Captain Future e-learning

Edublog Awards

2009-12-20T12:44:00.001-05:00

Lots of links to great educational blogs

http://edublogawards.com/2009/

See the link for Resource Sharing for cool apps and such.

Horizon Report 2010 Preview

2009-12-18T15:02:00.003-05:00

A preview of the 2010 Horizon Report has been released.
Here are a few of the main topics

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
- Mobile Computing
- Open Content
Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
- Electronic Books
- Simple Augmented Reality
Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
- Gesture-Based Computing
- Visual Data Analysis

Here's the link to download the pdf.

www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report-Preview.pdf

Thanks to Shirley for sending me the pdf!

Horizon Report wiki http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/

Big Huge Labs- Make a Magazine Cover

2009-11-14T21:04:00.003-05:00

Here's a fun site http://bighugelabs.com/
Create Posters, Magazine Covers, Motivational Posters and lots more.

My puppy Sheba gets the star treatment at Big Huge Labs.

99 awesome Firefox add-ons for educators

2009-10-05T12:10:00.000-04:00

interesting addons
http://www.onlinecourses.org/2009/09/28/99-awesome-firefox-add-ons-for-educators/

iCyte- save your research

2009-09-30T10:03:00.004-04:00

I've talked before about Awesome Highlighter and its nice feature that will copy portions of text that you can send in an email or send as the highlighted page.
This new application iCyte seems to do something similar but maybe goes one better.

From Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day:

"Cyte enables you to highlight and save text on any webpage, allowing you to recall the most relevant information. You can save sections of webpages or the whole thing. Webpages you Cyte are saved forever on the server, letting you return to your research even if the webpage has been deleted or modified. iCyte is free and works with popular browsers. Firefox 3 or Internet Explorer 7 or 8 are required to save webpage content using iCyte."

Myna- mix audio in the cloud

2009-09-25T09:19:00.003-04:00

Mix audio online in new app Myna by Aviary
Add sound effects, music and voice. Multiple track editing-looks interesting!

Myna

100 Best Blogs for Tech Savvy Teachers

2009-09-21T13:46:00.002-04:00

This looks like an interesting link - 100 Best Education Blogs for Tech Savvy Teachers

http://www.onlinecourses.org/2009/09/13/100-best-blogs-for-tech-savvy-teachers/

Masher-create a video mash/BBC Motion Gallery

2009-09-08T08:19:00.006-04:00

This sounds interesting. Masher promises to
mix your videos, photos and library clips from BBC motion gallery, mash them by adding words, music and effects and then share by email or social network all for FREE..sounds too good to be true.

Just did a really quick mash. This seems really cool. I'm not sure you can download your final mash; looks like you can only send a link. But I've discovered if you have DownloadHelper as an extension of Firefox, you can download the video clips and music from BBC motion gallery. That in itself is a great resource. But I've just discovered that you can go directly to BBC Motion Gallery for royalty free footage and music..so maybe that's even better !

Social Media Revolution

2009-08-26T21:58:00.003-04:00

12 Sites to find Free Images

2009-08-13T09:22:00.002-04:00

This is a great link
12 Best Places to Get Free Images
See the link for full details

Here are the basic links

Cartoonerize Yourself- Be Funky!

2009-07-25T09:52:00.003-04:00

Ever see yourself as a bit of a cartoon? Well now you can become one. It's free..go ahead cartoonerize yourself at BeFunky

Watch Know Educational Videos

2009-07-25T09:40:00.005-04:00

Just found info on this one in FreeTech4 Teachers.
Watch Know is a repository of educational videos collected from various places across the internet. There's a search option as well as category browsing. Videos are from sites like National Geographic and YouTube. If your school blocks YouTub,e you'll be able to access videos here.

Google Advanced Image Search- Royalty Free Image Filter!

2009-07-22T12:49:00.006-04:00

Looking for royalty-free images? We all know that if we go to google search we can do a search for images, but which images are we allowed to reuse? Until recently, we didn't know.

But Google has tweaked their image search and now we can find royalty free images!

Here's how:
First click on Image Search. Next to the search bar click "Advanced Search"
Put your search term in and then using the drop down menu, choose whcih type of image you are looking for.

It's that simple. Mostly you'll find images from Wiki Commons and sites like Flickr that have tagged their photos but as more sites begin to tag their images, the pool will increase.

I was happy to discover this today!

ScreenJelly - 3 minute sound and screen capture-Twitter it

2009-07-08T08:23:00.003-04:00

This looks like a pretty cool little tool. You can create an up to 3 minute screen capture with sound and either send it in twitter or email.
Just launched yesterday Screenjelly is created by the people at Screentoaster who I've written about previously. I just tried something quick, and the quality looks good. There are lots of ways you could use this, but for education here are a couple: If you have an online course and one of your students is having trouble with an application. You could have that person create a screenjelly. In minutes you could see the exact problem. If you are writing a blog and want to show your reader a concept, screenjelly might be helpful. Check out this interesting ScreenJelly from Bensykes where he demos photo realism in a desktop resume.

Mini-Mizer..not just for Dr. Evil

2009-07-07T20:10:00.005-04:00

Dr. Evil has Mini Me, why shouldn't we have our own Mini Me? Reasonably Clever's Mini-Mizer is a simple little application that can help you picture your self in plastic. Try it here Mini-Mizer

Could be fun as a diversion or an ice-breaker. Here's me!

Capture any website screen and edit it - Aviary

2009-07-02T21:16:00.007-04:00

Capture any webpage by adding Aviary.com/ to the beginning of the URL!
Simple, no application. no sign up....Wow...me likey!

Bloggers, this one's for you or maybe not - Zemanta

2009-07-02T20:00:00.011-04:00

Here's another "real-time" app. How would you like to enhance your blogs with relevant images, links or tags while you write. The minute you start to write a post, Zemanta will switch on. I'm trying it as I write this post. Well I found their logo, so it saved me a bit of time. This might be useful. It's a simple add on in Firefox. Check it out here Zemanta

Follow up- It's about an hour after uploading Zemanta, and I have already uninstalled it. I saw its icon sitting right up there in my browser window, and it suddenly dawned on me that it also would be providing ideas about content when I'm writing email..that is kind of creepy- big brother.
There now-- I feel better.

Real-time- Edit live EtherPad

2009-07-02T19:31:00.004-04:00

I've been reading about a trend in applications called Real-time. It denotes an application that has a usage right now live. These applications can save time and simplify tasks especially if you are working online collaboratively.
With Etherpad you create your own pad and can work with up to 8 people. From their site,"When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate." The upside is there's no sign in; the downside it's out there and anyone could see your work. Of course, if you really want a private network it's $49 per user.

YouTube EDU

2009-07-01T21:19:00.003-04:00

Have you seen all of the educational videos on the YouTube EDU channel? If you haven't, it's worth a look. The channel has hundreds of free video clips colleges and universities. You can search the individual institution, search for a specific speaker, or check out the most viewed. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/edu

Stupified by all the options-STUPEFLIX

2009-06-26T12:58:00.004-04:00

A little bit like Animoto, Stupeflix will create professional looking videos out of your pictures and videos. You can upload a soundtrack and text and it looks like it gives you more control than Animoto. Where Animoto restricts the length of your video in an unpaid version and provides open source music, Stupefix seems not to have that length restriction.(but I'm just doing a preliminary investigation now.) As for music, if you want to use Stupefix, you'll have to upload your own.

You can create special effects, overlay elements and animate text. With all this free in beta testing, I'm hoping it can take care of the laundry too. ...Back later perhaps with some example creation.

Wordle- Bringing Your Words to Life

2009-06-26T08:37:00.008-04:00

If you have a fondness for words and visuals, you'll love Wordle.

According to Wordle, it is "a toy for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide." I'd suggest that is so much more than a toy. What it does is allow you to see a visual representation of any set of words. In a "Wordle" you can see how frequently words appear in a given text, or see the relationships between column of words and a columns of numbers.

To create your vision of words in Wordle, you can choose fonts, colour combinations and layouts. After you are done, you can print, download or publish your Wordles as long as you note the Wordle URL.

As far as accessing the Wordle gallery, there is a caution. The developer warns that Wordles are not moderated or filtered. As such this may limit its application in K-12. For the rest of us, it's-WORD ON!

Blerp! Say Anything Anywhere- Annotate the web

2009-06-23T04:21:00.004-04:00

Released in May, Blerp wants you to layer the web and say anything anywhere.

Currently in "Alpha" stage, Blerp adds a social network over the entire web turning it into one big interactive forum. There will be community blerps where anyone can participate and user-based blerps created for closed groups.

Sounds intriguing and I can see its application in education; however, right now I'm trying to sign up but I seem to be caught in a perpetual spin. It is in Alpha stage, so I'll try to sign up later..more to follow.
UPDATE! I finally was able to sign up to blerp. I'm using a Mac and was on Firefox. It didn't seem to like that so I switched to Safari and bang zoom 0I;m on blerp. I blerped this page, so you can see how it works. Check it out http://www.blerp.com/d/15516?layerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fcaptainfutureelearning.blogspot.com Add a comment to see if it works and answer the poll.

Starting a Youtube Video from a particular spot

2009-06-22T10:39:00.008-04:00

Have you ever wanted to show a YouTube video in class and wondered if there was some way to have it automatically start at the spot you want? Someone asked me this today. (Thank you Debbie for the Q) Within a minute I had the answer to the question, and it's easy!

OK, let's say I wanted to show one of my course introductions but I wanted to start at the part where I show the class a montage of the commercials we'll be talking about in the class.

First I view my video and determine that I want it to start at 3 minutes and 32 seconds.
Next grab the URL for the video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7V27ZVm3pw
Add #t=00m00s to the end -inserting your minutes and seconds into the formula. In this case I want to start at 3:32 so I would add #t=03m32s to the end of my URL, like so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7V27ZVm3pw#t=03m32s

Be careful to add a "0" into each section of the formula if you are dealing with single digits as in 3 minutes--> 03

Wow..wonderful world isn't it!

Subscribing to Free Podcasts

2009-06-21T11:55:00.005-04:00

Right now, I'm working on my major project for ESPY590 Net. The topic I've chosen is to create an online e-learning survival guide. Maybe I'll do a 'littila thisa and a littla thata' and post some things here too.

As a podcaster myself, I love a good free podcast. I've found the best place to go for just about anything is iTunes.

There are two areas where you can look for content. One is iTunes U where colleges and universities post their podcasts. You can get to iTunes U by opening iTunes and going to the iTunes store. (Don’t worry, if you follow my path you will get to all things free.)

Once you are in the iTunes store, you’ll see a link in the box to the right, click “iTunes U” and browse!

The other alternative is to find open educational podcasts. After opening iTunes, go to the iTunes store. In the left column, you’ll see a link “Podcasts.” Click this link. In the left hand column, you’ll see under the heading CATEGORIES a link to “Education.” Click this link and browse.

Here are a few interesting educational technology podcasts:

(Before clicking subscribe, make sure you have downloaded iTunes for your computer.)

Screencast.ca by Kent Manning is a video podcast that covers topics like using Flickr Creative Commons, Quicktime Pro for video, Camtasia, Picassa and Screencast.
SUBSCRIBE To Screencast
Teacher 2.0 e-Learning Daily by Rod Lucier is podcast to assist educators with e-learning tools to engage learners. He also has a website The Clever Sheep
SUBSCRIBE To Teacher 2.0
E-Learning Insights Edna.edu.au part of Education Network Australia is to provide academics, teachers, and trainers with interviews on leading tools, technologies and issues in e-learning
SUBSCRIBE To E-Learning Insights

Whatever you teach, you'll probably find something in iTunes education.

Ouote of the Day!

2009-06-19T10:28:00.005-04:00

I was just reading a case concerning a student who in a computer programming course posted his code to the internet. If you are interested in the open access movement, it's worth a read especially the comments of Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing.

See the article here Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course

The kicker for me was a comment made by "ackpht" posted in response

"The prof here was probably motivated by the antique notion that students should do their own work."

I don't know, but that just cracked me up!