilled users allows more flexibility and more specialized conversions. Access to
www.cocoonvideos.com where if registered for free you can upload and share your converted videos and pictures (free 2 Gigabytes). Converts to and from mobile phones. Converts all FLV files or Youtube Daily motion Break. Captures and records Web cam and DV Cam flux (video and sound).

Works with Windows 98/NT/2000/XP/Vista

Thanks for Dave Flynn for passing this along to me.

Blackboard Next Generation

2008-03-01T09:19:00.003-07:00

From the Canadian Blackboard Users Group online conference yesterday, I learned some interesting announcements coming out of Blackboard. Of course this is after the court case ruling in Blackboard's favour in the patent suit against Desire 2 Learn.

Blackboard classic version 8.0 was released last Fall and this Spring Vista and Campus Edition (former WebCT products) version 8.0 will be released. These editions are not much different then proceeding versions but this action will synchronize the version numbers of the three products.
The real interest part of this is that Bb is promising the release of Blackboard 9.0 before the end of 2008. This is the Next Generation edition that will have significant differences from previous version AND this is the version that finally merges the two former WebCT products with the classic Blackboard product. From the little they showed of the mockups, this product will have a whole new look, feel and new features. The timing of this release means that many schools will be testing this release out in the first half of 2009 and considering upgrading to it in the Summer of 2009, or not.
My jury is still out if this is good and bad news. The new is good in that now we know what is planned. But could be bad because most schools may not be able to afford the new product. It promises to deliver all of the Web2.0 functionality that we are looking for but it seems to me that most of these features will be distributed in the suite of modules that Bb offers. At most schools, they just run the one core module and can't afford the extra modules.
I have a meeting with a Bb representative this coming week so I will raise these concerns to him and report back here.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

2008-02-18T23:41:00.002-07:00

Here is the downloadable utility from Microsoft that will allow you to open Office 2007 formatted documents, with the x on the end of the file extension, in Office 2000, XP or 2003. This is a nice band-aid to a huge problem that occurred when MS released a non compatible file format for the Office 2007 suite of apps. I have heard that there is more compression in these new file formats, so a PowerPoint file would be significantly smaller but I haven't tested that myself yet.

I assume that there was a great reason for introducing this new set of formats that would off-set the pain it is causing, but I can't think of any.

Anyway, you can download the Compatibility Pack from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en

or you can use http://www.zamzar.com to convert your files.

Richard Baraniuk: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning

2008-01-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a very interesting TED Talks from Richard Baraniuk who gives us his vision of the future of textbooks, and open-source learning.

It is 19 minutes long but worth a view and thinking about. Go to http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/25 to see it.

Rod

Get a First Life

2008-01-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen this before, you need to check this site out. It is simply and parody on Second Life, which is getting a lot attention from the e-learning community lately. Go to http://www.getafirstlife.com/ to check it out.

It is kind of like the www.dhmo.org that is a parody of many sites about toxic substances. BTW, if you can't see the humour in this site, ask a chemistry student.

Rod

bFree - Blackboard Export Extractor

2008-01-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a very interesting and useful tool if you are working with Blackboard version 6.3 and higher. This tool is freely available from the UNC website. Essentially, this tool will allow you or your students to view and extract any content for a Blackboard Archive or Export zip file. It also can be used to do the following:

If you need to extract a document from an old course that you have an archive file, you can use bFree an avoid having to mount the file back into a Blackboard course shell.
You can convert your course into a web site with the same structure, that can be shared outside of Blackboard either on a disk or website.
This would be a very useful tool if you needed to move your course from Blackboard to a different LMS.

Rod Corbett

Jane Hart's E-Learning Handbook

2008-01-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

Here is an very useful online handbook all about E-Learning from Jane Hart. This e-book is free and will serve as an excellent PD source and reference. Jane promises to keep the handbook current with continuous revisions.

Useful topics covered include:

Virtual worlds like Second Life
Blogs and wikis
Podcasts, videocasts and screencasts
What is Web 2.0 and E-Learning 2.0?
RSS Feeds
Mobile E-Learning
Social Bookmarking
And many more

Click here to check it out.

The Next Generation of e-Learning Software

2007-12-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

I recently read this white paper from Educause about the current status of e-learning systems and what the next generation systems should be and it is very thought provoking. You can find it at http://www.educause.edu/er/erm06/erm0643.asp

I was very impressed about how the model of the next generation system, described at the end, reflected the concept of a personal learning network that centres on the learner. This is a concept that I have been reading about for a few years and I feel that I personally have constructed my own personal learning network to meet my professional development needs. So, here is a model of how this could be extended to our students, as life long learners. And I had a chat with one of the authors of this paper, Ali Jafari, and he is building the system and offering it to us. It is call epsilen and you can look at it at http://www.epsilen.com/

It is worth the read. After reading it, consider how we can start to change our thinking about our e-learning systems to meet the needs of 21st century students. And if we don't will the students be attracted to the institutions that do? I wonder if this is just like 10 years ago when we were considering getting on the e-learning bandwagon or being left behind. I suspect it is.

I am putting a group of people together who would like to collaborate on discussing these issues and helping to move us ahead. Email me if you would like to join us at RodCorbett@gmail.com

Please place comments here.

Portable Computer Apps

2007-11-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

Do you work on a computer where you can't install and run the computer programs that they want to run? Check out this site PortableApps.com From this site you can install your favorite free computer programs on your USB Memory Drive and carry them with you in your pocket and run them on any Windows computer no matter how locked down it is.

Some of portable apps include:

Open Office - the free alternative to MS Office and some would argue is better.
GIMP - a full featured photo and image editing program.
Audacity - record, edit and create MP3 audio files
Mozilla Firefox - the for browsing the web
Mozilla Thunderbird - for working with your email
Mozilla Sunbird - calendar and task organizer
Nvu - for developing websites.
Miranda - for instant messaging with AOL, MSN and Yahoo users

What is even cooler is that if you need accessibility features then check out these three:

Firefox Accessibility Extension - Make Firefox more accessible
On-Screen Keyboard Portable - Easily access an on-screen keyboard
Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable - A full-featured screen magnifier

So for a $10 USB Memory drive you can practically carry your computer programs and data files in your pocket. Oh and by the way, if you buy a USB Memory Drive with the U3 software on it, you might as well delete that as it appears to be useless to me.

Rod Corbett

Too FAST: Student Assessment Tool

2007-11-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

Bruce Ravelli and Zvjezdan Patz, who brought us FAST, has now release the second generation of their tool, Too FAST. This is the a great web-based tool for surveying your students. It is easy to use, free and designed for instructors to use with their students. This new version was built in PHP and has many improvements over the older FAST:

You can have more than 20 items in your survey.
There is more flexibility if the item formats
And there are standard items available to use.

This is a great tool for surveying your students that takes very little time to setup and administer.

Go to http://toofast.ca/ to sign up for an account.

eLearning XHTML editor (eXe)

2007-11-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

I have finally taken some time to explore eXe, which is a tool that has been on my list of tools to explore for a while now. So, I am sold on this. This is a free tool that has the following features:

It is free.
It is available for Linux, Mac, Windows and even has a Ready-to-Run version for Windows so you can run it on a computer without installing it. You can even run it off a USB stick.
It is easy to use
It creates some great looking multi-page learning objects that your learners just need a current web browser to access.
It exports the objects in HTML, Zipped packages, and SCORM and IMS packages so you can put them on a CD-ROM, website or into Blackboard of similar LMSes.

I really like how it is designed for teachers to use to author learning modules that are well designed using ID principles. You have a choices of several Instructional Devices like interactive quiz questions and feedback objects. There is a image gallery and image magnifier that is very cool.

We are exploring how students could use this to create their e-portfolios as well as other electronic presentations.

There are many examples you can check out at http://exelearning.org/Examples

I suppose what I really like about eXe is that it allows us to be platform independent when we develop our online course content, quizzes and guides. This is really important if you are considering moving from one platform to another, like from Blackboard to Moodle. Or it is even more important if you want to share your modules with others.

Check it out at http://exelearning.org/

Rod Corbett

Educational Technology and Related Educational Conferences

2007-11-06T10:10:00.000-07:00

Clayton R. Wright has compiled and distributed his excellent list of conferences about Educational Technologies and related topics. This list covers the dates from November 2007 to June 2008.

I have posted the document to Google Docs so you can access it from the follow link:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dd78qwxf_455djr835

I would like to contact Clayton directly to give him feedback or to add events to the list his email address is crwr77@gmail.com

MS Office Speech Tools

2007-09-27T20:56:00.000-06:00

Did you know that MS Office 2003 has a built in Speech Recognition tool? This seems to be well kept secret so I thought I would post it here. Actually, you should check your version of MS Office as it may also have this built in.

What is it? It is a tool that allows you, with a microphone, dictate text into your computer applications. The cool thing is that once activated you can use it with any applications, not just MS Office applications. You can also use it to give voice commands to your office apps.

The best way to find it is to open MS Word and pull down the Tools menu and select Speech. If it is not showing then you may need to click on the double arrows at the bottom to show all options. Once you click on Tools>Speech, you will get a tutorial appear that will walk you through testing your microphone and training the speech recognition software. Basically, you need to read to your computer several pieces of text so that it can learn how to match your voice patterns to text.

Tips, the more you train it the more accurately it recognizes your speech. And it really helps to use the same microphone all the time and talk clearly, consistently. Headsets with the boom microphones work best as they pick up better then other microphones. You can pick one up
for about $25 for a good one.

Try it, you may be surprized just have useful it is. And you don't have to pay for it.

Google Docs (Office) - Presentation Tool

2007-09-25T07:06:00.000-06:00

On Sept 17th, the Google people released the long awaited for Presentation tool for Google Docs. We have been waiting for this for a while to make the complete Google Office suite.

I have been using Google Docs as an alternative to MS Office and Open Office. Although the tools still lack many features, I find that I have the features I need and the power to collaborate on editing and have the documents saved on the website where I can access them from any where, makes it worth using. I am also very tired of how I can copy and paste text from MS Word documents without a lot of formating tags coming with it that mess up the text I am copying. With Google Docs this is all taken care of.

The Presenter tool in Google Docs has the essentials for building a PowerPoint like slideshow but lacks many of the fancy features, like animations; although that may be a good thing. You can upload a PowerPoint file into Google Docs now and use this tool to post your slides online either for your students or as a supplement to a conference presentation you may have given. This makes it very easy to add your presentations to your e-portfolio. This tool will come in really handy for students that are tasked with group work assignments where they need to collaboratively build a presentation for the class. It can then be delivered either online or f2f.

A unique feature is included that allows you to delivery your presentation live online, with a live chat tool to dialogue with your audience.

So far there is no support for audio narrations but I am hoping that will be added later.

Oh, and it is free to use, no advertising. You just need a Google Account. Check it out at http://docs.google.com/ and add a comment on what you think of it.

Freedom Writers Movie

2007-09-03T12:00:00.000-06:00

This is the first movie review I am posting on this blog but if you have seen the movie Freedom Writers you should rent it and view it. I was very impress with this movie about a teacher who found a way to reach out to several students through the appropriate application of educational technologies, including journal writing. The film was quite watchable and speaks a lot to the passions of teaching and what I believe teaching should really be about.

Rent it and enjoy it.

Rod

Free Websites and Online Portfolios

2007-09-03T11:48:00.000-06:00

In a search for a useful tool that we can give to students to create a maintain online portfolios or websites, we are currently going to explore how well Google Page Creator will work. I meets all of the key criteria that we need:

It is free to use.
There is nothing to install
The contents are on a server that is not affiliated with the college
It is very easy to use for novice students
There are privacy controls on each page and each page has it's own URL.
It is hosted by a service that should be around for a long time so students should feel they can own the site and use it after graduating.

You need a Google account (free) and you can upload up to 100 mb of files. If you need more space and more control over who can read your documents you can place documents in Google Docs or other services (for photos, audio or video clips) and link to them.

Click here to access this tool.

Please comment if you have tried using this tool or if you have found any better tools.

A Wiki Replaces the Textbook in a Boston Colllege Classroom

2007-08-20T08:53:00.001-06:00

Here is an interesting article about how an instructor is using a Wiki and other Web 2. 0 tools to enhance learning in his classroom, but he has gone so far as to replace the textbook. The students have to love that.

Check out the article at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9030802 and let us know what you think out it.

Rod

Recording Narrated Slideshows with MS PhotoStory

2007-08-09T18:37:00.000-06:00

I have been looking for a free and easy tool that instructors, and students, can use to make recorded narrated slideshow presentations from their photos. MS PhotoStory 3 is one excellent tool for this.

It is very easy to use. Download it from here but you have to verify your Window XP or Vista is legal. It import photos of any size but over 640x480 works best.

You can add special effects like panning and zooming. You can even make a whole slide show from one photo by zooming into different parts of the photo.

It generates WMV files of various specs for on computer, PDA, mobil device, playing or email sing.

If you need your slideshow in other formats, you can convert with ZamZar.com to other formats.

You can add a voice narration but must use microphone, can't import MP3 or wav files. If you need to do this, use MS Movie Maker.

One of the highlight features is that you can easily add back ground music from a MP3 or CD or you can also generate your own original (royalty free) music.

It if Free but requires Windows XP or Vista. Mac users should use Garageband.

GTD on Retro PDAs

2007-07-06T18:58:00.000-06:00

I have been exploring a new organizing system that may help me get better organized. It is the GTD system from David Allen. In my explorations I ran across four very interesting tools that can help you organize your life and they are all free, sort of.

The first is the Hypster PDA. Click here to learn more. This started out as a joke but it works so well that many people are using it. Or click here to see how to use Hypster PDA for GTD.

Next is PocketMod. Check it out at www.pocketmod.com This is like Hypster PDA but you can use common letter sized paper.

Then there is Thinking Rock, which is an actual stand alone computer application that is open source. This software helps you to use the GTD system and it prints out reports in PocketMod formats.

For Gmail users you can configure your Gmail account to do the same thing Thinking Rock does but it is online and accessible where ever you can access your Gmail. Go to http://spaceagewasteland.com/gtd%20with%20gmail.pdf to read a white paper on how to do this.

And finally, there is a Firefox addin that even makes it easier for you to use Gmail for your GTD system. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3209

Check them out.

Oh, if you want to check out the book by David Allen about GTD click here

If you are using the GTD system, please post a comment here and let us know how it is working for you.

Rod

Free FLV Player

2007-07-04T21:21:00.000-06:00

Here is a free FLV Player the you just run and drag and drop your FLV (Flash Video) files on top of it and it plays it for you. You can also play an FLV stream with it.

FLV is the format that Google Video, YouTube and TeacherTube use for their videos.

Check it out at http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467081.html

Rod

Google Office Folders

2007-07-03T15:37:00.000-06:00

Google Docs and Spreadsheet has just added a very cool new interface that allows you to set up folders to organize your documents. This would allow you to set up a folder for each of your projects, courses or whatever category you need to use. Go to http://docs.google.com/ and check it out.

As yet, there appears to still be no limit on how many documents you can post into your account and I ran across a posting in the Google Blog that they have acquired www.zenter.com, which will give them technology to add a PowerPoint like presentation tool to their Google Docs and Spreadsheets tools. Go to http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-sharing.html to read more about this. Google is planning to roll out the new tool this Summer. I hope they include a way to add a voice narration to the presentation files.

Podcast Recordings Available for the Future of Eduation Conference

2007-06-07T16:09:00.000-06:00

The podcast link is now available for the MP3 recordings of the presentations from this conference hosted by George Siemans and University of Manitoba. Click here to learn more about the conference.

I really appreciate these presentations being made available through MP3 because even though it is online, I could attend any of the sessions live because I have been just too busy this week. I also find it restrictive that I need to use Elluminate to view the archive recordings. I love the MP3 recordings because then I can load them into my MP3 player and listen to them anyway. I can also share them easier.

The URL for the Podcast list in RSS is http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/foe-2007/podcast/index.xml which came up right into my Google Reader, which even offered to play them for them. Nice.

Thanks George.

Rod

Teaching Naked: Should you do it? Yes!

2007-05-29T20:58:00.000-06:00

Okay, so this is not be about teaching without clothes on but this is a very good article about not letting educational technologies get in between you and your students.

What I get from this article is that we would be more effective teachers if we stopped using so much technology in our scheduled class-time to present content or have quizzes. But we should use the technology to develop content and admin quizzes outside of scheduled class time so we can use that valuable time to have more open, less structured discussions and other interactive learning activities. The notion of teaching naked is to prepare to take some risks in your classes, with less content to hide behind and allow the students to set the directions of the activities more.

The article explains this much better so click here to access this great article by Jose Antonio Bowen and post a comment on what you think about it.

Rod

Top 10 Time Savers for Instructors

2007-05-19T22:00:00.000-06:00

On May 15, Andrew Reil and I made a presentation at the Spring PD Retreat of the Mount Royal Faculty Association about the Top 10 Time Savers for instructors. We tried to present a list of tools that are easy to use, to acquire and will save an instructor significant time. We selected this topic because we have continually heard feedback from instructors that they are suffering from shortage of time in their work.

Click here to access the handout, which includes the to 10 time savers as well as several that didn't make it into the top ten.

We had about 25 instructors attend our presentation and several of them expressed appreciation for the timesavers as many they were not aware of and they felt they could use right away.

We also presented a similar presentation for Researchers where some of the timesavers are the same but you can access that handout by clicking here.

Free Blended Learning Guide from Web Junction

2007-05-03T19:57:00.000-06:00

Here is a free guide (PDF download) that is an update guide to Blended Learning. It is full of links to many examples of the latest online learning tools and resources. It also features many tips, case studies and examples of best practices for trainers and instructors.

Click here to access

Symposium Promotional PostCard

2007-04-28T16:53:00.000-06:00

A promotional postcard is being emailed out to invite participants to register to attend the Symposium 2007 event. And to submit a proposal to present.

If you didn't receive a postcard or the images got mangled through the email then click here to view it.

The online registration using SPORG is now open at http://adeta.org/symposium/registration.html

This is going to be a great event. Don't miss it.

Rod

Second Life International Education Conference! May 25, 2007

2007-04-24T07:22:00.000-06:00

Planning is currently underway for the first Second Life International Education Conference! The focus will be on best practices in teaching, learning and research. Click here for more information.

The conference will be held on May 25, 2007 in venues all over the Second Life world, with exciting presentations, vendors and exhibitors, and everything an educator needs to know to get started exploring the possibilities for teaching, learning, and research in Second Life!

There is no cost to participate in this conference but you do need to sign up for a Second Life identity or account, which is free. Go to http://www.secondlife.com for that.

Rod

Zamzar: a free online file conversion tool

2007-04-21T07:00:00.000-06:00

Zamzar is a free online file conversion tool that allows you to convert Document, Image, Music and Video Formats without having to download any software. With this site you convert MS Office documents to PDF, or Open Office and MS Works documents to Word. So if a student sends you an assignment that you can't open you can convert it with this tool. You can also convert PowerPoint files into Flash movies.

The scary conversion is that you (and your students) can convert PDF files that shouldn't be editable to an editable Word, RTF or HTML document. See a list here.

This site also supports batching up several files to be converted at once.

Zamzar also has the ability to convert videos from sites like Google Video and YouTube.

The interface is super easy to use. First, you upload the file you want converted (or provide the URL), second, you select the format you want to convert it to and then you supply your email address where you will be notified when you can download the converted file. You can't convert files bigger than 100 MB and you have 24 hours to pickup your file.

Call for Proposals Out for October Symposium

2007-04-14T15:00:00.000-06:00

The call for proposals is justing going out for presenters at the Distributed Learning in the 21st Century: Shaping the Future of Learning Symposium taking place October 17 to 19, 2007 in Edmonton.

The due date is May 14th to get them in. Please consider sharing some of your insights, research and/or practices that will help us Shape the Future of Learning.

All presenters will receive a discount on their registration fees.

Click here for more details.

Download Free Web Design Templates from OSWD.org

2007-04-05T15:58:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, when I discover things that other people tell me about, I feel like I must be the last to know about these things. This is one of those. Did you know that you can download free templates from websites like http://www.oswd.org/ that you can use to make your own sites look like a professional designer designed it? Terri Brown told me about this site. She just recently used a template from this site for the new http://www.adeta.org/symposium website that looks wonderful. Especially compared to the site as I had started it. Of course using free templates to make my sites look better is why I am using Blogger.com.

So, this site is full of templates that generous people have shared with the public, you can download and use these templates on your websites, legally. The site claims to currently have over 2000 free designs. Terri told me that you do have to sift through them to find the best ones.

I am going to starting using them more. I use Dreamweaver for my websites and it comes with very few templates.

GooSync - Synchronize Google Calendar with your Mobile Device

2007-04-02T19:54:00.000-06:00

I have been looking for an easy way to synchronize my calendar, which is now in Google Calendar, with my Pocket PC and I have found this one. GooSync.com is a free tool and service that makes this a snap. I switched over to using Google Calendar exclusively as my calendar due to how useful it is and better than the other calendar tools I have used. I use a Dell Axim PDA that I have always wanted to find a way to sync the two. Actually, I stopped using my PDA because it was not in sync but today it is. It only took 5 minutes to signup for the service and install the client.

I had abandoned using the Lotus Notes Calendar at work that I used to have M-Notes installed that synched my PDA with that calendar. Well with GooSync installed, now my Lotus Notes Calendar is synchronized with my Google Calendar.

Oh and GooSync works with a lot of mobile devices, including cell phones, palms and smart phones. Click here to look up your device.

Check it out at http://goosync.com

Skype 3 - Free Conference Calling for 10

2007-03-29T07:04:00.000-06:00

I finally upgraded to Skype version 3 and discovered that they have now expanded the number of participants you can have in a free conference call to 10 instead of the previous 5. 10 is a great number as most committees that I work on are between 5 and 10. I have Skype installed on all of my computers and my Pocket PC. It uses webcams with ease and has many of the features that other systems lack. For example in my MSN Messenger, as soon as I bring in a third person into a conversation, we lose audio. With Skype you can add 9 to your conversation and keep the audio connection. Skype does support text chat, monitors which of your contacts are online and makes it very easy to find people.

When you install it on your Pocket PC, it turns it into a Skype Phone, for free. All you need is a WiFi connection and you can make calls without a subscription, if you call other Skype users. For a low fee you can call nonSkype users on their telephones.

Go to http://www.skype.com and download it.

Teacher Tube Video Sharing

2007-03-26T22:05:00.000-06:00

I was sent this link today and this site appears to be YouTube for teachers. The concept is the same but this site is only for sharing educational video clips. It is free and well designed, okay, it pretty much mirrors YouTube. I like the idea of an educational YouTube so you should check it out. It is still very new, started in January, but there are many videos on it already.

Features that I like are the flag for reporting inappropriate material and you can embed the video clips into your only courseware. It is all Flash based, like the others, so it is easy to share links to your students. I also like the guidance and position about posting copyright materials. This will help us feel confident that in using the clips from the site, we are not violating anyone's copyright.

So, this site will be as good as we make it by posting our video clips to it. Check it out at http://www.teachertube.com/

All Things Web 2.0

2007-03-17T12:40:00.000-06:00

Here is a very useful directory site of many Web 2.0 applications. These apps are typically free and designed for collaborating with others. The apps are organized in to categories including one for Elearning 2.0 where several very interesting learning apps are listed.

I also found the wide range of very innovation apps in the lists that I have never thought of before. There are sites to help you improve your health and network with others doing the same. Apps for networking with others is all kinds of ways.

According to lists, the most popular app is blurf a trivia question game.

What is also nice of this site is the you can read reviews and ratings on the Web 2.0 apps/sites so it can help you make sense of the new Web 2.0.

Changing Learning Systems - Elliot Masie

2007-03-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

Elliot Masie has released a free online presentation in Flash about the issues and challenges of changing your learning systems. Click here to access it. Are you a WebCT or Blackboard user and wonder about changing LMS over to something else, then check out this presentation.

"Changing Learning Systems: Forces & Disruptions"

Changing Learners
Changing Content Models
Changing Business Processes
Changing Learning & IT Models
Changing Marketplace

This content is based on our research with our 240 member Learning
CONSORTIUM. We are tracking a rate of more than 30% of corporations in
LMS and LCMS "reconsideration". This on-line module includes my audio
comments on the key business drivers that are impacting LMS selection and
change.

Rod

Google Notebook

2007-03-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

We ran the 25 Google Learning Tools workshop a week ago for the conference in Calgary and one of the most popular tools was Google Notebook. Then I realized that I had reviewed that tool with you yet. Notebook is new, free and very useful. Go to http://www.google.com/notebook/ and sign up with your Gmail or Google account. It works best if you download and install the plugin. BTW, you can sign up for gmail account without an invitation now if you go to http://www.gmail.com

What can you do with Notebook?
- Surf the web and grab quotes, notes and images from the web pages you find useful and they automatically copy to one of your Google Notebooks.
- After open up your notebook and edit, organize, and insert your notations.
- After you have the notebook set the way you want, you can share it with your students or peers but simply making it public and sharing the URL, all with seeing one single HTML code.

So, if you are an instructor, you could put together some pretty nice looking presentations with images and resources from the web very quickly and post them into your online course.
Or, if you are a student working on a class presentation you can use Notebook to compile your notes and findings and present to the class. You can even collaborate on developing the presentation.

Rod

Canadian E-Learning 2007 conference

2007-03-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

The 5th Annual Canadian E-Learning Conference will take place in Edmonton at the University of Alberta on June 18 to 22, 2007. This is the former Canadian WebCT conference that UofA have hosted over the last 4 years. The title is explore 2007.

This conference will be very different because of the take over of WebCT by Blackboard and the organizers are working hard for make this a conference for all WebCT and Blackboard users in Canada, as well as other platforms.

The call for proposals is out right now and the due date is March 20th. If you are accepted your registration fee is cut to $100.

Plan to attend. I have submitted proposals to offer the 25 Google Learning Tools workshop that Jeff Hamilton and I have developed. This workshop has attracted a lot of interest when we have offered it. I am also working on a concurrent presentation about the top 10 free tools you can use to enhance your WebCT or Blackboard courses.

It will be a great conference. See you there. Click here for details.

Rod

Publishing with Google Tools Module Guide

2007-02-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

Publishing with Google Tools Module

In this module you are going to use some of the Google blogging tools to find useful blogs to read, subscribe to their feeds, and even publish your own blog and website.

Google Tools Explored in this module:

Blogger
Google Blog Search
Google Reader
Google Alert
Google Page Creator

Learning Objectives:

Find useful blogs that have postings that would want to read on a regular basis.
Setup a blog of your own that you can use to publish your own thoughts, opinions or commentaries on an area of your interest.
Setup two tools that will act as agents for you to alert you to new postings on selective blogs or just generally on the Internet, as well as make it easy for you to read the postings.
Create an HTML based website using Google Page Creator

Resources Required:

A Google or Gmail account login.

Directions

Blogger

This module guide is a posting in one of my blogs in Blogger, one of the most popular blogging tools around. Google acquired Blogger awhile back and recently it just came out of Beta release. Explore the features of this blog. Can you find the archive of past postings, organized both by date and topic?
This blog is one that I started a few months ago to post my views and reviews about Ed Tech. Post a comment at the bottom of this post and let us know who useful you may find this particular blog useful, or suggestions on how I could improve it.
Think of a topic within Ed Tech that you would find useful and enter a keyword or two into the Search Blog tool at the top and left of the page and see if I have posted something about that. Did I?
There are thousands of blogs out on the net and many on Blogger along. Click on the
Next Blog>> link at the top and centre and take a look at another blog. Would you find this one useful? You may need to click on the Next Blog>> again.
Google Blog Search
Now lets search all of the blogs out there for some useful posts. Go to the Google Blog Search and enter in a key word or two describing a topic you are interested in
reading about. Find at least two blogs that you will want to subscribe to later in this module and bookmark their URLs.
Google Alerts
New blogs are created every minute and there may be one that is useful to you that gets created tomorrow. Well, you could always do another Blog Search to find it but better yet, use the Google Alert tool to let Google let you know. Go to Google Alerts and enter in a keyword or two you would like to be alerted about, and your email address. You may want to change the other options or just leave them as their defaults. If you are already signed in with your Google account you won't need to enter your email address. You can have as many alerts as you wish.
Google Reader
Hopefully you now have 2 or 3 blogs identified that you would like to read on a regular basis. We are now going to set up Google Reader to help you monitor and read the postings on these sites. If you would like a list of blogs that I subscribe to see below. Go to Google Reader and sign in with your Google login. As you create your Reader for the first time, you may choice to add some of the feeds offered but it is up to you.
Most blogs have an RSS feed when will allow Google Reader to automatically check for new postings and present them to you to read. It is easy to add these to your Subscription list in Reader because you just need to click on Add Subscription and paste in the URL from the blog site and let Google Reader set up the feed connection. Add 2 or 3 blog sites subscriptions to your list. Feel free to add any of the ones I have listed below.
If you get a lot of blogs subscriptions, you can go to the Manage Subscriptions tool where you can set up various folders, tags and other tools for organizing your subscriptions. Now take some time to actually read some of the postings. As you do, notice how Reader keeps track of what you have read. It will do this even if you access Reader from multiple computers because the information is stored on the server and not your computer. You can use the tags feature and some of the advanced publishing features to share selected postings with your class.
Blogger
Would you now like to create your own blog? Go to the Blogger start page and sign in with your Google account. Review the information about blogs presented here.
If you are ready to create your blog click on the big orange arrow that say Create your blow now and follow the directions of this wizard. Feel free to just create test blog, it is free. Or if you have figured out a purpose for you blog, create one and start publish your postings.
Google Page Creator
Blogs are different than Websites and you may want to build a website using
the Google Page Creator tool. Click
here to access my website built in Google Page Creator. What is nice about
this tool, is that it is free, no HTML knowledge required and you get 100MB
of space.
Click here to start your own website using
this tool. To get started, simply click on Create a New Page button and follow
the directions on the new page. Explore the tools. Look for buttons to change
the look and layout of the page. And experiment with the editing tools. When
you are finished you can Publish your page by click on the publish button and
you will see the URL for your site at the bottom. It should be something like
http://yourusername.googlepages.com/home
Try adding a gadget or more pages and then inserting links to them on your
home page. Could it be any easier to publish a website?
Go back to the Teaching with Google Group and look for the discussion thread
about Publishing with Google Tools. Review the postings there and post your
own message describing how useful you found the Google tools you explored in this module. Please include links to your Blog and Page Creator website so we can view them.
Go to the bottom of this page and click on the Reward link for a reward video clip on Google Video for completing this learning activity.

Additional Resources:

Some blogs I subscribe to about Educational Technologies:

Click here to access the next module in this workshop, Google Does Office and More.

Reward

PicNik.com: Free Online Photo Editing

2007-02-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

There are many photo editing tools out there and typically you will get one free with your camera or scanner. And you would like a great one for installing on your computer try Google's Picasa. But, let's say you are at the office, at you school and you need to edit a photo right now and you don't have Picasa, or another photo editor installed. And you don't have admin rights to install Picasa, well then go to PicNik at http://www.picnik.com/. The is a free online web-based photo editing tool. You can even use it without an account but sign up for one, it is free. And PicNik is VERY easy to use. You can use it and direct your students to it. If you have a Flickr account it can connect directly to it.

I found that I could easily do the following useful things:

Remove red-eye from a photo
Take a photo using my Web Cam
Crop that photo
Resize the photo
Adjust the brightness
Save it to me computer or email it to a friend
And a lot more features

One thing I would find very useful is that often students will send me or post a photo to our course site but they have not resized it down to fit within a screen. This is normally due to the new digital cameras using resolutions optimized for printing but not screen viewing and they don't know how to resize it down, or crop it. And often when I ask them if they have a photo editor on their computer, they have no idea. So I am going to send them to the PikNik site.

Rod

Picasa and a Digital Camera OCC2007

2007-02-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

At the Online Connectivism Conference that I have been kind of monitoring this week, I did catch the presentation by Diana Oblinger. In her address, she talked about many things but one thing hit me that I want to comment on here. She stated that the younger generation is very much more visual orientated that we are, their instructors. She said that we, the older generation, are not very good at using visuals to teach, but we need to learn how to use visuals more.

This is consistent with some of the work we have been done to encourage instructors to improve their classroom presentations. Typically we use PowerPoint but the slides have more text on them instead of visuals. But, good visuals are hard to come by and you don't have permission to use most of the really good ones. So what is the solution?

How about this, buy yourself a digital camera. You can pick up one for less than $100 right now. Here is one on the FutureShop website that would work great. Click here to see it. These cameras are 5 Megapixels, which is all you need. It is small enough to fit in your pocket and you can use it to create your own visuals for your teaching, whether you are in class or online. Carry it around and take lots of pictures of things that will have you illustrate your presentations. Take pictures and short video clips of examples of the concepts you are teaching. These cameras will let you take hundreds of photos on inexpensive memory cards. Pro photographers take over 100 photos in order to get a really valuable one.

You can then use Picasa, a free photo organizer and touch-up tool. It will help you transfer your photos from the camera to your computer where you can sift out the best ones. It is a free download from Google and it is better than the software that comes with the camera.

Click here to download Picasa.

I have also just discover a new free online tool for editing and organizing your photos. It is call Picnik and you can access it at http://www.picnik.com/

You can also download Wink, a free tool for making narrated slide shows in flash movies that you can post on the Web.

These are the new tools of the teaching craft. Just like you need to buy yourself a computer, a headset with microphone and now a digital camera. Don't balk at not getting your school to pay for it, you need these tools and you need to master them, or get left behind.

27 tips for teleconferencing

2007-01-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

Anne Zelenka, posted a posting on Web Worker Daily about 27 tips for teleconferencing. There are many very useful tips here that apply to learning conferences. Check it out at http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/01/28/27-tips-for-teleconferencing/

Free Online Music Jukebox

2007-01-27T12:36:00.000-07:00

Clayton R. Wright just emailed me this really cool site where you can go and play 100's of top hits from the 1950's, 60's, 70's and up to 1982. I found several of my old favourites like Crimson and Clover, Stairway to Heaven and Honkytonk Woman. The best thing is that this site is free and you can just pick a play list and go back to work, listening to the music in the back ground.

All of the music appears to be in Flash format so you just need the Flash Player installed. And the flash files download quickly while playing, then frees up your network connection for other things.

Check it out at http://www.tropicalglen.com/

TCC 2007 Online Conference

2007-01-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

TCC Worldwide Online Conference or Technology, Colleges and Community is a online conference designed for university and college practitioners. Interact in live presentations from the comfort of your office or work place. This year will be the 12th annual online conference.

The dates are April 17-19, 2007 with pre-conference dates: April 3-4, 2007. The call for proposals is still open but the due date for submissions is January 26.

The theme for this year is Blending Community and Multimedia in Ubiquitous Learning.

I have attended this conference a couple of times and it is very worthwhile. It attracts participants from all over the world.

Because it is an online conference you can save travel costs and the registration is low ($99 US) because they don't have to rent large halls or feed you.

Click here to access the information website.

GIMP: Free Photo Graphic Editor

2007-01-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. It is a bitmap based editor that is free and easy to use, yet very powerful and rivals programs like PhotoShop and Fireworks.

To install it on Windows, go to the Installers website at http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
You will need to download and install the GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment first but that is available from the same site.

Installers for Unix and Mac OS are available from http://www.gimp.org/

This tool could be used by teachers and students for developing images and photos. It supports many advanced features like:

Pattern and Radiant fills
Layers
Pressure sensitive pen tablets
Multiple Language support
Additional plug-in for Animation development.

Plenty of online tutorials are available at http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

Soople: A New Face to Google?

2007-01-18T07:20:00.000-07:00

Check out this tool. Soople is an alternative user interface to Google. It gives you a series easier search entry forms so you can access the more advanced, but hidden, search features of Google. For example, did you know there is a Glossary, Calculator, Name finder and other cool specialized search tools in Google?

Click here to see the basic start page in Soople, But click here for a great set of advanced math based calculator tools that students and teachers would find very useful.

Predictions for 2007

2007-01-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

What new and cool innovations are going to happen in 2007? Lisa Neal, Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine has published a list of predictions from several of the gurus in the field of e-learning. These include Don Norman, Elliot Massie, Stephen Downs, Curtis Bonk, and many more.

Click here to access the article and post your comments below. Do you agree? Do you have your own?

Group Effectiveness Video

2007-01-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

This video clip is about 12 min long and in Flash format for easy access over the Internet. This presentation reviews and illustrates the principles of effective groupwork. It can be applied to all types of teams.

This clip was produced by the Media Production Services unit at Mount Royal College. It is being shared to the public for learning purposes so feel free to show it to your classes if you find it useful. It is being streamed out using the MRC Breeze server so it should be quite viewable even on a dial-up connection. The URL is http://breeze.mtroyal.ca/p33333291/

The presentation is very well produced and speaks to common issues and concerns that students have when working with a group to complete an assignment. Well, you may want to skip over the animated introduction.

Jane Hart's E-Learning For Free Information Service

2007-01-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to build a website where I had lists of all of the free and useful elearning tools, online presentations, books and other resources so I can share these with others and invite others to help me add to the list, and this blog is one way of me trying to do this. But the other day I ran across a site just like the one I had in mind but Jane Hart had already built it. This is a great site and a lot of very useful lists. Check it out at http://www.janeknight.com/Directory/index.html

On Jane's site you can find the following lists:

Over 400 free tools for elearning
a Guide to Choosing & Using Free Tools
Free ebook about elearning
Free conferences that you can attend about elearning
a list of articles and interview about elearning

In Jane's blog she share a pick of the day, every day. You may want to subscribe to this one. I have.

Real Alternative and Media Player Classic

2007-01-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I ran into a problem that our IT department had blacklisted the Real Media Player for installation on our college computers, yet we had just subscribed to a PD Resource site that required the Real Media Player in order to play many of its recorded presentations. The reason Real Media Player was blacklisted because it now carries with it a lot of spyware and other undesirables.

We found a solution, a alternative player Real Alternative . And best of all it is free. Click here to access it now. It is based on the freeware Media Player Classic, which is a really nice little player that have many other uses other than playing Real Media.

Here are the reasons I recommend this:

It is easier to install and use.
It is fast, free and legal to distribute.
Plugs nicely into IE or Firefox
Plays a lot of other multi-media formats
Also plays DVDs better than the other DVD players I have:
Support real-time zoom
Supports saving bookmarks in your media presentations and DVD movies.
I can fast forward and rewind easier.

BTW, if you also want to avoid installing QuickTime, there is a QuickTime codec for Media Player Classic also. Click here to access.

Google Calendar Tool

2006-12-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

I have been using the Google Calendar tool for a while now but just discovered some advanced things that I (and you) can do with it:

It is free, fast and very easy to use. You can add events to it in a snap and easily move it later. It has one of the best set of tools for repeat events also.
It is web-based so I can access it from anywhere and any time, that I have Internet access. I can print it out for reference.
It shows my schedule is several useful views including agenda, monthly, weekly and daily.
I have my calendar embedded as a gadget in my Personalized Google Homepage. Have you seen all of the cool gadgets you can add?
You can share your calendar with others. Either on an individual basis or to publish it to a Website as an embedded object. Click here to see an example.
I can have multiple calendars. I have four calendars each with a different colour that I can hide, copy from one to another or merge. I use one for appointments and one for planning time blocks for doing tasks. You can copy events from one calendar to another.
I also have calendars for organizations that I can managing events for and posting on their websites.
I have the weather in Calgary on my calendar. I could put the moon phases also.
My wife and I share each others calendar so that we can see each others schedule at anytime.
You can set up shared calendars for your workgroup or organization with Google Calendar. This is very useful if you don't have access to another online calendar.
Your group can post comments on events and discuss them.
You can invite others to a meeting with invitation going out through email.
You can also set reminders that can either popup in a window, send you an email, or call your cell phone number. It can even email you an agenda for the day each morning.
And you can search your calendars for any text string to help to locate an event, even old ones.

This is a great free online calendar. I am still looking for a way to synchronize it with my PDA calendar though.

Click here to access Google Calendar.

Inventing the Future by Patrick Perri

2006-12-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

Patrick Perri is a computer science instructor at Mount Royal College and he has recorded a very interesting presentation about the future of computer and information technologies. The presentation is just under 57 minutes in length but is in Breeze so you just
Click here is access Inventing the Future

Post a comment to give feedback on Patrick's view into the future. Do you agree or disagree? What is you view of the future.

NVU

2006-12-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

Finally! A complete Web Authoring System for Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and Linux users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. And it is 100% open source or free.

Click here to download NVU.

Click here to access a tutorial on Learn How To Build Your Web Site Using Nvu

Blogger

2006-12-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Google brought Blogger out of beta release and with it some features that I was waiting for so now I have moved my two blogs over to Blogger. The one feature that prevented me from using Blogger before is the Labels feature so that I can organize the postings into topics instead of just in a chronological archive.

Other features that I like:

Blogger now uses the Google user accounts so I don't have to log into Blogger separately.
Blogger's dashboard is better than other blogging tools for monitoring multiple blogs
The template is now much easier to manipulate and customize.
The Feed Tool will allow a reader to filter for selected labeled postings.
It is very easy to use.
Blogger is tied in closer to other related Google tools like Google Reader, Adsense and Blog Search.
I can set up an RSS Feed link into my blog.
Blogger support Mobile Blogging.

Features that are still missing:

I can't seem to attach a document file to a posting
There is no import feature so I copied and pasted my old blog entries over. I was able to back-date the posting dates.

Blogger is free, easy to use and works well for teachers and students to blog with. Got to www.blogger.com to get started.

Selecting an Open-Source Online Course Development and Delivery Platform: An Academic Perspective

2006-12-09T11:48:00.000-07:00

Clayton R. Wright, a long time member of ADETA shared this attached article that he authored with me and gave me permission to share it here. He presented it at the Pan-Commonwealth Forum in Jamaica in October 2007. You can reach Clayton at crwr77@gmail.com.

Click here to access the PDF file of Selecting an Open-Source Online Course Development and Delivery Platform: An Academic Perspective by Clayton R. Wright

The Useful Web - Bonus Edition! by Russ Wilde

2006-12-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

Russ Wilde publishes a TechNotes newsletter for Bow Valley College and has generously giving me permission to share highlights of it. Below is an exerts that I think you will find very interesting about more new tools. Some of which I have already reviewed here.

The Useful Web—Bonus Edition!
The past six weeks has seen an absolute blizzard of new and innovative tools released on the Web. I’ve been collecting links and trying to decide which ones to share with you, but there are just so many and they are all so good—I couldn’t handle the pressure of these weighty decisions anymore! So, dear readers, I present here a special, giant-sized bonus issue of “The Useful Web.”
A quick note: Web tools are great, but remember that some people use them to create content that can be objectionable to other users. Be sure to think critically when you evaluate any Web tool or resource for use in your practice.
Tools for Collaborating and Sharing
The best part of Web 2.0 for educators is the emphasis on sharing and collaborating. Everything from documents, spreadsheet, presentation slides, music, video, and lecture notes can be created, edited, and shared by online groups. The sites presented below are some of my favorites, but there are many more available.
Zoho Show - The site’s home page says it all, “Create presentations from anywhere, present it remotely. Export it offline - it’s simple & free.” This tool works well and lets you import existing PowerPoint presentations. Also check out Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet for more document collaboration fun.
Google Documents and Spreadsheets - Office-style documents right on the Web and integrated with your existing Google account. Hard not to like this one.
Thumbstacks - A lot like Zoho Show, this tool lets you create and present PowerPoint-style shows right on the Web without any additional software. Check out the demo presentation.
Slideshare - OK, this is another Web presentation tool, much like Zoho and Thumbstacks. But it has a great interface and really deserves a look before you choose the service you want to start a relationship with.
NoteMesh - This site is designed to allow students to share their class notes. From the site:
“NoteMesh is a free service that allows college students in the same classes to share notes with each other. It works by creating a wiki for individual classes that users can edit. Users are free to post their own lecture notes or contribute to existing lecture notes. The idea is that users in the same class can collaboratively create a definitive source for lecture notes.”
I know this might make some people cringe as it seems to make it easier to skip classes. But I see it as a great tool for our busy learners to help each other succeed by working together, despite the many other responsibilities that fill their lives.
NoteCentric - Similar to NoteMesh, but with a bit more emphasis on storing personal class notes rather than sharing. It includes great WYSIWYG test editing tools and I suspect this could be a nice tool for instructor’s and students alike.
Tools for Creating Media
Splice - Need to record some audio or even mix music and commentary for a presentation? This tool allows you to make custom mixes right on the Web using either live or pre-recorded audio. The emphasis is definitely on creating and sharing music, but the tools will work for any audio project.
Jumpcut - Hey, if we’re going to edit our audio online, why not do video as well? This service—now part of the Yahoo! family—allows you to upload and modify video clips, then mix them with audio to make movies. Amazingly easy to use.
MapLib - This is a bit primitive looking but could be quite useful. It allows you to upload any picture and then use the tools from Google Maps to explore by moving around and zooming in and out. This would be a great way to present a large or highly detailed diagram that can’t be properly viewed when reduced to fit on the screen.

Russ is a member of ADETA and can be emailed at rnwilde@bowvalleycollege.ca

Synergize and Energize Conference

2006-12-07T11:46:00.000-07:00

Mount Royal College, ADETA and McGraw-Hill Ryerson will be hosting the next National Teaching Learning and Technologies conference in Calgary on February 21 to 23, 2007. Early bird registration fees will be $245 before January 19th, I believe. This conference will have many presentations and discussions about Ed Technologies and how best to apply them into our classrooms.

The Synergize and Energize: Exploring the Dynamics of Teaching and Learning conference will be a great Professional Development event and will replace the Interface conference ADETA normally holds in the Spring. There is an entire stream of presentations devoted to making technologies transparent yet effective in learning.

We also have some great keynote speakers lined up. Click here to check them out.

Look for a preconference workshop that Jeff Hamilton and I are facilitating on how 25 Google tools can be used to enhance learning. You can actually participate in the workshop online if you can’t make it to Calgary. This will be fun as using the Google platform may leave you wondering why would you use your institutions LMS for your online or blended courses.

mLearning 2006 Conference

2006-12-07T11:45:00.001-07:00

Back in October, I attended a very interesting conference in Banff all about mLearning. This was the 5th annual world conference about mLearning. If you are not familiar with mLearning this is Mobile Learning, so like eLearning but with the focus on using Cell Phones, PDA, Tablet PCS and other wireless devices for learning.

There were many very interesting presentations at the conference and the organizers have just posted most of the presentation PowerPoint slides up onto their website at http://www.mlearn2006.org/program/

I observed that the number of Canadians at the conference was low compared to the delegates from other countries. This may be due to that apparent lead that countries other than the USA and Canada seem to be ahead of North America when it comes to mLearning.

Ray Kurzweil: The Future of Technology

2006-12-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist that has some very interesting views of the future of technology. Click here to view a 23 minute online presentation of Ray’s view of the future of technology and where this is all going in the next 10 years.

I found his predictions very interesting, especially as it will impact on educational technologies. Check it out and post a comment.

Slideshare.net

2006-12-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Slideshare.net is a site the I recently found that allows anyone with PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress to post a slide show on the web and share it with the world. It is kind of like YouTube for Slideshows. It is free and easy to use. Instructors can use this to post their presentations on a public website. Conference Speakers can post their slides after their presentation to their audience. And this is a better way to distribute your presentations without giving away your PPT files.

Students can also use this sharing their presentations with the class or the world.

Other features allow you to receive comments on your slideshows and embed them into other websites or blogs. It is kind of like having a free Breeze Presenter server available only without the audio. But will that be the next new feature?

Click here to access this site.

Another similar site that allows you to build your presentations online is http://www.thumbstacks.com/

Google Groups 2

2006-12-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

Google Groups has been around for awhile but there is a new version out in beta that I have been playing with and it looks very good. Of course it is still free and only requires a google account to access. Here are some of the features I liked:

You can have as many groups as you like.
Each group has a threaded discussion board, Wiki tool, File Exchange tool and a way to email the members of your group.
Each group can post up to 100 MB of stuff in the group and that is a lot considering you will mostly be posting text messages.
There is a great management tool for tracking several groups and the activities in them.
You can elect if you want notifications email to you in various levels of digest.
I like how it integrates into Google Personalize Homepage as a gadget and connects with my Gmail contact list.
You can customize the look of the group area.
You can join hundreds of existing groups or set your up to be by invitation only.

I was disappointed to not be able to edit a discussion posting after I posted it but I can remove and replace it.

Check it out at http://groups-beta.google.com

e-Learning Environmental Scan

2006-12-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

I was just sent the URL to this document. It is an e-Learning Environmental Scan that had been prepared for Alberta Education in March 2006.

The report addresses the following:

needs and preferences of today’s students
needs and preferences of today’s employers
issues in e-Learning
trends and promising practices in e-Learning

You can access the report from http://www.education.gov.ab.ca/technology/elearning/scan.pdf

Freemind - Mind Mapping Tool

2006-11-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Freemind is a free mind mapping computer tool that is very easy to use. I found this tool very valuable for brain storming, creating lists and outlines. I used it for my list of 80 free computer tools for learners that I blogged about earlier. Freemind is not the same as concept-mapping tools that tend to by more visual, where Freemind is more based on a text outliner. What is really great about Freemind is that you and your students can download it easily and use it on computers without installing it if that if a challenge. I have used it to create an outline of notes with my learners and then posting it to the web right afterwards. I also used it as a presentation tool instead of PowerPoint to teach complicate principles and relationships.

Your students could use this tool to make and organize their notes and for developing assignments and presentations.

Go to http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ to learn more and download the tool.

YackPack

2006-11-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

I have been playing with YackPack (www.yackpack.com) and it is great. YackPack is one of the few asynchronous audio conferencing tools that I have seen and this one is Free. Wimba Voice Tools is another such tool but it is not free.

YackPack let’s you set up “packs” where you can invite friends, associates or your students to meet you in the online pack where voice messages and emails can be exchanged in non-real time. So you can access the pack at any time and listen to messages, reply or post your own. You can send voice messages to the whole group or just selected participants. And email is automatically sent out to alert the participants that a message is waiting for them. And it is very easy to use. Did I mention it is Free?

You can even have several yackpacks and tracking activity in various packs is easy. You can also embed the packs into your website or course sites. There are also great tutorials and help support.

I am going to use this for my next online class and perhaps a committee or two. If you are using this in a class, let us know how it is working for you.

P.S. YackPack has just recently added a synchronous chatting component.

Over 90 Free Computer Tools for Learners

2006-11-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

I made a presentation at the AOC Online Learning Symposium last week about 50 Free Computer Tools for Learners. By the time I got the presentation ready, the count was over 90. I have post the list of tool to my portfolio site so click here to access it.

I put this list together is order to inventory all of the useful and free computer tools I have been finding that would be useful to students if we put them into their hands. I realized that most of the Ed Technologies that we focus on are not really that useful to learners. Tools like Blackboard, WebCT, Breeze Presenter and others are more for supporting teachers and administration then to actually have learners learn. The list is organized by typical functions that student perform in order to learn.

So here is my list. Let me know what you think of it.

I have already had feedback on tools that I could add to the list so I will continue to add them but you can add them too but adding a comment below.

BTW, the list was created in FreeMind, a very cool and free mindmapping tool.

I am working on a similar list the would focus on tools to support teachers. I will post it here when it is ready.

Gmail

2006-11-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

Are you feedback with fighting with your email software? I was and tired of checking multiple accounts and deleting spam. I was especially frustrated with the email server managers emailing me warnings that my inbox is getting full and that I need to remove message. I hate doing that when I don’t have time to carefully consider that I need to keep. Actually, I just hate deleting anything because I just know I will need it late. Not that I can find old important messages in my email anyway.

Okay, then a friend invited me to try Gmail or Google Mail and it is by fair the BEST email tool on this planet. And if you ask other Gmail users, they will say the same thing. And it is free. Why do I like it?

I moved all of my other email accounts (save my mtroyal.ca) to it very easily and now I just need to check in one place.
It is webbased so I can access it anywhere.
I have almost 3 Giga Bytes of storage so no one bugs me to clean up my inbox. I have been using it for 6 months and I am still under 10% used.
I can attach files to a message to myself and use it as web storage. Max file size per message is 10 MB.
I can use the Google Search engine to fine the email messages I need.
It automatically add any email address I send to or recieve from into the contacts list.
It clusters messages into conversations.
It supports labels instead of folders. Messages can essentially be in more than one folder/label at a time.
It has a star flagging tool for flagging messages that require my attending. I can quickly list all messages starred.
It has great spam controls.
Gmail is also integrated with Google Talk an easy to use Instant Messaging tool that stores your transcripts into your Gmail box.
It has a great spell checker and rich formatting tool that appears just like Word.
It is fast and reliable. It saves to draft automatically so you don’t lose your message with a network disruption.
It is just way too easy to use and it is free.

I highly recommend this as a replacement email system to teachers and students. To get signed up you need to have a current gmail user invite but that is not difficult, just look for a message in your inbox from a gmail.com email address and ask them to invite you.

Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding

2006-11-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a very interest short film about teaching and understanding. It is in the context of Universitys but can be applied to most other learning contexts. This film is being shared freely on the Internet and can be accessed at http://www.daimi.au.dk/~brabrand/short-film/

I think the message in the presentation is great and well presented. We talk a lot about these ideas with instructors but this film really illustrates what we need to do to help students learn more effectively. Please post your comments on how you found the film.

Audacity

2006-11-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

Audacity is a very good sound recording and editing application that is open source and free. It is available for Macs, Windows, Linux and other OS from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Audacity is easy to use to record presentations, interviews, sounds or music. You can see a visual representation of the sampling and edit the sound kind of like a word processor, you can select a segment, delete, copy or move it. You can also record or mix several tracks and save to MP3 format for podcasting.

I have used Audacity for recording guest speakers, myself and presentations over the Internet that I was not able to attend. There are many advanced features but they are optional. The one I have found very handy is the Noise Removal effect that can clean up the buzz.

Both teachers and students will find this tool handy.

If you are interested in acquiring music for presentations, you may want to check out Finale Notepad. With this free program you can select and download from thousands of legal music pieces and record them to Audacity and put them into presentations, legally.

Wetpaint.com

2006-11-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

In looking for a useful free and hosted wiki tool, I have come across Wetpaint.com. It have a very easy interface and claims to have the functions of a wiki, blog and online discussion forum. You can access it at www.wetpaint.com.

Features that I like are:

Many templates to choose from
Comments and discussions are right on the page
Very easy to work with
You can attach files to pages
You can add RSS Feeds directly in the pages

There are many of these out there but I am looking for the best one. If you know of others that work for you, please comments and share it.
Like all wikis, you use this for many collaboration activities. What activities do you use Wikis for?

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

2006-11-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

Google a fairly new tool available that allows you to create, open, print, share and collaborative edit word processor documents and spreadsheets. The word processor tool appears to be a cross between MS Word and a Wiki. Actually it is the Writely tool that Google acquired not too long ago. The spreadsheet tool appears like MS Excel. Both allow you to do the following:

Open documents and save them as PDF files.
Store documents online and access them from anywhere. No storage limit apparently.
Collaborative create documents like meeting agendas, lists and tables.
Draws email address from my gmail contact list.

Although you just need email addresses of the people you want to share or collaborate with, they will need a Google account, which is free.

You can access this tool at http://docs.google.com/

I have also run across a couple of similar tools at http://www.thinkfree.com/and http://www.zoho.com/that are also free and have more tools, like presentation, planner and database tools.

Are tools like this going to be a threat to the MS Office Monopoly?