Obfuscation

Clearly I am reaching the limits of either Serif WebPlus' or my old pc's capabilities but that's not why I'm posting this screenshot. I have written before about Greenshot and if I were to ever find a piece of software that tells me which programs I use most often other than operating system things then Greenshot would be up there in the Top 10.

Firstly, getting this as an image was simplicity in itself. You just hit the Print Screen button and up comes a grid that you drag around an area of the screen to save. I wasn't terribly accurate with this one and, yes, I could have used alt+Print Screen and then pasted it into an image editor in this particular case but most times I just want a part of a window. Normally that's it, I would just save the image and use it wherever it's intended to go.

This time, however, I thought I'd better do something about an ftp address and, instead of saving, Greenshot has several other options on offer, including its own little editor. I chose that and immediately there's a toolbar with various things I may or may not want to do to the image. The coolest is called Obfuscate and it pixelates whatever area you specify. Love that.

You'll almost want to take screen prints with this tool just so you can obfuscate!

Webtools; notes on Google Forms now available

For some reason I missed out notes I'd written on how to set up a survey using Google's brilliant Forms.

So that's there now - here's the direct link.

New web tools site - lots of new links and notes

Web

I have just updated and completely revised the webtools site for teachers, students and, well, anyone really.

Lots of new additions and I have included some notes and suggested use decsriptions for a range of tools which will also be featured on the LSIS Excellence Gateway soon. (I have provided content - but not the design - for a Third Sector toolkit that will be hosted there).

If anyone has any more ideas just let me know. I'm sure I've missed plenty and, of course, new ones are appearing every week now which I'll try and keep up with.

Apps²

A colleague has just shared this infographic that she found. My first thought was OK, that's interesting, a bit out of date but nice to see someone promoting use of some of these tools which, of course, is what I spend an inordinate amount of my time doing.

Click to enlarge

Source (full size)

Then I had second and third and fourth thoughts. 

2. It's really a bit of a mess. 

I'll simply have to do something about that and redo it in rather smarter fashion, maybe adding some much needed links too. 

3. There are some quite important tools missing. 

OK, it may be old so I can remove some and add some. 

4. There are quite a few instances where lines need to go in more than one direction, tools that can be good for several elements. 

That can be included in the reworked version.

It was the fifth thought that really stuck, though: 

5. Wouldn't it be great if we could start in one application and stay in that application with everything we might need being something like an app within that application. 

Sort of app².

Ideas, drafts etc. go in and out of this central application. Some you discard. Some go straight in. Some need a bit of editing first and then get embedded. The whole end product, or 'content' as this graphic calls it, is a combination of various elements: text, images, data, media and any other dimension that I've missed out that can be shared, linked to, embedded, displayed or even printed in part.

I don't quite know where I'm going with this but thanks to Shri for getting me off on yet another journey in this e-learning world!

Start with some quizzes or student comments with Socrative

Socrative is maybe not the best of names but it offers some useful tools to tutors to use in a class. At the beginning you can have some quizzes for them to do - multiple choice or asking them to include their own answer. If you know of someone else using the software and can get their Socrative quiz number then you can use theirs too, or instead, if you like.


On logging in the tutor is allocated a 'room' number. Students enter that on their devices and will then get to see the quiz or whatever that is provided there.

A nice feature is the way that the teacher can display the live results of the quizzes and also have them sent as a spreadsheet by e-mail.

It seems to work on a pc or mobile device quite happily with a clear interface actually best viewed on a mobile as the content tends to stretch across a normal screen and look a bit strange.

There are additional options for creating quizzes using a template that can be downloaded so the tutor can take their time setting up more detailed quizzes and answers in their own time rather than on-line. I haven't noticed yet how many times this can be used with, or what options are not available in, the free version but it's certainly worth a try to see what you can do with it, even just to have the students occupied at the start of a lesson while the late-comers wander in.

It hasn't the most intuitive of interfaces - for instance, it takes time to figure out how to make quizzes available and it expects students to include their name as Surname, First name which, together with the title, says something about the team behind this! I guess the way people enter names can be changed, though, and may just be a demo thing.

t.socrative.com and m.socrative.com are the mobile sites for tutors and students respectively. You can play around yourself with two devices and pretend to be a student or get the wife and kids to help check that it all works as you want.

Caibre - Make, Find and Manage Ebooks

Very impressed with Calibre, an open source application for managing e-books. It converts files to make documents compatible with all kinds of device and just seems to be able to do everything you might ever want.

Being able to browse books by cover is great and so too is the News search and download with a huge range of sources across the world.

Whether you just want to organise all those e-books you've accumulated, find more or browse news in the world on your device, this software is well worth downloading. You will surely find it useful at one point or another and can use it to create your own - that creates some interesting opportunities for sharing material perhaps?

The developer, Kovid Goyal, has also put together a first class video showing you how it all works.

http://calibre-ebook.com/demo

Something I forgot in the Webtools Media section: VLC Media Player

A colleague just asked what application would be good for converting certain types of video files (without using an on-line tool) and my first thought was to have a look at the web tools site to check out VLC.

For some reason I had forgotten to include this excellent bit of software from the VideoLan organisation when I transferred links from the previous site! So I've added this back in now and am here giving it a bit of extra promotion because it is very simple and very good. Admittedly, you don't get all the bells and whistles and lovely graphics of Windows Media Player but it does what it says on the bollard, I mean, tin.

Whilst it's not really a 'web tool' it is a tool and you do get it from the web and you may well find it pretty damn useful so it should be included in the Media section which is where I shall now add it.

More experiments with web tools: Animoto

Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

The interface makes it dead easy to grab a folder of images from Picasa (or other on-line collections). Limited selection of music tracks in the free version but this one kinda worked. My son'll like it anyway and will probably have tagged himself in it already.

One idea I must try is to make images that fit a particular learning object - maybe illustrate a process in a fun way. The key thing about this, though, is that this took longer to process than to make. It can only have been 2 or 3 minutes to log in, select an album, a template and a track. Animoto do the rest.

Just checking out some tools: GoAnimate

The toolbox 1 by AndrewHill on GoAnimate

Video Maker - Powered by GoAnimate.

Think I need something with better expressions! And they sound pretty boring too! Still, it's so quick and easy that it shouldn't take too long to make another. First I shall look at some alternatives, though. 

Free web tools past and present