Screenr

Here’s a great article on the tool and what it can do from the Rapid eLearning Blog.

Just thought I’d share this article containing come good tips on how to make great tutorials capturing what’s on your screen and more…

• The right applications
• Setting the screen resolution
• The right equipment
• Create a script
• Export to the right format
• Finishing Touches

Converting learning material that you have developed for your learners into MP3 Audio is a great way to reach busy trainees and offer students more flexible ways to learn.

Some of our trainees work day and night and try to fit their study into their busy schedule. A lot of them are on the road, traveling from site to site so why not use that time to learn? Converting text books, manuals, or other eBooks into Audio makes this possible.

* Note, be sure to check the copyright information of any text you are converting to audio. For more Copyright info, check out the copyright resrouce sites listed on the eLearning Kit.

Here are some tools that can help you achieve this;

First you need a free Text to Speech (TTS) Program

As of today, you can add video clips to your Animoto videos! Watch a few sample videos and find out more here – http://animoto.com/video

You won’t believe how good your vids can look. Using video clips in your Animoto videos couldn’t be easier! There’s no need for a complex video editor! Just follow these three steps:

1. Upload clips from your camera or phone (iPhone anyone??), or use some from our collection (thanks to iStockphoto and Getty Images).
2. Choose your highlights. You can choose highlights of up to 10 seconds each, though we recommend using only 3-5 seconds as that works best within the flow of an Animoto video.
3. Create the rest of your video as normal, and you’re done.

The slideshow below shows you how to use Animoto;

Sloganizer allows you to put any keyword into a box, hit the Sloganize button and voila – your own slogan!

What a great tool for brainstorming, creating project slogans and much more. Here are some of the Slogans I tried;

Supporting Colleagues

To reinforce and refresh my own learning I’ve started to roll out sessions with my colleagues especially in Retail, Community Pharmacy & Personal services.

This year I have had demand from colleagues who previously weren’t engaged are now asking me for help.  Which is fantastic because they knew where to go to for help.

Adobe Connect has been engaging my Community Pharmacy colleagues who are looking at viable ways to deliver workplace training especially in distance locations.

In Retail my colleagues are asking for help with: online resources, wikis, how to do powerpoint and use a data projector for face to face delivery to engage their students.

Personal services have asked me to help them establish units on Moodle.

This year has certainly started off to be a year of action!

Supporting Industry

Another exciting moment I had recently was being approached by a pharmacy. The business wanted to establish how they could learn to use technology because they would like to run instore health promotions in store.

After assessing their needs I was able to match a unit of competency to the desired training and incorporate it into Cert IV in Community Pharmacy traineeship for the senior staff member.  The unit is called ‘Select an eBusiness Model’. Initially, I put together a presentation of how they could use moviemaker as a stepping stone and to build their confidence in this area.  Last week they were so impressed, they can’t wait for me to show the trainee how to do this and then apply her learning to the pharmacy, they believe that both the business and the community will benefit from this.

It is so rewarding to share my learning from The Learning Technologies Team to our customers.

Being apart of this amazing team has given me so much knowledge which now I can share confidently with my colleagues and customers.

I know Linda Johnston uses Second Life for her beauty therapy students and possibly there are others out there that use it as well so, I thought this paper might make interesting (holiday) reading.

It was presented at the 2008 Annual ASCILITE (Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education ) conference.

Here’s the abstract to give you an idea of what it’s all about…

Regulation, governance and harms stemming from the use of virtual worlds and other Massive Multi Media Online Role Playing Games (MMMORPGs) in higher education, are poorly understood and under-researched issues. Second Life, developed by Linden Labs, provides users with a series of generic ‘terms of service’ and codes of conduct, yet place the bulk of responsibility on individual users or groups to report misbehaviour or develop their own behavioural codes, enforcement procedures and punishments suited to their particular needs. There is no guidebook to assist users in the processes of risk identification and management. As such, the various benefits of MMMORPG technologies could be offset by the risks to users and user-groups from a range of possible harms, including the impact of actual or perceived violence within teaching and learning settings.

While cautioning against the direct translation of real-world regulatory principles into the governance of virtual worlds, this paper suggests theoretical and practical guidance on these issues can be taken from recent criminological developments. Using Lawrence Lessig’s (1999) landmark work on cyber-regulation as a starting point, this paper examines the literature on video-game violence to illustrate the need for educators show awareness of both real and perceived risks in virtual worlds as a core element of an emerging educational pedagogy. We identify how the multiple roles of the virtual-world educator become useful in framing this pedagogy to improve student learning, to dispel myths about the risks of immersive technologies and advocate for their adoption and acceptance in the educational community.

Here’s the paper!

cheers,

Neal

Not your usual Seasons Greetings

This a great example of how LTT members continue to engage staff and the positive effects these tools are having.

VisualCV has a section specifically for students and caters for those trying to get their first jobs right through to CEO’s

.

Click to Play in a new window

Enter a bundle of words at Wordle and this really cool web tool will create a word cloud for you. Once the word cloud is created, you can change fonts, chose a colour scheme, or make your own palette. You can even change the layout of your words…

Check out the wordle gallery for inspiration.

It’s another great tool you, or your students can use to share images. It mixes up your images and music together and creates a professional looking little video. The results are often somewhat like a movie preview.

Just sign up and follow the steps…

1. Upload images (don’t start with too many, it’ll take a while…)

2. Choose from a range of music, or upload your own

3. Choose create movie and let animoto analyse and ‘mash’ up your images.

If you don’t like the result, you can remix… Go to the Animoto homepage andwatch the preview (example video).