Working in Second Life

For a few months now I've been thinking about writing an article about why I decided to rent an office in Second Life and how my virtual office there has changed the way I work and the kind of business I do. I booted up the MAC this morning to get started and saw this article from Web Worker Daily. Well I guess this will save me some of the bother.

This is a really interesting article from Aliza Sherman about her usual business day in Second Life. Well worth a read.

• Just another day in Second Life

If at the end of it you are still interested in what i do in my office, here's a quick video slide show created with PhotoStory 3.

• My virtual office

Hope you enjoy this and get some food for though from it.

Best

Nik Read More..

Create Projects for iPod

This is a website that on the surface of it seems like quite a good idea. It's called Mogopop and it supposed to help users create and share multimedia projects for iPod.

You have to register (for free) and this gives you your own space (up to 50Mb) to create your own projects. You can create an image and video library them create pages and add or link the media to them, then when you are ready you can publish the whole thing on the Mogopop site for other to download and enjoy.

As well as creating your own projects, you can of course download other people's (if the they are public), but this involves downloading and installing the Mogopop manager (18Mb).

It's pretty quick and easy to install, but you have to be using the right kind of iPod. I wasn't, so I still haven't got any of the projects onto mine, there's also no way of checking out and viewing what you download before you download it, which for me is a huge disadvantage.

There is an education section and there are some promising titles in there. I also liked the interface and it did seem really easy to create projects, but downloading them and viewing them seems to be the main obstacle.

Anyway, I think this is a really good idea and one that students might well enjoy, so I'm going to persist with it for a bit longer. If I have any luck you may well see a tutorial on http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ in the next few weeks.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who tries / has tried it.

Best

Nik Read More..

Quiz widgets for your blog

A few weeks back I saw this nice and sometimes nasty collection of quizzes which you or your students can take. Many of the quizzes are interactive and when you finish them you get a widget that you can embed in your website showing your results.


Some of the quizzes would make interesting discussion in class. I particularly liked:

• The moon survival challenge (take the quiz then compare your answers to NASA)
• Is your brain wired for creativity
• How addicted to Apple are you?

There are a couple of useful ones for developing vocabulary

• How many countries can you name in 5 mins?
• How many colours can you name in 5 mins?

If your students are all bloggers and have their own blogs you can create blog awards and get them to create awards for each other. Using the fun and serious blog awards widget

Things to be careful of:

• This page is part of an online dating site, so be careful that your students don't start lining up dates while you aren't looking.
• Some of the quizzes could be offensive such as 'How much is your dead body worth?' or 'How good would you be as a human shield?'

There are lots there to choose from though so do have a look.

Best

Nik Read More..

Encyclopedia of Earth

I just spotted this rather useful looking website called Encyclopedia of Earth. It is pretty much what it says on the box and delivers quite detailed information about a wide range of environmentally related topics. It's a growing resource and they are looking for people to contribute.

There is a forum too so students can get involved in discussing some of the issues relating to the articles.

The site looks like a very credible source of free information. A lot of the articles tend to have a US focus, but there's still quite a few that don't.

The language / information level is quite high so this is for speakers with a good level of English, but there's certainly plenty of information, text, images and opportunities to interact that could make this a pretty useful tool. (Terms of use)

Hope you enjoy it.

Best
Nik Read More..

Looking at the universe

Well Microsoft had to go one better than Google's Earth and bring you the whole universe! I've just been watching an amazing video from the TED Talks website. It's about the new WorldWide Telescope that Microsoft will be launching in the Spring of this year. This will enable web users to explore the universe in close up detail by drawing on imagery from a whole range of the world's most powerful telescopes.

The images and capabilities being described on the video look really amazing. Well worth a watch!



Hope you enjoy it. Really looking forward to getting to use this.

Best
Nik Read More..

Free PDF editor

I haven't tried this yet, but I have just seen a free PDF editor on SourceForge.net

Here's what it says; "Free editor for PDF documents. Complete editing of PDF documents is possible with PDFedit. You can change raw pdf objects (for advanced users) or use many gui functions."

Sounds pretty handy. I would also recommend keeping an eye on and having a look around SourceForge.net as there is quite a lot of useful free software there.

Hope you find it useful

Best
Nik Read More..

Tackling Race Issues

This week the Big Think is running a feature to coincide with Black History Month. It includes videos from Black American leaders from a wide range of fields and backgrounds giving their thoughts and reflections on race and identity issues.

This is great material for basing lessons around and should promote a lot of discussion within your classroom.

As ever with sensitive issues, you'll have to handle this carefully, but watching the videos is a good way of raising awareness, without having to tackle the issues head-on.

Here's an example of one of the videos.



You can check out some of the other videos at:

• http://www.bigthink.com/user/nelson-george
• http://www.bigthink.com/user/kwame-anthony-appiah

For a more complete review of Big Think have a look at my Learning Technology Teacher Development Blog at:
http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/01/video-debating-website.html

Hope you find this material useful.

best

Nik Read More..