Furl

http://www.furl.net/index.jsp

Use Furl to save copies of Web Pages which you want to store as they are, forever.

I use it to keep copies of articles and news which I don't expect to be online for ever, or which I am referencing in work that I do.

Join Furl and get the toolbar, and you are given 5 Gb of server space to save these pages.

Skype: Phone calls over the Intenet

http://www.skype.com/products/

Can be used for phoning over the Internet - http://www.skype.com/products/explained.html explains how.

Perhaps it could be used by groups of students to take part in discussions. For example, Fast Forward students have to take part in a group discussion, which is difficult to achieve if some live at a distance. The Skype software might allow several students to take part in conferencing cheaply and simply.

Changing the Icon text on a WebCT module

I was looking at if we could control the icon text on a WebCT course, using style sheets instead of Font tags. It's not the most important thing in the world, but can make updating styles easier.

It seems that a style sheet can only be called from the organiser pages by going through the WebDAV address. So instead of, in the icon title, typing:

<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> <b><br>Introduction</b></font>

...Type...

<link href="http://webct.edgehill.ac.uk/dav/ProVIDE/css_provide_home.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"><P>Introduction</P>

...With the 'css_provide_home.css' file in the 'My Files' directory on WebCT.


The possible down-side was that in Internet Explorer (which most students will be using), 'View' > 'Text Size' doesn't work on the icon text now, because that is set to work on 'Font' tags. It does work in Mozilla Web browser 'View' > 'Text Zoom'. But as long as the text is large enough to start with , that shouldn't be a problem.

Also we need to test how WebDAV is affected when we go off campus.

SONY PD150 and PD170 WORKBOOK: CONTENTS PAGE - WWW.URBANFOX.TV

SONY PD150 and PD170 WORKBOOK: CONTENTS PAGE - WWW.URBANFOX.TV

Some help for the Sony PD150 video camera.

elearnspace. everything elearning: Blogs

elearnspace. everything elearning: Blogs

Build a Feed You Can Cut 'n Paste

Build a Feed You Can Cut 'n Paste

I will use this to add a live news feed to the Faculty WebCT sites.

Educational Blogging

Blogging

Interesting thoughts on the educational uses of Blogging.

Educational Blogging : By Stephen Downes, Senior Researcher with the E-Learning Research Group, National Research Council Canada.

The street finds its own use for things: By Henry.

PDAs at Worcester

Two members of the ILS department (Sarah Hayes and Ken Mackay) are running a (L&T Centre-funded) project: to examine existing and potential use of PDAs at Worcester.

http://www2.worc.ac.uk/pdaproject/

RAMBLE blog for PDAs

RAMBLE is a JISC-funded project, part of the E-Learning Tools programme. RAMBLE is investigating the use of mobile blogs and their integration into Learning Environments.
In this project the process of blogging has three stages:

1. Blogging on a PDA - where students can reflect on their learning experiences, provide feedback on lectures, tutorials, practicals etc at a location, time etc. that is convenient to them.
2. Upload the blog to a blog server - on return to their desktop or wherever there is access to the Internet, the students can press a button and upload the blogs to a local blog server.
3. Integration in a VLE - VLEs can provide an environment in which the blog can be shared among selected groups, typically peers or tutors within a focused context as can be provided by VLEs. (Usually, blogs are made public and are not highly contextualised). The main development for this project will consist of tools to read the blogs via feeds (probably RSS and Atom) and to render them in various ways in the VLE.

Second National Workshop and Tutorial on Handheld Computers in Universities and Colleges

Second National Workshop and Tutorial on Handheld Computers in Universities and Colleges

Might be of interest as I have just ordered 3 DELL Axim X30 Wireless PAN/LAN PDAs.

It is £205 for the day (lunch and refreshments included). Each delegate also gets a Palm handheld.

Webcite

Webcite

E-learning resources, consulting and training. Some useful lists of books.

stock.xchng - the leading free stock photography site

stock.xchng - the leading free stock photography site

Useful for images

ColorWhore

ColorWhore

Another colour site. Honest!

[ws] Color Scheme Generator 2

[ws] Color Scheme Generator 2

A useful tool for colour schemes.

ALT-C so far - Day 2

Day 2 of the conference and the word of the day is ontology. The keynote speaker this morning mentioned ontologies and so did someone in a session this afternoon. Still not quite sure what it means!

John's session went very well (or so he said!). There is always a worry that people will radically disagree with your thoughts on a subject but JD didn't have to worry. A lot of conversation was generated from his thoughts.

Some highlights so far for me.

• Watching JD lose all his money at the casino last night.
• The cooked brekkie this morning.
• Finding out about lots of new software - much of it free, eg. Kartoo - a visual search engine although will we ever get time to play with it?
• Brilliant session on how to use PDAs in your teaching from a couple of funny guys from Yorkshire. Some simple yet effective ideas.

Conference dinner tonight, probably be loads of lovely veg!

Until tomorrow.

Tata.

Accessibility

Joe Clark has some excellent resources covering accessibility. These could be useful when creating resources for the web and on DVD.

http://www.joeclark.org/access/

His book 'Building Accessible Websites' is available on that site, and I have a printed version in my office.

Adding Sound

Is this something we should be looking at developing on our site?

Adding Sound

I am sure there are loads of short tips, tutorials etc we could put together. Virtual induction for WebCT springs to mind.

Library System: Innovative's Millenium - Reading Lists

The session on Tuesday, covered how reading lists would work in the Library system - if we choose Millenium.

From our point of view, it would be easy to add a link to a reading list from WebCT modules, because they will each have a URL that doesn't change. If that wasn't good enough, and we wanted to format the data, it could be sent from Millenium in XML.

BLiki

Just when you thought you were getting your head around Blogs and WIKIs, here comes a hybrid called a BLiki!

A BLiki is a hybrid Wiki/Blog. It's a Wiki that you can blog to. Er, a Blog that you can use wiki markup in.

WIKI test

If you would like to see how a WIKI works and have a play around with one, try this.

http://www.daily-tart.co.uk/tricks_wiki/

e-Learning Dashboard

Good list of e-learning news, blogs, events etc. - e-Learning Dashboard

RSS: A Learning Technology

0405_Trends

LearnScope

LearnScope looks like a very interesting site.

Particularly like the article on How to use weblogs to create engaging learning experiences

Welcome

Welcome to the Learning Technology Development Unit blog.

Please feel free to add anything you may come across on your travels around the web/media/pub which you think might be of use to the Unit.