Learning Resources for All

Slides for my session today at openforeducation. More information to follow!

In this video, Dr Chris Speed from the Edinburgh College of Art describes the project in detail from its initiation through to plans for the future. Lots of great ideas packed into 10 minutes. And a big thanks to Chris for agreeing to do the video :-)

This three year project, which started in April 2010 and funded by the Research Councils UK Digital Economy Programme is a joint collaboration between the Edinburgh College of Art, University College London, Brunel University, The University of Salford and the University of Dundee.

Want to hear more of Chris? In this short audio clip Chris talks about a collaboration with Napier University working with the National Museum of Scotland. He also describes a fantastic use of QR Codes that he uses with his son.

Download mp3

Links

Tales of Things website
Tales of Things blog
My Tales of Things overview

My First Tales of Things Thing

So this is the video I did for my first Tales of Things thing talking about my Fisher Price Music Box Teaching Clock which holds special memories for me. Here’s the full page with additional info on the Tales of Things website.

Will you be adding your own Tales of Things? If you’re considering it, there’s a FAQ that’s worth reading on the Tales of Things website which has some useful guidelines.

In this quick video I talk about using QR Codes on calendars. They could be used to highlight various resources. The QR Codes could also point to a placeholder or holding page which is only activated after a certain date. That way you’re not tied to specific content when planning your calendar. You can plan on the go and share any late breaking resources or new technologies, competitions, giveaways, time critical resources like study skills etc.

This video was shot, edited and uploaded on my iPhone 4 using the new free vimeo app. That was the primary reason for putting the video together :-)

Things I did

1. Shot the clips. The front facing camera records at a lower resolution than the rear facing cam so the first clip was set to fill the frame.
2. Trimmed video clips
3. Added a short fade-in transition between clips
4. Added a still image for the title slide from the camera roll*
5. Added a text title

*took me a while to figure this one out. You’ve got to allow the app to use your location to gain access to your camera roll. It’s some crazy Apple restriction which I’ve seen in other apps.

Things that were problematic

1. Couldn’t add my own music made in Garageband from iTunes – didn’t recognise any tracks via wireless or connected directly via usb
2. Using built-in music as soon as you adjusted the audio it would mute the track – so no music in this video.
3. Couldn’t upload in HD quality – render failed. Then when it did upload second time round Vimeo declared that it was an incompatible format :-/ Uploaded it in SD quality on the second attempt
4. Bombed out a few times without saving my edits.

Overall, despite the bugs it’s a good first attempt and all the better for being free. Looking forward to the bug fixes and some refinement in the user interface.

I was asked how to generate QR Codes at one of our forums recently and I mentioned QR Code generator sites like kaywa or delivr. I also mentioned a very quick way to do it if you’re encoding web addresses – use a URL shortening service like bit.ly or goo.gl.

The benefits are two-fold. You get a less complex QR Code (therefore faster to decode) and you automatically have access to the QR Code.

To do this just add .qr onto the end of any bit.ly or goo.gl shortened address, for example bit.ly/qrapps.qr Then right-click and copy the image into an application of your choice.

To get the QR Code plus some useful stats like number of times the URL has been accessed simply add a plus sign (+) on the end of your bit.ly or goo.gl address, for example bit.ly/qrapps+

My solution was to build a breakout cable*. In this video I demo some ways to use the cable and then talk about how to make it.

Hardware demoed: Plantronics DSP400 headset and a Sony ECM Z60 microphone. A quick word about the mic. iOS** devices are pretty particular about mic characteristics. The Z60 is an electret mic which is what the iOS device expects to see so you don’t need to use the battery pack for the Z60 as the iPhone will provide enough power to drive the mic.

Software demoed: Skype, Voice memos and AudioNote. AudioNote is an audio note taking app for iOS devices which works in a similar way to a livescribe pen. It syncs your recorded audio with the notes you have taken.

Cable Schematic

Maplins Part List

3.5mm 4-pole jack QT65V
3.5mm stereo line socket FK04E 2 off
some single core screened cable

* You can buy ready made cables but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun :-)
** iOS device = iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad.

I would have been doing a QR Code session today so I thought I’d make a short screencast of what I would have delivered.

I give a brief overview of QR Codes, a quick look at how they are being used generally then move on to more educational examples, show you how to create your own QR Codes and finally talk about some things to think about when using QR Codes institutionally.

And here are the slides with active links that I used in the screencast above.

If you’ve got any questions or queries about QR Codes please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’re here to help :-)

Other related QR Codes posts on this blog

QR Code Icebreakers
Simplifying your QR Codes for Easier Scanning
Shorten your URLs with Goo.gl
QR Codes – For the easily amused: me!

Some external QR Code links which may be of interest

Tom Barret’s Interesting Ways to use QR Codes in the Classroom part of a user-contributed series on ways to use learning technologies
Don’t waste your time Blog QR Codes: In the Classroom
TechDis: Upwardly Mobile: Getting started with inclusive mLearning QR Codes

Delicious is a social bookmarking site that lets you bookmark your favourite web resources or URLs. You can also search Delicious for resources. If someone has bookmarked a resource it’s usually because it’s useful in some way and we can use this to our advantage when searching for useful resources. You don’t need to have an account or be logged in to search Delicious.

In this short video I look at three quick ways to find information on Delicious

1. Explore Tags

On the Delicious Home Page, there’s an Explore Tags tab (1) which we can use to search for tags.

A tag is a keyword that users assign to a bookmark to describe the resource. So I’m interested in QR Codes at the moment so I’ll type in qrcodes (2) omitting the space. In delicious, tags don’t have spaces. QR Code related bookmarks could also be assigned tags such as qrcode and qr. You’ll get a feel for the various tags when you see the search results

You can also search for multiple tags so I could filter this search further by typing in education. So it returns all the recent tags with qrcode and education.

TIP: Each Recent and Popular tag search on Delicious has a handy associated RSS feed and if you’re familiar with RSS feeds you can subscribe to this feed by copying the RSS address into something like Google Reader and automatically be kept up-to-date with, in this case bookmarks being tagged with qrcode and education.

You can also search for Popular tags.

You can only search for one tag at a time but it’s a quick way to get a list of popular resources for the subject you are searching for.

2. Full Search

Delicious also has a global search facility and it will search not only tags but bookmark title and associated notes. You can refine your search in a number of ways. For example, restricting it by date, wrapping it quotes and filtering by tag. I go into more detail in the video.

3. Sort by Popularity

Finally, you can sort your results by the amount of times a resource has been bookmarked by using the Greasemonkey Firefox extension.

Greasemonkey lets you change the look and feel of web pages and here I’m using two scripts; AutoPagerize and Sort Visible Links. AutoPagerize lets you see multiple screens of information on one page. It saves you scrolling down the page and hitting the next page button. As soon as you’re at the bottom of the page it automatically loads the next page. Once you’ve got a few screens listed on the one page you can then use the Sort Visible Links script to sort the bookmarks into the most bookmarked resources.