LearnShifting

I use a blog tool created by Ray Camden. I love it and use an online editor to create my blog posts. One small annoyance is that I have to upload graphics into my blog and then point to them from the article so that it appears embedded... like this picture of a storm taken from my office window.

It would be better if I, and other folks building school websites using SharePoint 2010 could use Microsoft Word 2010 to creating an article, copying and pasting pictures into the word document as they saw fit and then with a button click or two have the whole article, complete with pictures transported up to the website with the layout they had created in the word document.

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This entry was posted on November 16, 2011 at 6:27 AM and has received 175 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We are currently holding discussions across various agencies about learning management systems and delivery of training. I will be providing a list of solutions here that are probably a best bet. Before I do that, let's look again at the problem we are trying to solve or the efficiencies we are trying to achieve.

Common forms of training like orientation, financial procedures, health and safety are delivered face to face, sometimes involving travel and often repeated. These forms of training are good candidates for conversion to eLearning.

Additionally, many of these courses are very similar in nature and content across agencies is also very similar which means that if we can gather a common set of technologies and skills, agencies will be in a situation to share courses and content for repurposing without having to build from the ground up.

We can divide the learning requirements into training and support.

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This entry was posted on October 21, 2011 at 1:58 PM and has received 233 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Yesterday I attended an online webinar run by Microsoft as part of their tech Tuesday presentations for educators. The sessions are recorded and I hope to gather the playback URLs and embed them into our Moodle Learning Management System.

This post raises the question - can OneNote replace Mahara and introduces a new programming language.

OneNote

One of the things presented was OneNote which we have as part of our Standard Operating Environment.

I have heard that it is fantastic from other folks, but personally have had difficulty including it in my daily work... but with this presentation I think the penny has started to fall - albeit slowly.

Onenote is like a giant clipboard that you can arrange and share with other people. By sharing I mean that you can either just share your notes, clippings, research and links with other folks (like your students, or your teacher) or you can place your OneNote file on the intranet, a skydrive or the local area network and have other people in your team collaborate and contribute to the OneNote document. Call it collaboration or crowdsourcing, you have something that could be termed an e-Portfolio if it is a gathering of your own work or a team assignment.

Students could submit their assignments in OneNote and teachers could mark them up with annotations and even video responses to the work.

So, I am rethinking the Moodle/Mahara solution into potentially a Moodle/Skydrive/SharePoint/OneNote solution.

Kodu

I was also excited about Kodu, a a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input. This programming language apparently requires no learning. Those familiar with scratch and Alice will also want to have a look at this language. You can download it and work with it on your PC or on an XBox.

Of course I will be unleashing my 9 year old on it to see how it compares to Alice.

This entry was posted on May 11, 2011 at 3:58 AM and has received 521 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Microsoft are running a number of sessions nationally each Tuesday, starting 3^rd May, on the following topics. This is being done through live meeting.

This entry was posted on April 20, 2011 at 1:00 PM and has received 335 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Three things rolled up into one blog entry...

• IE 9.0 Release Candidate available
• Finding out how fast your connection is and what ports are being used
• Partners in Learning links to applications and solutions

This is a bit of a Microsoft Entry. I meant to write about this on Friday and things go out of control. Firstly I downloaded and installed the Internet Explorer Release Candidate 9.0. It is quite good and now we have a complete set of browsers that support the <video> tag and most of HTML5.

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This entry was posted on February 14, 2011 at 1:31 PM and has received 433 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 I have been using Microsoft's tag reader and it is great, especially when you want to create your own tag that points to content. In Tom Khulman's latest blog he has a graphic of an admission ticket to an event in Phoenix . The ticket had a QR Code on it and the code also had a hyperlink which took you to information about the event.

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/heres-how-to-help-your-subject-matter-experts-build-better-e-learning-courses/ is where the article is and I recommend the article as it talks about working with Subject Matter Experts in an eLearning context.

Back on topic... Microsoft tag reader couldn't read the tag, so I downloaded another reader called mobiletag which is in the app store or you can visit their site at http://www.mobiletag.com.

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This entry was posted on January 12, 2011 at 5:32 AM and has received 260 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

There is a trial version of this product available with a very generous 45 day trial period. I think the ITCs working with kids in the younger years and definately in areas where literacy may be an issue should look at this add-in for the MS-Office range of products. I would love to hear if and how it is deployed.

Max's Toolbox 2010 is an early childhood interface to Microsoft® Office suitable for children in grades K through 5. The flexibility of the programs makes them suitable for teaching children of all capabilities.

A suite of three products – MaxWrite for Microsoft® Word, MaxShow for PowerPoint®, and MaxCount for Excel – gives teachers a platform for incorporating technology across a wide range of subjects and lesson plans.

There is a downloadable demo available

This entry was posted on December 1, 2010 at 5:03 PM and has received 273 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

The Microsoft Learning Suite is a freely distributed suite of materials and tools for teachers and students to use in the classroom. With almost all locations in the NT (and around Australia) using Windows and Microsoft Office as key aspects of the education operating environment, it is good that these tools are all in one place.

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This entry was posted on December 1, 2010 at 2:57 PM and has received 615 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Imagine this... Your class has created a walk through exhibition in your school. The items have an A4 sheet with a brief description and a funny looking barcode in the bottom right hand corner of the page. Students and parents visiting the presentation carry around an iPad or iPhone connected to the schools wireless network.

As they see something of interest and read the fact sheet, they decide to find out more... They click on the tag reader application on their smartdevice that has a camera and point the camera at the barcode. The barcode reader interprets the barcode and immediately starts a browser and visits a website with more information on the subject, complete with videos and audio.

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This entry was posted on November 18, 2010 at 4:20 PM and has received 310 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

I received a request from a teacher the other day who wanted to upskill in the area of information technology. "Where do you start?" She asked. Surrounded by people who strum keyboards and use applications like a conductor with their orchestra, creating documents here, extracting information there - it must be head spinning to look at that and also have to listen to people rabbiting on about web 2.0, wikis, blogs, facebooks, youtube and iThis and iThat.

It reminds me of when I purchased my first computer - and if you click on the player at the bottom of this entry there is a little audio story about what went wrong that fateful day.

Back on topic... What do you suggest to get someone started with something that is good, fast and cheap (free is even better)

We have courses on offer that provide a formal qualification and can be, in some cases studied externally, these courses are great, but they take time and depending on your budget are not that cheap - they are good value for money though.

So I dug through the kit bag and came up with two suggestions... We could come up with 20 suggestions and I hope you add some via the comments button at the bottom.

read on to find out what mine were...

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This entry was posted on August 10, 2010 at 12:00 AM and has received 304 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.