Podcast or videocast, which do you prefer?

Do you podcast you lectures? . I have started this in a small way but from the system logs the results were not encouraging. Anyway I started to give the whole idea some serious thought recently. From my own perspective, if am driving or travelling on public transport, then yes I would listen to a podcast, however if was sat in front of a computer, then I would appreciate something more visual. The feasibility of videoing and editing a whole lecture on a regular basis would for me be unrealistic. But do you really need the whole lecture, well no, and all I record usually are selected parts in audio using my PDA. Anyway I decided to pop one of my audio tracks into one of CrazyTalks avatars, the result, good, judging from the Moodle logs, the media is definitely getting a better response. If you would like to take a look just click here. Please feel free to feedback on your own experiences by posting to this blog.

Free learning resources from the OU via Moodle

free and open educational resources
If like myself you are always on the lookout for some quality e-Learning materials, then you simply have to take a look at the Open Universities Moodle site OpenLearn. The resources here are free to use and are of an excellent quality, well done OU.

Time for a Second Life

Just recently I decided that the time had come to put my money where my enthusiasm was, so I upgraded my membership in Second Life and bought some land and see how it could be used in conjunction with my work on Moodle. In fact I bought a small island from diddster.com, these are really nice properties and the company extremely helpful. In fact the whole experience was a bit surreal, as I had to leave my wife cruising around Diddsters Daydream island complex, made more stressful for her as she had not used Second life before, looking for a vacant plot and making the purchase. While all this was happening I was watching through a colleague’s avatar at work (Whoops), keep that bit to yourself. Anyway Jinxster of Diddster turned up and gave some very timely advice and we all had an extremely useful three way conversation. I have since acquired a building for my island (Shimmer Island) and begun accumulating some tools; whiteboard and media player, both of which were actually free. If you click on my island thumb nail at the top of this post, you will get a bigger picture.
Anyway I am off to my alternative reality now, but do stay tuned to see how things go.

Value Added Moodle?

Keen as I always am to make use of our vle for course delivery, I am also very keen to find evidence on its effectiveness with regard to student outcomes. One of the courses that see particularly heavy use of the vle here at Bromley is my BTEC National Software Development. Just the other day I am informed that it has attracted highest Value Added in the country for this course, wow. How much of that is due to the vle, difficult to say, but I was asked to put my views in writing; 50 words! Anyway here is my response. We have an experienced subject specialist team delivering a wide range of software technologies that include VBA, VB6, C, Java, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP and SQL, and find attracts motivated students with an ambition for Software Development.
Our adoption and increasing use of the Moodle vle has further allowed us to explore a variety of teaching methods, that facilitate our students the opportunity for personalisation, to extend their learning beyond the traditional physical boundaries and time constraints of class based lectures.A bit Just a tad more that 50.