News Feeds to Your IM

(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

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Blogging Tools

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.

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Microsoft Digital Literacy Materials - Now with Added SCORM

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:

1. Computer Basics
   
2. The Internet and the World Wide Web
   
3. Productivity Programmes (Word processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Databases)
   
4. Computer Security and Privacy
   
5. 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

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Computing and Information Technology Subject Network Conference

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

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Free Desktop Sharing

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

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

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