Mary Nicholson's Blog

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Mary Nicholson — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:54:45 +0000

Hi! Today was a good day.

Check out the Tour deFrance.

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velonews.com

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Mary Nicholson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:08:47 +0000

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Welcome to our eLearning Concepts class blog!

Mary Nicholson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:27:00 +0000

Since you chose to participate in the class blog, this is the place to post news, announcements, resources, links, thoughts, discussions, and anything else that seems important for our class.

I would like for you to watch the video below – it is a wonderful video created by Common Craft and is titled “Blogs in Plain English”. I know you’ll enjoy it!

You can see more of their videos at: http://www.commoncraft.com

I’m looking forward to reading your ideas and perspectives! Don’t forget to post once a week, and remember that many people are reading your comments.

Cheers, Dr. N

Free Virtual Classroom – (like Centra)

Mary Nicholson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:11:00 +0000

Hey everyone,
I know the OCDesign is over, but I found this resource. I know that I still have the Blog as a feed on my iGoogle page. So, hopefully someone will find this resource useful.

I haven’t checked it out yet, but I will later.

WizIQ

It looks like it has a lot of the features of Centra with application sharing, text chat automatic recording, easy uploading of videos with quicklinks to YouTube videos, and a MATHEMATICS toolbar! Best of all, it is free for classrooms under 50 students.

Hope you found this useful!

Funny Blog Post

Mary Nicholson — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:24:00 +0000

This is yet another blog that I read from the Common Craft. I thought it was sort of funny. Also someone posted a comment and a link to this article. I just thought that with the technology we have today, you’d think airport security would be a little tighter. Check it out…but not if you’re flying anywhere for the holidays!

More from Google Labs

Mary Nicholson — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:53:00 +0000

When I logged into my google account this morning I saw a message that google labs had cooked up a couple of applications that I thought might benefit the group–at least anyone who uses a google account.

Their first offering is one that acts as a task function

Keep track of what you need to do with a lightweight task list right inside of Gmail. Just click and type to add new tasks, convert emails into tasks, and (most satisfyingly) check them off as you’re done.

The second is pretty cool. It allows you to send SMS messages from your gmail account…

Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards.

sort of like twitter in reverse.

These quotes were taken from this announcement page.

PowerPoint Presenter Option

Mary Nicholson — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:52:00 +0000

I was looking for an option that was free in lieu of buying the Adobe Presenter software. I found iSpring. It has a lot of the same features. I haven’t got to check it out, but I have heard of it before. I will let you know more later in the month- I will be trying it out for use in my classroom.

Google Operating System on the way?

Mary Nicholson — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:10:00 +0000

An article on the Boy Genius Report states that there are signs showing Google may be working on it’s own operating system. Recent net traffic from Google headquarters shows about 1/3 of Google’s employees are accessing the web with an operating system that has had it’s identifiers removed. Whether this is a sign of Android coming to desktop, an all new OS or Google just playing with our minds remains to be seen.

Lots of Free Stuff

Mary Nicholson — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:18:00 +0000

There’s nothing like finding free stuff and what a great thing to add for my last Blog entry for this course…

I found this really list of resources to tons of free stuff from software to free courses that you can sign up for. There is so much that this website has, that it is a bit hard to describe. You can find free virus and spyware to free CAD software, free dictionaries and joke sites, free eBooks, sweepstakes, and free education. It is really worth checking out!

Freebyte!

Instructional Game vs Computer Game

Mary Nicholson — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 01:40:00 +0000

I was working on the 10 blog posts required for the class with Dr.Kapp where i came across this interesting post about the comparison between a Computer Game to a Serious or an Instructional game.
When a designer or developer looks from the angle of the gaming, two formats of the game are meant for entertainment, but interesting debate would be does serious game has to compete with a computer game to make it more captivating and motivating? Certainly it would be a designer’s dream to build an application that would be designed to perfection showing rich graphics and animation. But when analyzing this component one has to focus on certain factors like the time frame for the project, hardware used, learners, type of organization and the instruction itself.
Looking at these factors from a designer’s perspective will certainly lock the components that can be used to make the prototype work. But certainly a designer has varying options to make the solution interesting and appealing for the client. Even the budget allocated for the project can lock the hands of the designer. But a good designer can figure out ways to create an attractive and working solution within the allocated budget. The key to achieve this goal, pretty much depends on the common sense, and the good or bad experience from the past projects. To be more precise its all the life experiences will make one grow perfect.
To sum up, instructional or serious games can take certain inputs from its elder brother(computer game) to build an interesting and attractive game to captivate and motivate the learners keeping without loosing the very purpose of instruction.
Please check this interesting post related to the current topic.
Learning circuits Blog