eLearn 2009 and New Tools

I was in Vancouver last week attending the eLearn Conference. I gave a presentation co-authored with Susan Prion. The reception to our article was very positive and some people in the audience made valuable suggestions about how to extend our research. I'm keeping "mum" on the details for right now—I'll publicly post our research in about six months. Beyond research presentations, I also learned about several very cool computer tools at the conference. Below is a short list of the ones that stood out to me.

etherPad

I don't know how I missed this product when it first came out about a year ago. It's stellar. I think I ignored it mainly because it tends to be marketed as a collaborative writing tool (and it is). However, I saw Nanda Ganesan at eLearn use this as a live feedback mechanism while he was giving a presentation. Very impressive. So, as a collaborative writing tool it may fit your needs. But as a virtual class live discussion, or a live class feedback system, this is a fantastic tool. It's free also. Check it out.

Google Sites

Google has been doing great work creating useful "cloud" computing applications. They've really come a long way with the free Google Sites offering. Unlike Blogger (also owned by Google) or other free web solutions, Google Sites allows you to create easily complete websites instead of just a very rich web page. That's a big difference. Several people were using this product at eLearn, but if you check out Nanda Ganesan's webiste you'll see a nice example of the various things this product can do.

One of the most valuable features of this website creation software is it allows you to very easily embed a Google doc—whether that be a document, spreadsheet, form, or presentation—into a web page.

Does it create uber-cool websites? No. Does it create very functional websites? Yes. Definitely worth a look if you've been looking for a free website creation and storage solution.

Video and Animation Tools

I saw a variety of free animation, video, and multimedia creation tools used. Virtually all of these tools were either used via the web or were free-Windows-only software downloads. You'd have to check out each tool to find out more details.

Included in this collection of tools was Prezi, EyeJot, Fix8 (create animations of yourself, Windows only), Viddler, and Xtranormal (animated videos). Check them all out to see if any fit your multimedia needs.

Common Craft

I've mentioned this website before, but more and more people seem to be using it. Why? Because Common Craft has created a series of shareable animations that explain key concepts in plain English. They do a very nice job—and their explanations can be especially helpful to embed in your website if your learners need to get up-to-speed on how to use very common technology tools. That said they also do animated explanations for topics like: "borrowing money," or "electing a U.S. President," or "saving for retirement." Some of their videos are free to use, others you need to buy. However, even for the videos you have to buy you can alternatively choose to give students links to the videos at the Common Craft website (there may be some exceptions to this but I wasn't finding them). Overall their pricing policy, combined with the benefits received when buying their videos, are quite reasonable.

That's it for now. Hopefully some of these tools may be useful for you in your own educational work.