Wordle

Wordle is a sites which can create a tag cloud from a series of text. The more times the word appears, the larger the word is. To see what I mean have a look at the example below which was created from Darwins Origin of the Species, thanks to Project Guttenberg for supplying the text.

I’ve known about this site for a while but it wasn’t till recently I saw a really good way of useing it.

We asked people to complete a survey where they could write about what limited their use of elearning. All the free text responces were put into wordle and the tag cloud showed the word “Time” far bigger than anything else. No Suprise.

iTunesU and ZoomIt

iTunesU is avalable via the iTunes store in iTunes and is a collection of free video and audio content form Universities arond the world.  From the UK, the Open University and University College London (UCL) have added some content.

I had a look around the Teaching & Education Category and found “Free is Good” which is a series of video tutorials about free programs and websites for teachers. The videos are created by Frank Miracola and are avalable via  Michigan’s MILearning page on iTunesU.

I’ve had a look through some of the videos and so far the best thing it has shown me is ZoomIt which provides some useful shortcuts for onscreen presentations.

• CTL + 1 zooms into any part of the screen, great if you are demonstrating software or a website
• CTL + 2 write on the screen with a mouse, just like an Interactive whiteboard.  Type R, G, Y, B to change the pen to Red, Green,  Yellow or Blue
• CTL + 3 Bring up a timer counting down (10 mins is the default but you can change that)

TechDis and the H810

I’ve Just done a quick search about the OU course i’m about to start and found a blog post that says “H810 is an innovative collaboration with TechDis, who are providing us with curriculum around the topic of accessibility. “…..interesting.

http://josiesblog.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/current-events/

Online and Distance Education

I have decided to restart this blog, predominatelty as a method of reflecting on the masters I am about to start with the Open University. The programe is ” MA in Online and Distance Education (F10)” ,This Masters is brocken down into several courses, the first will be “Accessible online learning:supporting disabled students H810” which starts on 25th July and goes on till Jan 08, and I am hoping to follow this with “Technology- nenhanced learning ractices and Debates H800″.
They haven’t started yet so watch this space