Lots of new updates added!

Hello!

Lots of new updates for you today – I hope you find them useful:

Added to the Twitter Page:

• 100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics
  
  
• TwitCam - This free service lets you broadcast live streaming video, all you need is a webcam and a Twitter account.

Added to the image editing page

• Pho.to - This site has many free options and services that you can make use of to edit, enhance and present images.
  I especially like the 3D gallery maker.
  

Added to the Moodle page:

A new video that you can show to people to explain what Moodle is and how it can benefit both students & teachers - Click here to watch it.

Added to the accessibility page under Text To Speech:

• Panopreter
• TTS Reader
• Natural Reader
• Browse Aloud

Added to the PDF Tools page:

• Smart Soft PDF to word converter - This is a bit of free software that you can download, it does exactly the same thing as the website mentioned above.

Added to Screen Grabbing & Recording page:

• Screen Jelly - Another "one button" website that lets you record your screen just by clicking one button.

That’s all for today!

Cheers!

Paul

Embed videos into PowerPoint's easily, make scanned text editable (OCR) & an improved navigation system added.

Added to the Presentation Tools

• Author Stream - This is a free add on that lets you quickly and easily insert YouTube videos into any PowerPoint.

New Site Features:

• Expanding navigation system added - following an update to Google sites I've added in the new collapsible navigation menu to the site, this lets you access "sub" pages quickly and easily by clicking on the little grey triangles that indicate a topic can be expanded.
  
  eg:
  
  

  Click the image above to enlarge it
  
  

• New page added: Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
  
  On this page you will find links to websites and resources that let you convert scanned text into editable text.

GDocsBackup added to the Google Docs page

Hello!

One update for you today, but it's really helpful re: Google Docs.

One of the main concerns that people have re: Google Docs is that they won't be able to access their work if they cannot connect to the internet.

GDocBackup solves this issue.

By using this free utility you can download all of your Google docs as Microsoft Office files to your local machine any time you like.

You can learn more about it & download it for free by clicking here.

Cheers!

Paul.

Twitter guide book, ways to visualise Tweets, Google’s Royalty free image search & a free local phone number that calls your Skype account

Added to the Twitter page:

• Mashable's Twitter Guide Book: http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/
  
  
• Twitter Visualisations example using Visible Tweets & a link to 6 more visualisation tools.

Added to the Royalty Free Images page:

• Google Picassa Creative Commons Image Search - Similar to the Yahoo search above, this one uses Google's search engine to find royalty free images that you can use.
  
  You can jump straight to the Picassa Image search by clicking here.

Added to the Video and Audio conferencing page:

• Ring 2 Skype - this lets you set up a local rate phone number that people can dial using a normal telephone and then talk to you and your students in the classroom/lecture theatre your computer via Skype.

That's all for today!

Cheers.

Paul.

New page added: PC Care & Maintenance

Hello!

As a response to the numerous requests I get from colleagues about how they can keep their home computers running smoothly, I've added a new page to my site.

Although it's not strictly about e-learning, it does contain links to free software that staff and students can use to keep their machines running as trouble free as possible and thus facilitates on-line or blended learning when accessed from home.

I hope that's not too tenuous a link!

Anyway, you can access the new page here:

http://sites.google.com/site/technologyenhancedlearning/pc-care-maintenance

Cheers!

Paul.

A large collection of educational videos, 2 great services from Aviary & an easier way of linking and embedding high quality YouTube videos.

Added to the "Using Ready Made Online Videos" page:

• NeoK12 - This site offers a collection of educational videos that can be found at many specialized destinations on the Internet all categorised by subject.
  

Added to the "Image & Photo Editing" page:

• Falcon - Designed to work as a standalone editor or for use with its screen capture Firefox extension Talon, Aviary's Falcon lets you edit text, crop, rotate, resize images, and more, all within your browser. You can watch a video of Falcon in action here.

Added to the "Screen Grabbing & Recording" page:

• Talon -Take & edit screenshots of websites really easily by adding "aviary.com/" in front of the URL of the page you wish to capture, or just paste the URL into the box provided on Talon's main page.
  
  Click here to see a demo.
  

Added to the "YouTube tools" page:

• How to embed high quality YouTube videos - A nice article from Lifehacker that shows you how to link to, and embed "High Quality" YouTube videos.