The midden

Billed as “a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities”, this handbook written by George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger at the University of Manitoba,  is a lot more than this. It starts from the premise that Higher Education, whether individual institutions know it or not, is in the midst [...]

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Educause have produced a useful guide to QR codes as part of their “7 Things You Should Know….” series. It provides a good overview on what QR codes are and how they are being used. It also includes a mention of Andy Ramsden’s work at Bath, and also offers the opportunity to contribute your ideas [...]

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Creating and reading QR codes on the iPhone is quick and easy with the Optiscan app from Airsource. This app will automatically scan and read a code when you point your camera’s phone at it. It reads equally well from a computer or iPhone screen as it does from paper. Once it has read the [...]

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This is a useful article by Olivia Mitchell, posted on the Slideshare blog, describing 4 multimedia learning principles that can be applied to improve the learning value of presentations. She distinguishes between graphic design and instructional design and explains why the latter is the most important if you want to help your audience to learn.

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The latest Horizon Report, that looks at the likely impact of emerging technologies on teaching, learning and research, features six examples of tools, applications and devices that will change the way we operate. Two of these technologies, i.e. mobile devices and cloud computing, are already with us and used extensively. With the advent of the [...]

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This article in ZDNet Technology News looks at some of the claims being made about Cloud Computing and also gives a good update on where this technology is up to.
There is also a good review of MobileMe, Apple’s successor to .Mac, for those considering Apple’s cloud offering.

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AccessApps is a collection of over 50 open source and freeware assistive technology applications for Windows PCs, that can be used directly from a USB memory stick without the need to install anything onto your computer.
The applications have been collated by the two Scottish JISC Regional Support Centres (Scotland North & East and Scotland [...]

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This is a video of my presentation to the JISC Regional Support Centre for Yorkshire & Humber on June 10th at Bradford University. The sub-title of the presentation was Beyond “no significant difference”, on the basis that, in education, we use technology to do things the same way as we have always done rather than [...]

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Take care.

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This Special Report in the Economist highlights the impact of an increasingly connected world on the way we live, work, communicate and generally spend our days. All those gadgets (mobile phones, laptops, PDAs) that we have been carrying around for years, and which tantalised us with promises of quick and easy access to an [...]

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