June…. a nipper (Berry nice :-)

Morning/evening all
June is well and truly upon us and in Auckland it’s a nipper, as winter makes its presence felt. I did notice that early summer in London was about the same temperature as here so there’s a little bit of equity around:-)
Some variation in the sites today with some useful information on multimedia development, mobile learning with handheld devices, web design guidelines, e-learning research and costs and some resources for the visually impaired plus the odd one out… get your favourite Website analysed…..fascinating
1. This is a quite a nicely designed site with links to materials, guides, tips on the use of handheld devices in education.

http://www.handheld.hice-dev.org/

and if you are interested in the progress of mLearning…. check out

http://www.mlearn.org.za/

2. Here is a small range of Webdesign resources which you might find useful. Hot Potatoes is one of my favourites. Some good tutorials /scripts worth exploring as well.

http://www.edteck.com/eddesign/2pages/resources.htm

3. Nice set of materials and ‘database of resources’ from the Higher Education Academy in the UK related to the evaluation of learning technologies resources

http://www.materials.ac.uk/resources/fullrecord.asp?resourceid=1535

and here is another one to complement it from the other side of the globe

http://ltde.tripod.com/menus/evaluation.htm

4. Information Literacy is always a hot topic and these sites gives plenty of links for you to explore

http://www.fiu.edu/~library/ili/iliweb.html

and another for your edification…

http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm

5. E-learning costs, cost benefits, cost efficiency/ effectiveness. ROI, ROV, TCO seemed to be all consuming for those that hold the purse strings, but to my mind it’s always going to be a challenge to determine costs accurately, especially if you are trying to quantify ‘value added’, pedagogically effective, convenience and flexibility as a monetary value. This site provides some links to resources which may be of some help

http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/Resources/costs.htm

6. The Learning Technology research Institute is starting to build a comprehensive resource online. Shame there’s not a lot more like this around the world. Have a look at the Demo’s section if you don’t have time to peruse the lot 🙂 Learning Objects is particularly interesting (for me anyway as I have never really liked the term only the concept. Perhaps a better acronym would be TELR ( pronounced “teller”) Topic Encapsulated Learning Resource:-))
“The LTRI conducts research into the application of information and communication technologies to augment, support and transform learning”.

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri

7. This is a new and interesting site which as it grows could potentially provide some excellent guidelines on designing accessible multimedia for e-learning. Extract from the site:
“The purpose of Skills for Access is not to present a set of guidelines or requirements to be followed at all costs – accessible design is about more than that, and in this section of the web site we outline our recommended approach to using multimedia to enhance accessibility of the learning experience.

http://www.skillsforaccess.org.uk/

8. Instructional and related resources for the visually impaired: This is a useful set of links to resources that could make a difference to how the visually impaired learn.

http://www.tsbvi.edu/Education/index.htm#Subject

9. The odd one out…. enter the URL of your favourite Website or that of your institution (faint chance they may be one and the same thing 🙂 and view the results

http://webxact.watchfire.com/

That’s it for now….. enjoy the weekend 🙂
Richard Elliott

http://blog.unitecnology.ac.nz/LTForum/

See you at ASCILITE 2005 in BRISBANE: 4 – 7 December,

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05

OR
ALT-C 2005, 6-8 September, Manchester, UK

http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2005

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