Sunday, March 28, 2010

Audacity Tutorials

For those of you who have the school podcast as part of your TY or LCA brief, then this is a must read (well view actually) before you delve in. Visit http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/17-audacity-tutorial.htm for all kinds of tutorials covering many different aspects of the open source God-send!!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Introducing Moodle!

Ok folks, after seven months of use I can now announce that there is nothing to be afraid of! It's fantastic and opens up so any other avenues in teaching and learning that have great benefits for all. I have used it with my first year science class and it has become my interactive textbook!! More imagination needed to it's use for mathematics but at the moment I use it for uploading end of chapter tests and their solutions so that the students can engage in some autonomous learning. I also utilise it to post up solutions / more detailed explanations for those students who may require them.

By the way it is worth pointing out that the solutions / explainations / marking schemes et al are created using a word processor package like Writer or Word along with Geogebra and MathType. It is the essential tool box for all maths teachers who are serious about using the net to distribute notes / solutions / worked answers and animated tutorials. If there is any other freeware or open source software that can be used for teaching Maths through ICT that one should add to the toolbox, then let me know. By the way I am interested in tools / software that allows you to create your own materials more so than software the offers a prepacked solution that you have to follow. Oh and Wolfram Alpha is wicked but a little too good in that it gives the solution to all problems in somewhat easy to follow steps. A students dream for having the computer do your homework so lets keep quiet about it in the classroom for the moment.

Yes there is an initial outlay in respect of time, but I would suggest that you begin by looking at moodle as a permanent resting home for your existing resources and bit by bit increase your adventurous nature, click some other buttons and see what some of the other functions can do for you.

There is a site that you can visit that gives many video tutorials on various aspects of the moodle experience. they are easy to follow and should have you up and running in no time.

The site is located at http://www.moodletutorials.org/ so delve in and enjoy.