101 free learning tools
Aug 24th, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
Another (5th) microsite concept
Jul 21st, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
An amazing tool to build microsites of a few pages, that you can publish as a Flash widget for embedding into your and other people’s sites:
Check out Sproutbuilder.
This could be an excellent tool for microsites on the PQ survey, for example.
Edublogs upgrade
Jun 30th, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
OUr edublogs portal has been upgraded. Make sure you clear your cache, remove cookings and do a hard refresh when logged in (ctrl+f5).
For a description of the upgrade, and video on the new features, see
http://edublogs.org/campus/edublogs-upgrade/
A few first experiences with Dokeos
Jun 26th, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
A first test session with our Dokeos system gives us a better feel for the application we have acquired, while learning a lesson or two about e-learning:
Scorm import of Articulate Presenter or Quizmaker packages
Articulate allows exports into Scorm packages (zip archives). Webcasts and Quizzes can be imported easily into Dokeos. Unfortunately, Articulate exports assets as a single screen, and therefore, webcasts and quizzes are interpreted as single learning steps in the trajectory, irrespective of their number of slides or questions.
Oogie conversion of PowerPoint files
The alternative is to import PPT files into Dokeos, and have them converted to steps using a tool called Oogie. Narration can be added (though it cannot be removed yet, only superseded). The Oogie conversion is not so good, so it may be better to export PPT as jpg,s and import step-by-step in Dokeos, should we choose this route.
Deploying Flash
Is very straightforward. Flash can be seamlessly integrated, and we wouldn’t expect any less from an e-learning system.
Templates
An advantage over our previous system is that Dokeos comes with a great many template pages (as opposed to the 4-5 we had in LPQI), and new template pages can be easily added.
Deploying video
Is quite straightforward, though the only format that can be used is Flash Video.
Geomapping with Picasa & Google Earth
Jun 26th, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
Vadim made a presentation on Geomapping architectural pictures using a combination of Picasa and Google Earth. The disadvantage is that it requires 2 installations for moderator users.
When one opens pictures in Picasa, there is an option to geotag them under the tools menu. It is quite straightforward. You can watch a 2 minute video tutorial here.
To share the results of our geotagging experiments, an option is Picasa Web Albums. Picasa allows to share an album on the web, either publicly or selectively. Storage is limited to 1 GB (which gives us close to a 1000 pictures, if not more) and can be upgraded. Geotagged pictures in a Picasa web album have a map view showing there origin. There is also a map view for the album. See this link for a test album with 3 pictures.
Albums and individual pictures can be exported into a file for viewing them in Google Earth. It’s another sharing mechanism, provided users have it installed.
Picasa web albums can be embedded in blogs and websites.
Applications for Geotagging appear quite limited. We could think about energy projects, but the number of pictures we have that are specific to a location are very limited. Wind turbine pictures are obviously site-specific, but often we do not know the site. Mapping partners or users may be of value, but only if we have many more users and partners, and many more chapters. In such case, we would need to go much further in automation of geotagging.
Dokeos help
Jun 23rd, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
You might want to check the PDF manuals here :
And the Flash tutorials there :
The Google SketchUp revolution
Jun 16th, 2008 by isabelle heriakian
Q : What do an architect, an interior designer, an energy manager, an electrical designer and a green energy enthusiast have in common when it comes to build a better reality ?
A : One of the most promising 3D open source modelisation platform & tool powered by Google : Google SketchUp.
As it is open source, users can easily build & share objects in collections.
As it is from Google, beta testers & early hype adopters helped this tool to become their favorite around the world.
As its features & interface are easy to use & allow a freedom of creation, it can be used for various applications like : showing the perfect place for ederly to live in, build your own full renewables world, present projects implantation, raise attention to the main point of interests to be checked for an energy efficiency audit, educate about electrical safety issues in a home etc…
Interested ? -> you can download it here.
Adobe Connect
Jun 9th, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
We have 5 hosting accounts with Adobe Connect. Currently, these are allocated to Colin, Sergio, Isabelle, Hans and one generic account.
For the generic account, I suggest that the other users share it. Drop a comment if you need access, and I’ll share you the account details.
The catch is that only meeting host at a time can use the generic account. So coordination is needed via the Google Calendar.
Managing e-mail
May 30th, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
Thanks to Sergio for this hint.
MS Outlook allows you to define rules to automatically process e-mail. For example:
- Automatically assign a ‘red flag’ when e-mail is sent directly and only to you
- Move a message to a ‘low priority’ folder if you’re copied in on the email
- Move messages to a ‘sandpit’ folder if the subject contains certain keywords
- …
Just yesterday, I moved 159 e-mails to my delete folder. So anything helps. Hope it may prove useful.
On another subject, we converged earlier on a 60-90 minute processing time for e-mail. This means that we need to process e-mail messages on average within 34 seconds.
Opening an e-mail and printing out a single attachment takes about 70 seconds in our office (if nothing goes wrong).
Comparing content management systems
Apr 21st, 2008 by Hans De Keulenaer
2 good comparisons of CMS can be found at the following links:
Joomla and Drupal – Which One is Right for You? – Alledia
These 2 articles demonstrate that drupal is the right system for us, but at the same time comes with a number of limitations we have to live with.
If you wish to play around with a Joomla or Mambo site, I can give you an admin password to the following mockups:
