A-Z of Free Online Stuff - 4. Duolingo

Image from Karyn Christner, under a CC
Attribution licence

D is for Duolingo

Duolingo is a free language site, that leads users through online modules helping them master French, German or Spanish, with more languages promised in the future. This freebie language-learning isn't totally altruistic, as users translate websites and documents as they progress through the lessons. It effectively means users are doing translation work for free, but learning in the process. So everyone's a winner, eh?

Signing up to Duolingo is simple, and can be done via Twitter or Facebook, the latter providing a social aspect as learners follow the progress of friends. The interface is clean and easy to follow, with lessons utilising your computer's microphone to allow for learners to give spoken answers to be assessed. Lessons highlight and explain new words and phrases, and at the end of a lesson there is a test that allows you to progress to the next.

Personally, I've only gone through the first few lessons of Spanish (¡hola!), but I can definitely see the possibilities of the site allowing users to learn at least the basics of a new language at their own pace. As with all learning tools of this type, there's definitely a challenge for users in keeping dedicated and logging in to do the work every day, but you do get (optional) email nags when you haven't logged in for a few days, and the social aspect may be just enough peer pressure to spur you on.

It would be interesting to see if anyone ever becomes fluent in a new language through Duolingo, but in the meantime it's  a fun way to start learning a language, and do your bit translating the web in the process.

Pete

Weekly Learning Technology Digest... 25

Image from Patty, under a
CC BY-ND 2.0 license

Though I'm sitting here typing this, I have to admit that half of my brain is drifting away like the clouds in this week's picture because for the next two weeks I'll be on leave!  Still, I will focus for this last push of stuff before then...

On with the Weekly Learning Technology Digest!

• The first highlight this week was an interesting article called Censorship in the Internet Age which appeared in The Guardian.  Really thought-provoking stuff from Patrick Ness and I wonder how others would respond to his question, "And so I ask you today, what do you not say? What do you censor when you write? Because I'm afraid I can't believe that you don't".  I wonder too what impact this has when we get learners to learn online, in the public domain?  Read and reflect!
• You'll often hear the term 'digital literacy' bandied about at the moment, but what does it really mean? Digital literacies and web literacies has the answer!  Or at least it'll get you thinking about what you might be thinking of when you say digital literacy.
• Another thing you might have heard of is iTunesU Course Manager - or you may not.  But either way there's a nice article on the Inside Higher Ed blog about it which is worth a look. I don't think this will be a technology to put on the 'ignore' list.
• The Times Higher had the tantalisingly titled There's Gold in Them There Hills of Online Learning - and while this is no quick fix to financial benefits for more traditional online learning, it is an interesting glimpse into the world of edX.
• I liked the list of 12 UK blogs worth bookmarking which were recommended in The Guardian's Higher Education Network and while some I've known about for years were featured, there were some which I didn't know about and it's always good to hear about interesting new stuff.
• One techie bit - have you got Google Drive yet instead of just Google Docs?  If you have, then you may be curious about it and Google Drive: The Differences Between the Web App and the Desktop App is going to help untangle the difference for you!
• Final interesting snippet out there was a short blog post called From connectedness to openness which is a reflective piece on how openness has changed one educator's practice - how has it changed yours?

Image from http://xkcd.com/185/ under
a CC BY-NC 2.0 license

Oh, and I normally try to find a video which is of interest, but haven't got one today.  How about an xkcd cartoon instead?  

That'll do?  

Excellent!

Right... have a good couple of weeks.  I'll see you in September when the fun really begins!

Sarah

A-Z of Free Online Stuff - 3. Creative Commons

Image from Horia Vorlan, under a CC
Attribution licence

C is for Creative Commons

Regular users of this blog will know we're all big fans of Creative Commons, and with good reason. Copyright can be a minefield, and knowing where to find good quality images, music and sound that can used legally and for free is very important when creating content.

Creative Commons gives content creators the chance to give their work different licenses, allowing others to use their work provided certain criteria are met - a "some rights reserved" license rather than the usual blanket "all rights reserved". There is a wealth of material out there that can be found quickly and easily, and so there really isn't a lot of excuse for both infringing copyright, or having boring, imageless presentations!

Some of the best sites for finding material also happen to begin with 'C'. CreativeCommons.org should be everyone's first stop if they're new to what can be used and how, and has a good search function. Compfight is a great site for easily searching Flickr for images, and ccMixter is great for finding music and samples. (Jamendo for music, and Freesound for SFX are also really useful, even if they don't fit in with the alphabetical conceit of this post!).

Pete

Weekly Learning Technology Digest... 24

Image by JD Hancock under a
CC BY 2.0 license

Hooray!  I'm on time with the weekly learning technology digest for the first time in weeks.

The summer is a funny old time, isn't it?  People are either away on leave or snowed under with work in preparation for the next academic year. For me, it's been a combination of both of those elements and with the reality of yesterday's A-level results and the new year looming large, things are going to get hectic until well into October!  Got to love the academic year.

Anyway, enough waffle... on with the learning technology!

Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2012

• One of the first things to catch my eye during the past week was Six Big Ideas for Educational Technology Leaders from Innovations in Education - and if you can repeat to yourself 'be open to new ideas, be a practitioner, model the behaviour you want to see, have vision and be prepared to fail'... then those will stand you in very good stead!
• There was also a good piece in The Guardian's Higher Education Network from the HEA Chief Executive Professor Craig Mahony on learning and teaching for higher education today - and if you can make time to read it, I think it's worth seeing what he has to say.
• If you're not aware of this development at London Metropolitan University then there are changes afoot reported in The Guardian as their bid to outsource most sources to private firm.  This is a huge change in the way universities are run with IT, library services, student counselling etc all being out-sourced - keep an eye on how this one works out...
• Talking of things to keep an eye on, Gartner have published their latest Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies and bring your own 'everything', smart things, big data and human interaction with tech are key messages. Lots to digest!
• For something a little smaller scale, there have been some nice developments with Prezi including 3-D backgrounds, fade-in images and screen blackouts (which can be very handy when presenting) - these changes will be handy in the classroom if Prezi's your thing - but as ever, don't overdo those animations!  Travel sickness in a presentation is never a good thing!
• In fact, if you're thinking about whether or not something's working... why not evaluate it? In fact, why not have a look at this handy basic guide to evaluation which Mozilla's Doug Belshaw has put together? A good, plain English guide.  We like!
• Oh, and if you wondered why I hadn't mentioned MOOCs this week... well, it's because I was waiting until now to do it.  I've just seen this one called Dozens of plagiarism cases are reported in Coursera's free online courses which is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Fascinating that people feel the need to cheat even when no course credit is involved and this should just be about learning. 
• To finish though - I liked the fact that these MOOC students from MITx ended up creating their own MOOC - what a contrast from the last story, huh?  Plagiarism vs. taking learning that step further.  What makes learners make those choices? A good contrast of how learners respond to MOOCs.

... and I'm going to leave you with a TED Talk on the 'Barefoot College' which I've just seen (though it's been around for a year)... and for Friday inspiration, it's just the ticket.

Have a great weekend.  Dodge the showers.  Enjoy the sunshine!

Sarah

A-Z of Free Online Stuff - 2. Blabberize

Image from Takomabibelot, under a CC
Attribution licence

B is for Blabberize

Creating online animations can be a great way to engage with learners. I'll be looking at at least one more website as we get further into the alphabet, but Blabberize is one of the simplest and most easy to use. I'll let the handsome fella below explain...



So, to clarify, Blabberize takes a picture and animates it to dialogue, which can be imported, recorded directly, or even recorded from a phone. A popular example of its use in education is for students to take a historical figure, and bring their project to life by having the person themselves say their own biography. (This blog post shows how it was used to put words in the mouths of planets, and this one how it was used in a literature assignment).

Obviously it's a very silly animation style, and probably more suitable to school use than Higher Education, but if anyone has any example of how it's been used in a university environment I'd love to see it.

The downside of the site is that it does have the air of one that's been a bit forgotten by its creators - it hardly looks the most up to date, seems to take a while to load in places, has a "©2010" message at the bottom, and doesn't seem to work in Safari. The blog page gets a database error, and Blabberize Twitter hasn't been updated since February. So perhaps one to enjoy while you can!

Pete

Weekly Learning Technology Digest... 23

Image by Karen Booth, under a
CC BY-ND 2.0 license

The weekly learning technology digest is a tad late this week due to my being on leave last Friday - so I come bearing cake by way of apology for not getting this online sooner!

Grab a cuppa... help yourself to one of those lovely looking cakes... and sit down for this week's digest...

• One of my bug bears is 'when elearning goes bad' - which so often it does... so 5 Tips for Beating Boring eLearning is a handy nudge in the non-dull direction.  None of this is rocket science, but they're points which can slip by some times!
• Oh, and while we're thinking about making elearning a bit more interesting, what about Five Factors that Affect Online Student Motivation from the Faculty Focus newsletter?  Point number 5 is especially important, even if it might seem a little too touchy feely!
• And a final one about online learning... How [not] to Design an Online Course is going to be useful if you're starting to think 'I need to get this course online' and don't want to fall into the usual traps!  It's not all 'don't do this' stuff, there's some constructive advice kicking around in this one too.  
• The quality of teaching also appeared in the news in the Times Higher in their article Post-1992s give sector an object lesson in instruction  and for an overview of HE teaching, this is a useful article to read.
• As a diversion from learning and teaching for a mo, how about a tool which converts text to speech for you... free of charge?  I spotted SoundGecko in LifeHacker and if you'd rather listen to long articles rather than read them - this could be just the app for you.
• MOOCs (massive open online courses) are still in the news and The Guardian covers it with an article provocatively titled MOOCs: a massive opportunity for higher education, or digital hype? The conclusion seems to be that it's too early to tell... but this is a nicely balanced overview of all things MOOC.
• My final bit of learning technology loveliness is 8 Great Reasons to Flip Your Classroom (and 4 of the Wrong Reasons), from Bergmann and Sams - a bit of a mouthful of an article, but again since 'flipping the classroom' is one of the current educational technology trends to note, then we like anything which gives a good quick overview.  And this does!
• And finally... a video!  This one is from the RSA Animate series called The Divided Brain and it's just... well... interesting!
  

And that... is that.  No more Olympics on the TV either... what will we do with our time?!

Sarah

A-Z of Free Online Stuff - 1. Audioboo

Image from Cathy Stanley-Erickson, under a CC
Attribution-NoDerivs licence

OK, so here's the start of (hopefully!) 26 useful things that can be found on the Internet for free. And we start with...

A is for Audioboo

Audioboo is a rather nice website for recording and distributing audio. It's been around since 2009, and allows users to record or upload short pieces of audio (up to three minutes in length - sadly this has been recently slashed from five) which the site (slightly annoyingly) calls 'Boos'. Apps can be downloaded for Android and iPhone that allow you to record your Boos on your phone and upload them on the fly.

These Boos can then be linked to, shared on the usual social networks, or embedded into a website, with an automatically created RSS feed meaning it is quick and easy to produce downloadable podcasts for your listeners. Users can also find your Boos via the website, and also by searching everyone's uploads to Audioboo.

There are downsides to Audioboo. The three minute limit will prevent it from being useful in all circumstances, and there are no privacy settings, meaning all Boos would need to be available for all to find, listen to and download. This would severely restrict its use for some purposes, such as student feedback.

However, for a quick and easy way to record quick, pithy podcasts, that are very easy to distribute, it's superb.

For those wanting more functionality, there is a paid-for AudiobooPlus, which allows for a 30 minute limit, as well as a few extras such as Facebook Pages integration and enhanced iTunes categorisation. It costs £60 a year. A "lite" version of this is in the pipeline, allowing for ten minutes at a lower fee.

Stephen Fry has been a vocal advocate of Audioboo, and the BBC and Guardian are among the businesses that have channels on the site, so as well as creating your own material there's plenty of decent Boos to have a listen to. Below is an example from BBC Radio 4 Today.

listen to ‘Nasa: This is the next big thing’ on Audioboo

Pete

Top 5 tips for Screencasting (avoiding scream-casting!)

Image by conskeptical
Reproduced under a CC licence 

This blog post is borne out of recent "intensive" screencasting sessions done on Camtasia in our University creative media suite. I must say I was impressed by Camtasia 8 and it made my particular screencasts (focused on aspects of Turnitin functionality for my Turnitin project) much easier to complete.

Now this is a top 5 mainly for those that maybe have not had much experience in screencasting, and I am going to keep it pretty brief (just like any good screencast).

1. Know your subject

Sounds fairly obvious I know, but if your demonstrating a particular aspect of a software program you really need to know how that particular element of functionality works, right down to its little idiosyncrasies.

2.  KISS

Not used this acronym for a while but the old maxim "Keep It Simple Stupid" does apply here. This means both keeping the material your presenting easy to follow,  but also holding back on some of the bells and whistles that are available in many screencasting programs that are oh so tempting to use. Finally try to keep the screencast to no more than 3 minutes. If it needs to be longer, split it into two parts.

   

3. Script it

Perhaps the most important point of all is to script your screencast, and in fact storyboarding is also a very good idea. Scripting means writing down exactly what you want to say verbatim. This prevents needless screencast "re-takes", as it is amazing how the power of speech fails somewhat when you are recording (speaking from experience here!).

Storyboarding your screencast should come before the scripting. Storyboarding is the process of "sketching" out what you want to cover in the presentation. The way I do it is to have a two column template with the visual on the left hand side, and prompt text on the right. This way, you make sure you have not missed anything vital in the material.

4. Testing testing

When it comes to using any audio/visual software/hardware it is a good idea to demo levels first. You don't want the audio to be "clipping" (meaning too loud) and you dont want the video to look blurry or hard to see. Simply record a short 30 second test, export it to your desired format (avi, mp4 etc) and check that everything seems ok.

5. Audio

This tip appeals to the recording musician side of me, but I do think it has a place here. Using a decent microphone going into a reasonable soundcard will give you a clear audio track, which serves to make your screencast sound more professional. If you are doing a quick screencast, which maybe has a limited audience, then the headset microphone would do just fine. However, if your wanting to get across detailed information about a subject, then the audio does need to be clear and consistent.

Ok, so that is my brief top 5 based on recent experience, if you have others then feel free to share!

James

Summer preparations for the helpdesk...

... or... "Life on the frontline with the Learning Technologies Team Helpdesk"...

Ian Mumby

We are now in that quiet period during the summer when the helpdesk calms down a little as the majority of students have gone home and staff take it in turns to have a well-deserved break.

So what do we do on the helpdesk when most of our customers have deserted ship for a few weeks?

Well there is still lots to do.

Colleagues are preparing all the required MOLE courses for 2012-13 and throughout the summer have been sending out various emails across all the departments requesting different bits of information regarding their requirements. To make life easier replies are directed to us on the helpdesk so we have these to collate and pass on to the relevant people.

We get lots of requests for outgoing courses which are due to be switched off in the summer to be kept live for a longer period to allow for some unforeseen event, so we facilitate this.  And we always have a steady stream of enquiries from staff anxious to know when their next years courses will be available to them so they can make any required changes.    

There are also enough summer students on campus and overseas students still studying online to contact us with their various individual problems -  submitting assignments for example.

Also a lot of departmental admin staff work through the summer to ensure all the requirements of their teaching staff colleagues are in place ready for the start of the next semester and they contact us with their various requests. Some of these cannot me actioned straight away and it’s a case of collating the various requirements for actioning a little later in the summer.

Also team colleagues ask us to help them out with various tasks.  We recently upgraded MOLE 2 which meant it had to be offline for a few days and prior to this we were asked to take part in the  QA testing of the upgraded version looking for potential problems etc.

In addition we always have lots of housekeeping to do – things that you intend to do throughout the year but never get round to doing. For instance when investigating a problem for someone with their course, it's usually necessary for us to register ourselves on that course in order to gain access to it.  Once the problem is resolved we should then unregister from the course but sometimes we forget.  As a result we can end up be registered to dozens of courses and this is a good time to attend to that !!

Ian Mumby and Khalid Rahmatullah are
the Learning Technologies Helpdesk

Also we try to reflect on things that went well last year and identify areas where we can improve on.  One idea we are going to trial in the coming months is promoting the use of Google Chat and Hangouts as a possible method of contacting us on the helpdesk rather than just by email or phone calls.  More news on that soon.

And of course just when you think you have the day ahead all mapped out and planned… the next phone call or email could be a really serious problem to sort out – you just never know do yer??  

Ian

Weekly Learning Technology Digest... 22

Image from JP Photography, under a
CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license

Now, I know that you'll probably be thinking about the weekend or watching the Olympics, but you know what... stuff still carried on happening where learning technology's concerned.  And because it's Friday, it's time for me to share the juicy bits of lovely from this week's selection!

• The first link might help to demystify some of that muzziness around the concept of 'MOOCs' - it's 20 questions (and answers) about MOOCs from Dave Cormier and there are lots of interesting nuggets in this article.  
• Another link to take a look at is the 2012 Horizon Report from Educause / NMC and it looks at the things that are coming up - from stuff a year away to things that will hit in 4 to 5 years.   If you're working with learning technologies now, the trick is not to keep your head down but to look up and see what's headed your way and plan ahead.  This report is great for that.
• I also saw an interesting video from 'Hacking Society' which records a discussion on how we visualise the web's hidden economies
• A nice new development which is currently being rolled out is video chat face-to-face with Hangouts in Gmail and it mainstreams further some of the excellent features in Google+ which is good to see.
• Talking of changing tech, it's easy (very easy!) to knock PowerPoint, but did you know that it's been 25 years since it arrived on the scene?  A real game changer from the boardroom to the classroom and the fact that's it's installed on 1 billion machines worldwide is just mind blowing!
• Another long in the tooth Microsoft product - Hotmail - is about to be relaunched as 'Outlook' 
• With all new tech comes risks - and a great little article on Social media and the elephant in the room needs reading to ground how we're using social media in a little reality.
• And for a little more social media how about the Updated survey of Russell Group Universities' use of Researcher profiling services  from the always excellent Brian Kelly at UK Web Focus?  The comment that 'use of popular social media services by researchers could enhance access to the researchers’ research outputs if links to their outputs were provided from the services' is an interesting one and it provides an interesting picture of the use of such services across some of the UK's research-intensive universities.
• There seems to be a lot of stuff about social media kicking around this week and In the Facebook era, students tell you everything continues the theme.  The awkward relationship between the student giving out too much information and then sending 'don't go there' signals is amplified by their ease with revealing their personal selves online.  A really interesting article.
• The final link is a reminder that University students demand a 'real relationship' with tutors which appeared in an article in The Guardian voicing concerns from the NUS about the quality of contact hours.  A thorny issue - but maybe technology can help here too?  

And that's that!  As ever, if there's something worth a note for the week which I missed, do drop a comment off for me below.

In the meantime, enjoy the Olympics whether you're watching them in person or on the TV... and if you're not doing that, have a great weekend anyway and I'll see you next week.

Sarah

Top 10 Tips: Power searching with Google

I recently completed the 'Power Searching with Google' MOOC (massive open online course) and thought it would be useful for me to share some of the tips I picked up along the way... here goes...

1.  Image searching is far more useful than you might have realised

Searching for infographic CVs on Google

If you're looking for an example of a CV you'd just type 'CV example' into Google, right?  Well... what you might not have thought about doing was going to the images search and typing it there instead.  The reason this is great is it's a really quick way of doing a visual search for layout ideas... or diagrams... or visual explanations of concepts etc.  Brilliant for that!

2. Google search is not case sensitive
Y'know, I just didn't realise this... but it isn't.  If you search for 'NASA' or 'nasa', it won't matter - the results would be the same either way.

3.  But word order matters
Searching for 'green grass' and 'grass green' will produce two very different sets of results.  Think carefully about the order in which you enter search terms as this will affect your results.

4.  Using the site: operator can help narrow your results
If you're after results just from academic institutions then simply add site:.ac.uk to your search criteria (no space between site and the domain extension) - this can be a really great way of finding what other institutions are doing on particular subjects.  Equally, restricting it to site:.uk will keep your results from UK domains etc.  Simple technique but very effective.

5. Using the filetype: operator can help you track down more than just pdf files
Did you know you could add in filetype:pdf and it would just find you pdf files?  Nor did I... but nor did I know that it could search for other file types which could be extremely useful.  For example, search for something with filetype:kml (kml are Google Earth files) and you'll be able to see your results in Google Maps - perfect for tracking down walks / routes to places even historical expeditions which have been mapped.

6. Search features can short cut you to answers quicker

Using the weather Search Feature in Google to
quickly track the fact that it's going to rain!

Want to find out the weather in Sheffield (it's rainy, by the way!)... just type in weather Sheffield and it'll come straight up.  There are a whole host of 'search features' which do things like this, from finding out the time in other cities to sunrise times in your holiday location to definitions, performing calculations, converting units, looking up health conditions and more.  There are tons of them which you may have noticed producing quicker results but not realised this was a feature... it is and it's excellent!

More search tools

7.  You have more search tools than you might realise
If you click on more search tools on the left hand side of a search window it'll drop down to reveal some more search goodies.  You can restrict items by the time they were published (which is great if you want to find out the latest news or blog posts on something or articles published within a particular period)... you can search for sites with images, for content at a particular reading level or even do a 'verbatim' search which will search for exactly the terms you want with no 'help' from Google.

8.  Google's translation functionality is superb
Yes, you can come up with some wonky translations but did you know you can search pages from other countries which have been translated?  It's in the more search tools section mentioned above so is straight forward to access.  Why would you do it?  Well, want to know what other countries are saying about the crisis in the Eurozone?  Want to know how an event was reported elsewhere to give additional context?  This is a terrific way to do just that.

9. Don't think like your query, think like the results you want to find
This sounds a bit mad, but actually makes sense.  If you're trying to find an answer to something you'd think you should type in the question but this won't necessarily get you what you're after - the search engine doesn't answer questions just finds results.  Instead think about what terms might appear on the pages you want and enter those as keywords instead.  Be aware that this might skew your results - so choose keywords with an awareness of their impact (i.e. searching for the place 'Londonderry' will bring up different results to searching for 'Derry' because of the political history attached to the name).  To include both terms in your results use the OR operator.

10.  Image searching is brilliant

Drag and drop an image into a Google search and
it'll find it on the web (if it exists there)

Yes, I know I've already mentioned this, but how many times have you come across images / diagrams where a student has referenced 'Google' as the source or (lazily!) said 'I don't know where I got it' (as if it just landed itself on their computer one day in an act of academic magic). If you save that image to your computer and then drag it into the images search bar - you can find other instances of it on the web and most likely track down the source.

There you have it - my top 10 'power searching with Google' tips (there were more than these and I bet I'll come back to this post and think 'why didn't I mention that?!').  If you've got a bit of time to squeeze in some new ideas, then explore Power Searching with Google.  I bet you'll get a few tips from that too!

Sarah