EdTechRoundUp

EdTechRoundup Weekly Special - Meeting with TALMOS representative

Doug Belshaw — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:57:27 +0000

Last Sunday’s weekly EdTechRoundup meeting was a special one. It came in response to an issue that surrounded a blog post by Doug Belshaw and EdTechRoundup Podcast 5.

In that blog post and podcast, Doug made some comments about TALMOS Virtual Learning Environment to which the company behind the product took exception. More details here.

Mike Jones from Core Projects & Technologies (UK) Ltd. accepted our offer for TALMOS to put their side of the story. We’re not releasing it as a podcast as the issue probably won’t be of interest to most of our listeners. However, we thought it important that we make available in unedited format the discussion that took place.

Click here for the FlashMeeting replay!

ETR Weekly #1 - How to get started in the edublogosphere

Doug Belshaw — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:06:31 +0000

We’ve decided as a group that our weekly Sunday meetings contain enough ideas and useful discussion to start getting ‘out there’ as podcasts. Ironically, we had a few problems which delayed getting the the first EdTechRoundup Weekly show out until today. There’s been another meeting since the one below - this one’s actually from 15th June!

Normally we’ll endeavour to get the links put in our del.icio.us account, but for now, and for the sake of speed, they’re listed below in the order they came in the discussion:

Oh, and the Mac applications Lisa never got round to mentioning in the podcast itself were Handbrake and Comic Life. Both wonderfully useful applications!

EdTechRoundup - podcast episode 5

Doug Belshaw — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:06:12 +0000

The fifth podcast in the series by the EdTechRoundup team is a little different. This time around we’ve recorded a special discussion we had around the subject of VLEs and the Scottish GLOW network during one of our Sunday night FlashMeetings. Everyone is invited to these and the podcast features some of the core members as well as a number of those who had dropped in for the first time.

As a result of the more free-form discussion, the podcast weighs in at around the 55 minute mark. There’s some great insights from Moodle expert Ian Usher and, as always, input from a diverse range of educators.

You can listen to the podcast by using the controls above and subscribe to the series of podcasts by clicking on the orange RSS icon in the right-hand sidebar. Alternatively, download the MP3 file directly by clicking here (27.3MB).

The del.icio.us links for this show are available at the following location: http://del.icio.us/edtechroundup/etr5

(Intro/outro taken from What We Want! by Alice Russell from her album My Favourite Letters)

EdTechRoundup - podcast episode 4

Doug Belshaw — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:01:40 +0000

Sinclair Mackenzie and Doug Belshaw are your hosts this time around with the subject being Internet Safety. The podcast features an interview with Ollie Bray, an expert on the subject and a guy who’s both interesting and doing fantastic things in Scotland at the moment. The podcast’s around 35 minutes long - we look forward to your feedback!

The del.icio.us links for this show are available at the following location: http://del.icio.us/edtechroundup/etr4

EdTechRoundup - podcast episode 3

Doug Belshaw — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:49:42 +0000

Due to work commitments and other things it’s taken longer than we’d have liked to get the third episode of EdTechroundup’s series of podcasts available for download. This was actually recorded a couple of weeks back and comes in at a shade over half-an-hour. Enjoy!

EdTechRoundup 3

Presenters:

Kristian Still (kristianstill.edublogs.org & kristianstill.tumblr.com)
Doug Belshaw (dougbelshaw.com & edte.ch)

This show is very much a battle of the web 2.0 heavyweights, blogs and wikis.

News:

Channel 4: Bow Street Runner: http://tinyurl.com/yu4ssc
Interview: Just about everyone has now seen Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, but we’ve been impressed with this excellent video of an interview done with Sir Ken by pupils from the Radiowaves project.
Online Database: http://www.blist.com/
TED: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/70
MediaSnackers interviews Sir Ken Robinson: http://mediasnackers.com
Teaching Creativity: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7246498.stm
Ed De Bono: How-Have-Creative-Ideas-develop
Mobile Phone Projectors:Mobile-phone-projectors-now-were-talking/
Teachers not using technology: http://education.guardian.co.uk/
Alex Savage’s Wiki: http://communicty.wikispaces.com
Blogs vs Wikis
EdTechRoundup Blog: http://edtechroundup.com/
EdTechRoundup Wiki: http://edtechroundup.wikispaces.com/
3D Ring binder vs. a website with conversation
YouTube - Blogs vs. Wikis
A fictional debate between JFK and Richard Nixon on blogs and wikis (4:31)
http://www.commoncraft.com/

Multimedia

Mymuvee: http://www.muveemix.com (Windows App available at http://www.muvee.com/en/)
Animoto: http://animoto.com/ (Now with the ability to export direct to Youtube)
Windows Moviemaker Tutorial: http://tinyurl.com/2hux8t
Photo Story 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTt5WMHYSsE

Images:

Del.icio.us links:

15 days of Google answers - day 15

sinclairmackenzie — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:00:42 +0000

We’ve reached the last of our questions put to Google. In our final question, Sinclair Mackenzie, a Physics Teacher from Thurso High School, asks about the internet safety aspects of using Google Education Apps in schools.

A recent BBC Panorama programme highlighted children’s lack of awareness regarding safe use of the internet. I have also found that school management are reluctant to give permission for online collaboration activities such as Google Apps or wikis. This was echoed in discussions over a recent GTCS consultation document. What actions are Google taking to allay the fears of parents and educators with respect to internet safety? - Sinclair Mackenzie

Google replied:

Google takes internet safety issues very seriously – after all the internet is at the core of everything we do. In general, hosted software is extremely reliable, safe, and secure and we have multiple and extensive safeguards in place to protect our users’ data.

We understand that each school needs to make its own decision about the systems that it makes available to its students but we have found that most schools take a very pragmatic approach to providing their pupils with this kind of technology. The overwhelming feedback has been that using online communication and collaboration tools has been extremely useful in improving communication and working practices both amongst students and teachers and parents and teachers.

15 days of Google answers - day 14

sinclairmackenzie — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:28:23 +0000

In our penultimate question to the UK Google Education Apps team, Doug Belshaw had a question about Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).

“As many of Google’s products form the basics of a VLE, will Google be officially entering a targeted VLE solution over and above Google Apps for Education?” - Doug Belshaw

Google replied:

Currently we have no plans to develop a Virtual Learning Environment solution but we have found that many schools and universities are very successfully using Google Apps communication and collaboration tools alongside their existing VLE.

15 days of Google answers - day 13

sinclairmackenzie — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:44:02 +0000

We had a tweet from Joan Badger, co-presenter of the Smartboard Lessons Podcast. Joan’s question was “I love Page Creator! Any chance on getting a table feature? (also, I’d like to work for Google! lol)”

Google replied:

Great! We love Page Creator too and we’re glad you’re such a fan – we’ll let the Page Creator team know about your request.

15 days of Google answers - day 12

sinclairmackenzie — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:55:31 +0000

Carolyn Foote is a librarian at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas She used Twitter to pass her question to the EdTechRoundUp team.

“Why are Google Apps for students over 17/18 as per the sign up agreement–many useful features for younger students?” - Carolyn Foote

Google replied:

Students of any age can have access to Google Apps, it is at the discretion of the school who they want to allow to use these services.

15 days of Google answers - day 11

sinclairmackenzie — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:31:45 +0000

DK from Mediasnackers got in touch with us through Twitter. He suggested we ask Google the following;

“Why focus just on education, surely these online tools can be used in the charitable, youth-work, voluntary sectors?”

Google replied:Great point - this is a view we share too! That’s why there are three versions of Google Apps - Standard Edition (free for all businesses and organisations), Premier Edition (£25 per month with support and more email storage) and Apps for Education (all the advantages of Premier Edition for free to the academic sector). As mentioned, Apps Standard Edition is free and this is an excellent tool for charities and the voluntary sector to supply essential communication tools such as email, calendar and documents to organisations that otherwise might not be able to afford it.