Lifelong Learning

innovative technology + self-sustainability

Category: ICT (page 1 of 2)

Grab that screen survey results

First of all, I would like to thank all those who took part in my survey on screenshots and screen casting.

Here are some observations relating to the results.

There were 45 respondents. Over 80% know how to create a screenshot using their smartphones and approximately the same amount share screenshots with others. The percentage falls considerably when we add voice tools i.e. to create a screencast rather than a static screen. Only 60% have tried creating a screencast.

Q9 Survery results

A similar percentage of respondents save their screenshots in organized folders.

I feel this is the most significant aspect of the survey results and clearly indicates the need to

  1. get more familiar with the options that are available
  2. think about output ie. the final objective of where static or dynamic screens will be saved before embarking on student projects
  3. set up storage and retrieval solutions that can support both the educator and learners for faster and more efficient.

My suggestion is thinking about this before getting going with any screenshot or screencast uses with learners. Different tools offer different options. Some of the freeware solutions, such as Jing Project (for PC or Mac) or Skitch (for Mac / iPhone users) allow you to save to your hard drive or directly to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or your FTP account.

Freeware Jing Project save options

If you are familiar with Dropbox, then you may want to buy a professional solution such as SnagIt that allows for multiple output locations including Dropbox and Drive.

Use professional software such as SnagIt to enjoy more flexibility of output options.

A range of uses were shared by respondents, these can be broadly categorized under the following points:

  • To exchange / personal things
  • To support part of an assignment
  • To confirm completion or submission of work (ie. as a back up or to review difficulties)
  • To highlight samples of target language when using the internet

One respondent also mentioned using screen capturing tools to share tasks / units via twitter with a screenshot attachment that captures the students’ answer or challenging language which might require further clarification.

In my next post, I’ll share some samples and showcase screens to provide practical illustrations and outline how to set up screensharing activities with students and in part 3, I’ll cover some issues we need to consider when using these tools with or for our learners.

Choose your preferred output location before creating your screen!

 

Sustainability

It’s week four of our EVO course.

This week we invite you

– to watch the session videos about ethical and sustainable businesses

 

and

 

 

During your business English teaching what kind businesses or business people are represented?

Look back over material you’ve used or material your students have discussed during your lessons recently and think about whether the businesses could be described as ethical / sustainable / future-fit?

If you are new to BE, think about one example of an ethical and sustainable business you could bring to the classroom and how?

 

If you are not participating in the EVO, please feel free to add your comments here or get in touch with the coordinator via the Nellie Deutsche’s Moodle.

Dormant blogs vs. still standing or standing again bloggers

Following Ken Wilson’s inspiring “Still Standing” post in May 2017, I decided to revisit the ELT Blogosphere after many years of interaction via Twitter, Facebook or other platforms.

I decide look back at the blogs that were an integral part of my working life at the beginning of the decade and see where these had led those professionals.

Outcome, blogging is still very much alive. The discussions and comments around blog posts are completely different to FB.

Some other “still standing” blogs that I’d like to highlight

  • Sandy Millin  -Technologically and linguistically adventurous EFL teacher, trainer, writer and manager
  • Nicola Prentis – Thoughts on ELT, English and whatever else comes into my head
  • Lizzie Pinnard – Reflections of an English Language Teacher
  • Nik Peachey – Nik’s Learning Technology Blog For English Language Teachers

So what’s your story? How long has your blog even been dormant? Is it still? Why? What might trigger an interest in blogging or urge in write online again?

How do you feel Facebook or Twitter have changed the commenting on your blog or the interaction with your audience?

Tools I use series : Hootsuite

I’m a “tab” person, I found tab browsing and tabbed tweeting the easiest way to handle the flow of information I need to digest.

Have you tried Hootsuite?

Here’s a short video which explains 5 reasons why you might find it useful!

Simply boxed – sharing comments, capturing content

A nice way to share a group of URLs is to “box” them together using a service such as Simplybox.

If you are new to Simplybox you can watch this overview here to get an idea of what Simplybox is all about.

Once you’ve added the webpages (you can tag and describe them) then you can choose to share the box publicly via URL or by embedding a widget  – shame this doesn’t seem to work on Moodle or edublogs but it does look great on a wiki!

Embed widget for your wiki- plays as slide show

Embed widget for your wiki- plays as slide show

Another nice feature is the print options. If you select “view as list” then choose print (e.g select pdf) you can create an archived version of the comments on that selection of webadresses.

This is very useful in training or with language learners if they are using sites and need to discuss, the record might be helpful for some who prefer off-screen reading or for showing progression and continuity of comments.

In comparison to using Diigo, I’d say the pros of Simplybox are that the boxing is simple and user-oriented. You can save the part of the website you want to “capture” by dragging your mouse over the area. This can help visitors to see the part you are pointing them to.

Simplybox -capture and share webaddresses

Simplybox -capture and share webaddresses

One of the drawbacks, is the person doing the bookmarking needs to add another bookmarklet to their browser.

What do you think? Have you got any feedback from students/trainees?

Do taste tags exist?

Having just become familiar with the term “taste neighbours” and after exploring and comparing two social databases www.thinktag.org and www.twine.com I am wondering whether there is also the concept of taste tags. Does anyone use this to describe the ontological structures that arise from online knowledge sharing?

 

Thinktag is a database that allows users to upload items and share them within a dedicated private or public channel or across platform. The commenting and linking functions allow discourse to develop around shared items that can range from books (one click ISBN upload), video, links, images, files.

Twine a similar platform with a much wider international membership is also fully compatible with other web 2.0 applications such as Twitter, Facebook or Digg.

 

Thinktag as the name conveys centres around social tagging and allows tags to be manually inserted, updated and edited by registered users, comments i.e. “replies” to inserted item comments and memorabilia also carry tags allowing label on-going dialogues. Twine, even with its recently updated interface does not have this option.  Twine has an automatic tagging feature which will generate interconnected concepts. When I uploaded a video of how to paint Mona Lisa in MS Paint and tagged it Mona Lisa, Paint and clicked saved the community tag box immediately inserted “Microsoft” – fair enough this is straighforward conceptualized connection. What about other patterns and relationships?

 

Apart from Common Tags what other standards exist? It appears that a lot is based on markup language RDF, OWL, the techonology that enables computers to interpret the data that is then shared. This techonolgy also “understands” the what things are in relation to other things. So will an “apple” tag be referring to Gwyneth Paltrow’s bay, to Apple Inc, the fruit or the Beatles record label?

 

 

And how exactly does this system work and what sort of tagging standards exist?  How aware of them are we and how do they influence search, inter-connectivity and flow of ideas?  These are just some of the questions that I am pondering for Module 2 (of my Master in Multimediatà per L’e- learning coordinated by Roberto Marigliano at Rome 3 University) has led me to explore the current evolutions in the semantic connections and social tagging . In  considering how social database contribute or help with personal information overload I will also try to research more fully how automatic subject metadata creation works across languages and cultures. What steps do we need to take as educators to analyze and create environments which move beyond the collective sharing of items towards the cooperative construction of meaningful items and debates?

 

 On the blog post Why I Migrated to Twine, the author feels the semantic garden that Twine interacts  with “uses machine learning & 300,000 taxonomic categories of the Wikipedia for reference” whereas from my experience of Thinktag (mainly on the Parlare le immagini channel for Roberto Maragliano’s book) tags are entirely “user-generated”. This allows for far greater creativity and personalization but also risks being extremely dispersive and unstructured for meaningful connections in content discovery and sharing.

 

 

 

 

ELTONS – Congrats to Teflclips

It was great to hear that TEFL Clips won an ELTON award.

Well deserved and although the The Consultants-E EduNation, which was shortlisted,  didn’t make it this year, we are happy that the award won in 2007 for the ICT in the Classroom online training course has lead to the launch of full Certicificate in ICT .

Having spent a year designing it with Director of Pedagogy, Nicky Hockly,  and colleague Anne Fox, I’m currently working on the first iteration and Anne is tutoring a parallel course. Wonderful 😉

And TEFL clips won our favourite website poll so a round of applause to Jamie and all our appreciation for the useful YouTube lesson plans. Truely wonderful,

Valentina

Embed YouTube video on blog

A nice video from Leigh Blackall on how to insert videos onto your blog. I found that my edublogs format bar has a simple and easy insert/mebed mp3/mov. or other media file button (so by simply clicking the the yellow circle with an A on the post toolbar I could paste in the YouTube video)

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/OHN30Cmljuk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Check out his http://screencasting.blogspot.com blog for more “screen grabs and audio explanations – demonstrating ways of using
information and communication technologies for teaching and learning
online”

technorati tags:

Sychronous and voice experiences

Well how can I not blog about this???

This is a super summary of a hard week’s work of analysing. Week 8 of the ICT I tutor on is about chatware tools and chat projects. The group have spent a week viewing some webhead projects like and using some shared applications together first-hand. Here is a wonderful summary from one of the super ICT colleagues 😉 on the course.

Check out Seth’s Podomatic podcast to hear the group’s collective feedback.

TESOL Cosenza

Franca Plastina invitied me to hold a seminar about Blogging for TESOL Cosenza

on March 1st and I was pleased to be sponsored by TRINITY Italy. Great to travel down with Raffaele Nasti himself.

Lovely audience with a some experienced bloggers too! Thanks everyone
Here’s the link to my PPT slides

Blogged with Flock

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