Educational Development

I dunno why it has taken me so long to realise. GNUChris pointed me to it a while back, they must have added a bunch of features since - or was I just a fool rushing through and didn't see the greatness of the free online video service Blip.tv!! Check my account out. Subscribe to the webfeed - I'm officially a Blip man now.

• Not only is it fast to upload!! Boy its fast!
• But it gives you back an quicktime.mov to save back down to your computer
• It cross posts your video to your Internet Archive account!
• It cross posts the video link to your del.icio.us account based on the tags you use for the video
• It cross posts a frame image thumbnail across to your flickr account through your flickr account's email address!

There's more - I just couldn't wait to do the shout out for them!

Recently I was asked to provide a criteria for assessing learning resources on offer from another organisation. In my time I have come across many criterion for assessing such things - always very complicated and hard to understand.

Below are 3 general criteria I use. They are a condensation of criteria I have worked under in past projects. Those who know will probably see that behind them are some quite complicated processes - but to start with, I think the simplification is enough. It should help people come to terms with what they are looking for, without losing sight of why they are looking for it.

1. Accessibility and usability - Can these resources be easily used?
Have the resources undergone testing with students and facilitators, including those with a range of abilities, and those with a range of computer and connection settings? Are there clear and concise supporting documents such as study plans, facilitation guides, assessment guides?

2. Reusability - how customisable are the information resources?
Is the file structure simple to comprehend? Do the individual resources copy easily, including into other formats? If they are complex and interrelated resources, can they move as a whole into new systems? What are the copyright restrictions, if any?

3. Communications - What communications and feedback methods are possible?
Are the inbuilt communication options (if any) accessible and usable? Is it easy to communicate into the information resources, eg. can specific points be hyperlinked to, or otherwise identified in communications? Is there, or can there be a range of communication options used to support the information?

Please, if you think I have missed something in this initial 3 step - add it as a comment below and help me improve it. Any references to similar attempts to simplify learning resource assessment criteria would be much appreciated.

So we're up here in a Networked Learning workshop, talking about eGroups. A question has come up, how do you change the way in which you receive email from the group? How can I set it so a different email receives the notices?

Here's a quick demo (no sound) on how to manage and add membership.



In short, the steps are:

1. Sign in the Google Groups
2. Find your group listed in the left column and click it.
3. Click manage
4. Click browse membership, and/or add?invite members.

I have asked the people with me today, to post a response about eGroups to their own blogs and then forward that post through to us. Over to you.

Have had an encouraging turn out for the networked learning workshops lately. Today was webfeeds, which is probably the most important feature to know about in networked learning. The group looked at bloglines and how to use it to subscribe to multiple sources of regularly updated information - such as other teacher's blogs, student blogs, BBC news etc, the weather, the ski report, what ever. Basically, the use of web feeds in a service like bloglines enables us to take control of the types of information we want and need, and get rid of the rest. Newspapers are on their way out, and its about time.

Have a look at my Bloglines, and find things you think may be useful. If you also have an account with Bloglines, it will let you copy across my subscriptions as your own.

I didn't get to show another type of feed I have been quietly building, and that is a resource list of free, creative commons learning resources for each department. Here's a few examples for the people who came today:

• Langauges
• Art
• Nursing
• Hospitality

Remember! Look for the RSS button at the bottom of these linked pages, and copy that link to your bloglines. Come to the tagging or finding digital resources workshops next week to learn how you could help build these resources...

Hopefully many of you are nearly ready to go the next step. To come up with a proposal that enables flexibility in teaching and learning your course or programme. Here's how, come and see me if you'd like to discuss things.