commoncraft approach to blogs
At last, the guys from Common Craft have done a video how-to on the topic of blogging. Their visual approach is stunning, engaging and really clever – worth emulating. Thanks and well done.
Cartoon slideshow
This is a blog post about blogging. (oh-oh … eyes roll) No, actually the point i want to make is about using visuals. This slideshow presentation uses cartoons to make a series of points .. and it’s very effective. Think you can’t draw? Well, how sophisticated are the visuals here, really? Similar points to the ones Sue Waters makes over here. See i don’t do any of the things recommended, which is why i’m writing for myself. Ha ha. At least i enjoy writing. | View | Upload your own
Flex e-news (second life + interactive ochre)
The latest flex e-news is out, from the AFLF (australian flexible learning framework), and this month one of the feature articles focusses on Second Life, the virtual world that’s been on TV and in the ordinary news. In 2006, Gipps Tafe used Second Life to explore work-based learning for VCAL students. Other articles cover the very inspiring “Interactive Ochre”, which is a CD-based resource on Indigenous Culture. Past articles include one study which shows Australia is leading the world. Links: Lead article on Second Life Article on Interactive Ochre Australia Read More …
Remind Me
Several bloggers have been linking to this youtube video, as an example of the modern world; some kind of complex infographical philosophy. i just love the song, and want to watch the video later. Oh, and Jakob says that i’m devaluing my professional input commodity value with such trashy asides. He’s probably right. Cheerio, michael
flexible screens
.. from multiple input screens, to this wafer-thin flexible mini-screen; it’s great to see this kind of technology developing so fast – launched in Japan, of course!
Pacific CALL Symposium
Michael has been invited to represent PRACE, and speak at “The First CALL” in August. Should be a terrific event, with Uschi Felix opening, and James Farmer, of edublogs.org and The Age blogs, as a keynote. The “Inaugural CALL Symposium” hosted by the Monash University English Language Centre and the Pacific CALL Association: Saturday, 18 Aug from 12 noon – 4.30 pm, Monash University, Clayton Campus. From the publicity: “CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) practitioners join global professional communities online, yet they often do not utilise the wealth of expertise Read More …
image labelling game
An interesting idea from Google: they want to improve the quality of their knowledge about online images, so they create a game, the "Image Labeler". Could be difficult to play when people have serious spelling issues, but could be fun for others .. Essentially the program matches you up with another person (you may play as a guest), and you both add words to describe each image, until you come up with a match. This gives the search engine more information about the pictures it has found. Matching two strangers Read More …
extradition for crimes against commerciality
This is astonishing; i had no idea that the Australian Federal Government had handed over an Australian citizen to be tried in the USA. A member of the software-cracking group ‘drink or die’ which delighted in redistributing illegal working copies of US softwares, faces ten years in US prison plus fines of half a million US dollars. Stephen told me, and he read it in The Age. Ouch! This is after the same disturbingly reactionary government leaves David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay for Five Fears Without Charge. Has the Island Read More …
Turn the page
This help desk episode has been very “viral”: it reminds me of a good article on the future of the book, “The Book is Dead, Long live the Book“, from Priscilla Murphy. People have predicted the demise of the book for a very long time. In 1894, one writer predicted that the phonograph and the kinetograph would rapidly substitute paper-based text with audio. Murphy explores and questions three themes, rivalry between media, that they are competing for limited public attention, so every dollar spent on new media = a dollar Read More …
infinite thinking mac .. goog .. machine
Infinite Thinking Machine .. i’ve just stumbled on this one somehow. Very snappy and engaging ideas for teachers. This crowd loves Google in a big way: they’re sponsored by google, but they talk about plenty of other things (social software, mashups, classroom ideas). This episode taken from chapter five of their blog, Calculate This, which has plenty of ideas for using spreadsheets in class. Watch out for the Grade 5 kids sharing their formulas, and getting totally social about feedback on their work. Anyway, their videos are good! Tight and Read More …
Updates and work changes
So, it’s clearly been years since i’ve posted in this place. There’s been a whole lot going on in the meantime, including pandemic etc. Since 2017, my teaching has focussed mainly on technology aka “digital literacy” within adult community education (ACE), and i haven’t done much in the way of language and literacy teaching at all. I’ve been working as a “learning facilitator” aka Tour Guide at the Polly Woodside Museum, with the National Trust. For those who didn’t grow up in Melbourne, Polly Woodside is an old sailing ship, Read More …
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 …
Mark Hopkins’ story translated into many languages
You remember Mark Hopkins, the adult learner from PRACE who told his story so well, not only in our publication, but also on the SBS Insight tv program last year? Well, some of the stories from this Resilience collection have been translated into other languages for the EPALE* site, and the first story to be translated was Mark’s. *EPALE: Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe. https://goo.gl/XqROOX
Adult Learners in Conversation – “A Fuller Sense of Self”
Last night Tricia Bowen spoke about her experience of reconnecting with the adult learners who have shared their stories in this volume. I talked about how great it was to join with Tricia and Lynne in the whole creative and collaborative process of editing. Then Lynne Matheson invited us to launch the video into the world, so we all made rocket-launching sounds, and the champagne flowed. * It was such a good experience filming and editing these stories with Tricia. I would love to hear any feedback, especially related to Read More …
Reading between the Lines – SBS Insight focus on Adult Literacy
If you think Australia is a highly literate nation, watch this recent episode of Insight from SBS. This powerful and moving episode features Mark Hopkins one of the students from PRACE. I spoke with Mark as part of the “Stories of Resilience” project, and it’s really heartening to hear his voice in this national forum. All these adult learners show real courage and vulnerability, as they describe their experience for people who have no idea of the extent of this hidden problem. Over 40% of Australians experience some level of difficulty 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 …
Help Files for the iPad
Here’s a copy of the printed materials we handed out during the course. It’s a pdf file that should hopefully open on your iPad. Link here: This post was originally on the site “iPad for Seniors” at PRACE.
PageTurners has a new online shop
Just sent out the latest PageTurners newsletter, letting people know that the new shopping-cart style website is up and running!! It’s taken me much time this year to get the site all updated and e-commercey, so i’m very happy that we’ve finally launched. Woot. You can read the newsletter here. Take a look at the site, tell us what you think. Oh, we need a feedback form don’t we. If you’re not subscribed to the PageTurners email list, you can join via the website.
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 …
Some help files for blogger
Here’s a basic intro that Michael made – for low level students really (link: pdf stored in google drive). GCF LearnFree don’t have an intro to blogger, but they do have a great section talking about blogs in general, and an intro to Tumblr instead. Tumblr is much more visual than blogger, which can be text-heavy. Google themselves have a fairly decent help section. Grovo has a few videos showing the basics, including this overview. But they’re a commercial mob, and they’ll want you to pay for more. What good Read More …