Agency links

Updated logos and list of the main ILT / e-learning agencies and departments, with some links for Scotland, Wales, NI and Eire now too, available on the Q2 links page.

Lesson Plan and Scheme of Work tool

I recently asked for help in making this task simpler for staff, with the emphasis on avoiding typing entries over and over and also creating a format that can be used effectively on-line. One or two very interesting offers from colleagues in the sector which I'm working on. In the meantime this simple Excel tool may be of interest.

Peter's Pond

Here's something completely different! A good quality camera sending a live video stream of activity at a pretty popular refreshment pool for wild animals in Namibia. Best time to view seems to be early morning but there's nearly always something to see. With live sound too, it's quite amazing and a timely reminder that not everything goes at the pace of our lives here. You don't need to teach Geography to use this in a lesson - I'll find a way to include it in all of mine at some point or another.

Link to National Geographic Live Feed

Write on-line

If you'd like to try a new way of collaborating on a document, or sharing one with colleagues, give writely.com a spin. Easier than a blog (but you can still publish to one as well) and faster loading on a decent connection than Word 2003. This could spell the end of the Word e-mail attachment!

An Inspirational Spiral

Several people have asked to borrow a presentation slide I use which illustrates how apathy about e-learning might transform into something more useful. So here it is - (and now it shouldn't run automatically!)

Google Desktop2

I wouldn't be surprised if several of you haven't yet managed to get as far as reading about Google Desktop Search amongst my ramblings. Well, never mind because they've now produced a new version which includes a Sidebar from which you can access all sorts of things as well as being regularly distracted from whetevr you're supposed to be doing.

See it at this link and wonder, like me, just how long such developments can remain free. Amazing.

Learning Landscape

Now, doesn't that sound so much more pleasant than Environment? That's part of the name for something that ELGG have created. It's a place where you can store files, share things and reflect in private, amongst friends on in public. A bit web log (sorry, I dislike the word blog for some reason) like but with rather more attraction, and even easier to set up, than the Blogger option. I haven't described it terribly well but you really should take a look. It's all free. This link will take you to the set-up page and this to my first feeble attempts at adding content (old articles so don't get too excited!). Nice simple link, though.

BBC On-line Archives

Here's a good test - if you can't think of a way to use any of these resources in a session then perhaps you're missing the point of all this ILT and e-learning stuff . . .

Forget all the complicated stuff - use a few of these to brighten up your next lesson (or get students to use some!) Surprise yourself. Well done Auntie.

Staff Skills assessment?! (updated)

Thought I'd ask a simple question recently. Has anyone got a way to assess staff ICT skills that is modern and with tasks that bear some relation to the jobs they're actually doing most of the time? I was almost embarrassed to ask as it was the sort of thing people would expect me to know about. Needn't have been. Very little response and nothing really new. Hmmm. So I've done my own! Bit clunky but access it here.

Now, where was I?

In case you forget where you should be when, and even why, here are a couple of sites that can help: planzo and meet-o-matic. Meet-o-matic is great for meetings when you are trying to get a group of people to agree a date. It doesn't look very smart but it does work. I've been using it for a couple of years but may not need it now that I've found Planzo. Now this looks awful but you can make it look better quite easily by choosing some better colour combinations than any of the standard sets offered, and it is very very smart in action. If it weren't for all the others sending you Outlook tasks and meeting requests, you could easily do without Outlook now and, of course, as very few of us have Outlook out of the office anyway, it may just be time to try and persuade colleagues to change to Planzo instead. Take a look (and don't get put off by the ghastly colours - you really can improve them later!) It comes from the Frappr stable (where you can see photos and profils of many of the Further Education ILT Champs and other groups) and is also, like most things I recommend, quite free.

A great time to be in this business!

It really is all happening. The Holy Grail of anyone being able to publish stuff on the web just by typing on a page seems tantalisingly close. A whole raft of wonderful new web-based applications are being trialled and we get to use them for free. I didn't even get time to write about Google's Page Creator when along came Pageflakes and the cool Netvibes. Now I've discovered 9cays and, well, the whole web scene is changing. 9cays is all about communication: you send an e-mail to people and their replies get accumulated on a web page they can all access, with simple facilities for getting others involved, developing the strand and leaving it too. Forget the distribution list or the cumbersome ones someone else has to set up for you via JISC or whoever - this one you can just start.

Pageflakes and Netvibes are remarkably similarly remarkable. One is now my home page - they're that good. Again, quite free. You can create a page that contains the panels of your choosing, from news feeds, feeds from your own blog, other web pages of your choice or a range of smart tools like clocks, searches and more. You can move panels around and, and this is the bit that makes them special, add your own text to as many panels as you like too. Pageflakes has the edge on content and the fact that you can have several pages comprising a pretty useful 'site'-ful but Netvibes has the better design and functionality in my view.

Google Page Creator basically does just that - provides you with areas in which you add your content, including images, then select from a variety of templates and when you hit the publish button you have a web address and a pretty decent looking site.

All these allow the inclusion of a nice facility to show your Flickr images or fine Flickr badges featuring your or someone else'd collections. . . oh, didn't I mention Flickr?

Lastly, for probably not very long, go to Wink and tag these and a whole lot of other pages you find that suit a particular need and they'll get stored in your own area for quick future reference or, indeed, as a selection for others to view, with a selection of similar sites, tagged by others via Wink, which have similar content but you perhaps missed.

OK, so it wasn't lastly . . . I forgot box.net where anything that's still what is rapidly becoming an 'old-fashioned document and needs to be stored somewhere, can be stored and accessed by whoever you care to give access to - and none of the processes require anything other than a reasonable recent computer and common sense.