Creating e-Learning

Move on... Nothing to see here...

2008-06-24T12:34:00.001Z

This blog, Creating e-Learning, has reached a natural conclusion
I think. While it started being devoted solely to e-learning and
branched out into e-assessment it has evolved into a smorgasbord of education links, useful software and general outpourings covering my work with Ayr College, the Scottish Qualifications Authority and the Scottish Further Education Unit.

It
has made sense, therefore, to spin off my blog and rename it. I'll keep the
original blog here, and might even make some updates, but my
main blog efforts will be over on Feeducation from now on.

Hope you stay with me.

Tony

Computing and Information Technology Conference

2008-06-23T09:55:00.004Z

Image via Wikipedia

Now, I know that there's no need for any more sweeteners to tempt you to the conference on Thursday the 25th of June at Central College in Glasgow but...

A little bird has told me that Microsoft might just be offering a nice XBox 360 as a prize. So, don't sign up. I want to win it...

Open Source in Education

2008-06-18T10:52:00.002Z

Image via Wikipedia

I've never understood why more educational institutions don't go for open source solutions.

We are in education and not training so it's principles not specific tasks that are important.

This is an interesting article on the problem:

IT PRO | Becta, open source and education: Too little, too late?

Online Notepad

2008-06-18T10:01:00.002Z

Image via Wikipedia

There is a new entry to the online notepad replacement to add to Google Notebook, Yahoo Notepad, et cetera, et cetera.

Helipad is essentially a wiki but you might find it useful. Try it here:

Helipad - Product overview

Private Sector eLearning

2008-06-17T14:17:00.003Z

Image via Wikipedia

This company have worked with several companies including National Instruments, the World Bank, Intel, Canon USA, The US Air Force, SAP, and Harvard Business School.

Their case studies and demonstrations are a good way of sparking ideas.

Enspire Learning: Demonstrations & Case Studies

SCQF at the Computing Event - Central College - 26th June

2008-06-17T11:39:00.006Z

Image via WikipediaAs you may know the SCQF will be at the SFEU Computing event at Central College on the 26th of June. We've just added the presentation details to the programme.

They'll be presenting on - SCQF: The learning spine? The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework has been described as the learning spine of the Skills Strategy. What is the SCQF? Who is it for? How does it work? Find out more in this workshop.

There are still a few places left so go book and I'll see you there.

But I'm Sure I Put It Away Safely!

2008-06-16T14:02:00.004Z

Image via Wikipedia

How many times have you safely stowed the user manual for your shiny new gadget only to find that you have no idea where that safe storage area is when you come to read the thing? What, it's just me? Never mind.

SafeManuals.com has a bunch of PDFs of manuals available for your (OK my) perusal.

Find your user guide, user guide, instruction manual or owner manual instantly !

News Feeds to Your IM

2008-06-16T10:23:00.003Z

(One of) the downsides to e-learning and e-assessment is the sense of isolation engendered. It can be nice to alleviate that with e-mail and chats to at least feel as though you are in a more social workplace than your front room.

What do you do, though, when none of your friends can play? I use IMFeeds to get RSS feeds piped directly to my IM window. I can then feel as though somebody wants to talk to me...

IM Feeds Beta - Welcome

Blogging Tools

2008-06-11T12:26:00.002Z

Image by Tom Raftery via Flickr

For a long time I've relied on ScribeFire to create and publish my blog entries. It integrates well with Firefox making it a one-click job to blog anything I've come across.

What's more difficult is finding other things to go with the post; images, links, tags and so on. (And when I say difficult I mean time-consuming.)

Zemanta have come up with an answer. Their tool will find (free) images, links to relevant stores, add in hyperlinks and all sorts of other nice things. Give it a try:

Blog me up! | Zemanta Ltd.

Microsoft Digital Literacy Materials - Now with Added SCORM

2008-06-10T15:03:00.003Z

Image via Wikipedia

For those that haven't come across it before the Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum is a complete set of notes for teaching Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 in both XP and Vista modes at levels up to Higher and are also useful for things like IT Applications at Level 7. It also includes materials covering:

Computer Basics
The Internet and the World Wide Web
Productivity Programmes (Word processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Databases)
Computer Security and Privacy
Digital Lifestyles

The complete set of notes has now been SCORMed for use with your VLE (like Moodle). More information and download from here:

The UK Further Education Blog : Digital Literacy Curriculum: Now Available as SCORM Objects

Computing and Information Technology Subject Network Conference

2008-06-03T09:18:00.004Z

Image via Wikipedia

UPDATE: The final programme for the event has been published with the following confirmed speakers:

Cally Beck, Academic Program Manager, IBM UK
Joyce Henderson, Team Leader, Learning and Teaching Scotland
Steven Grier, Microsoft Education Manager (Scotland), Microsoft
Margaret McKay, eAdvisor, JISC Regional Support Centre
Graeme Clark, SOLAR Project Manager, SQA
Bobby Elliott, Qualifications Manager, Scottish Qualifications Authority
Gerry Toner, SCHOLAR Programme Director, SCHOLAR
Margaret Cameron, Project Manager, SCQF
Colin Maxwell, Lecturer, Adobe/Adam Smith College
Sarah Hall, Senior Executive, Careers Scotland
Jane Richardson, Regional Development Manager, Oracle Corporation UK
Vanessa Ranaldi, Project Manager, Microsoft/Scottish Qualifications Authority
Michelle Henderson, E2C Programme Manager, CompTIA
Mark Clark, eAdvisor, JISC Regional Support Centre
Michael Kowbel, Scottish Manager, e-skills UK
Jackie Graham, Information Systems Technologist, COLEG
Marjorie Quigley, Regional Director EMEA/APAC, ComputerPREP
Tony Gurney, Computing and IT Subject Mentor, SFEU

I've been told that two thirds of the places have been booked so if you want to attend you should sign up as soon as possible.

-- ORIGINAL POST --

As part of my work as Computing Subject Mentor with the SFEU I've been putting together a conference for Scottish FE computing practitioners. The blurb follows:

Following the heavy hints of last month I can now confirm what many of you know. The
Computing and Information Technology Subject Network
Conference
will take place on Thursday the 26th of June.
This free event takes place at Central College in Glasgow and includes
presentations and exhibits by many public and private sector
organisations including (in no particular order): IBM, Learning and
Teaching Scotland, Microsoft, JISC, SQA, SCHOLAR, SCQF Adobe,
ComputerPrep (CIW), Oracle, CompTIA, eSkills, Leckie & Leckie and
COLEG.

Places are strictly limited and going fast so to book your
free place at this event (and earn yourselves a days CPD) click over to
http://www.sfeu.ac.uk/events/show/2526

I look forward to seeing you there.

Events

Free Desktop Sharing

2008-05-27T11:02:00.002Z

Image by SeanOsteen via Flickr

There are lots of different versions of applications for sharing desktops. Yugma works with a Java virtual machine to bring this to Windows, Mac and Linux boxes. Try it here:

Yugma Desktop Sharing for Mac, Windows, Linux (exe), from Yugma - Free Downloads on ZDNet | Shareware, Trialware, Evaluation Software

Scheduling Meetings

2008-04-02T11:09:00.002Z

Image via Wikipedia

I recently blogged about a new tool for finding good meeting times. This has, inevitably, meant that I have been inundated with links to lots of similar services. Like this one for example:

Plan your next team meeting with When is Good - Download Squad

Do a Google search - it's probably easier...

Meetings Made Simple

2008-03-20T12:07:00.001Z

I seem to spend half my life in meetings and the other half arranging them. That's why a tool like TimeBridge is invaluable.

TimeBridge takes care of the nitty-gritty of matching calendars to enable multiple attendees to quickly and easily synchronise their availability.

No details are shown - just busy or not so it's simple to view everyone's calendar without being scared that people will see the time you've blocked out to take Tiddles the cat to the vet.

See what I mean here:

http://app.timebridge.com/mytime/tonygurney

and then sign up here:

TimeBridge

Set Up Your Own Video Hosting Site

2008-03-06T17:20:00.001Z

Want to distribute your e-learning videos? Video.Show may be the solution. Check it out here:

Set up Video Hosting Site in minutes - Microsoft Silverlight lets you do a Youtube ! | Tech Bytes at Use Bytes

Adobe - Digital Video: Foundations of Video Design and Production

2008-03-06T17:07:00.001Z

Adobe have created a year long curriculum guide for video design and production.

Find out more here:

Adobe - Digital Video: Foundations of Video Design and Production

Adobe - Digital Design: Foundations of Web Design

2008-03-06T16:46:00.001Z

Adobe have created a year long curriculum guide for web design. It covers the basics of Dreamweaver and Flash.

Find out more here:

Adobe - Educators : Digital Design Foundations of Web Design

Syncronise Google Calendar with Outlook

2008-03-06T16:20:00.001Z

I hate Outlook. It's a memory and processor hog and it forces me to work the way it wants to work rather than how I want to do it.

That said almost everything "speaks" Outlook and for that reason it can be a useful information hub. If you can get the information in and out.

For a long time I used Yahoo applications and they included a synchronise program that let me synch calendar, contacts and notes with Outlook. Having bitten the Google apple I've found it difficult to re-create that.

It's become a little easier with a new Google application to synchronise Google Calendar with Outlook.

Such small increments, such little time...

Google Calendar Sync: Getting Started

Extract the information from a PDF

2008-03-06T16:10:00.001Z

Ever been sent a PDF with information you want but lots of extraneous material you don't?

PDFTextOnline delivers the content without the fluff

As it says,

"PDFTextOnline is a free service that will give you your day back. With
no login or account required, you just browse to- and select your PDF
file, click the magic button, and PDFTextOnline takes it from there."

Try it here:

http://pdftextonline.com/

Use a web app like a "real" one

2008-03-06T16:09:00.001Z

Use GMail? Wish it worked like an application on your desktop? PRISM
from Mozilla, the fine folk who brought you the Firefox browser, takes
web apps and presents them in an application only interface with no
confusing browser menus or toolbars.

Check it out here:

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Prism

Screencast-O-Matic

2007-09-06T15:27:00.000Z

I use the rather wonderful Wink to create animated screen captures for my on-line learning materials.

I get a lot of feedback from people who are not allowed to install software on their institution's computers. For them I would recommend

Screencast-O-Matic

which performs a similar job but completely on-line.

TeacherTube - Teach the World

2007-09-06T14:16:00.000Z

Well, the summer's over and I'm back lecturing and the blog's back too.

My last entry was to suggest that bite sized learning could be stored in a YouTube style site, properly tagged and available to everyone.

Well gosh-darn it someone's only gone and done it:

TeacherTube - Teach the World

SuTree

2007-05-16T11:12:00.001Z

While many of us think of e-learning from a traditional academic perspective some of the more interesting implementations are actually to be found elsewhere.

SuTree is an index of free video lessons, tutorials, lectures and how-to guides covering an eclectic range of subjects. On the day I visited the most viewed video was "How to Make a Banana Split".

Now, if you need help in the preparation of fruit based desserts you may have other problems, but the principle of having categorised help videos is sound. All we need is someone to provide the necessary hosting facilities.

Even the videos could be hosted anywhere (like YouTube) and the hosting would simply be a categorised, or tagged, set of links.

Any volunteers?

Wikipedia

2007-03-29T11:30:00.001Z

I've written before about my liberal use of Wikipedia as a background source for information. After someone asked for more information about why I started writing a post detailing my reasons, and then the fine people at Google Operating System did it instead.

Ther article "Why People Link to Wikipedia" details some of the many reasons that Wikipedia is a prime resource for unbiased and useful information.

Here's number 1:

1. Wikipedia articles have a lot of content
and people like to link to pages that consist mostly of text. There's a
lot of information structured in a consistent way and that makes most
of the articles valuable.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Moodle

2007-03-23T14:10:00.001Z

My favourite VLE is starting to get even more coverage in the press. This article on ZDNet shows just how far Moodle has come.

On the Implementation of an LMS or LCMS

2007-03-21T12:00:00.001Z

The eLearning Guild is an American organisation (or organization as they would have it) that promotes eLearning, its uses and applications.

As part of this they have produced, in collaboration with Adobe, a free e-book on the subject.

While it's too fragmented to read well it's still a useful resource for anyone involved in implementing these systems.

While you're there check out the other e-books they have available.

SQA and e-Learning

2007-03-12T12:59:00.001Z

You can say want you want about the SQA (insert your own joke here) but they have always seen the potential of e-learning, e-assessment and e-portfolios. In fact for a small country we are remarkably advanced in introducing these things into the day-to-day learning environment.

If you're interested in the SQA's current thinking (and you should be) they've produced a new document outlining their vision for the next five years and more. You can read the PDF document at this link:

SQA E-Assessment Vision Strategy

Veracity of On-Line Sources

2007-03-07T15:03:00.000Z

When creating my various e-learning packages I frequently include links to background information. More often than not those links go to Wikipedia.

I've found that for straight technical subjects (like, picking an example purely at random, a description of the 802.11 wireless standard) Wikipedia is peerless.

Where I would be less keen to use it is on subjective subjects. Two items have come together today that remind me exactly why that is.

The first, and most though-provoking, is the news that an editor on Wikipedia faked his credentials; including awarding himself a fake doctorate in religion. I'm not concerned that the editor did not have formal academic qualifications, many of the most knowledgable people in all sorts of fields have knowledge gained from long years of study but have never been near an academic institution. Instead my concern is that people with personal axes to grind will use Wikipedia to promote their own viewpoints, rather than writing authoritatively and dispassionately.

Which brings me to the second piece of news. Some radical American right-wing neo-conservatives have started Conservapedia to present their own, uniquely twisted, view of world affairs. At heart this means that everything good is American, Christian and right-wing and everything bad is European, non-Christian and liberal.

This led to an amusing exchange on the BBC's Today programme (yes, Conservapedia, it does have an extra me at the end) between representatives from the two organisations. For Wikipedia the goal is an authoratitive, neutral representation of information. The Conservapedia spokesman on the other hand seemed unable to graps the idea of neutrality, continually complaining that pro-American and pro-Christian articles had been edited or removed altogether. Not forgetting one of the most heinous allegations against Wikipedia, it sometimes uses non-American spelling!

So, do we want Wikipedia where everyone is equal at the potential expense of articles that don't know what they're talking about, or Conservapedia where no-one is equal and no-one knows what they're talking about? Let's just say that I won't be referencing Conservapedia any time soon.

UPDATE: Looks like Conservapedia has a new, extra, URL. Welcome to Moronopedia.

Software for Virtual Teams

2007-03-05T16:02:00.001Z

The bonus, and the drawback, of creating e-learning is that it is quite common to be nowhere near the other members of your team when you are working together.

Most people have an idea of the various tools that are available for virtual working but Read/Write Web has just come up with an article on software for virtual teams that covers them all.

It is comprehensive, at least for a week until the next big thing comes out.

bandwagon

2007-02-22T12:23:00.000Z

For those of us who seem to always have their computers go down there is help in retrieving iTunes data. bandwagon is an on-line backup for your downloaded iTunes purchases. Definitely worth checking out.

Giveaway of the Day

2007-02-09T11:23:00.000Z

All of us in education know how tight money can be and so any help we can get is gratefully accepted. That's why I've added a link to Giveaway of the Day over at the right.

While the site often gives away, and let's not beat around the bush here, rubbish, some gems do come up occasionally.

On the day I've posted this, for example, it's a useful utility to convert PowerPoint presentations to video format.

Worth keeping an eye on.

Wireless Access

2007-02-07T12:32:00.001Z

Fon are a Spanish company that organise wireless access throughout the world. The idea is that everyone that is signed up to the network shares some of their bandwidth with other Fon users. As you travel you can use free wireless hot spots from other members in the community.

The hardware aspect of this is a wireless router that you plug into your broadband connection to allow other Fon users, and only other Fon users, to connect and user your broadband connection.

As part of their celebrations for being one year old Fon are currently giving away 2,500 of these routers free. I've signed up.

This is a great way of widening wireless access without it costing loads. And a convenient way of me sitting in a coffe shop kidding on I'm working without it costing me £30 a month for wireless access.

Show, Don't Tell

2007-02-05T14:53:00.001Z

One of the central tenets of e-learning materials that I try and push to my colleagues is that, where possible, show don't tell.

This video takes that on board and shows why Web 2.0 is actually important; and not just in education.

Google Documents

2007-02-05T09:46:00.001Z

After my previous less than complimentary remarks on Google documents and spreadsheets I was contacted by several people who tell me that the facility is actually very usable. In particular the collaboration features are some of the easiest to use.

As someone who has always been willing to try new technologies, particularly when it may cause a delay to work I don't want to do anyway, I decided to check and see if I agreed.

Having a new project under way that will require some light office style documents to be created I'm going to attempt to complete it using only the the on-line tools.

I think you might need to wish me luck...

And it's a new world record!

2007-02-05T09:45:00.001Z

That is definitely some kind of record.

AS I posted my last entry talking about how I'd try on-line Google Docs for my new project, you guessed it, my internet connection died.

So that is now officially my trial over. Six minutes that lasted. Until there is some way to have my work available off-line as well I simply cannot trust any on-line editing tool with my work.

So, when do Google add word-processing and spreadsheets to Google desktop? Together with some way of synching the data.

I'm looking forward to it.

Tipsy Clock

2007-01-22T16:26:00.001Z

This is absolute genius!

Ever find yourself just those few minutes late for a meeting? Missed a train because you thought you'd make just one more call? Or just congenitally always late?

The Procrastinator's Clock shows the time with up to 15 minutes error. In other words it might be on time or up to 15 minutes fast.

Result? Not knowing how fast it is you use it as the correct time ensuring that, at worst, you are on time or, at best, 15 minutes early for everything.

Now all I need is a utility to hide my watch. :-)

Truism Time

2007-01-22T15:00:00.001Z

I've been deep in writing mode recently and it's not been going as quickly or easily as I'd have liked. Stupid problems crept in, the flow was poor and the overall concepts did not come through as well as they should have.

An enforced break over the weekend (looking at wardrobes if you're interested!) gave me time to reflect on the problems and devise a strategy.

As is often the case the answer is blindingly obvious. I hadn't planned.

In my efforts to just get things done I had neglected rule one and had sat down at my computer and started typing. That may be OK for a blog entry but it causes endless problems with any piece of writing over a page.

Other recent writing has followed the same path

Think about the goals
Mind-map the topics
Research anything I am not immediately comfortable with
Repeat until happy

Then, and only then, had I started writing.

The latest set of notes had followed another path entirely

Sit down
Write
Hope

This is not as effective as the first method!

The annoying thing is that I know this. The idea of planning something beforehand is not new. I had been careful to do it every other time. The difference here was time. Under pressure to get something done I had disregarded every piece of good practise and hoped for the best. My mum would have told me "More haste, less speed". As someone who's careful to avoid cliche I wouldn't say that. But she's still right.

Performancing

2007-01-15T15:59:00.001Z

As you can see from the previous post I find the easiest way to update this blog is from right inside Firefox using Performancing.

This add-on allow me to compose my messages, add links, format and so on without leaving my browser environment.

If Writely (now Google Docs) ever gets a bit quicker I may never leave my browser again.

This week I have been mostly Winking.

2007-01-15T15:55:00.001Z

On of the (many) difficulties with on-line teaching materials is the lack of interactivity. There is no way to immediately give feedback or explanations.

The only way around this is for two-way video links between tutors and students (meaning that the learning needs to be synchronous rather than the more desirable asynchronous mode).

A way of obviating the need for feedback is for as much demonstration material to be available on-line as possible. This requires some way of showing exactly what is happening on the screen.

The best tool I've yet found for this is Wink. Wink is a screen recorder with a built-in editor. When complete the screen grab can be augmented with sound (or text or titles or...) and the finished movie saved as a Flash format file suitable for viewing in most browsers.

This great freeware tool has saved me loads of time and is truly remarkable.

Highly recommended.

Assessment 2.0 - the future of assessment?

2007-01-08T15:48:00.001Z

Bobby over at the Scottish Education blog has written a paper about the future of assessment.

I don't agree with everything written there but it's definitely worth reading the paper.

And we're back...

2007-01-08T14:51:00.001Z

As is all too common for many people I've been too busy creating e-learning to write about creating e-learning.

While this has undoubtedly not bothered you too much it has not helped me. The act of writing about what I'm doing makes a big difference in my approach. The reflection required to write semi-coherently about what I'm doing and the mistakes that simply committing my words to (electronic) paper reveal are definitely more helful to me than the two people that actually read this blog.

So, I'm back and I'm committing to updating. You have been warned. :-)

Popup Content

2006-03-08T20:20:00.000Z

As a usability issue I would prefer pop-ups to appear in a seperate window. While there is an option for this in the Course Genie settings there is a problem.

The pop-ups created appear in a window that cannt be resized. Worse, there seems to be no recognition of the content of the window so it is not wide enough for the text.

Anyone found a way of making the pop-up resizeable?

In the meantime I'll need to go back to having pop-ups appear in the main window.

Course Genie Error

2006-03-08T20:06:00.000Z

This seems to be the first genuine error I've found. I've sent the following mail to the company.

Using Course Genie 2.0.0.0 I'm generating a course and getting this error:

The Document has been Exported as an XML File:lo1 - data representation.xml

End tag 'b' does not match the start tag 'subheading'. Line 01696: />Pos 00026: -------------------------^

There is a problem. The HTML was not generated.

Clearly an error but short of changing the XML by hand how do I fix this?

Thanks,

Tony

I would guess that there is a spurious Word formatting character in the source but I'm not sure how to get rid of it without changing the Course Genie paragraph format.

I'll update this as I hear from the company.

---------- Update 8/3/6 21:21 ---------

Checking the XML and the source Word document I see that the error occurs where I have a bookmark defined in a CG sub-heading. Moving the bookmark to a line of its own fixes the error.

Having found it I'm sure that this is a problem Ted mentioned in his presentation

Free Stock Photos

2006-03-01T10:01:00.000Z

I've been looking for photos to illustrate some of the points in the course. There are a few places that have free stock photos including

Stock.XCHNG
morgueFile
Image*After
PictureStation
Pixmotor

The online photo sharing site Flickr also has many photos that are flagged with a creative commons license.

Creating Passionate Users

2006-02-23T23:49:00.000Z

I'm a big fan of the Creating Passionate Users blog. Focussing on the difference between things that are OK and things that are great it contains lots of thought provoking articles about the things we can do to make that jump. As the author has produced many books that are near the top of the Amazon best seller charts she must be doing something right.

I've found myself further indebted to her as she has drawn my attention to the web site of former PARC chief John Seely Brown. His thoughts on things like learning in the digital age make fascinating reading. Just be sure to put aside plenty of time to read all the stuff there.

Speed; Including External Links

2006-02-23T23:29:00.000Z

I've had a comment about the external links I've embedded into the course and it's made me think about the use and abuse of this feature.

The comment addressed the speed of linking to an external page and whether or not that would be a barrier to those accessing the external data.

While this could be a problem, particularly for those students accessing the materials from home using a steam driven 56K modem, I still think that the benefits outweigh that possible problem. Indeed I think that those students will soon make their own decisons about whether the information gained is worth the click. That does, though, put the onus squarely on the author to choose worthwhile links.

There are also some possible technical solutions to this problem.

In an educational setting I would hope that the appropriate
network settings would be in place (cache and proxies) that would ensure that content was only fetched once for a complete class group.

Other technical solutions might include some pre-fetch software such as Google Web Accelerator. This fetches pages linked from the current page before the links are clicked thus simulating a faster connection.

Neither of these technical solutions should be the responsibility of the course author or host.

In the end there is always going to be a dichotomy between the urge to include "extras" like external links, animations and multimedia components and the realisation that not everyone will be able to access this data. Who wins? It depends on the course. It is clearly not reasonable to attempt an on-line course on, for example, sound editing without including sounds. While that may exclude some possible users a course that excluded them would not be worth having.

On the other hand where course can be produced without using these bandwidth heavy components that should be one of the stated aims.

In the end then the solution is clear. We should always include the multimedia elements. Except when we shouldn't. Everybody clear now?

Course Genie 2.0 Question Generator

2006-02-23T22:58:00.000Z

I wa excited with the prospect of formatting the answers on Course Genie 2.0. As I've blogged before version 1 didn't allow subscripts.

The latest version has a nicer question editor; specifically it puts questions into table form in the document. Once in there they can be formatted like anything else. Unfortunately that formatting is lost when the course is generated. In the following example the first 2 should be a subscript.

You answered: 1

The correct answer is: 101010012

This is 128 + 32 + 8 + 1 or 169.

Navigation

2006-02-20T22:53:00.000Z

I had been concerned with the length of the navigation pane on the left hand side. Playing with the settings I see that it is possible for the navigation pane to "Show Sections and only Sub-pages of displayed Section".

This works well, keeping the navigation manageable while still being able to see the relevant navigation links.

Trial Version Footer Fixed

2006-02-20T20:05:00.000Z

Thanks to Ted who made the eminently sensible suggestion of removing the "Generated by Trial Version" message from the Settings.

That works fine but I still contend that it is poor programming not to have that automatically removed when the product is registered.

2.0 Registration

2006-02-17T22:22:00.000Z

Despite having entered the registration code and Course Genie no longer telling me that it's in trial mode it is still placing the "Generated with Trial Version" message at the bottom of every page as you can see.

I'll e-mail the company and see what they say.

2.0 Creating Questions

2006-02-17T22:14:00.000Z

First impressions are that the question builder is nicer to use. The representation in the Word document is certainly much clearer and easier to read.

CG Update

2006-02-17T21:09:00.000Z

Who was I kidding. Of course I've updated it.

Sadly it doesn't address any of the problems I've reported up to now. The problems with layout are still there.

Additionally I've noticed that table layout is not converted. For example if a table does not have a border it acquires one once it is published.

Course Genie 2.0

2006-02-17T20:24:00.000Z

Version 2.0 of Course Genie has now been released. There seem to be lots of useful improvements. The only question is; am I brave enough to try it?

Horizon Wimba :: Products : Try Course Genie

Media

2006-02-15T21:01:00.000Z

I've found some useful public domain/creative commons licensed images at Wikimedia. Great if you don't feel like creating a logic gate from scratch.

More Firefox Fun

2006-02-15T20:21:00.000Z

Just discovered another Firefox plugin called Performancing that lets me post to my blog without leaving Firefox. I'd experimented with Flock to do something similar but this seems useful too.

Table Spacing

2006-02-15T15:38:00.000Z

There appears to be an issue with the spacing of tables in Course Genie. The default spacing is both large in the table and leaves a large gap after the table.

FTP and Firefox

2006-02-15T15:24:00.000Z

I've long used SmartFTP for my projects. It's clear and easy to use as well as being free for individual and educational users.

However, I'm also a big Firefox fan and I'm finding that more and more of my day to day work is done in the browser. I've therefore started using the FireFTP addon. This opens a graphical FTP in a new browser tab ready for transfers.

Quick and simple. My favourite kind of tool.

Early and Often

2006-02-15T15:16:00.000Z

Following the lead of the Open Source community I thought I'd publish my draft course.

This allows my students to use it for their revision. Anyone who says that it is just a cheap way of having it proof-read is just being mean.

Learning outcome 1 can be found at my site.

Course Genie Questions

2006-02-15T15:12:00.000Z

Which means the questions that you can create in Course Genie rather than... Well, you get the idea.

As my project contains explanations of number bases I am using lots of superscript (for powers) and subscript (for bases).

While this isn't a problem in the main text Course Genie has no facility for this within the question editor meaning a lot of re-writing to make the meaning clear.

-- EDIT --

There seems to be no formatting facility at all. This means that even line breaks cannot be added to feedback text.

Initial Course Genie Impressions

2006-02-15T15:05:00.000Z

The software is easy to use - particularly for those whose only exposure to computers may be word-processing. Without messing around with the CSS templates the supplied layouts seem adequate but uninspiring.

As a fan of Jakob Nielsen I'm approaching the project with a keen awareness of usability issues and the first problem I see is the incompatibility of data "chunking" creating small but manageable chunks of data and the navigation issues this creates. Specifically the menu created on the left side may become long and hard to follow.

Creating e-Learning

2006-02-15T15:00:00.000Z

This blog will detail my experience in creating an e-learning site. Some project details:

The project is sponsored by the SQA
E-learning courses will be created for all of the mandatory units in HNC Computing
I will be creating a course in Computer Architecture 1
The software is Course Genie which converts Microsoft Word documents