Using ICT in Further Education

Drop.io lets you create simple private exchange points on the Internet called ‘drops’. This is a great little service for enabling temporary access to files.

Each drop is “private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want“.

You can choose to delete the drop from 1 day later up to 1 year later. You can also choose to allow your users to view only, view & add or view add & delete the ‘drop’.

Drop.io is very flexible allowing you to create ‘drops’ using the web, email, voice, fax and widgets.

Give out the ‘drop’ address to your students and the whole class can access the file immediately at the same time.

Works a treat so long as it is not blocked on your schools network!! No surprises to hear that Drop.io is blocked on ours

Qipit is a free mobile online copy service that has great potential for classroom use.

You just take a picture of your printouts, whiteboard or handwritten notes with your camera phone or digital camera and then send the image to Qipit, where it is turned into a digital copy (PDF).

As well as using your phone, you can also send the image via email or fax. Once uploaded the PDFs can be tagged for easy searching and sorting.

You can also publish and share the documents.

It even works with my humble Nokia 6234!! Read a great review of Qipit on Joe Wood’s blog.

Update (13/5). Just discovered that Qipit also blog and tweet. Now that is the complete service

MindMeister is a great site that enables “real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions“.  In the ‘brainstorming mode’, you can work on the same mind map simultaneously with other MindMeister users - and see each other’s changes as they occur.

Creating new maps is easy and you simply add your thoughts as they come to mind. As well as storing your mind maps online, you can also export them in various mind map formats (or even as a document outline or image file). And, you can also import existing mind maps into MindMeister.

‘Widget Mania‘ is an example of one that Mike created and invited me to join in. Great fun and this one is not finished yet!

Here’s one I made myself as part of my online course that I am completing at the moment.

Evernote is a place to store information for retrieving at a later date - anything from simple to-do lists to web pages, whiteboards and photos.

I’ve just started using it for my to-do lists and I really like it. Thanks Paul for finding Evernote.

There are lots of ways to record your information in Evernote including:
* Creating new notes using desktop, web, and mobile versions of Evernote
* Take a snapshot using your camera phone or webcam.
* Amazingly text is also recognized in the image!
* Clip entire web pages, screenshots, and just about anything else you can copy
* Drag and drop content into the desktop clients for Mac and Windows
* Email notes directly into your account using your personalized email address
* Scan receipts, recipes, tags, brochures, and anything else into Evernote
* Record audio wherever you are and listen to it whenever you want

Still not convinced, then have a look at this promotional video. If you want to sign up immediately, I have 5 invitations left. Just send an email to inchicorepd AT hotmail DOT com and I’ll send on the invitation.

Dragster 2 is a simple tool for creating “sophisticated drag and drop image labeling and categorisation activities”.

Many “innovative features and rich feedback” are also incorporated in Dragster 2.

This is a great little tool, which does exactly what it says on the box!

After creating your activity, you download the required files (zip file) to your PC.

You can then edit the resulting html code to adjust the look of the flash player to match the colour of your website.

The final version can then be installed on your web server or in your VLE. Have a look at the Earths Structure to see just how well it works.

Found this thanks to Stephen and Scott.

Downloading videos from the web couldn’t be easier with RealPlayer11.

The NEW RealPlayer gives you “the power to download Internet video instantly” by simply grabbing videos from Web sites with just one click.

The downloaded videos are automatically saved to the RealPlayer11 library so that you can easily watch them whenever you want.

As you hover over the video with your mouse the ‘Download This Video’ option immediately pops up as shown in this clip here.

RealPlayer11 is meant to be able to play “all major audio and video formats” - although I have not tested it with the main open source formats yet!

The Visual Dictionary Online is “an interactive dictionary with an innovative approach“. There are 15 major themes to access with more than 6,000 images and words to view.

The Visual Dictionary Online is designed to help you “find the right word at a glance“. Simply click on any word in the diagram to see the corresponding definition.

What I really like about the Visual Dictionary Online is that an audio pronunciation is also included for every word - so really you could think of this site as the ’Audio-Visual Dictionary’!!

A game of the week is also included where you can build your vocabulary or test your knowledge by associating words with images - archived games are also available.

Wondering how to make use of the video function on your mobile phone?

Well, have a look at this great little example of an instructional video created with a Nokia and uploaded to the computer. No expensive equipment or setup needed. Just a bit of inspiration!

Bite size instruction - This could be really useful for students who miss the ‘real thing’ or need a second look.

Thanks for sharing Rashmi