Prezi

I'm trying out the free version of Prezi, another presentation tool. Prezi allows you to put together simple presentations using a canvas (rather than successive slides), and pointing to and zooming on various parts of the canvas. The editing mechanism is a bit counter-intuitive (it uses an attached-bubble mechanism similar to mind-maps and fractals). The paid version probably has a lot more features. Will keep you posted.

Twitter List added to Group Scoreboard

To all:

Due to lack of activity in tweetworks, I've added the Twitter eLearning list to the Group Scoreboard. The tweetworks group still exists.

If you want to be on the Twitter list, please contact me via Twitter (tedkopp).

Thanks - Ted

Need a Job? Have a job to post? Use LinkedIn?

To all my blog readers:

Did you know that LinkedIn groups now contain Jobs sections? The Courseware Development group job board is now open for business!

Note that this board just got started - if you have any courseware or eLearning-related positions, you are encouraged to post them on the board! If you are looking for such a position, feel free to look at the posted jobs (check back frequently), and follow up as desired.

Please contact me if you have questions.

Thanks - Ted

Blogger Search

Blogger has added a search feature! Just type in your search criteria in the box just below the Group Scoreboard and the search will return results in this blog, items linked from this blog, the blogroll, and the web!

The results will appear just above the most recent blog post. To close the search results, click the X at upper-right of the results.

Have fun!

Quizinator

I'm now trying out another free test-creation tool - Quizinator, courtesy of Kim Komando. More to follow as I create some demonstrations.

For more information, click this link.

If he's high on eLearning, shouldn't everybody be?

Courtesy of Coggno and TechCrunch, some interesting comments from Bill Gates:

In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web

Enjoy!!

Blogger Comment Moderation Now On

To my readers, and fellow Bloggers:

Per suggestions in How do I block Chinese Spam Comments, all comments on this blog will now be moderated. As usual, all appropriate comments regarding courseware and eLearning are welcome and encouraged!

Thanks in advance for your understanding.

Ted

The Big 12 is now 10, and the Big 10 is now 12

and the Pac 10 is now 12, and, uh, some of these may be 16 soon, and, whatever blah blah blah.

Anyway, the 12 Courseware Development groups are now 10, due to the elimination of the Twine groups by Evri, and by a lack of response from BrightFuse as to why the CwDev group was eliminated.

If not already a member, please join and participate in one or more of the CwDev groups.

Thanks - Ted

English Only, Please

To everyone:

My apologies to those of you who don't speak English, but due to the proliferation of inappropriate comments posted to this blog in non-English languages, I must enforce an English-only rule.

Thanks for your understanding. Comments are welcome, but please keep them clean and relevant.

Best regards, Ted

IT4ALL

OK, folks, enough with the gloom and doom already...

IT4ALL (Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning) has moved off of Ning (presumably due to pricing issues) and now has its own site! From the About page:

IT4ALL website was established on November 22, 2006 as an open and not-for-profit website. Initially, the site was built around Moodle, a course management system with the name, Integrating Technology: Exploring New Domains (IT-END). On August 2009, IT-END started offering Moodle for Teachers (M4T) workshops and took on a new look and name: Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL).

Today, IT4ALL Moodle provides free online workshops in professional development, formal and informal education, collaborative instruction and learning, and lifelong learning. The workshops are run by experienced online facilitators who volunteer their services. Access to the pages on IT4ALL Moodle is free and open to all. The site carries no advertising, nor do any of the links to other sites involve sponsorship or payment. The site currently has a one time registration fee of $39 for some of the workshops. However, scholarships are available to anyone who cannot afford the registration fee.

In addition to the IT4ALL Moodle workshops, IT4ALL has expanded and now includes a social network, a IT4ALL Wiki, individual and group mentoring services, web hosting, consultation, and support.

The aim of the the social network is to build a community of learners and educators for the purpose of connecting and engaging people of all cultures in collaborative lifelong learning.

The web hosting is an additional service IT4ALL provides for educators and organizations who wish to create courses using Moodle, Joomla, Forums, Blogs, and MediaWikis. The team at IT4ALL also provide specialized web hosting & installation of VLE, ongoing support and consultation on technology and pedagogy related subjects.

This is a very good social network! For more information, please visit the IT4ALL website. Thanks, Nellie!

BrightFuse

The BrightFuse Courseware Development Group has apparently temporarily disappeared. Note that both the Evri and BrightFuse CwDev links will not work properly until when and if these matters are resolved.

Twine has been absorbed by Evri...

And the twines (semantic networks) created by individuals (such as the Courseware Development Twine) have apparently disappeared. I have a request into Evri to see if this information can be recovered.

Please click this link for more about Evri.

LearnHub --> Nuvvo

Old name: LearnHub

New name: Nuvvo

Please see the Nuvvo site for details. The Courseware Development group link was changed accordingly - see the Group Scoreboard (this group is otherwise unchanged).

I tried hard but...

No WAY could I do better than these!

Latest Courseware Development News

Speak Softly, but Tweet Loudly!

The squeaky tweet gets the grease! After posting a message within the Tweetworks CwDev group that I intended to abolish the group due to lack of interest, I got the following response from Mark Langford, head and founder of Tweetworks:

"Don't go anywhere my friend! The new Tweetworks release is happening very soon."

This kind of personal interest is rare, and appreciated. I did follow up with a request for more information on what is in the new release, and what the advantages are over Twitter lists. However, I thank Mark very much for his response, and the Tweetworks group will continue to exist, hopefully with a lot more members.

More about Mark can be found at this link.

Harsh Realities - Some Groups Will Go Away

To all:

I am happy to report that my "real life" has gotten a lot busier, however, as a result, several inactive Courseware Development groups will be discontinued. By "inactive", I refer both to membership counts and to lack of member posts.

The following groups will go away:

• Konnects
• Xing
• Tweetworks (to be replaced by something else Twitter-oriented)

I want to thank the members of these groups for their participation!

Ted Kopp, Courseware Development Group Manager and Blogger

Graphic Design for the Rest of Us

The situation: Desire to do some graphic design for eLearning and other purposes

The problem: Don't have a lot of spending money - purchased software is muy expensive, especially anything Adobe®

The solution: Free / open source software (what a concept!)

I've been testing out the following, similar to the Adobe product listed first:

Illustrator: Inkscape vector graphics editor

Photoshop: Gimp Gnu image manipulation program

Some of the images I add to this blog in the future will be created and/or modified using one or both of the above.

Try these yourselves and have fun!

Get Spacey!

To all:

The Courseware Development Group has been started on MySpace, one of the original social networks. To join and/or look around, please visit the group at this link. Hope to see many of you there!

Thanks - Ted

Blog Enhancements

To my readers,

I've added a couple of enhancements to this blog:

Quote of the Day, from The Free Dictionary: This is their daily quotation (appears at right of this blog under my LinkedIn Profile). There are other pieces of code on this site that can be added to a website/blog (games, word exercises, etc.) - look under Webmasters for Free Content.

Followers - this blog can now be followed via Google Friend Connect (appears at right of this blog under the Quote of the Day).

Thanks, Manishankar!!

Twitter eLearning List

To all Twitter Users:

Twitter now has lists, which are in effect subgroups of your followers that you set up for a particular reason (and a follower can be assigned to more than one list). Lists can be public (and can be followed as if they are Twitter users themselves), or kept private.

For example - I set up a public list that shows the Tweets of my followers (people and companies) who are interested in eLearning:

@tedkopp/elearning

Please feel free to follow the list and/or me - if you do follow me, and are interested in eLearning, I'll add you to the list!