Graeme Boxwell

Moodle quizzes can be a pain to enter all the information but there is an easier way to get a large amount of questions into the quiz. GIFT format can be a really straightforward method of entering questions into the quiz. When reading the documentation on GIFT, it can be a little daunting so I have created this video to help you.

This has been my first blog post in some time, and I do apologise for not keeping it as up to date as I should. This term has been extremely busy with a new team in place who are doing some fantastic work and getting a great reputation around the College already. It’s great to be part of a team that have such dynamic and creative people. They help to inspire everyone to better things.

Speaking of better things – Moodle 2.1? We currently have a test server set up that we are looking to do some rigorous testing on over the next few months. If there are any of you with experiences of 2.1 that you can pass on I would greatly appreciate you getting in touch.

We are looking forward to being able to use the Moodle app with our VLE, as this requires Moodle 2. Combined with the ongoing network infrastructure updgrade that is taking place at the College, with wireless coverage being integral as far as I am aware, this will improve the potential for mobile learning and BYOD (bring your own device).

All this makes it a really exciting year ahead, so I’d like to finish this year by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I’ve been using Photoshop for a few years now, and have been amazed at the difference it can make to an image. Recently the we purchased CS5 in the office and I have been stunned by the new content aware mode. It really is staggering. Watch this video to from Terry White, demonstrating the content aware tools.

RSS feeds are an excellent way of ensuring that your students, and colleagues are keeping up with current trends and news in your subject area. I like using an RSS widget like BlastCasta to display the RSS feeds. You can create a widget to embed in a variety of different places (blogs, wikis, Moodle sites, etc).

Here’s a blastcasta widget displaying the RSS feed from the BBC Technology  site:-

What you can also do is take an RSS feed from any of your tags on your delicious bookmark site. So for example, lets say you teach AS Maths. Use delicious to bookmark your favourite sites, and when you see a site that is relevant for your specific class, set the tag to be something unique relating to the class e.g class10ASMaths. Create a widget todisplay that tag in your delicious bookmarks and have this widget at the top of your Moodle site. You would have a constantly up to date list of sites that are relevant to your students and that are updated to keep your students interested in returning.

To create the RSS feed from a particluar tag in your Delcious Bookmarks you need to use the following format:

http://delicious.com/v2/rss/[yourdelicioususername]/{the tag you want the RSS from]

so for my sites that I have tagged with elearning, the RSS feed address would be http://delicious.com/v2/rss/boxwell/elearning

Here is that RSS feed in a Blast Casta widget:-

I’ll create a screencast video walking you through the relevant steps as soon as I can.

YouTube has to be one of the most used tools by teaching staff. There is a huge wealth of resources on there.  There are lots of other sites that can give you extra functionlity and support when using Youtube in an educational context.

For example, if you are looking to embed content but do not want any comments, or advertisements etc to be on the video you can go to a site called ShareSafe to stripout all of that extra stuff. Just paste the youtube URL into the site and it generates a ‘safe’ version. Click here to visit the site.

Find out about lots of other youtube supporting sites at Richard Byrne’s fantastic blog called Free Tech for Teachers, and read the blog post about the other Youtube sites here.

Thanks to Doug Belshaw for sharing this on Twitter. He is a good person to follow if you are looking for innovative educationalists working in the North East – His Twitter Page

In keeping with the Johnny Cash Project, here is another TED talk from this year relating to the world of art. Amit Sood is an employee of Google, and the head of Art Project. This Project brings together amazing art from around the world to let you view and set up your own collections. Watch the video and give it a try here.

Google docs never fail to astound me with the amount of functionality and collaboration options that are available for free. I find myself using this more and more, with a  decreased reliance on machine based Microsoft office packages.

Google Docs have added the use of pivot tables in their spreadsheets. Pivot tables are a way to sort and analyse data in spreadsheets, and they are especially useful in large spreadsheets that uses large data sets. Click here to visit the blog post from Google regarding pivot tables.

Watch this video to go ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the power of pivot tables in Google Docs!

In previous blog posts we’ve looked at the power of learning through the web video (http://graemeboxwell.co.uk/?p=206), and there are a variety of different instructional videos that I have made for this site. I tend to use Camtasia for my screencasts. Camtasia is powerful, with a good set of advanced features to enhance the quality of the screencast. The downside of Camtasia is the license cost, especially in the current climate of budget restrictions.

I have recently come across Screenr, a screencast tool that is free to use, and also involves no installation of software. You would need to have an account with one of the following – Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, or WindowsLive. You log in using the credentials of one of these sites.

Be aware that when you create your screencast, you need to post it to the screenr site to be able to use it. Visit Screenr here.

In Dave Foord’s excellent blog, he describes a method of using Screenr to create learning objects and keeping those objects private if necessary. See his post here.

Alot of conversation in e-learning over the last couple of days has been about the demise of the flip camera. In a staggering decision, Cisco has decided to pull the plug on the excellent low-cost camera. They bought out the company who originally made the flip camera for around $600 million, twoyears ago and are now closing it down.

Whenever I have introduced the camera to staff, they really like the ease of use, and especially the ease of transfer on to their PC. Support for the use of the cameras is minimal compared to others on the market. Point and push the big red button to record. Simple as that.

David Pogue has written an excellent article in the New York Times about the death of the flip. Click here to read the article. In this, he describes the new model of flip that was just about to be launched that would allow users to stream their recording live over a wireless network. you could email a link to your audience and they would follow the link to see the live video. Sound like a fantastic addition to an already great product.