The next pandemic
I went to a dinner party last night, where I and other guests enjoyed copious amounts of alcohol.
I awoke this morning not feeling well, with what could be described as flu-like symptoms; headache, nausea, chills, sore eyes, etc. ... Read more
From the results of some initial testing, I have unfortunately tested positive for what experts are now calling Wine Flu.
This debilitating condition is very serious - and it appears this is not an isolated case.
Reports are flooding in from all around the country of others diagnosed with Wine Flu. To anyone who starts to exhibit the aforementioned tell-tale signs, experts are recommending a cup of tea and a bit of a lie down.
However, should your condition worsen, you should immediately hire a DVD and take some Nurofen (Nurofen seems to be the only drug available that has been proven to help combat this unusual type of flu). Others are reporting a McDonald's Happy Meal can also help in some cases. If not, then further application of the original liquid, in similar quantities to the original dose, has been shown to do the trick.
Wine Flu does not need to be life threatening and, if treated early, can be eradicated within a 24-48 hour period.
NOTE
If you find you are complaining a lot, it may be that it has mutated into Whine Flu. This is particularly common in men and can quickly spread to their partners where the symptoms are detected as a serious case of eye-rolling.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Digital Literacies & E-safety Conference
Saturday November 14th - it has been in my diary for weeks as it was Leon Cych's Digital Literacies and E-safety Conference on the Learn4Life Island in Second Life.
Josie Fraser started the day with a really interesting presentation about Digital Literacy and Digital Footprint. She is very passionate about her work and hopefully, very soon there will be an audio presentation to listen to. One thing really surprised me about what she said – that although almost everything we do leaves a digital footprint what we do in Second Life doesn’t :-)
As I do so much in there and record loads of it in Flikr or in the blog I am not convinced in my case.
It is a real issue for some people that with social networking sites such as FaceBook, and the efficiency of the search engines that we leave such a trail in our digital footprint. Employers know a lot about anyone going for a job interview before they ever get there. Apparently lack of a digital footprint is just as bad because if people are not good at social networking they may not be good at real life networking, or, know nothing about technology. Both of those issues are likely to cause problems in the work place!
My session followed – about how we are using Second Life as a teaching space for E-safety.
Leon Eyebeams Electricteeth Cych’s Digital Literacies followed. Leon played a film clip by Howard Rheingold where he discusses the need for skill – actually using the ICT, but also he highlighted five key digital literacies which enable users to use it successfully and purposefully and enables teachers to deliver materials and facilitate learning: Attention, participation, collaboration, network savvy and critical consumption. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMSzgiiSGPQ. We went off in groups to discuss these literacies but seemed to get caught up on why some colleagues do not have these skills. One of our group decided that it was not necessarily a resistance to ICT that some teachers demonstrate but a resistance to learning! They simply cannot be bothered to learn any more.
The day ended with a session on using Second Life as a teaching / learning medium from Chris ShamblesGuru Voom Smith where he discussed all of the tools and resources that people could find on ISI (International Schools Island) followed by a discussion on developing one PLN (Personal Learning Network). Lots of information and a clear view of how Chris organises his can be seen on http://www.shambles.net/csmith/PLN/index.htm
It was a very enjoyable day, thank you Leon :-)
Both Leon’s and Chris’s talks are below, hopefully Josie's will soon be.
Josie Fraser started the day with a really interesting presentation about Digital Literacy and Digital Footprint. She is very passionate about her work and hopefully, very soon there will be an audio presentation to listen to. One thing really surprised me about what she said – that although almost everything we do leaves a digital footprint what we do in Second Life doesn’t :-)
As I do so much in there and record loads of it in Flikr or in the blog I am not convinced in my case.
It is a real issue for some people that with social networking sites such as FaceBook, and the efficiency of the search engines that we leave such a trail in our digital footprint. Employers know a lot about anyone going for a job interview before they ever get there. Apparently lack of a digital footprint is just as bad because if people are not good at social networking they may not be good at real life networking, or, know nothing about technology. Both of those issues are likely to cause problems in the work place!
My session followed – about how we are using Second Life as a teaching space for E-safety.
Leon Eyebeams Electricteeth Cych’s Digital Literacies followed. Leon played a film clip by Howard Rheingold where he discusses the need for skill – actually using the ICT, but also he highlighted five key digital literacies which enable users to use it successfully and purposefully and enables teachers to deliver materials and facilitate learning: Attention, participation, collaboration, network savvy and critical consumption. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMSzgiiSGPQ. We went off in groups to discuss these literacies but seemed to get caught up on why some colleagues do not have these skills. One of our group decided that it was not necessarily a resistance to ICT that some teachers demonstrate but a resistance to learning! They simply cannot be bothered to learn any more.
The day ended with a session on using Second Life as a teaching / learning medium from Chris ShamblesGuru Voom Smith where he discussed all of the tools and resources that people could find on ISI (International Schools Island) followed by a discussion on developing one PLN (Personal Learning Network). Lots of information and a clear view of how Chris organises his can be seen on http://www.shambles.net/csmith/PLN/index.htm
It was a very enjoyable day, thank you Leon :-)
Both Leon’s and Chris’s talks are below, hopefully Josie's will soon be.
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Shambles Guru Voom, ISI and PLN
Recorded at Learn4Life Island in Second Life 14th November 2009 at the Digital Literacies and E-safety conference.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Using PhotoPeach to make a quiz
Great app - pity about the content!
Visit to the Wildlife Park on PhotoPeach
Visit to the Wildlife Park on PhotoPeach
PhotoPeach
A lovley app to tell the story of a school trip or residential.
http://www.photopeach.com
Visit to the Wildlife Park on PhotoPeach
Wonderful - this took about five minutes, imagine what children could do with it and some time!
http://www.photopeach.com
Visit to the Wildlife Park on PhotoPeach
Wonderful - this took about five minutes, imagine what children could do with it and some time!
ToonDoo
Another fun application :-) http://www.toondoo.com/
I am rather enjoying myself - wish I was still teaching at times!
I am rather enjoying myself - wish I was still teaching at times!
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Friday, 6 November 2009
Playing with Animoto
Use http://animoto.com/ Animoto to create the video presentations of a set of photographs.
The program is free for thirty second video clips and it tells you that you need about 12 items for the thirty seconds. I used eight photographs or posters and four texts but the texts were not included in final thing so not sure about the 12 items guide! There is plenty of music to choose from.
It is clear to see from the little clip that the ideal shape to use is the recangular photograph rather than the A4 poster.
It is a bit of fun for the young!
The program is free for thirty second video clips and it tells you that you need about 12 items for the thirty seconds. I used eight photographs or posters and four texts but the texts were not included in final thing so not sure about the 12 items guide! There is plenty of music to choose from.
It is clear to see from the little clip that the ideal shape to use is the recangular photograph rather than the A4 poster.
It is a bit of fun for the young!
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Roxio Photo Show
Still atempting to find my particular holy grail for tonight and this seem closer!
I have made a simple photo show with Roxio, almost instant, simple and maybe a suitable answer!! http://www.photoshow.com/
The only draw back that I can see is that it does not show the images in order.... hmm.. back to the drawing board! Also still got the free Halloween background - none would be better!
Well having watched the show four times I think it is always the same order so maybe I did not upload them in order! If I can find a way of getting rid of the background it is in with a chance!
Yes - had another play and managed to get a better background - pan and zoom is best think! I am now very impressed with this program :-) Just realised I have made a spelling mistake in it - well trying things out late at night is not a good plan really, but no one who knows me will be surprised at my spelling - sorry all :-(
I have made a simple photo show with Roxio, almost instant, simple and maybe a suitable answer!! http://www.photoshow.com/
The only draw back that I can see is that it does not show the images in order.... hmm.. back to the drawing board! Also still got the free Halloween background - none would be better!
Well having watched the show four times I think it is always the same order so maybe I did not upload them in order! If I can find a way of getting rid of the background it is in with a chance!
Yes - had another play and managed to get a better background - pan and zoom is best think! I am now very impressed with this program :-) Just realised I have made a spelling mistake in it - well trying things out late at night is not a good plan really, but no one who knows me will be surprised at my spelling - sorry all :-(
Scrapblog Again
Okay a new scrapblog - I am slightly more pleased with it this time but after learning a lot more about it would recommend the former - choose a theme and get on with it! I did not choose a theme this time, I made up this scrapblog with clear pages. When I looked for a background I needed to purchase them with points awarded to me for the amount of work I have already done. In my case about 70 points so far - and the packs of backgrounds are in the 300s. So I made a simple gradient fill background and duplicated that page loads of times.
Next I imported pictures from Flickr - not my own, but searched under the topic London and used some of those. I carried photos onto each page, added a very simple text box where required, added music in the background and published. It was quick and easy but it is very boring, all of the decorative bits need points and I do not have many so I had no access to pretty bits to decorate the pages.
So - I would choose a theme, clear pretty much everything off the pages and have access to loads of extras if I did another one!
Next I imported pictures from Flickr - not my own, but searched under the topic London and used some of those. I carried photos onto each page, added a very simple text box where required, added music in the background and published. It was quick and easy but it is very boring, all of the decorative bits need points and I do not have many so I had no access to pretty bits to decorate the pages.
So - I would choose a theme, clear pretty much everything off the pages and have access to loads of extras if I did another one!
Scrapblog
Another attempt to make a simple book with photographs and text, which is what I am looking for. I find it really strange that when working on these web 2.0 programs every theme seems to offer pages with different fonts, backgrounds, colours etc. To me this flies in the face of everything I have ever learned about document creation. I am just old fashioned I guess but even though this one may well do what I want it to do the effort to change every single text box, font, colour, background etc., just makes me feel that it is not worth the effort though pupils may well love it!
http://www.scrapblog.com/
I think using PowerPoint where consistency is easy to establish and then iSpring to make it into the Flash file may be the answer to my investigation.
http://www.scrapblog.com/
I think using PowerPoint where consistency is easy to establish and then iSpring to make it into the Flash file may be the answer to my investigation.
Playing with Gickr
I am looking for a Web 2.0 book making program, failing so far to find what I want but decided to record one or two experiments along the way.
This is Gickr, http://gickr.com/ an instant animated gif creator. You simply choose your photographs, either from your own computer or Flickr, select Continue from the bottom of the page and it works its magic! When I think of the hours spent in the past getting lots of images exactly to the right size, shape etc., and creating animations that could take a very long time I think this is quite simply amazing!
In the choice of Flickr photos you just tick up to ten boxes and those images will be used. From your own hard drive you can simply choose up to ten images and use them. The animation can be downloaded if you want to use it elsewhere.
In the choice of Flickr photos you just tick up to ten boxes and those images will be used. From your own hard drive you can simply choose up to ten images and use them. The animation can be downloaded if you want to use it elsewhere.
Make your own animation
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