Writings Reclaimed

I decided to bring posts to this blog from other projects, such as: Digital Learning at PRACE Digital Learning at Lalor Living and Learning ACFE Learn Local Communities of Practice the North-West e-mentor projects from ACFE Learn Local iPad for Seniors at PRACE the 23 Things project from ACFE, CAE and PRACE.   Having written nearly all the text in those places, i wanted gather it all together. It was relatively easy to export from Blogger, and then import into WordPress here. Unfortunately, now i’ve discovered several roadblocks, namely: the Read More …

Dark Side of the Comment Section

If you’re involved with any kind of online facilitation, you may appreciate this article from The Guardian. They’ve done some research into the comment section, finding that much more abuse is directed at female writers than male. (Also, for web designers, some really good layout effects, especially the way they’ve integrated the graphs and the “how would you moderate this comment” bits.) There’s a whole series around this research, articles interviewing people who have experienced the maelstrom of massive online shaming and bullying.. and articles on ideas for making things Read More …

iPad apps especially for Seniors??

I wondered if there are any iPad apps that would be especially useful for people over 55, so i searched the web for  “best apps for ipad for seniors“. Sure enough, there are many many lists: “16 helpful apps for seniors”, “27 bet iPad and iPhone apps for senior citizens”. But are any of them useful.. and how many of these apps are FREE..? Well, some of them are designed to help people by improving things like: Visual accessibility: Silver Surf is a web browser with “large navigation buttons, dynamic text Read More …

Refurbished iPads

Suppose you want to buy an iPad, but you don’t want to pay a fortune for the latest and greatest.. what can you do? I’ve done a basic search for “Refurbished iPad in Melbourne“, and found that Apple themselves have specials on their website as low as $309 for an old model (which is still a lot of money, but less than $700, right?) Also, not sure who these people are, but they explain “Refurbished” quite well – “MacpricesAustralia“. Other than that, it could be worth asking at your local Read More …

Chris Mooney talks about using the iPads with students

A while back, I asked Chris Mooney how she was experiencing the iPads in her English as a second language (ESL) classroom. She replied that so far, they have already been looking at YouTube videos and information texts, and it’s been fun. In future, Chris would like to find ways to: play interactive games on the overhead, get the group doing gap-fill (cloze) activities together, get into reading information texts as a group. You can hear the whole one-minute conversation here: What about you – what have you done with an iPad Read More …

What apps do you use for image work?

Good discussion on the ACE Network Ning, started by Lynne Gibb the e-mentor for Eastern Metro Region. Like Lynne, I used to be a big PaintShop Pro fan, as i had a free licensed version from one of the computer magazines. Now I use XNview for browsing through my image collection, and also for those times you have to quickly re-size, adjust colours or optimise an image for the web. [Here’s my video screencast about it.] Screenshot captor is my choice for screengrabs (similar to Carole’s Snipping Tool.) I’ve loaded Read More …

Live web conferencing – the skills you need to facilitate a session

Last year, a few of the Victorian LearnLocal e-learning mentors put our heads together to think about the skills that people need when they want to run a live web conferencing session. I think it’s really crucial, if you’re thinking of running a live web conferencing session, to get as much help as you possibly can. We came up with the ideas in this document below.

How to create a "session exit URL" for Blackboard Collaborate

Warning: specialised technical info relating to web conferencing in Blackboard Collaborate: Don’t know how many people will find this useful, but Leo just asked if i knew how to do this, so i made a quick visual help file. Yes, unfortunately you’ll need to do this for every session you set up. Unless someone else knows how to create a default exit URL. Here’s a link to the PDF file hosted at google docs.

More voice-overs for PageTurners (via Soundcloud)

So, as well as embedding voice-overs into the PageTurners website, i thought there must be a way that other people could embed the stories in their own sites as well. Sure enough, these days there are a few different ways to do this. One i’m trying out now is via Soundcloud. Woo-hoo! It works. But does it work in the land of iPad? Okay, back to editing the audio originals. Ned Kelly next, by Anne Dunn.