eLearning at New College

The CoolCatTeacher Blog has 38 cool Web 2.0 tools to enliven teaching and learning. Best of all they are all free! I have used a few of them – Gmail, Google Reader, Netvibes, Skype and Firefox and am currently trying to get my head around the whole Twitter thang. Its a good list and happy birthday CoolCatTeacher!

This looks cool (thanks to Ewan McIntosh via Jaiko for the link):

Animoto

Haven’t had a chance to play with it yet but it looks like some online software that automagically creates video from images and music in widescreen cinema format. A free version for educators is in the works and in the meantime anyone can create 30-sec shorts for free. Has potential for podcasting me thinks.

An enjoyable 45 minute presentation by Alvin Trusty on (a) avoiding breaking the law when constructing slides and (b) good practice design principles:

How to create a great powerpoint without breaking the law.

Don’t forget to check out his del-icio-us links.

Thanks to Josie Fraser via Jaiku for the heads-up:

Keeping Students Safe Online

At the same website there are notes from a previous webinar on using wikis in libraries.

More details of what looks like a very exciting online conference sponsored by JISC and Emerge Online are here:

http://www.alt.ac.uk/conferences.php

I asked one of my second year Sociology classes a few questions the other day regarding their use of technology. For what its worth (obviously very unscientific!) here is what they said:

(a) Every single student had an mp3 player of some kind. Some variation of an iPod was most popular, other brands included Creative Zen and Samsung. Interestingly the vast majority prefer listening to content on a dedicated mp3 player rather than their phones.

(b) About half the class had downloaded and listened to a podcast via iTunes. The most popular genres were comedy and music. Nobody had listened to any specific educational content via podcasts.

(c) About 90% of the class used a social networking website ‘fairly regularly’, the three most popular being Facebook, MySpace and Bebo (some students use more than one). They often use these sites plus Instant Chat applications such as MSN or Yahoo for helping each other out with college-related work.

Obviously completely unrepresentative but I wonder to what extent this kind of data is replicated across other groups of students in the college?

Not sure who created it (or what software they used to do so – maybe Apple’s Keynote?) but its a nice short introduction to Moodle. Thanks to Paul Andrews at Coleg Gwent for the heads-up, they use it as part of their staff induction Moodle course (open to visitors). 

Lucky first-years at Abilene Christian University will each be getting an iPhone/iPod Touch as part of their enrollment package which they can use to “receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances” (hat-tip the Mobile Learning blog).

They have produced a video podcast to show off what can be done with this mobile learning platform, and its pretty innovative stuff. Check it out at the iTunes U section of the iTunes Music Store, under Abiline Christian University – the video is called ‘Mobile Learning’ (connected) and there are a number of download formats including a 400-odd MB HD version! You can also view it in Flash format here.

Not sure about the quality of the narration and sound but there is an interesting little screencast over on TeacherTube about the 10 steps it takes to build a professional learning community. One thing I definitely agreed with is the need for a vision statement and clear goals (with the learner centre stage). I wonder whether the eLearning team could come up with a vision statement?