Reflecting on Week 1

The first week of this learning has found me reflecting on a little blog post I read as part of the optional Power Point links but now I have a dream! What an inspiring learning environment to be a part of and I find myself wondering how to create this in the environment of Training Packages!!

http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2007/05/27/making-assessment-personally-relevant/

Audio processing/conversion

Audio conversions.

You probably all know about Audacity, but another free audio program is which you may be unaware of is BeSweet. There is a free GUI front end for this called BeLight. They are both available at Sourceforge.

(SourceForge.net provides free hosting to Open Source software development projects with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code - this a great site for all things free and in development).

The main attraction for this suite is the ability to convert mp3, wav and others to ac3 which is required for DVD authoring and conversion of/to 5.1 channels.

In addition, a free video converter is available from: http://www.koyotesoft.com/indexEn.html.

Cheers. Stuart.

New technologies & access to education

The new Web 2.0 technologies are revolutionising access to education and learning in general. I love the way I can join in conferences that are overseas and link with people from all over the world.
For educators, the ability to link with learners 'where they are' is fantastic, and of course visa versa. Distance doesn't have to be the barrier anymore - except of course if broadband is not in your zone.

We visited Ethiopia in January and here are some pictures of technology in a third world country.

One shows a satellite disc for houses that are made of mud and cow dung and rush matting.
The other is a computer shop in Addis.



Ann Davenport

One way to think of the internet

Browsing through a few sites on new learning technologies and came across this simple but interesting description of the internet at http://www.learningtechnologies.com.au/index.cfm
"The Internet is not a network of computers it is a network of people!"

Craig Moody

New Learning Technologies

How's this for a mouthful..."Without appropriate pedagogy, use of high capacity communication services cannot provide significant improvements in learning outcomes. In general, it is the pedagogy that provides for learning, not the technology or the software alone.” James Carr, PhD., the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Welcome to New Participants (2008)

Welcome to all the new participants on the New Learning Technologies (NLT) course for semester 1, 2008. You can see some of the posts from participants on the last course - I have decided to leave them here so you can see what others did last time. I look forward to having many more co-authors to this blog!