G’day
September heralds the start of spring on this side of the world, more like spring water the amount of rain we’ve been getting. Not to worry, plenty in this posting to keep you occupied on a wet and windy day.
Firstly, I have to mention the odd one out as you can spend forever browsing through your favourite subjects and picking out some useful gems in the quotations section or some facts and fiction elsewhere.
For those of you who are Macademics like me, there is an excellent ‘free’ thesaurus to put on your desktop and a link to an online one if you are not. Also included is a link to top 100 Web 2.0 applications, Webconferenceing guides and evaluation, scanning tips,a research helper, a digital atlas and some brainy stuff, an online e-book and some conferences.
I have also included a number of links to Websites dedicated to online assessment as it seems if that if it moves, makes a noise or requires attention one must assess it in some way
CU in October
1. Learning Technologies tips: This is a useful blog with all sorts of information on: Exploring learning technologies: emerging trends, research and implementations. You will need to do some searching to find items that may be of interest to you.
http://digitaldialogues.blogs.com/learning_technologies/2007/08/edublogs-20-200.html
2. Testing and Assessment Glossary of Terms.
http://questionmark.com/uk/glossary.aspx
3. On-line assessment. Some good stuff here from the University of Melbourne
http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/online.html
4. Top 100 Web 2.0 applications.
http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html
5. Australian flexible learning assessment guide.
http://designing.flexiblelearning.net.au/assessing/c_design/c020.htm
6. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation (PARE)
7. Online assessment resources
http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/assmt/resource.htm
8. Nisus Thesaurus (Mac) A free download from the makers of the multilingual word processing software, Nisus Writer Pro.
For those of you who don’t have a Mac (or even if you do) try a free
online Thesaurus at
http://www.lexigram.net/thesaurus/
9. Web conferencing: Comparison of applications + some. Probably one of the best online resources for finding information about Web conferencing systems
http://thinkofit.com/webconf/wcreview.htm?p=breeze#reviews-multi
10. Welcome to the OTiS Online Tutoring e-book. We have been here before but it’s always worth a revisit in case you have forgotten about the very good resources embedded in the pages.
http://otis.scotcit.ac.uk/onlinebook/
11. Digital Atlases: For those of you interested in things anatomical especially the brain.
http://www9.biostr.washington.edu/da.html
AND if you really want to know more try
The BRAIN from Harvard University.
http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html
OR if you are looking for a career in Medical Imaging, read all about it in the online book:
http://www.cis.rit.edu/htbooks/mri/
12. A few Scanning Tips by Wayne Fulton. Very good overview with lots of hints and tips on how to scan effectively
‘The purpose is to offer some scanning tips and to explain the basics for photos and documents. It is about the fundamentals of digital images, about the basics to help you get the most from your scanner. How it works, for those that want to know’.
13. NoodleQuest. A useful tool to get you started on your research project.
‘One of the hardest parts about doing academic research on the Internet is figuring out where to start! A search engine or subject portal is usually the first thing to try, but which are the most useful for your research need? Fill in the short form below, and we’ll point you in the right direction. For every question, you can check any number of boxes (or none)’.
http://www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/
14. Conferences
14.1 Welcome to the MoodleMootNZ07. This is the official site of the 2007 New Zealand MoodleMoot. Being hosted by WINTEC in Hamilton in the Waikato region.
It promises to be a grand event with the big man himself Martin Dougiamas in attendance. Watch this space and sign up to attend.
14.2 ASCILITE 2007: Providing Choices for Learners and Learning.
For the first time ASCILITE is to be held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
This is one of Singapore’s largest educational institutes and has a very impressive campus. The campus has excellent resources and personnel and I am sure they will be great hosts. Don’t miss it.
From 2- 5 December 2007
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07
14.3 ALT-C 2007: Beyond control
Learning technology for the social network generation
4-6 September 2007, Nottingham, UK. By the time you read this ALT-C will almost be underway. An interesting development is the intention of
Elluminate
to simulcast ALT-C 2007 plenary sessions.
Conference sponsor Elluminate, a leading provider of live eLearning and
web collaboration solutions, will be simulcasting selected ALT-C 2007
sessions. The company will use its flagship product Elluminate Live! to
provide real-time, online participation in the sessions with voice over
the Internet, interactive whiteboard, high-resolution video, text chat,
and more. Information on the online sessions will appear shortly on
Information derived from:
“[the] ALT Digest, a fortnightly publication from the Association for
Learning Technology (ALT) –
The Odd one or two out
15. Great books online. An excellent site with literally thousands of facts, features and fascinating resources.
‘The preeminent publisher of literature,reference and verse providing students researchers and the intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and information on the Web, free of charge’
and if you are keen to keep up with what’s happening in New Zealand go for
Google News. Updated every 15 minutes.
http://news.google.com/news?ned=nz&btn=Go
Richard Elliott
Auckland
New Zealand