Here’s a tip for you…

Word Options!

If you are quick with your copying and pasting and you do lots of it, then I am sure you are aware of the ‘Paste Special’ option in the Edit menu, and you choose unformatted text, which removes all the formating from where you copied the text.

Being able to strip formatting from text and pasting it ‘plain’ has its uses, but for times, when you want it to take on the formatting of a paragraph, or document ‘paste as unformatted text’ and then applying your formatting/styles is just one way to go.

There is a feature available in MS Word.

The feature – Match Destination Formatting. It’s a simple matter of changing a setting in Word Options and all text loses its source formatting to take on what’s there in the open document file. Here’s how you do it:

1. From the Office button – click on Word Options at the bottom to open the panel.
   
2. Come down to the Advanced feature on the left. Within it, the second section is for Cut, copy and paste which lists the four options – Pasting within the same document, Pasting between documents, Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict and Pasting from other programs.
3. Change the default of Keep Source Formatting to Match Destination Formatting. Alternatively to paste text without any formatting, you can also choose Keep Text Only. Click OK and that’s it.
   

When you do the above steps in Word Options, it will be applied to all your Word Documents from here on…

Screenr

Here’s a great article on the tool and what it can do from the Rapid eLearning Blog.

Just thought I’d share this article containing come good tips on how to make great tutorials capturing what’s on your screen and more…

• The right applications
• Setting the screen resolution
• The right equipment
• Create a script
• Export to the right format
• Finishing Touches

Converting learning material that you have developed for your learners into MP3 Audio is a great way to reach busy trainees and offer students more flexible ways to learn.

Some of our trainees work day and night and try to fit their study into their busy schedule. A lot of them are on the road, traveling from site to site so why not use that time to learn? Converting text books, manuals, or other eBooks into Audio makes this possible.

* Note, be sure to check the copyright information of any text you are converting to audio. For more Copyright info, check out the copyright resrouce sites listed on the eLearning Kit.

Here are some tools that can help you achieve this;

First you need a free Text to Speech (TTS) Program

As of today, you can add video clips to your Animoto videos! Watch a few sample videos and find out more here – http://animoto.com/video

You won’t believe how good your vids can look. Using video clips in your Animoto videos couldn’t be easier! There’s no need for a complex video editor! Just follow these three steps:

1. Upload clips from your camera or phone (iPhone anyone??), or use some from our collection (thanks to iStockphoto and Getty Images).
2. Choose your highlights. You can choose highlights of up to 10 seconds each, though we recommend using only 3-5 seconds as that works best within the flow of an Animoto video.
3. Create the rest of your video as normal, and you’re done.

The slideshow below shows you how to use Animoto;

Sloganizer allows you to put any keyword into a box, hit the Sloganize button and voila – your own slogan!

What a great tool for brainstorming, creating project slogans and much more. Here are some of the Slogans I tried;

Supporting Colleagues

To reinforce and refresh my own learning I’ve started to roll out sessions with my colleagues especially in Retail, Community Pharmacy & Personal services.

This year I have had demand from colleagues who previously weren’t engaged are now asking me for help.  Which is fantastic because they knew where to go to for help.

Adobe Connect has been engaging my Community Pharmacy colleagues who are looking at viable ways to deliver workplace training especially in distance locations.

In Retail my colleagues are asking for help with: online resources, wikis, how to do powerpoint and use a data projector for face to face delivery to engage their students.

Personal services have asked me to help them establish units on Moodle.

This year has certainly started off to be a year of action!

Supporting Industry

Another exciting moment I had recently was being approached by a pharmacy. The business wanted to establish how they could learn to use technology because they would like to run instore health promotions in store.

After assessing their needs I was able to match a unit of competency to the desired training and incorporate it into Cert IV in Community Pharmacy traineeship for the senior staff member.  The unit is called ‘Select an eBusiness Model’. Initially, I put together a presentation of how they could use moviemaker as a stepping stone and to build their confidence in this area.  Last week they were so impressed, they can’t wait for me to show the trainee how to do this and then apply her learning to the pharmacy, they believe that both the business and the community will benefit from this.

It is so rewarding to share my learning from The Learning Technologies Team to our customers.

Being apart of this amazing team has given me so much knowledge which now I can share confidently with my colleagues and customers.

Thought this site had great material for engaging students and teachers in discussions around children’s rights, use of the media and cartoons to get a message across, text types etc. It is the UNICEF site: cartoons for children’s rights

http://www.unicef.org/crcartoons/

Each cartoon listing is illustrated with a still image from the original animation, and has the following information:

• Number and theme of the cartoon
• Which Article of the Child Rights Convention the cartoon is based on, originating country, production house, and credits.
• Links to online clips, if available for that cartoon.

When you click to watch them online a box comes up asking you for a username and password for the unicef site – just click ‘cancel’. Then another box will come up asking for your DET username and password – enter these. The cartoons need to be played on Realplayer which comes on all the institute computers however if you have not opened it before you will need to register.

Call me if you have any problems and please pass this to staff who might be interested.

Cheers

Kate

I got my hands on an e-beam for the Gen Ed section at Great Lakes – how great are they! Teachers who where very ambivalent about technology were immediately engage, especially when shown all the fantastic Activstudio flipcharts that are out there that they can use.

One of the stumbling blocks for a lot of Gen Ed teachers is the literacy level of a lot of our students. Teachers don’t feel that giving computer activities to students helps when they are reluctant readers and writers. Flipcharts are colourful, interactive resources that you can use with the whole class. And if you have an e-beam you can direct everything from the whiteboard. Check out the Activstudio flipchart resources at http://www.prometheanplanet.com/ (You need a flipchart reader – download from TaLE www.tale.edu.au)

Cheers

Kate (WeLC, Great Lakes and Taree)

This tool will allow you to view summaries of all funded 2008 projects nationally, it links to the project sites, all project documentation and presentations are shared.

This site is by an Australian moodler Tomaz Lasic. Tom has some great little video tutorials on how to use and set up a range of resources and activities in moodle.

See them here - http://human.edublogs.org/moodle-tutorials-2-minute-moodles/

Thank you

A big thank you to Julian “Moodleman” Ridden for helping us sort out the issues with our NCTAFE Moodle theme. The choccies are on their way Julian!

We’re planning on showcasing what people are doing with their course delivery and to try to inspire others to give it a go.  The first meeting is in being held in Port Macquare 10th March and I’ll do updates as how it goes.  The LTT might find some of my expereinces (!!) helpful.