Greetings to all followers of the ICT Newsletter. Here in Ireland we are beginning a new term and with that will come a whole new round of ideas and tips. If you have been following my newsletter before or happen to stumble upon this blog – your comments, ideas and tips would be welcome and much appreciated.

 

Moodle item of the week

This week I would like to draw your attention to the news forum at the top of each Moodle page.  This is the very first activity which appears on each course and is a most useful tool. This allows you to send a message to all students of your course, as long as they are subscribed to the forum. People are automatically subscribed to the news forum, if you set up new forums you need to force people to be subscribed to them.

To add a forum which students are subscribed to
1. Click on add an activity – choose forum
2. Enter the name and introduction and click on save and display
3. If you want everyone to get your posts via email you now need to click on the
“force everyone to be subscribed” in the top right corner.

This is a very good way of sending messages to students. It can also be a useful way to record homework and if it becomes a routine students will know where to check when absent or unsure of homework. I have also found it to a useful way of giving out study tips but the trick is not to overload if you are using it in this way. It can be a useful idea to name the fourms appropriately so you might have one called  “News and Announcements” another called “Homework” etc.

Please note that unless you press the “email now” button you have 30 minutes before it is sent. The default is to get messages as they are clear to go but if you would prefer to get them at the end of the day – please change your settings in your profile (see me/email me for more info if necessary).

 

Web 2 Application of the week

 

If you are not a twitterer already then I would really advise you to go and have look at it. The whole idea is that you can only send 140 characters per message. This means that you get to follow the edited highlights of other twitterers without having to wade through meaningless waffle. You follow twitterers and other twitterers follow you. The key is to find someone who tweets on your subject and to then see who they follow so that you can build up a useful resource bank of information. To learn more about twitter and to see the excellent “Twitter in Plain English” – please see http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/ You can sign up for a twitter account at www.twitter.com and I recommend you download the twitter application or use twitterific on your i-phone/android/handheld device.

 


I-phone/I-pod touch application of the week

This week I would like to foucs on just one of the applications I found from http://theteachingpalette.com/2009/08/03/30-best-iphone-apps-for-art-teachers/ – Animoto. If you are familiar with the regular web-version of Animoto then you will already be familiar with how easy and intuitive this application is to use. You can add a variety of photos – put them together and create nice slide shows. This could be a useful project for students following a field trip or even an interesting way of creating a timeline through pictures.

 


Website of the week – if you only visit one site this week go to…….

It is hard to keep up with technology and figuring out what it means it can even harder. Check out his useful website to unravel some of it! http://www.teach-ict.com/technology_explained/whatis_home.html