I have been thinking over the last few weeks about school based pupil email provision. I have to confess we have been considering investing in an advanced Google Apps for education (paying so we can apply a policy) system for pupils after a very successful model with staff. When providing for pupils a school really can not provide any sort of ICT system without some sort of save guarding filtering or quarantine policy and this is what Google charge for.
A number of teachers have asked how we manage the growing amount of video based teaching resources that are being produced. From screencasts to Moving Image Arts coursework, from video podcasts to clips edited from our EyeTV system we end up juggling a large amount of video files which creates both storage and bandwidth issues for schools.
Over the last few weeks we have been exploring some of the less obvious yet massively advantageous activities available in Moodle courses. One of my personal favourites is the brilliant Glossary feature. The glossary allows teachers (and students) to build up definitions of key terms used within the course.
Tuaw have discovered a brilliant new application in the offing for the popular Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment. The app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is not yet available on the Apple Apps Store but this video gives a little insight into how it will function.
By the very fact you are reading this article you have probably already embraced Web 2.0 and the idea of embarking on running a Virtual Learning Environment isn’t going to scare too much. Virtual Learning Environments don’t excite everyone in education and nor should we expect them to.
Having played with a number of Mind Mapping applications in the last few months I have really grown to appreciate the range of learning and productivity opportunities mind maps offer. There are a number of great applications on the market all offering very similar tools and features. Unusually though a free application shines.
If you use Moodle you probably do everything possible to lock down who as access to the courses on your server both to protect the content but also to protect your students from outside visitors. There are quite a few steps you can take to ensure your VLE is protected ranging from the total lock down of administrator account creation only right down to email authentication.
