miller’s spin

Yesterday I interviewed one of the teachers at North Coast Institute, TAFE NSW about the current use of technology to engage trainees and industry. Linda Johnston, a Community Pharmacy Teacher and e-Learning Contact for the THRAPS Faculty (Tourism, Hospitality, Retail and Personal Services) was happy to share her experiences with me.

This podcast covers the use of Adobe Connect as ‘Virtual Classrooms‘, the use of various Social Networking and collaboration tools, such as wiki’s, blog’s and Facebook to engage trainee’s in industry.

Linda also talks about the mutual benefits to TAFE and Industry and the importance of these tools for life-long learning.

You can visit the podcast site here.

Share This

Berkley University, California has put free videos of courses on YouTube. Have a look at their YouTube homepage. Check out their three sections, Courses, Events and Campus Life;

More than 300 hours of University of California, Berkeley, classes and events are available online in this media rich format. The university began online broadcasts, called “webcasts”, of its own in 2001 and last year began making audio “podcasts” available for download at Apple’s iTunes online store.

Read the full article here.

Do you think your students would be ready to check out lesson content on YouTube? If you’re a student, what do you think?

Share This

So you want to create some learning materials that engage your learners, but don’t know where to start? Try this free little tool called Jing .

With Jing , you can create effective media-rich learning material, provide instruction, demonstrate how to use a web site or a software application, record everything you do and pass it along AND it couldn’t be easier to use!

Capture audio and screen movements easily with Jing!

Thanks to Joanna Kay from the Illawara Institute, I have been playing with a really cool, free Web2.0 tool called Jing.

So what exactly is Jing?

Jing is a free program that allows you to capture what’s on your screen (for all the visual learners out there). You can very easily add arrows and text boxes to highlight points of interest and provide instruction to learners. You can even capture screen movements and audio, which are outputted as a little video/ flash files (you’ll need a microphone/ headset), you can then save these to your computer, or if you sign up for an account, it will automatically upload to their server and give you the URL (link), which you can then email or IM to learners.

Sound like Adobe Captivate?

Yes, it’s a bit like Adobe Captivate, but it’s free. It doesn’t have as many features as Captivate, nor does it offer you the same level of editing ability. It does keep a history of the files you create and it allows you to store them somewhere else (which is great if you’re using the same account at home and at work) AND if that’s not enough, Jing has a Mac OSX version, yay Jing!

What does Jing look like?

Well, it’s a cute little yellow program that sites on your desktop like in the image below.

It’s easy to use. - Just watch this video tour.

Have a look at my first attempt - My first attempt was pretty ordinary, you can take a peek here.

Hints & Tips
* Keep your recordings short and sweet
* Script what you are going to say because you can’t edit it
* Keep your screen to a minimum size so everyone can see it!

Share This

Sue Waters is a part-time aquaculture teacher and educational leader in e-Learning for Challenger TAFE in Perth, Western Australia. She has many online spaces, called Mobile Technology in TAFE on which she shares her thoughts and experiences on and with m-Learning and e-Learning.

Here latest blog post about why and how she uses PDA’s in the classroom is really worth a read - Why I use PDAs in the classroom.

Besides her blog, she also has a couple of other Mobile Technology in Education online spaces;

• Sue’s podcast site has lots of great audio and video podcasts of interviews with people using the technology.
• Sue’s wiki site documents how the technology is being used and provides “how to” tips.

Share This