Booked in: sourcing and creating E-Content

Week 10

Booked in: sourcing and creating E-Content

Sorry to see no more emails from Felicity, I'll miss her, and this course was fun but still we all have to move on. I am going to suggest to the others here that are doing this course to share their blogs, so we can all learn from each other, and view the different ways we learn. Also if we collaborated and teach the other staff members what we learned during these last 10 high tensioned weeks.

Aaah well to work....

Scribed:  Sounds interesting, but whenI looked into the site, it confused me (it's Friday and I easily get confused on Friday's) and it seemed cluttered.

Myebook:   Interesting. I looked into one book and the computer would not preview it, I think I'll have to update my library to a kindle or something similar.

Vook:   Getting better and more interesting ... Definately have to invest in updated technology. i found a great looking book here Dracula's guest, I remember seeing a movie of this title as a kid, and am now in the hunt to read it......aaghhh, no kindle, have to find the book and sit in the sun, or under a tree with my buffalo out in the paddock.

Blurb:   This is an inspiring website. I took the quick how to tour and thought of all the things I could put into a coffee table book. I think I'll have to start making books again. They have an Australian site with different books shown but using the same technology for making the books. I loved the following book on the aussie site:

Papa Cloudy’s Laundrymat   


Zinepal:   Checked out the easy1-2-3 instructions.... easy to follow, this I might try.

Flipsnack:   Flipping books, hmmmmm. I viewed examples of a wire-bound and a hardcovered book here. Beautiful is the only way to describe them.

Movellas:   Love it, you can make the font biggere or smaller, read page to page and sit back and enjoy chapter by chapter, the book of choice.

Playtales:   This must be made for me. Has an "available for" format listing under each book as well as trabs for featured, top picks, newewst, and free books. Great for kids (like me), clear and easy to understand. I watched the demo, and thought it would be great for the grankids......oh where is that kindle?

Storytales:   Publish your own book for kids, in apparently easy steps. I read 1 book, I can count to 10, This was bright, colourful, clear and good for younger children. Overall a good site.
Now my effort, hope you enjoy it????
You'll find it at:

http://snack.to/fzh9qupx

Thank you Felicity for all your fun projects. I loved them.

Cheers for now and hope your enjoyed the Kids on the farm

Video killed the radio star

Week 9

Video killed the radio star: Sourcing audio visual content

While going over the days lesson, I kept thing about this course (Web +1) and the Diploma course I have just finished. Both use the Web, in the course activities, the Diploma course use videos and links to some great sources to enhance the learning experience. I will always remember one that they linked to that is on YouTube...... take a look..... Monk needs help opening a book
The one thing I found in quite a few videos online was that the sound quality variance was quite distracting especially as I am deaf. In some cases even having the sound at maximum volume it was hard to hear.

The download speed varied from computer to computer also and being in a remote area, waiting for a 2 minute video to download in an hour makes my hair curl. But this is something unique to Australian remote areas (Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia, Outback Queensland and NSW) not people living in major cities.

Delving into KhanAcademy I found it very mathematical and not quite up my alley of interest (I hate maths). In actual fact I really prefer something not educationally formatted for me to learn quicker. In other words ...... "Make it fun and I'll learn"........

The Apple platform looks interesting and innovative  at iTunesU but not having an Apple anything I can't really check it out.

The various sites suggested were interesting but I think YouTube is the one I would still use daily for learning purposes. In fact YouTube EDU has a good video on English slang words, The 1 I viewed was on the word "Suck" and it described it quite well. In fact I think think I'll go back and view more of their slang words. Even though it is quite Americanized.

It was interesting looking at these sites But I think I prefer to..... Read a book

There are more in books

Re-search : Top Search Results Don’t End With “oogle”

Week 8

Re-search : Top Search Results Don’t End With “oogle”

I didn't know there was so many different types of search engines out there in the great land called Web. Some are so good but they all have there little secrets and idioms.

Sweet search:  really cool, precise good for studies and when (as it should always be) reputability is of the essence, and you can share your search results….. cool.

Twurdy: This has a gradient according to the difficulty of readability, this would be good for the Indigenous students here at Batchelor with low reading skills and definitely one search engine to keep in mind.

Blekko: says it eliminates spam but I found several results that were from advertising sites trying to sell products.

Qwiki: a quick wiki? Create videos for cyberspace on what interests you….. you never know someone out there may like it too!

Dewey Digger: Good but uses old edition of DDC (not DDC23).

Wolfram Alpha: Good, specific search engine good for research.

Zuula: When using this search engine it was surprising how many different sites appeared on different search engines. One to keep in mind and also highlights the need to search further afield when you want an answer. Not just in one place.

DuckDuckGo: I like the name. Not having to go to the next page is a bonus and the custom search morph with a ! gives exact results. Great.

Dunno: I was instantly turned off by being a Apple Mac App. (I don’t use Apple Mac’s).

I have always used meta search engines such as Dogpile until now...... I think I will expand my searches and experience more of the great sites above.

Searching till I drop          

 

Presently Surprised

Week 7

Presently Surprised : Making Memorable Presentations

Wow was I presently surprised at how easy this could be. I first tried SlideRocket and could not get any graphics of any sort to upload from either my computer, the web or anywhere else, this I found frustrating to say the least.

I then tried Prezi and wow! easy the hardest thing was to decide what the presentation was to be on???? In the end I went for a procedure that I had to develop for the Batchelor Library on Disc Cleanups. By using this and adding an extra slide the presentation was done in a couple of minutes. Easy.
Check it out at the following

http://prezi.com/u5nlgtr2vjs3/disk-cleanup/

I'm now ready for the next big leap (as long as it's not too hard), maybe not, I think I'll have a cuppa and think about that for a while.

Week 6

Picture pop:the image culture

This is my cup of tea, pictures I like…. Mmmm, my photo albums in the clouds, interesting concept.

“This is where I’ll become the mad professor and run screaming more, more, give me more!!!!”

Picasa  interesting this is something I will definitely investigate more and utilise to the max.

Flickr   not quite me

BeFunky         easy, fun and gives good effects

While playing here this is what I came up with:                                                 

   

Original miss attitude

Adjusted / played with Miss attitude

Pixlr     similar to Photoshop which I could never get my scrambled brain around

PicMonkey      cheeky, fun I like. Extra features are provided with registration.

Zoom.it           I couldn’t get it to work properly with what I uploaded, my fault, I’ll try again with something else and upload a picture of my own.

Taggalaxy        groovy, fun. Picking your topic, defining what you want then watching the globe spin as you check out your photos.

morgueFile      loved it (plenty of cow pictures here). I’ll definitely use this again in my work that I have to do regularly making covers etc. I will definitely keep this in my favourites file.

Ffffound         sorry this site can stay Llllost as far as I can see

Visualizing.org            not my cuppa either.

While searching the www I found tips and tricks to use on the above sites and photobucket which appeared interesting too.
Tips include:   
http://www.helpwise.com.au/help/google/google-picasa-web-albums.pdf

http://www.allcreativedesigns.com.au/downloads/picasatutorial.pdf

Photobucket    for uploading, downloading, sharing, linking and finding photos, videos and graphics. This site hosts all your images and videos for free; you can share them by email or

on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Store thousands of photos and hours of video. Access on your mobile phone, create and share digital slideshows, collages, copy and paste links to share your photos and videos on any profile, forum, blog or website, share with family, friends, and your favourite sites, unlimited photos and up to 500 videos, add captions, effects and more with our easy-to-use photo editor. Organize your albums. Follow the albums of the people you care about, and get notified whenever they add new stuff. Print your photos, create gifts

There are some exciting sites out there, so I’ll just have to keep looking