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

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

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

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

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

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.