Picaso2 - Hello - and Blog This!

So I have been using Picaso at home to organize my photos off-line. And I tried sending to their web storage and that was ok. But they don't give you as much free space as FlickR :-(

A friend pointed out the Blog This! button within Picaso (allows you to select a photo from your offline album and publish directly to your blogger blog) - and this photo here represents this first try.
Next, I think I'll try "Hello from Picasa" and see what that's all about...

Raptivity - 200+ easy-as-pie simulations, games, FAQs

Raptivity is soooooo easy. Jay said, "I must have done something wrong. It can't be this easy." and yet IT IS!

yes, I'd buy it for the whole school IF I had the money - it is mucho expensive.

the only other downside is students would need to have the latest version of Flash and some may not and may not have admin rights necessary to upgrade

when I was playing w/ Raptivity (per my assignment), it has a FAQ tool. So.. I built this flash FAQ in under 15 minutes: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ecore/ecoreFAQ.swf

There are also options for making this a SCORM module that is trackable..... for 200+ other examples of what it can do see: http://www.raptivity.com/Demo%20Courses/Interactivity%20Builder%20Sample%20Course/Index.html

Google Talk is Fun

Okay, so I tried Google Talk and yes it was fun. And I could see how it would benefit someone who wanted to make a long distance phone call for free... or maybe a foreign language student who wanted to practice his/her language skills with a native speaker in the country of origin (same for Skype). However, as far as group collaboration goes, because GT only allows one-on-one conversation, there are some other tools that would be much better because they allow multiple people to talk, allow application sharing, archiving, and have a whiteboard: Horizon Wimba's Live Classroom, WebEx, and eLluminate come to mind. Even WebCT (now Blackboard) Vista's Chat/Whiteboard tool is good because it allows multiple people to engage. Our team is also looking at wikis, Groove, and other tools, for this excercise.

Hybrid -Course Research Gallery - SnagIT in Action

I used this easy as pie and dirt-cheap software called SnagIT, to capture and edit this screen shot. SnagIT is soooo cool because it can capture scrolling webpages too (ones that are too long to fit in the window) and it can capture on a time-delay so that you can get those pesky drop-down menus captured. I love, love, love SnagIT.

The words look a little fuzzy only because I resized it to fit in this blog.

Managing Online Courses Around the World

This is really old Powerpoint presentation that I narrated with a really cheap mic - so the audio, even offline, is not that good. I used Impatica to compress it into a java applet. All you need is a java-enabled browser to view it - and turn up the volume! Click on the image at left to access the presentation.

Created Flash Movie w/ Camtasia - click image below to view

My First Experience Podcasting

I subscribed to an NPR news station show on Technology - boring at first but cool lately. I'm thinking that my iPod and these podcasts would be a very good way to pass the time stuck in traffic.

Then, I used Odeo Studio to create a podcast of my own (see link at right). It was easier than I thought. And I am surprised that I don't hate my voice.

I found a topic that is near and dear to my heart right now - Dyslexia - and gave an example of what goes through the mind of a dyslexic student when reading a sentence aloud. Then I tied that in with distance/online learning and this Advanced Tech class I am teaching now...

We often discuss/debate the value of multi-media techology - how much is too much? Do we really get adequate return on investment? For a student who has dyslexia, a text-only online course could be excrutiating. YES - we need to include hands on simulations, audio, and video clips. Yes what we are learning to do IS important.