Saturday, February 16, 2008

SCoPE listed as demonstration site for Heritage Now

According to a recent post by Rick Walker on the Vancouver Arts and Culture Forum, SCoPE is listed as a demonstration site for Heritage Now.
"Heritage Now is a broadcast video and online communications centre that recognizes cultural identity is a live experience that people share."
I just came across this today, so I'll need to learn more about the Heritage Now project. In any case, it's great to see SCoPE on the list, especially with that word future tucked in there.

ImageChef

Just go here and have some fun. Create unique images or icons for your website or course.

Online games

Web games to learn with. K-12 geography, chemistry, vocabulary, animals, history, math, and some quiz games.

Dezignus.com


Icons and other Graphics for FREE: Beautiful vector graphics of all kinds. I jumped right to the royalty-free section, so that's the link I'm providing you. But just have a look at the other beautiful stuff they have to offer!

Miha's utilities - Mihov Freeware

The site has a bunch of great utilities. Here are just two:

Image Resizer: A free utility that can batch resize your images in bmp, gif, and jpg picture formats. You can also convert from one format to another, rotate images, create thumbnails.

Link Checker: Nothing more frustrating than clicking a link that's no longer valid. Don't let your website or course pages get outdated. This free downloadable utility works great.

Free Online Video Editing Sites

ExtremeTech has posted a review of 5 websites that let you edit your videos online for free.
"Some people would be surprised that you can edit photos online without locally installed software, but surely video editing is too resource-intensive to be done over the web, right? Wrong! We review five online services that let you do things like scene transitions, cuts, splices, loops, audio overlays—and they're all free. We tested the following: Cuts, Eyespot, JumpCut, Motionbox, One True Media."

Splashup

Edit your images online for free.
"Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress."

Performance Learning Systems

(My link above is to the teacher resources section of the website, but please explore their many professional development courses too.)
"The mission of Performance Learning Systems, Inc. is to enhance education through the development of educational services. These services, designed to increase the effectiveness of educators and others who support excellence in education, include: seminars, Graduate courses, Consulting services, Quality instructional materials."

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The Reluctant Online Professor

"...when I was asked to put my course online, I felt quite unprepared ... I started the experience with great reluctance and trepidation. Much to my surprise, I finished it jubilantly. It turned out to be one of the best classes I have ever taught."
Cynthia Corritore, Ph.D., describes the process in detail: creating her course (design, content, 9 main components of the course, web tools used, etc), the outcome, and lessons learned. A refreshing example to read, especially for others in a similar position, but also for experienced online instructors.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Wiktionary


A multilingual wiki-style dictionary. "...includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics, extensive appendices. ...not only the definition of a word, but also enough information to really understand it. ...etymologies, pronunciations, quotations, synonyms, antonyms, translations..."

Free Online MIT Course Materials for High School

MIT OpenCourseWare ~ Highlights for High School: Free Online MIT Course Materials for High School. By now most educators know that MIT has opened its courses to public access. Now they've added content for high school teachers/students. Check out their resources for the maths/sciences (calculus, biology, physics), their hands-on learning labs (chemistry, physics). Explore their section on writing: essays, technical writing, rhetoric, short stories, web design.

Friday, February 8, 2008

MicroSCoPE February Issue

The February Issue of MicroSCoPE has been posted. This is a monthly compilation of upcoming events, recaps on past activities, observations about what SCoPE members are up to elsewhere (PeriSCoPE), and items that bring attention to features in the community that improve and expand possibilities for participation.

MicroSCoPE is a short newsletter but nevertheless seems to take forever to put together! I collect bits and pieces throughout the month, and sometimes rely too heavily on my memory when it comes to the final scramble to post it by the deadline (my self-imposed deadline -- I like to get it out by the end of the first week of each month). I'm finding that Google Notebook has really helped me with this process.

I've looked into more sophisticated tools for publishing newsletters, but using a Moodle forum seems to serve the purpose. I keep it simple for people reading via email, and I also encourage readers to forward the email to their friends and colleagues. So I try to keep the entries brief, and avoid images and mile-long URLs.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

I'm a Canadian Educational Blogger

Scott Leslie comments on the recent list of Canadian Educational Bloggers posted by Alec Couros "Maybe this will prompt them out of slumber". Earlier today Heather Ross just came right out and said in her twitter to me "get on it". :-) Heather has included me as a guest in her upcoming list of podcast episodes and threatens, "when you're on the podcast I will be linking to your blog".

Well as you can see, it's working! Getting started on blogging has been an interesting process for me. I literally read and write all day long. (Sometimes I speak! But not as often as you educators who head to a campus every day.) I'm active in online communities and deal with huge volumes of email and it seems I just don't have the umph at the end of the day to blog. I can hear my friend Heather now: So blog in the morning! This slumber behaviour surprises me though, and probably you if you've witnessed how I can't seem to keep quiet in other venues!

I think what I need to do to keep blogging momentum is just take one or two pieces that I write in other places and push it in this direction. Or I could just post a highlight or two from my day. I come across so many interesting people in my work that should be easy, right? I experiment with a lot of new technologies, and keeping track of what I learn would really help...well me! I often send reflection pieces on my experiences to individuals by email, so why not post them here? If I'm feeling dry, I'll just post something to help to draw attention to the good work of the many bloggers I read daily.
Hey, how hard can this be?

I always say that a great indicator of success in an online community is when people feel motivated to give back. Well this is to let my edublogging community know that I feel very motivated, thanks to all of you who have given so much :-)

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Moodlerooms

Want to try out Moodle but you need a server/host location? Check out this company. They offer hosting for individuals as well as organizations. They also offer user training, moodle customizations, and more.
"Moodlerooms’ values are all about community, collaboration and communication in the interest of lifelong learning. We seek to build, facilitate and be part of a community of like-minded educators endeavoring to extend and enrich the learning experiences of their students. We also seek to foster a community of educators who understand that teaching is a collaborative thing. We believe teachers and students learn more when they share knowledge with each other, challenge each other, and inspire each other."