A Free Learning Tool for Every Learning Problem?

Zaid Ali Alsagoff posted a great list of free learning tools. Zaid has suggestions for almost every learning issue and below are some of them:

• Microblogging tool? Twitter
  
• Directory of edubloggers from around the world? International Edubloggers Directory
• Wiki tool? PBwiki
• Encyclopedia, which I can add to or edit? Wikipedia
• Audio recording tool? Audacity
• Tool to host my audio recordings? Odeo
• Tool to transform media into collaborative spaces with video, voice and text commenting? VoiceThread
• Tool to tell a story? Here are 50!
• Screencasting (recording) tool? Wink
• Hosted screencasting tool? Jing
• Mindmapping tool? FreeMind
• Tool to make screenshots from different browsers with one click? Browsershots
• Easy-to-learn 3D authoring software tool? Google SketchUp

See the full article here.

Reaching Out With Your Conference

Dave Warlick provides advice for organising social networking for conferences:

“I would love to see more education technology conferences adopt this sort of out-reach. Conferences have never been an integral part of the job for most classroom teachers — and with budget cuts already starting to snip their way across the fabric of our education institutions, fewer educators will likely be packing up and driving or flying to the city convention hotel for three days of shared learning and energy-generating friction.

It’s all the more reason why education conferences need to shine more, to radiate ideas rather than rattle them in a box.”

Author: Dave Warlick, 2cent Worth Blog, 20th April 2008

Full article available here.

PLNs – Personal Learning Networks

Dave Warlick has written some interesting posts about his personal learning network and he elaborates also on the technologies and tools he uses along the way. This is an exerpt from one such post:

“Somewhere between 22 and 59 virtual attendees, the chat conversation became more of a focus point for me, as lurkers were commenting less about where they were from (PA, TX, SC, Perth, Shanghai) and more about the topics of Steve’s presentation, each shining a slightly different light on the idea, each giving me a different way of looking at it. A sudden small and fragile network was becoming a temporary branch of my Personal Learning Network.”

Author: Dave Warlick, 2cent Worth Blog, 9th April 2008

Full article available >here.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer 3.5.4011
If you are working with a friend on a joint project and he is in Houston and you are in Shanghai, what do you do? You could take a glance at TeamViewer, a program that allows for desktop sharing and file transfer. Visitors just need to run TeamViewer on both machines and the program can also be used to create and display presentations. This version is compatible with computers running Window 95 and newer.

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2008. http://scout.wisc.edu

Author: Ray Schroeder, Educational Technology Blog, 19th March 2008

Article available here.