Using ICT in Further Education

Quia Web provides a shared activities area where you can browse through thousands of learning activities grouped into different subject areas (300 categories provided to date).

Sixteen different types of online activities are available including flash cards, word search, battleship, challenge board, and cloze exercises. The Quia Web activities are designed with different learning styles in mind to suit the needs of all students.

Check it out now, you are bound to find something that can be used!!

Try this Microsoft Word Challenge and win a cool 1,000,000

Open-Of-Course provides a selection of multilingual online courses and tutorials, using the Moodle VLE, with the focus on educational information that benefits daily life.

The available courses relate to computers, the Internet and learning languages. For anyone interested in these areas, there is certainly lots to choose from.

I found the course covering the ECDL syllabus with Open Office, all be it older versions of both, to be quite useful.

However, there is no date on the site, so it is hard to tell just how up to date the materials are. Also, some of the links within the modules are broken but, having said this, there is still lots of useful information and links provided at Open-Of-Course.

You can use the OpenCourseWare Consortium to find course materials from associated OpenCourseWare Colleges either by browsing each site individually or by searching across all the sites.

OpenCourseWare is defined as the “free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses“. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using the shared model.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium seeks to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

Japan, Spain and the USA are the leading contributors at present. Unfortunately, no Irish colleges involved as yet. I wonder which one will be the first?????

The iLearn ezine created by Kelly Tenkely is a wonderful resource for all Mac Users.

Great layout and design and filled with lots of really useful information and links. You can keep up to date with the latest release through RSS. What a brilliant resource and productive use of the publishing platform Issuu.

Get your copy now!! Thanks for sharing Kelly

OER Commons is all about sharing open educational resources. Subject areas include: Arts, Business, Humanities, Mathematics & Statistics, Science & Technology and Social Sciences. Over 16 different types of course materials are provided.

You can search OER Commons by subject area, grade level, material type, media format and conditions of use or by selecting a relevant tag.

Once registered, you can, also, collect your chosen resources in your own portfolio area. OER Commons is yet another great place to find useful subject material.

The worldwide OER movement is committed to the provision of “equitable access to high-quality education.” The aim is to enable “systemic change in teaching and learning through accessible content, and importantly, through embedding participatory processes and effective technologies for engaging with learning“.

Explore “makes documentary films and photographs to showcase extraordinary nonprofit efforts and leaders around the world” opening the door to a world you might otherwise never get to see, a world neglected by the mainstream media.

Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, Sudan, Darfur, Rwanda, China, Tibet, India, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, The Vatican, The Arctic, Greenland, Costa Rica, Canada and many U.S. cities are all included.

Explore’s film and images “document how people from all over the world, from every walk of life, are taking positive steps that have local impact and global relevance“.

Many research articles and links to other relevant websites are also provided.

A great resource for travel and tourism students!!

Photos8 provides a huge collection of high resolution photographs. A great resource for presentations and projects alike, across many subject areas.

The Categories include:
Animals, Architecture, Art, Backgrounds, Birds, Electronics, Flowers, Food, Furnitures, Insects, Landscape, Macro, Miscellaneous, Money, Objects, People, Plants, Religion, Sky, Street, Sunset, Travel

The owner and creator of the site, Sam, explains what the site is all about:

Photos8  is a place for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers. Large collection of High Resolution photos and wallpapers, Thousands of high quality public domain pictures, easy to search, You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial. As the owner I have explicitly placed it in the public domain. If you do use any photo, please consider linking back to this site or giving credit to this site. Just something like, “Photo courtesy Photos8“, This is not required, but its a very good way to support the site efforts here.

NECC, the National Educational Computing Conference, running from 28th June - 1st July in Washington DC is rapidly approaching and promises to be a great event not to be missed.

But, don’t worry if you can’t travel because, the good news is that, you will be able to attend many of the presentations virtually.

You can even present virtually on any topic of your choice, if you so wish. Check out the NECC Unplugged wiki for all the details. Book your slot now!!

Likewise, you can attend Edublogger Con virtually. It runs all day Saturday 27th June. The schedule will be continually updated as the conference approaches.

THE CONFERENCE DATES AGAIN! - Sat 27th June to Wed 1st July