Web Cats: Episode Four - Anna, Pete and Faculty of HMSAS

Episode Four (7min 36sec) is an introduction to the work that Anna and Pete do with the Faculty of HMSAS.

HMSAS stands for Humanities, Managment, Social and Applied Sciences and it covers the departments of English, Business, History, Law and Criminology, Media, Natural Geographical and Applied Sciences, Performing Arts, Social and Phsycological Sciences and Sport and Physical Activity.

Viewing options:

• Subscribe to itpc://clickcaster.com/clickcast/rss/1163 in iTunes (select 'Advanced' / 'Subscribe to Podcast...')
• Watch online at ClickCaster
• Watch below

Contents:

Lydia Hale introduces the episode.

Meg Juss interviews Anna Connell and Pete Beaumont about what their role is in working with the Faculty of HMSAS and projects and technologies that they are currently working with.

Free Images for your Course

For finding images to use in WebCT areas, I've always used stock.xchng, which has almost always supplied me with the images I need for free. I've only had to mail the creator to let them know I'm using it, and I guess that's only good manners!

However Newman College's Elearning blog brought Yotophoto to my attention. This is the best service I've seen that brings together images from around the web that are, for example, public domain or which use Creative Commons licences. You still have to accredit the image to the creator in some cases, so check the licence for each image.

Yotophoto makes it easier to find images for icons (for example I struggled to find images which worked for WebCT Discussion areas), but you do lose some of the benefits of stock.xchng such as knowing the images will be large enough to use in full screen PowerPoint presentations.

Going beyond finding images, Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) have created quite compreshensive resources around using images in education. These include a quick presentation covering why you might use images and instructions on how to add them to a WebCT area.

Learning Object Libraries

Yesterday Sheena McLeod came to Edge Hill to show us the Intrallect digital library for learning objects. It was interesting to see the system but I personally didn't think that Edge Hill would use it enough justify the price.

Jorum uses Intrallect and as that is publicly open perhaps we could get involved with that, using it and submitting resources to it.

Also Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) is also designed for this sort of storage. Jeff Barr at d.construct talked about this among other of Amazon's web services, and for example the Chicago Crime mashup site uses it for storage. Costs are $0.15 (9 pence) per GB per Month for storage and $0.20 (12 pence) per GB of data transfered, which means that if we were only using it for a few objects we could be paying very little for it.

As I understand it, each object would have a public or private URL and so I imagine that we could integrate the resources easily within the library management system, or a Learning Technology area on the web site.

Web Cats: Episode Three - Adrian, Lisa, Peter and Faculty of Health

Episode Three (6min 55sec) is an introduction to the Adrian, Lisa and Peter and their work with the Faculty of Health.

Viewing options:

• Subscribe to itpc://clickcaster.com/clickcast/rss/1163 in iTunes (select 'Advanced' / 'Subscribe to Podcast...')
• Watch .wmv streamed version in Windows Media Player
• Watch online at ClickCaster

Contents:

Meg Juss introduces the episode.

Peter Beaumont interviews Adrian Cain, Lisa Bushell and Peter Reed about what their role is in working with the Faculty of Health, and projects and technologies that they are currently working with.

RSS Feeds: Tracking with Groupwise

Mark mentioned a little program that you can install which allows you to track RSS feeds through Groupwise (which we use for email here at Edge Hill).

It's available from the Novell site and just adds another folder to Groupwise under Cabinet.










While using Bloglines and Google Reader seem to be the best readers for text based information and I like iTunes for audio and video, integrating email and RSS could be a way of getting staff and students to take their first steps in subscribing to RSS feeds. This in turn could lead to them feeling more inspired and confident regarding creating their own content.

SOLSTICE Forum: Research, Digital Geographies and Online Discussion

The SOLSTICE research forum yesterday was recorded and MP3 and Windows Media files will be available through the SOLSTICE website soon, along with an RSS feed so that people can subscribe to future materials.

But here's a sneek preview!

01 - Mark Schofield - Research

02 - Gerry Lucas - Digital Geographies

03 - Cathy Sherratt - Online Discussion

These Windows Media files are available now and all are worth listening to. I think that the research done on discussion is relevant to many people, as so many are using discussion boards in some way in their WebCT areas.

We've posted before about this ongoing research and I still think that many students need to be taught how to discuss before they are expected to learn through discussion. Lindsey's comment about using screencasting to explain the process, and the need for the tutor to model good practice and make their thought processes explicit are still worth exploring further.

'Top 100 Education Blogs' from Online Education Database

OEDb put together a list of their top 100 Education Blogs which might be of interest to those looking at widening their reading.

To subscribe to these blogs you could:

• Start off by creating an account on Bloglines.
• Subscribe to blogs individually or download my OPML file and use it to instantly subscribe to each of the blogs in the Top 100 list that have web feeds.
• You can import the OPML file to Bloglines by going to the 'Feeds' tab and choosing 'Import Subscriptions' at the bottom of the page.

When you have a lot of blogs in Bloglines, it is worth setting them so that you only initially see the headlines. This will make it easier for you to quickly browse all the blogs for interesting posts. Do this by, near the top left of the screen, selecting 'Options' > Feed Options > Posting Length > Display Headlines Only.

Using Blogs as Databases and for Lecture Notes

Here in LTD we were talking last year about creating a database driven application to keep track of everything we do. For example if we get an email about a course, we could just search the database for notes about what we'd done for that course in the past, and for other details about it.

In the Geekbrief podcast episode 112 you can watch Cali Lewis talk to Leo Laporte about Robert Scoble's idea of using a private blog in this way. She also talks about how students could use a private blog to keep a database of their lecture notes and if they have a laptop, to take notes on their blog the first place.

We've got WordPress installed at Edge Hill so I'll ask IT services for one that we can use in this way, with all LTD members contributing to it. Look at it as a Cakes intranet site perhaps?!

Web Cats: Episode Two - Paul, Meg and Faculty of Education

Episode Two (8min 45sec) is an introduction to the Paul and Meg and their work with the Faculty of Education.

Viewing options:

• Subscribe to itpc://clickcaster.com/clickcast/rss/1163 in iTunes (select 'Advanced' / 'Subscribe to Podcast...')
• Watch .wmv streamed version in Windows Media Player
• Watch online at ClickCaster

Contents:

Peter Beaumont introduces the episode
Peter Beaumont interviews Paul Duvall and Meg Juss about what their role is in working with the Faculty of Education, and projects and technologies that they are currently working with. The research blog mentioned can be is available to view.

podgrunt: Introduction to Podcasting

Craig Syverson at Gruntmedia has created an excellent explanation of how subscribing to podcasts works. Have a look at the video and the basic overview page. I wish I could get my videos to look that good, so I might use this video when explaining what podcasting is to academic staff here at Edge Hill University.

And while we're on the subject of Podcasting, the Learning Technology Development manager here at Edge Hill is running a couple of sessions about the use of audio technologies in academic courses. They'll be called "iPod Therefore iLearn" and "iPod therefore iDo". You'll need to book soon as they are running over the next few weeks, and they are open to everyone, even those who aren't staff at Edge Hill.

Web Cats: LTD's Video Podcast Episode One

We've started developing a podcast both as a way of exploring the technologies and as a way of communicating with the academic staff in a different way.

Episode One (4min 18sec) is an introduction to the Learning Technology Development department.


Viewing options:

• Subscribe to itpc://clickcaster.com/clickcast/rss/1163 in iTunes (select 'Advanced' / 'Subscribe to Podcast...')
• Watch .wmv streamed version in Windows Media Player
• Watch online at ClickCaster

Contents:

• Peter Reed introduces the episode
• Peter Beaumont interviews Mark Roche

As mentioned in the interview LTD contact details are available

Jane Hart's List of Free E-learning Resources

Welcome back to another year of Cakes!

Before you get too busy have a look at Jane Hart's comprehensive list of free tools that can, or are being used in learning and teaching.

She's also written a guide to where each type of tool might be used, which is something I've been thinking about doing, so that will save me some work. However a cut down version covering just the tools that Edge Hill staff are likely to use soon might be worth developing.

If you don't have time to look at the list properly, why not subscribe to Jane's blog where you'll get daily updates. I use the web-based feed aggregator Bloglines to subscribe to blog feeds, so have a look at that if you've not got one.