What DL is happening?

May 1^st 2009! Time to move forward “On wards and up wards!”. My colleague Colin, (no nothing to do with Pollock), and I were talking about the success of this blog, namely…

·         The growth of readers since January when it was initiated as a ‘drip-feed’ (by request from many of you) and

·         The drop in numbers reading the eMagazine

It reinforces that ‘one-size doesn’t fit all’; by-the-way, the eMagazine does have much more than I put in the blog!

I think that I had come to the conclusion that some of our audience still found it difficult to find time to read the blog and/or the eMagazine; I was wondering if that time could be found on the journey to and/or from work. i.e. a podcast of the blog! Colin suggested I should give it a go so at the end of the blog you will find the audio of this blog and a link to the podcast if you want to download it!

Today’s finds are…

1:

A Virtual Interactive keyboard from the Birmingham Grid for Learning that can...

• simulate nine different instruments

• Piano
• Organ
• Saxophone
• Flute
• Pan Pipes
• Strings
• Guitar
• Steel Drums and
• Double Bass

Perfect companion for an interactive whiteboard.

A simple design but a powerful tool to aid teaching and learning.

I'm informed that...

• "the piano keyboard goes from ‘Middle C’ to ‘Upper F’ – one and a half octaves (18 different notes)"
• "the double bass is pitched lower but still tuned to C"

Try it out at http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/music/piano/index.htm.

2:

A captivating interactive website from Nikon called Universcale, which is made for an interactive whiteboard!

Today, using the electron microscope and astronomical telescope, we can see the objects which we have not been aware of its existence before. Are you and/or your learners able to fathom, or even roughly grasp, these sizes? I can't!

Visit Universcale and experience the sizes of various objects at http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/index.htm.

3:

My AwardMaker is a free, quick and easy site to print out certificates for all types of activities:

• Sports,
• School,
• Special Occasion,
• Business,
• Blank Certificates and
• Relationships

Why Free?

In their own words...

"It’s quite simple really. We love good design. We think good design should be, like air and water, “FAE” - Freely Available Everywhere!"

Go to http://www.myawardmaker.com/ to find out more and/or to download free templates.

4:

The Australian National Film and Sound Archive provides free and worldwide access to over 1,000 film and television titles – a treasury of down-under video 100 years in the making.

More details... 

• australianscreen is one of the access and outreach programs operated by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). The NFSA is the national audiovisual archive, collecting, preserving and sharing the nation’s moving image and recorded sound heritage.
• It is a promotional and educational resource providing worldwide online access to information about the Australian film and television industry.
• It contains information about and excerpts from a wide selection of Australian feature films, documentaries, television programs, newsreels, short films, animations, and home-movies produced over the last 100 years.
• It also includes teachers’ notes that identify and describe the educational values of many of the film clips. These resources are developed in partnership with the NFSA by Curriculum Corporation through The Le@rning Federation.
• The site brings together material from the vast collections of the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Archives of Australia, the ABC, SBS, and AIATSIS in a unique collaboration. All material is made available with the permission of the copyright holders.
• The site is curated by experts, specially commissioned for australianscreen.
• The site is freely available.

Access this resource at http://australianscreen.com.au/.

5:

This online resource was created in order to provide users with resources to help them learn English.

Wijng.com is originally from Germany, providing learners with a number of videos and other resources so they can practice and improve the way they speak and think in English.

With this site learners are able to revise the most important grammar topics and use the practice exercises to improve their skills.

Visit http://english.wijng.com/ to find out more.

6:

The BBC Learning Open Lab has released the prototype of a new news display, the BBC News Globe.

The BBC News Globe is a continuously rotating globe that displays news from two RSS feeds published by the BBC. As the globe rotates a new placemarker appears for each new story in the RSS feeds.

BBC News Globe provides learners with way to find news stories by location, providing a bit of geographic context for learners reading the news. 

Find out more at http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/openlab/prototype-newsglobe.php.

7:

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), funded by the UK HE and FE funding bodies to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research, has its own YouTube Channel.

There are currently 17 video clips available; they include...

• Designing Spaces
• In their own words
• Web 2.0 Rights
• Flourish PCD ePortfolios
• World War 1 Poets
• News Film online
• The John Johnson Collection
• British Cartoon Archive (My personal Favourite)
  
  
• The Cabinet Papers 1915 - 1977

Go to http://www.youtube.com/user/JISCmedia to access these clips.

8:

Compfight is an image search engine that allows users to search Flickr for Creative Commons licensed images that can be used in documents and digital presentations.

Compfight gives users the choice of searching by...

• keyword or
• Flickr tag word.

Compfight could be a great resource for practitioners and/or learners to find images they can use in digital presentations.

Note: If Family Learning practitioners do have young learners using Compfight to find images, remember to turn on the safe search option.

Go to http://compfight.com/ to try it out.

9:

Link TV, a news video resource that allows users to create news video remixes...

Link TV's video editing tool allows users to create their own mix of news stories in one video. Link TV's video editing tool is called Know the News. <http://www.linktv.org/knowthenews>

Using Know the News learners can...

• grab news clips from Link TV's library of news
• mix selected clips together to create a unique news show.

Link TV's news library contains segments from major news outlets around the world.

The process of creating a news video is fairly straight-forward...

• Watch and select video clips to place on a timeline,
• organize the clips through a drag and drop feature, then
• add text narrations using the video text editor.
• After previewing the video it can be published on the Know the News network <http://www.linktv.org/knowthenews/remix>.

To see examples of academic uses of the Know the News video editor, visit the Know the News wiki. <http://wiki.knowthenews.tv/>

Videos published on the Know the News network can be rated by viewers. The rating system asks viewers to rate videos on fairness, accuracy, presentation, and trustworthiness.

Go to http://www.linktv.org/ to find out more.

Note: Link TV is looking for educators to help them create learning guides. Link TV is interested in having teachers contribute learning guides for their One Nation Many Voices project. Link TV is offering teachers an honorarium for creating and piloting the learning guides in their classrooms. If you are interested in participating visit the educators' page on Link TV.

The 1 month trial podcast of the blog should be embedded below (fingers crossed)…