• 81% of students owned a smartphone
• 80% of students had previously seen a QR code
• 21% of students successfully scanned our QR code example.
• 75% of students said they are “Not Likely” to scan a QR code in the future.

It’s surprising to me that so many people struggled with the technology, its as simple as taking a photo with a smartphone, easier than tying a web address into the phones browser.  Isn’t it?

I agree though with this point;

“Remember, when it comes to trends, especially those in the tech fields, adoption doesn’t trickle down to college students but rather the other way around. The college campus is what drives our popular culture – always has, always will. Without adoption or buy-in from this segment, a product will continually struggle for relevancy.”

I also have to admit that when I first saw the QR code, I jumped in, head-first, finding reasons for educators to use this technology to deliver content in new, engaging ways. But I don’t scan them myself, the novelty has well worn off, there’s no ‘what’s in it for me?’, so why would I expect anyone else to? Is anyone doing anything really innovative with QR codes? Is it working?

I’d be interested to know. Bring on Augmented Reality!

http://www.dachisgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/qr.jpg

The conference attracted considerable media attention and was pivotal in reshaping thinking about regional leadership across Australia with a big focus on the NBN (National Broadband Network) and the opportunities and services it will bring to the mid-north coast. North Coast TAFE had a great stand demonstrating how we are currently using new technologies in education. The stand was manned by myself (a.k.a. Gadget Girl). North Coast TAFE had many presentations throughout the conference, but I thought I’d share the prezi that I developed because I just heart prezi.

Flickr is a great tool for backing up your photo’s and sharing them with your friends and family. It also integrates with Facebook, so you can upload your photo’s to Flickr and facebook at the same time (just in case your mates don’t have a facebook). If you use iPhoto, you’re even luckier because you can yupload to both sites from within your iPhoto application… If not, get yourself a Mac!

I twitter, do you?  Have you seen the video below from Common Craft about Twitter?

http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

Not sure what Twitter is?

“Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app.” Time Magazine

Heard of micro-blogging? It’s a brief form of blogging, short blog posts, there’s usually a character limit of 200 or less, like Twitter’s limit of 140 characters.

It’s a bit like Reality TV on the net. Your network of ‘friends’ tell you how long they’ve been waiting for the train, what they are listening to on their iPod, what they are eating and what they are wearing to bed. It’s short and it’s sharp.

You’ll read what they are presenting and at what forum, you’ll read what happened in their class that day or what amazing discovery they have made.

How does my network use Twitter?

I’ll invite them to comment on why they like Twitter, but mostly, I see them sharing educational resources, asking each other for support and advice, and making friends. They notify each other of the latest educational news and happenings, not just locally but internationally. It’s a fantastic way to keep your collaborative networks real, alive, dynamic.

Twitter is a great and convenient way to interact, you can post ‘Tweets’ from your mobile, on the Twitter website, from twitter widgets inside Facebook, edublogs, wiki’s and even from within Second Life. I can put a Twitter widget just about anywhere so I can keep an eye on the conversation. I can even add a Twitter widget to my netvibes/ RSS feed reader so that I can read and communicate with educators, friends and family all over the country.

What cool things have I discovered about Twitter?

A little secret I’ll share with all of you, you can actually add a Twitter application into your Facebook profile that updates your Facebook profile everytime to post a Twitter. So you don’t need to go into Facebook to update your profile.

Try it! It’s fast and it’s fun!

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?

Okay, it’s time for me to come clean about the reason I haven’t been blogging a couple of weeks.

On my way home from work last week, I tripped and fell into a tub of radioactive waste… (not really, I’ve had a bad cold… almost as painful) and have since developed Super Support Powers!

Thanks to JoKay, who also visited this website, I am now Super Spinner, with super strength and penetrating x-ray vision.

Once my transformation was complete, I was able to download my very own Super Hero kit with appropriate cut-outs (sig, mask, undies) and other goodies.

Do you want to be Superhero? Come on, Transform yourself… it’s easy!

You can even use it in your ToonDoo!

Well, the survey results are in!

As you know, I used a web tool called WuFoo to create a poll to determine times that would be best for you, for the Technolog-e Sessions. Once the form is created, a step-by-step process, WuFoo provides the code to embed the form into your blog (it’s just like adding media [slide.com] into your wikispace).

WuFoo tool also allows you to create basic, graphic reports for you to easily view the results.

I have taken a screen print of the results, as you can see, but, you’ll need to click the image below to view the graph;

So it looks like our sessions for Phase 2 will now be:

4.00pm on Wednesday and 9.30am on Thursday.

Thanks everyone for participating.

Watch this movie now!

*Special thanks to Des Osborn for pointing out this movie after a recent Elluminate Session… e-Tools ‘n Tips

There a few more of these “in Plain English” videos by Lee LeFever at CommonCraft

• Social Networking in Plain English
• Wiki’s in Plain English
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English

There has been a lot of interest in RSS lately. What is RSS, how can it help you and save you time? If the movie above wasn’t enough, then check out some of the links below…

Looking at my blog statistics and reader clicks, the RSS information seems to be the most popular, so here is a list of posts and resources from the archives;

• Netvibes Vs Google Reader – Aug 14th
• Alex’s demonstration of netvibes – August 13th
  
• Netvibes ‘How To’ – June 14th
• RSS in education - April 18th

Other good RSS feed readers;

• netvibes – this site is really cool. Your feeds are loaded into pods that you can click and drag around your homepage. You can also add To-Do lists, weather, search engines, calendars (very Mac friendly), video searches, and more…
• pageflakes - here’s another site you can personalise with your favorite news, weather, sports, entertainment, photos, videos, music, email…and much more, all in one place!
• bloglines – another useful site that once you have an account, you can add RSS feeds… I find this hard to use in comparison to netvibes and pageflakes

ask your readers to do some self promotion.

So… “I’d like to get to know you well…” (sing it)

As well as giving you the opportunity to promote yourself on this blog, I’d like to take the opportunity to get to know you, on a more… personal level. Yes, I’m going to ask you to share something personal with me.

If you’re not comfortable with that, then share something that you use to strengthen your networks, encourage collaboration and, or resource sharing. I’d love you to post a comment, include a link to your Flickr/Facebook or other social networking site…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flairandsquare

If you use Flickr, I’d like to know more about how.

• Do you really utilise all the tools that this site offers?
• Do you use it for teaching and learning?
• How can we get the most out of this tool?

Thanks to JoKay, I recently discovered MOO. Moo loves to print beautifully designed products with the photos in your Flickr stream. For just $25 I got 100 funky little business cards printed using the images of my choice. I used five images of my avatar, Spinner Mills. Click below to see them on my Flickr space.

www.flickr.com More of millerspin’s photos tagged with closeup

Every time I check my netvibes (RSS Aggregator), I am astounded that there is one or two new posts from Sue Waters. I’ve mentioned Sue a few times throughout this blog and her content often inspires me to write a post in response. Like this post I wrote in response to Sue’s article about innovation being challenged by all the constraints currently on us, like blocked sites within DET.

Sue is a Aquaculture teacher at Challenger TAFE in Perth. She trials a lot of new technology with her classes, on her blog she provides useful examples, guidelines, tips and much more. If you are interested in m-Learning, PDA’s, mobile phones, spy glasses, etc, and you don’t already read or subscribe to Sues blog, you’re missing out on loads of good tips and advice.

As a busy blogger myself, I know how hard it is when you have limited time and it can be so rewarding when someone leaves you a positive or constructive comment. It seems to make all that work worthwhile. This was highlighted by the Day 21 Blog Challenge – Make a Reader famous, which is what this post is all about. So here’s to you Sue!

Think about this – Do you like recognition for good work? Of course you do. So why not pick one of Sues posts listed below, have a read and leave her a comment, and tell her I sent you!

A few good posts worth reading;

• How to Read Blog posts on a Phone Using Mobile Friendly Google Reader
• SlideShare Needs Our Support — Lets Help Them Out
• STOP, LOOK, THINK – What Is Material Really Going To Look Like on A Mobile Device
• How are we going to effectively use the mobile devices in our student’s pockets?
• For all the lovers of creating comics ToonDoo has added ability to make ToonBooks
• You Need Spyglasses – Are you Serious?
• Mobile Web Usage is Increasing – How Will You Use It With Students?

Thanks for all your efforts Sue, there are some great resources on your site that I’m sure many teachers will find useful. I certainly have!

Do you get the vibe?

First of all, thanks to Sue Waters for posting an introduction of everyone that’s participating in the 31 Day Blogging Challenge created by Darren Rowse. It’s a great way to find out about everyone involved.

Sue, I think you’ve really started something with this netvibes Vs GoogleReader thing with the comments on your post;

“Alex from Miller’s Spin (Australia) may well cause me to be banned from Google forever. Her great screencast of how she uses Netvibes to subscribe to blogs has convinced a lot of bloggers not only to try Netvibes but also to give Jing a go. Which I did – and here is my quick screecast of how I use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs!” Sue Waters

I liked the jing movie you created and have linked to above, it was very informative. I love that GoogleReader let’s you view the blog posts on that one page, that makes life easy! As RSS feed readers go, both netvibes and Google Reader actually do very similar things (I also use iGoogle), but I do find netvibes a little prettier (much like Mac vs Windows) and has more ‘theme’ customisation options. I also love that you can drag pods over the tabs to drop them into different pages.

It’s also good to see everyone getting into jing.

Also, thanks to Kate Quinn from Waxlyrical (Australia) (also loving Netvibes) for setting up a netvibes page to follow our 31 Day Blog challenges. I updated this yesterday – click the button to add this to your Netvibes page.

Facebook Meet Netvibes: Netvibes Introduces the Facebook Widget

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!