Podcast: I have no idea where this podcast is heading…

After listening to one of his podcasts at the weekend I contacted Craig Taylor to see if I could be on it. He kindly accepted and thus ensued a series of tangents around e-learning, how us FE/HE types and corporate folks converge (measuring success and ROI).

I super briefly met Craig earlier this year at the Plymouth e-learning Conference and via twitter/podcast felt like I knew him enough to cheekily ask to chew his ear off!

I suggest you subscribe to his podcast and stalk him on twitter.

Listen to our podcast

Speaking: Mobile learning at Bath Spa

In my talk today at Bath Spa I set out to touch on key aspects of mobile learning, what is mobile learning and why we might be taking the time to care. Below are my supporting notes:

What is mobile learning

  • If you read nothing else, the JISC Mobile Learning infokit is a great body of work to get you started
  • It isn’t just about wheeling out devices, it is about seeking ways to enhance our teaching and learning by taking advantage of the opportunity and constraints
  • Mobility of people with devices opens new doors
  • Context is king
  • There are 100s of devices (demo’ed 3 tablets) and there can be social pressure on students to get the devices everybody else has
  • Mobile learning is leading to transformation in the classroom AND institutions are having to address this. Many institutions are are starting to address this with steering groups, research and initiatives such as “mobile clinics“.

Why Mobile learning?

Further signposts

A New Perspective on Crime Scenes

Over at the NYTimes is a great piece “A New Perspective on Crime Scenes” about crime scenes that make use of a panoramic camera (Panoscan) to capture the scene.

What really caught my attention was the audio descriptions for each scene that really bring the scenes to life. The images are used in court and also to preserve a crime scene for years to come.

Found via Kottke of course.

Black Leakage for the walls

Black Leakage is a new product from one of my favourite studios Design Chapel.

I haven’t seen this kind of wall art on sale before and it reminds me of my painting days and when I used to ‘F5’ the Design Chapel site before I discovered RSS!

Notes from Weelearning

Weelearning held the first event on Wednesday and I was in attendance in bristol. Dan and Sam are hoping to build a regular following for us e-learning types in the commercial and public sector. I really enjoyed the night and not just because I won a prize of e-learning books from packt.

What made this really enjoyable in addition to the two talks was that we had plenty of time to kick it with fellow folks. I attend plenty of formal rigid event so it was cool to almost have the other end of the spectrum.

We talked about the differences between commercial/public sector approaches, terminology and value of e-learning to traditional workshop models.

If weelearning can attract a regular following and keep the essence of a relaxed and diverse crowd then I look forward to meeting you at a future event.

Enabling webgl in Firefox

Earlier today I was attempting to view an example of 3D in the browser that makes use of webgl but the browser kept insisting webgl wasn’t enabled.

Initial web searches indicate that webgl, which is used to get the 3D working should be running on Firefox (im using 6.0.2) but it clearly was not!

Instructions

To enable webgl simply type “about:config” into the browser address, promise to be care and then type “webgl” into the filter at the top.  The second option should be “webgl.force-enable” and you’ll need to double-click the value of false changing it to TRUE.

Reload the 3D example page and you should now be up and running.

Making Firefox mine – extensions and such

Whenever I use another computers browser it is always setup in a unique way, and mine is no different.

Though I have opera, chrome and safari I always come back to ye ole faithful Firefire. I like it naturally because I am used to it, and I got used to it due to some handy extensions that I probably use daily. I thought i’d list them as you may also find them of use:

  1. Firebug. THE must have extension if you are in anyway curious about what is under the hood of any website you come across. This beauty lets you select any page element and reveal the coding secrets behind. Better still, you can make changes and see live previews before your very eyes.
  2. ScreenGrab! I collect website screengrabs of sites that catch my eye and for keeping an archive of old designs before I update.
  3. Colorzilla. A really quick way to grab all the colours you find that you just have to have.
  4. Web developer toolbar. The ruler for measuring gaps between elements is worth the download alone.
  5. Open Attribute. The ultra fast way to get Creative Commons license details in the correct format at the click of a button.