app of the week

MindNode – Mac App of the Week

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MindNode – Mac App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at various apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Originally this feature focused on iPhone and iPad apps, however I have now expanded to include Mac, Windows and Android apps.

This week’s App is MindNode.

MindNode is an elegant and simple-to-use mindmapping application for collecting, organizing and outlining your thoughts and ideas as mind maps.

Mind maps can be used for many different tasks – including to-do lists, brainstorming, holiday planning, research, writing, project management – and in many different environments – school, meetings, workspace.

Features

  • Node Well: New nodes are created directly on the canvas. There is no need to access the toolbar or the application menu.
  • Multiple Mind Maps: The ability to create multiple mind maps on one canvas makes MindNode an ideal tool for brainstorming sessions.
  • Constrain node width and resize nodes: MindNode allows to automatically constrain the width of a node and to resize the node directly on the canvas.
  • No file format lock-in: MindNode support a variety of file formats. You can import and export FreeMind and OPML documents (used by many outlining applications) or export the mind map as PNG image, TIFF image, PDF, RTF or HTML document.

Free

This is the first time I have ventured away from iOS apps. This is for a range of reasons, people often ask me which apps I use on my Mac or on my Google Nexus One. Apple have launched the Mac App store which makes it easier for people to get apps, or at least more confident in getting different apps. Finally though the iPad and iPhone are great for doing some stuff, sometimes you need a “truck” and trucks need software too.

MindNode is a simple mindmapping application for the Mac. I like it because it is simple, elegant and works for me. However I suspect that if you are a mindmapping junkie then this is too simple for you. For others who are looking at the potential for mindmapping or for learners who want a free tool then I think MindNode fits that need.

You can very quickly and easily create mindmaps with multiple nodes and sibling and child nodes.

However to take it the next level you really want to go with the MindNode Pro. This enhanced version has many more features and extends the functionality, and at £11.99 is good value. Whether you should do this does depend on what or if your institution already has mindmapping software. We use Mindgenius so I think I will use that if I need to go beyond MindNode, however you may not have that choice.

MindNode is a nice simple elegant app that is a great way to start using mindmaps.

Get MindNode in the App Store.

altc2011

ALT-C 2011 – Thriving in a colder and more challenging climate

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Second call for proposals

The 18th international conference of the Association for Learning Technology will be held at the University of Leeds, UK, 6-8 September 2011.

Abstract submission system live

Conference co-chairs

John Cook, Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning at the Learning Technology Research Institute, London Metropolitan University.

Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University.

Whether you’ve been involved in ALT for years, are new to the learning technology domain, or are an experienced researcher or presenter from other fields with innovation to report, please take the time to review the call and guidelines documents below. With your help we can make the 2011 ALT Conference a truly outstanding, influential, and enjoyable event.

Categories of submissions

We welcome submissions of two broad types:

1. An abstract of up to 350 words describing either a Demonstration (30 minutes), Short Presentation (ePoster + 6 mins), Short Paper (20
minutes), Symposium (60 minutes or occasionally 80 minutes), or a Workshop (60 minutes). All abstracts will appear in the Conference
Introduction and Abstracts.

2. A full Proceedings Paper of up to 5000 words, for publication in the peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings of ALT-C 2011, together with a 350 word abstract (taken from the paper), and a 200 word presentation overview which will appear in the Conference Introduction and Abstracts and online.

Calls and Guidelines

Provided below are links to comprehensive documents on the ALT Open Access Repository for you to download and/or refer to prior to writing or submitting a proposal, and for you to make us of during the subsequent editing process if your proposal is successful. Please read
the relevant documents carefully.

Call and Guidelines for Proceedings Papers
Proceedings Paper Template
Call and Guidelines for Short Papers, Short Presentations (ePosters), Symposia, Workshops and Demonstrations

Further information.

Key dates

Submissions close on 21 February 2011
Presenters’ registration deadline 27 June 2011
Earlybird registration deadline 4 July 2011
Registrations close on 12 August 2011

Outstanding and Best Proceedings Paper Awards

All presented proceedings papers are considered by ALT for an Outstanding Proceedings Paper Award. To receive this award, the judges
had to agree with the statement “This paper presents work that strongly advances the field of learning technology”. [If there is no agreement on the words “strongly advances” then the judges may make a Best Proceedings Paper Award.]

Best Short Presentation Awards

All accepted short presentations are eligible for the Best Short Presentation Awards, one voted for by the conference delegates and the
other subject to a wider online voting community.

Download a copy of the first edition of the flyer for the conference from the main conference web site.

lwf11, podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #069: Where have you been?

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Learning without Frontiers 2011 and Learning Technologies 2010 and not a mention of BETT.

With James Clay, Lilian Soon, Ron Mitchell and James Yorke.

This is the sixty ninth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Where have you been?

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Where have you been?

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #81 Embedding a social bookmarking tag cloud

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I was once a Business Studies and Economics lecturer and I taught the subject for many years. I use to at that time use a range of learning technologies, which at the time was quite innovative, but today would be considered old hat or even backwards.

One thing though that I did use quite early on was the web and got my learners to use it to find useful news stories and share them in class. I would then collate those links and share them on our “learning platform” which at the time was simply a website I had created…

Now today there are a wealth of social bookmarking sites out there such as Delicious, Diigo which make this really easy. Students can save their website links, tag them and using a shared tag these can be easily seen by others on the course.

You can also create a tag cloud from these links and embed them into the VLE. This then allows learners to access all those links based on the tags, simply by clicking the tag.

This cloud is a live cloud, so will update automatically as new bookmarks are added, or additional tags added to existing bookmarks.

This also adds a visual hook to learners on the keywords for their course and their studies.

Practitioners can of course create their own bookmarks and tag them accordingly for their learners.

Practitioners across a curriculum area can also bookmark useful websites, tag them and share them.

Practitioners from different institutions could also share their bookmarks and embed the tag cloud in their own respective institutional VLEs.

Tag clouds are a different yet simple way of sharing a series of bookmarks. However they are dependent on users tagging their bookmarks with relevant tags.

stuff

New devices, new ways of learning

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Today I am in London at the Learning Technologies conference. This conference is aimed much more at workplace learning than at the education community.

I was invited to speak on the potential and power of mobile technologies and the impact they have had and will have on learning in the workplace.

The proliferation of powerful mobile devices in the past 24 months, combined with a savvy population of users has led to a change in the way we use information. Many of us now expect to be able to read and interact on the move using smart devices like the iPhone and Android phones, or the iPad. At the same time, e-books and readers allow us to carry thousands of books in one device. Potentially this could be a great moment for extending learning – but what is the role of the L&D function in all this?

I hope to be “tweeting” my presentation live which starts at 11.30 and runs for about 30 minutes.

stuff

Using e-resources to improve the quality of achievement

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In order to improve the quality of achievement, there are various strategies that practitioners can use. One key thing to note is that there is only so much that practitioners can do and learners need to take responsibility for doing more than is just provided to ensure that they get the best possible grade they can.

I know some learners who “believe” that all they need to pass their course is the core text book and the handouts they get in class.

Well, yes in a way that’s right, but they will only pass.

To get that grade A or a distinction they are going to have to do a little bit more. Though some learners will know this, many will not. It is therefore useful for practitioners to support learners to ensure that they have the opportunity and the access to wider range of resources.

Of course practitioners don’t always have the time for this (as they do work hard doing a lot already for the learners) however learning technologies and digital resources can often provide that extra sparkle to allow learners to improve the quality of their work and assessments.

By providing links to e-books, e-journals, relevant e-resources will be placed on the VLE. This will allow students who wish to improve the quality of their assessed work, access to a wider range of resources and links. Learners can then access these links at a time and place that suits them, whether that be at home, at work, whilst drinking coffee or even in college.

Now just providing the links isn’t enough, you also need to ensure that learners are signposted the resources in lessons.

Before any practitioners say “I would like to do that, but I don’t have the time” I have two things to say.

Firstly if quality of achievement is an issue for a particular curriculum area than using resources ie spending time on doing this should be a priority over doing other stuff. It’s not about time, it’s about priorities.

Secondly within most institutions are a bunch of information professionals who are really good at curating and collating these very resources for you. They often live in the library and from experience not only will they know what resources are available for any particular curriculum area, they may also curate and collate them for you.

There are many ways in which digital and online resources can be used to enhance and enrich learning. Using access to a wider range of resources to improve the quality of achievement can be an easy start to solving this issue.

app of the week, iphone, video

8mm Vintage Camera – iPhone App of the Week

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8mm Vintage Camera – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.

This week’s App is 8mm Vintage Camera.

Shoot old-fashioned 8mm movies in real time.

8mm Vintage Camera brings your iPhone and iPod Touch back in time to capture the beauty and magic of old school vintage movies. By mixing and matching films and lenses, you can recreate the atmosphere of those bygone eras with 25 timeless retro looks. Dust & scratches, retro colors, flickering, light leaks, frame jitters – all can be instantly added with a single tap or swipe.

£1.19

This is a lovely little application that allows you to use the usually excellent iPhone camera and rather than shoot clear 720p HD video, you can shoot film as though the iPhone was using 8mm film stock.

This short montage, shot from a mount in my car, of the M5 shows the different styles that you can get by using the app.

Now video purists would argue that what you should do is shoot in 720p and then use a video application on your computer to add the effect so if required you can always go back to the original footage. Now there is some merit in that argument, but personally if I was doing that I probably wouldn’t shoot the video with an iPhone and would use a “proper” HD camcorder. This app is about creating an aged film look to a video quickly, immediately and without worrying about finding a computer.

After starting the app you can change the lense, change the film type to various different types, add frame jitter and then press the red button to record.

It’s nice that the above help screen is included in the app. The video is saved to the app, you can then either save the video to your camera roll (to import into your computer later), e-mail the video (for example to Posterous) or upload to YouTube.

I was quite pleased with the effect and it is a quick and easy app to use.

This app has a lot of potential for practitioners who may want to “pretend” that they are in the 1970s or the 1920s to enhance a lesson, video or presentation.

Get 8mm Vintage Camera in the App Store.

vle

Hearing the Learner Voice

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For most people, talking and listening to learners is the ideal way to gather feedback from learners as part of the learner voice in FE.

However there are many technologies and services out there that could be used in addition to talking and listening face to face.

I have mentioned on the blog before about using the VLE to gather the learner voice.

There are various tools that can be used for this, there could be an open discussion forum that allows learners to discuss the college and the provision. Though care must be taken in order for this open forum not to be abused and if moderation does take place that it is open and fair.

A closed discussion forum can also be useful in allowing evidence of discussion and feedback in one place. Within this kind of forum the only people who can see the discussion would be the learner and the college.

A further method of using the VLE would be to use something like the Feedback block on Moodle that allows users of the VLE to provide either a poll of some kind or more detailed feedback on the provision in the college.

Most (if not all) learners have a mobile phone and I would expect most (if not all) of these have a camera capable of taking video. You could encourage learners to make short videos using their mobile phones about their experiences at college, what they would like to see different at college as part of learner voice. There needs to be some mechanism for collecting and collating the videos, providing a central e-mail address or MMS text number could be used for remote collection. Another way would be to upload the videos to a college network resource or even the VLE.

SMS is another key way for gathering learner voice and is a technology that many learners will be familiar with. SMS textwalls are one way of collating SMS messages from learners.

Our iMacs in our libraries have built-in webcams and even if you use PCs, using a webcam to capture short video clips from learners can be a simple way of collecting the learner voice.

Online service such as Wallwisher can be used to collect and collate comments from learners as part of learner voice.

By providing a Posterous e-mail address and creating a private Posterous account, learners could just e-mail their “voice” and using Posterous would allow learners not to just send text, but also audio and video too.

So face to face discussions with learners are a valuable way of gathering the learner voice, there are also many different technologies, tools and services that would allow the learner voice to be collected in different ways.

How do you listen to the learner voice?

100 ways

100 ways to use a VLE – #69 Access to a Webcam Stream

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Though many may consider a webcam video stream somewhat antiquated, they are still well used for many different purposes. There are many different webcan streams out there that can be used for learning or to enhance a topic of some kind.

Though an easy option is to just add a link to a webcam via the VLE, some streams allow you to embed the video (or image) and this can then be embedded into the VLE.

Running your own webcam and embedding the feed into the VLE is another option. Certainly useful for scientific experiments or for animal care courses.

lwf11, stuff

Learning Without Frontiers, some thoughts

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#lwf11 @Jimmy_Wales

Well that’s the end of day three of Learning without Frontiers. I really enjoyed the conference and in my opinion was probably one of the best conferences that I have been to that Graham Brown-Martin has organised.

There was a great community of delegates and it was nice to meet and chat with old friends, meet some of my Twitter community of practice in real life and make some new friends.

I found there was a really good mix of speakers, workshops and discussions. Lots of choice from which to choose a track of sessions that stimulated, inspired and made you question your practice. For me what makes a good conference programme is a set of sessions that means you are forced to make choices and get ever so slightly disappointed that you have to make that choice and miss some really good stuff. That’s certainly how I felt about the different sessions and workshops.

The thing that you have to recognise about Graham’s conferences is that these are not a traditional academic conference, no this a polished theatrical series of performances. This is no bad thing, but even with all the bright lights and sparkly glitter balls doesn’t mean that all the presentations are lightweight, on the contrary, with some big names with big ideas there was lots to be inspired by and lots to make you think.

Some of the highlights for me were listening to Tony Vincent about mobile film making, I also enjoyed Tony’s App sharing session. I really enjoyed listening to Saul Nassé’s presentation about the value of the BBC and how it inspires. Yes it was me that asked the difficult question about Tomorrow’s World and BBC Jam! Evan Roth’s presentation was both entertaining and inspiring. The Apps for Good workshop was a useful session on planning apps, wish I had the imagination and skills to write a good app. The serious debate and discussion on e-safety with Josie Fraser and David White at the heart of this was both useful and informative, this will feed into my own institution’s e-safety strategies and policies. Keri Facer, who did a great presentation at the JISC Online Conference also gave a great presentation that reflected much of what the audience were thinking and reminded us that it is important that when making difficult decisions that we should base these decisions on evidence and facts and not just on what we believe. Stephen Heppell, who I have heard many times once more made us think and reflect on what we do. I loved David McCandless, it was nice to hear the voice behind many of the wonderful infographics that I have seen many times on the web. I also found Jimmy Wales talking about Wikipedia and where he sees Wikia moving forward really interesting and alongside Lord David Puttnam a great end to the conference. I was particularly pleased to see that Jimmy was there at the venue and not presenting over a video feed, which is what I had been expecting. I managed to have a few words with Jimmy and wished I could have had a few more, seemed like a really nice and genuine guy. It was funny to hear from him when he did present he understood the impact of his “personal appeal” for Wikipedia had had on the internet community. But it did work, raising $16m.

Finally a thank you to Graham Brown-Martin for a great conference and a inspiring set of speakers and sessions. I left the conference with new thoughts, ideas, new thinking, inspiration and so much more. I hope to post on these over the next week or so.

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