I’d rather go canoeing !

  A question I often ask myself !!

Today I received an invitation to fill in an on line questionnaire for a large organisation which supplies ICT services and equipment. As I worked through the questions I was trying to work out what they were going to do with the information gathered. It quickly became obvious – marketing! The questions had been constructed in such a way as to illicit positive information about the company.

• “Do you think we are innovative? 1…..7″
• “Do we put learners at the heart of our business? 1….7″ etc.

Surveys like this, when properly constructed can provide useful information about the services we provide or the classes we teach. One good thing to come from this questionnairre was the last page. It was a redirect to the site which created and hosted it – SurveyMonkey. What a good site. Expect more on this later.

Google TiSP (BETA)

Not satisfied with your service provider?
Feel like a mushroom?
Web access is slow and you’re bombarded with Spam?
This new service from Google is probably just what you’re after.

Spent much of today exploring the Glow Portal. It has just been switched on for the 3rd pilot. I still find it hard to navigate around in there. I have the experience of finding something interesting, navigating away and then spending ages trying to get back. Still no VLE. I have been able to upload files and to link to content hosted outside. No point in posting a link to it – If you have a password you will know what it’s like. If you are still in the dark (along with a significant proportion of the teaching profession) there are lots of blogs discussing it and the LTS website has all the basic information.

Quite a title for this really useful little utility from Ron Mitchell at the LondonOnline project. You can download the programme and use it at no cost. It creates very neat flash based drag and drop routines with embedded sound and jpeg images. I’ve put a quick example here. It took approx 5 mins to create this from existing material. The programme also creates a powerpoint and a word version of the file.

The Glow initiative appears to be suffering some last minute hiccups – which is hardly suprising given the size of the project. LTS have delayed the training of Glow Mentors and have also suggested that the training be done locally rather than travelling to Stirling. Our own mentors here in Aberdeen came together for a brief update on 4th June. They are obviously concerned about the lack of progress and are beginning to appreciate the size of the task which lies ahead. We are currently looking forward to the launch of Glow at the Scottish Learning festival in September and to a local launch event in Aberdeen in the autumn.