There are a few tools around for embedding books and documents into websites. I have historically always been a fan of Scribd where I can upload my docs and pdfs for embedding into my wikis. Recently I have found another couple of options and am now trying to figure out which I would use. I [...]

This is a post for Mac users about the useful colour tips and tools that you can install for free on a Mac. I got these from a post by Robin Wood and have already found them incredibly useful.

The post goes into great detail about how to use the Mac built in colour picker which you will be familiar with when using Mac applications. I learned a LOT about how to use this after reading the post. It is always amazing how some things you use all the time can do so much more than you realised. I had no idea about building custom colour palettes or creating palettes from images on my computer before reading his post.

It also gives links to a couple of great free tools that add extra power to the colour picker. One of these is a free plugin for the colour picker called ‘Hex Color Picker’ which will give you the colour code for any colour and not just restrict you to web safe colours. I find this very useful for when picking colours for my wikis etc.

There is also another plugin related to the Adobe Kuler colour palette generating tool. It will go out to the website and show you the latest and highest rated palettes created by Adobe Kuler users for you to use.

Probably, one of the most useful things about Robin’s post is that he has included a script he has written that turns the colour picker into a stand alone application rather than just something that opens in other Mac applications. This is very useful for me as I can use it now to pick colours out of websites rather than have to take a screen grab and then open it in a Mac application to sample the way I used to!

I’ve just checked out the list of Edublog nominations and was happily surprised to see this blog in the list of those nominated for ‘Best resource sharing blog’. Given that I haven’t been updating as much recently, I was pretty chuffed to still be included. Thanks to those that nominated me That will help keep me making the effort to blog.

I have had a free VRoom with Elluminate for awhile now which I have to admit that I haven’t used as it only allowed for three participants to use it at a time. Still, I kept in tucked away as possibly being useful at some future point so was interested to get an email from Elluminate asking me to register with a new service called ‘Learn Central’ which is being sponsored by Elluminate or else I would loose my VRoom.

I dutifully followed the link and signed up on this network (and you can too at www.learncentral.org). What I instantly found very exciting is that they are offering the use of Elluminate meeting tools for free through the Learn Central platform to hold meetings for up to 300 participants! I copied the information below from the website written by Steve Hargadon who is a well known ICT educator:

LearnCentral allows educators to use a free public Elluminate room to hold large webinars or group meetings.  To qualify, the events must be 1) education-oriented, 2) free (you’re not charging those who attend), 3)  recordable, and 4) open to anyone to attend.  We’re really excited to see what you do with this capability, and are hoping that it allows you to regularly gather other educators around curricular interests in “historic” ways.

The current instructions are below.  This is a new service, so your feedback and help are greatly appreciated!

Before Scheduling a Meeting

We ask that you go through the live or recorded free Elluminate training (http://www.elluminate.com/support/training/index.jsp) before hosting a session, and suggest strongly that you attend another session as a participant to see how an Elluminate session works.  Please don’t go in without any actual experience–it won’t be good for you or your attendees!  :) This is an honor system, but we do ask that you are prepared as we don’t want these free sessions to reflect poorly on Elluminate!

To Schedule a Meeting

To schedule a meeting in the LearnCentral public-use Elluminate room, please create the event using the calendar for this group by going to the events tab here and clicking on “Create Event.”  Please check the calendar first and take care not to schedule over another event.  Please also leave at least 30 minutes before and after each event (so that you and the organizer who follows you both have time to come into the room to prepare before your events).

The URL to put in the calendar event, or to give out to others to attend, is https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=lcevents&password=Webinar_Guest. You can also use this shortened version: http://tinyurl.com/lcparticipant.  Participants do not need to be members of LearnCentral to attend the event, but please encourage them to join!

Once your event is scheduled in the group calendar, you are welcome to also add it to the calendars of other groups you are a part of.  If you believe your event might be of interest to the LearnCentral community as a whole, please email me at stevehargadon@elluminate.com so that I can place it on the community calendar.  You also need to email me for the moderator log-in information of this is your first time holding a LearnCentral Elluminate meeting.

Please keep meetings to under two hours in order for others to be able to use the room.  If you need a session that is longer than two hours, please contact me directly.  Also, the LearnCentral Elluminate room has limit of 300 participants.  If you believe that you will need to accommodate more than this number, please contact me directly as well.
I think this is a great service as normally it is fairly expensive to book an Elluminate session. I would have found this useful when running online meetings for ICT PD this year and I’m sure others could find great uses for it too.

With John Key (NZ’s prime minister for those overseas) at last agreeing to go to the Copenhagen summit on climate change, my mind turned to the resource I had small part in creating for TakingITGloblal’s education section.

The ‘Tread Lightly Toolkit’ looks at historical cases of the impact of man on the environment, the current issues for the planet in relation to climate change, and a challenge for students to reduce their own ecological footprint. The purpose of the resource as stated in the kit is to help young people worldwide to:

Understand the basic science of climate change and how human activity is contributing to the problem.

Realise the dangers of living beyond the earth’s carrying capacity.

Understand how climate change and other environmental issues are interconnected.

Foster a sense of personal and collective responsibility towards the earth.

Identify and adopt eco-friendly skills, behaviours and attitudes.

Become more interested in climate change policy at local, national and international levels.

It is well produced with useful resources. I helped to create the handouts on the historical examples but this is just one small part of a very comprehensive resource. Check it out at:

http://store.takingitglobal.org/files/treadlightly/TL-Teacher-Toolkit.pdf