Jane Hart’s “25 Tools” is today’s Slideshow of the Day

Of those she lists:

• Firefox - yes (and Flock)


• Delicious - got an account, but never use it.


• Google Reader - yes, embedded into my iGoogle page (& now into Vista’s Sidebar)


• Gmail - yes - again into iGoogle (though not the Vista sidebar … but I have added it to my OLPC as an application)


• Skype - yes, but not often, as we’re not meant to use it at work; so tend to use FlashMeeting instead for work.


• Google calendar - to an extent - but it doens’t integrate with either the Groupwise or the WebCT Vista calendars (and they don’t with each other, either)


• Google Docs - yes (yet another gadget on the iGoogle page)


• iGoogle - see above!


• Slideshare - yes (though I have looked at others)


• Flickr - yes (even got a pro account!)


• Voicethread - that’s a new one - but it sounds good


• WordPress - need I say more? (Though I do like Elgg)


• Audacity - yes.


• YouTube - yes


• Jing - I’ve recommended it in the past, though tend to use Captivate, just because we have it on the machines.


• PBWiki - got an account, though I’ve used Wikispaces more with students (and hope to have a local install of MediaWiki for next academic year)


• PollDaddy - I’ve heard of this, but not really investigated, as though I’ve read about quite a few online survey tools - I’ve not had to use one in anger … yet (and as I do a lot of work with our Perception server, I know that tool really quite well!)


• Nvu - I’ve got this installed; however, it’s not been updated since 2005, and I’ve also read that Kompozer is where they are now doing the updates, so that’s what I’m using more now as an alternative to Dreamweaver etc.,


• Yugama - another one that’s new to me. Seems to be an alternative to Flashmeeting etc., I may have to investigate (and you can have up to 10 people for free, which is more than Elluminate’s Vroom)


• Ustream - heard of, watched, but not tried broadcasting. Yet!


• Ning - guess it had to come up. I really don’t like Ning. Though I know many others do. Oh well.


• Freemind - I’ve used it, and quite like it - though tend to use Inspiration more. (Just wish either made as good use of the stylus input on a tablet as Mind Manager can.)


• eXe - really must re-test this, now that we have a version of WebCT that it works with. Looked a really useful tool when I looked before (until I couldn’t import anything!)


• Moodle - I wish …


• Twitter - using it, but hardly what you’d call a devotee.

This seems to be a generally comprehensive list; of course, there are things I’d have put in instead, but there again, she did create it from others’ recommendations.

]]> http://eduspaces.net/emmadw/weblog/419296.html http://eduspaces.net/emmadw/weblog/419296.html Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:10:59 GMT http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/08/07/online-presen

I’ve used Slideshare quite a bit since I discovered it (apparently I first mentioned in it June 06), and I’ve also looked at other sites that offer similar functionality, though have tended to stick to slideshare as I’m used to it.

There are other sites, though, that have additional functionality, and I do rather like the look of (though not sure that I have the time to fully investigate them!)

Sharing:

• Scivee: Which I’ve mentioned in the past is aimed at the science community - and allows the upload of presentations, papers, videos, audio etc.


• Scribd: I’ve looked at this in the past & might well have used it, had I not already been using Slideshare. It allows documents as well as slides to be uploaded (though, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t allow audio tracks to be embedded in the same way. They’re using “iPaper” - which also allows you to create iPaper documents and embed them on a website. TOny Hirst created a useful bookmarklet to enabled the creation of iPaper documents.

Creating presentations.

• VUE. This looks interesting. It’s a java application, so requires installing, rather than running online. It’s also probably somewhere between a mind map & a presentation tool. It allows the same presentation to be presented in a number of different formats/ orders.


• Sliderocket. I have just been invited to the beta testing of SlideRocket. It seems to be a presentation tool where there are a lot of options for transitions etc., Personally, I prefer something plainer. But, then again, I’m not a graphic designer!

Share & create

• Google Docs/ Zoho / Ajax Presents etc. all offer the ability to either create online, or to upload existing presentations (Powerpoint, Open Office, though not always Mac keynote) - and to share as required.

I’ve used Slideshare quite a bit since I discovered it (apparently I first mentioned in it June 06), and I’ve also looked at other sites that offer similar functionality, though have tended to stick to slideshare as I’m used to it.

There are other sites, though, that have additional functionality, and I do rather like the look of (though not sure that I have the time to fully investigate them!)

Sharing:

• Scivee: Which I’ve mentioned in the past is aimed at the science community - and allows the upload of presentations, papers, videos, audio etc.


• Scribd: I’ve looked at this in the past & might well have used it, had I not already been using Slideshare. It allows documents as well as slides to be uploaded (though, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t allow audio tracks to be embedded in the same way. They’re using “iPaper” - which also allows you to create iPaper documents and embed them on a website. TOny Hirst created a useful bookmarklet to enabled the creation of iPaper documents.

Creating presentations.

• VUE. This looks interesting. It’s a java application, so requires installing, rather than running online. It’s also probably somewhere between a mind map & a presentation tool. It allows the same presentation to be presented in a number of different formats/ orders.


• Sliderocket. I have just been invited to the beta testing of SlideRocket. It seems to be a presentation tool where there are a lot of options for transitions etc., Personally, I prefer something plainer. But, then again, I’m not a graphic designer!

Share & create

• Google Docs/ Zoho / Ajax Presents etc. all offer the ability to either create online, or to upload existing presentations (Powerpoint, Open Office, though not always Mac keynote) - and to share as required.

I’ve just updated WordPress to 2.6 - which seems to be promising quite a few new features:

I’ve also been beta testing the Elgg 1.0 over the past few weeks. It seems to have a lot of new, useful features - I’m looking forward to being able to install & have  a play soon.

I’ve just updated WordPress to 2.6 - which seems to be promising quite a few new features:

I’ve also been beta testing the Elgg 1.0 over the past few weeks. It seems to have a lot of new, useful features - I’m looking forward to being able to install & have  a play soon.

A colleague has just shown me Wordle which is really rather fun. You have to paste in a chunk of text, or a site that has a feed. It then creates a cloud (much like a tag cloud) of all the words that are in it. It ignores common words (e.g. The, and), but not all 3 letter words, so at the moment, it seems that I like “can” and “use” a lot!

We also started to think about how it might be used for teaching - for example, to help students analyse pieces of their work, to see if they over use particular words.

In this week’s Multiple choice (in the Guardian Education Supplement), a parent, teacher & student were asked the above question.

Both the teacher

As a teacher, I think this kind of site has got to be part of the future.

and the parent

but I do think it’s possibly more likely you’ll get more from teenagers from Facebook than from having them hand in a conventional essay.

were more positive than the student:

I don’t think we should access MySpace or Facebook during lesson time, but some social networking sites could be involved in learning as long as they were used at break time or after school.

I tend to side more with the student, in that it’s the informal use of Facebook etc., that will be of use. The points that both the parent & teacher make, however, would cover the use of tools used to develop specific learning networks - using the skills students have developed using social networks.

I’d be wary of using the same tool for both; I like to keep personal life & work separate. However, others are less pedantic - roll on true “open Social” I say!

(N.B In the online version, the student & parent views were labelled in the opposite way to the paper based version. I’m assuming the paper is right, as the comments fit better that way)

Jennifer has made some very valid points following the TL^t Summit 2008

In particular:

• It is time to toss out the “blog, wiki, podcast” mantra. This is bigger than tools isolated for singular purpose. If we keep pushing the tools into categories, new users will continue to only use the tools for those purposes. We should be twisting, stretching and breaking these tools, not neatly packaging content with them.



and



• A wiki is no place to start an intentional, sustainable community. I’ve always said this to my internal customers, but it has been based on my use of them. I’ve now heard many many people describe how the wiki did not work for creating a sustainable network. Let’s let it go, move on and get more creative with our wiki use.

I’d definitely agree with the point about wikis, that they aren’t that useful for community building; but that’s not to say they’re not useful. While I agree to a point about the “blogs/wikis/podcasts” point she makes, I do think that they do offer some form of structure to help people get going; yes, we can be creative with them, but some (?many) people need some ideas to help them get going. What’s probably useful is the range of ideas that can be shown to work with a particular tool (just as today most Powerpoint trainers encourage their users not to use bullet points & noisy text effects; but to look at all the other ways it can be used).

Jennifer also made a point about Twitter being in heavy use. I’ve decided to revitalise my account (can’t promise that I’ll use it for anything other than reading other people’s things mind), but I guess I ought to try to get into it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never really taken to text messaging in a big way, that it doesn’t feel really “me” - nor do I use the status updates on Facebook. One of the reasons I don’t like Twitter is the fact I can’t subdivide contacts into smaller groups to send targetted messages, however, this blog doesn’t let me do that - and with RSS feeds people are getting the information whether they like it or not. It’s not as if the only way folks can read this is to come here.

I recently read a paper about people who read, rather than keep blogs. Wonder if anyone’s done any research into people who have a twitter a/c to follow others, rather than to be followed themselves. Is this stalking?

Via: Stephen Downes

I read about Facebook Chat a while ago, and I’ve now just seen that it’s been enabled for me.



I’ve not yet tested it, but I think that it may well be a very useful extra (as I’ve mentioned in the past when it didn’t exist)

I’ve been investigating the OLPC quite a bit. I’ve also got back into reading about it. Due to the changes at the top, there’s been a fair bit of news coverage, including an article in the Guardian, which Stephen Downes pointed to. I’ve made comments on Stephen’s post, so won’t repeat those here.

Over the weekend, I read about Sugar Labs; due to the changes at OLPC, quite a few staff who have left have set up Sugar Labs, where they are intending to start to really look at the software, to see if it can be made available to other platforms (e.g. the Asus EEE), and so on. Via the Sugar lab & general playing, I’ve found out quite a bit more about Sugar; and some of the advantages. One thing that I’d sort of seen, but hadn’t quite appreciated is the journal. That, in essence, provides a record of everything that a user’s done. From what I can tell, rather than storing a file of, say, a Write document, it saves the current set up of the program. That means that if you go to Browse, you can see (as far as I can tell) you get back the history of where you have been. So, while the inability (as far as I can tell) to create lasting bookmarks could be a problem, this ensures that you can start to find things again. As the default home page is Google based, perhaps I had better investigate the Google Bookmark service (though it’s not possible, as far as I can tell, to install the toolbar)

I’ve had a few problems with the power cutting out without warning. It seems that others have this problem, however, I’m not quite sure how to fix it; as there seem to be several possible cures, mostly for earlier builds. I’ve set it up to keep a log file of the battery state anyway. At least the journal saves things regularly, so not too much is lost.