Distance and E-Learning Unit » Introducing…

Roles in Blackboard

Gill Ritchie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:15:26 +0000

Course Instructor, Designer, Teaching Assistant, Student, Auditor...you may be aware of the terminology but how much do you know about roles in Blackboard and what they mean? This article explains what the various roles are and provides you with enough information to allow you to ensure that the right people have the right level of access to your Blackboard course area.

What is RSS?

emcdonnell — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:12:28 +0000

What is "RSS" and why might you care? This article provides some explanation of the term.

What About Wikis?

sbrenton — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:18:28 +0000

Wikis are a sort of social software, which allow you create a website where other people can easily edit and add content. You may be thinking about using a wiki to support your course, to share information with colleagues, or, for example, as a repository for service information of some kind. Wikis can be very useful and [...]

Screencast from Techsmith

emcdonnell — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:54:15 +0000

I mentioned Screencast in a recent post about another of Techsmith’s offerings; Jing. Screencast is a free service with 2GB of storage and the same in bandwidth usage p/m. Like many online services there is an option to upgrade to a Pro account which greatly increases these allowances. But, at least to start with, you’ll [...]

Jing

emcdonnell — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:22:57 +0000

What’s Jing? Jing is my new favourite application. It is, as are many Techsmith products, simple and focused. No extraneous features or extra buttons; it just does what it does. So what does it do? It’s a free application that works as an excellent screen recorder; either video or a still image. It sits in a [...]

Organising meetings: Doodle

emcdonnell — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:27:57 +0000

Doodle allows you to invite people to attend a meeting and for the attendees to choose when they can attend from a range of dates and times that you dictate. It’s one of those fantastic apps that spreads so quickly among users. I think this is due to two things: it’s extremely easy to use and [...]

Annotating with a Tablet PC

emcdonnell — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:46:34 +0000

I was thinking about an alternative and/or portable solution to Interactive Whiteboards and I was trying to figure out if tablet PC’s were a good way to go. Especially if we’re considering them in conjunction with lecture capture solutions like Echo360. So I happened upon the video below which is a neat little movie demonstrating [...]

What is Blended Learning?

emcdonnell — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:14:58 +0000

This has sometimes been referred to as ‘hybrid learning’. Blended learning is an approach that seeks to take the advantages of different tools and methods and employ them in one organised programme. The term often refers to a mix of traditional face-to-face delivery with asynchronous self-paced learning (delivered over an ICT system). Though it could [...]

Free Tools: MindMeister

emcdonnell — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:36:33 +0000

We’ve been recommended a few free online tools recently so I thought I should include a few here. Mindmeister is a free online collaborative mind mapping tool. We’ve had quite a lot of interest in mind mapping and flowchart creation tools over the last year or so. Personally I find these quite cumbersome as I think [...]

What the h*ll is Web 2.0?

emcdonnell — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:11:38 +0000

Web 2.0 is an ongoing interest of anybody involved with learning technologies. As a rather pithy buzzword it succinctly refers to both the recent technological changes in the use of IT and the cultural shifts that have come about as a result. As a rather meaningless marketing buzzword it refers to pretty much any web [...]