Dabbleboard saves your sketches, time

This from Webwear…

dabbleBoard-logo.png

If you’ve been using MS Paint to brainstorm it’s time to upgrade. A whiteboard solution called Dabbleboard is one of the better efforts I’ve seen. It lets you put together a map of ideas very quickly, and supports both free-hand drawing, along with a system that will automatically convert basic doodles into sold shapes like circles, triangles, and squares…

See Dabbleboard and watch the demo video.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Top Five Collections of Free University Courses

From Open Culture…

Last week, the launch of Stanford Engineering Everywhere, featuring 10 free computer science and engineering courses, got no shortage of buzz on the net. This led me to think, why not highlight other major collections of free university courses/resources. As you???ll see, each collection offers countless hours of free, high quality content. Download the audio and video to your iPod or computer, and you can get lost here for days, weeks, even months. A perfect way to distract yourself on the cheap during the recession ???

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Free Presidential Biographies on iTunes: FDR and Beyond

From Open Culture

Thanks to PBS, you can now download from iTunes a four-hour definitive biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR guided the US through the Great Depression, then World War II, serving as president for an unprecedented four terms. The video podcast run a good four hours, and it???s part of a series called American Experience: The Presidents. Other presidents featured in this series include Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. You can watch more videos from The American Experience series online by clicking here.

Also check out their resources for educators.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Learn Photoshop in One Week

Interested in getting good with Photoshop but know nothing about the popular photo editing software? Weblog Elite By Design puts together a crash course for mastering Photoshop in one week that might be a good place to start.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Yet Another Free Photo Editing App – Windows Only

Photoshop Alternative Artweaver Helps Edit Your Images

Windows only: Free application Artweaver isn’t just a Photoshop alternative like GIMP, but a fair clone of Photoshop itself. While Artweaver lacks the polish and advanced feature sets of Photoshop, the menus are laid out like they are in Photoshop and the tools function close enough that use is intuitive. The programs are so similar, in fact, that seasoned Photoshop users will find themselves wondering why a feature is suddenly missing from the menu. While it isn’t a true replacement for Photoshop, Artweaver’s feature set is robust; it includes layer management, image cloning, a history function, transparency, pen tablet support, and a host of the common filters in Photoshop. Artweaver is available as a full install or in a portable version. Artweaver is a free download for Windows only.

From Lifehacker…
Artweaver

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

If Wikipedia was a Professor, College Would Be Awesome [Citation Needed]

CollegeHumor, kings of turning internet memes into viral videos, have done it again with Professor Wikipedia. It’s pretty awesome, although I take issue with the notion that nobody wants to know the names of all the makeup artists who worked on the original Star Wars trilogy. I’m pretty sure Jesus Diaz does.


Check out the video

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Update to iTunes U and iTunes 8

This message was sent out today from Apple about iTunes U and iTunes 8:

On September 9, Apple announced a new version of iTunes and the iPod nano (4th generation). Using iTunes 8 with a screen reader such as VoiceOver on Mac OS X, or GW Micro WIndow-Eyes 7 on Windows XP and Windows Vista, blind and visually impaired students, faculty, and staff can browse, search, buy, download and play content from iTunes U and many areas of the iTunes Store. In addition, the new iPod nano (4th generation) features spoken menus, so it can be used to navigate and play tracks downloaded from the iTunes Store and iTunes U just by listening.

You can learn more about iTunes 8 and iPod nano at www.apple.com and about the accessibility of Apple’s products at www.apple.com/accessibility. iTunes 8 can be downloaded at www.apple.com/itunes/download/

As a reminder, in July, Apple added the ability to provide readily useable text descriptions (i.e., “Alt Text”) for the images within your iTunes U site. Apple strongly urges you to provide Alt Text so that these descriptions can be made available to your students on your iTunes U pages.

If you have any questions about iTunes U or how to use this new ability, please feel free to contact us directly at itunes-u-request@apple.com.

Sincerely,
The iTunes U Team

Posted in iTunes U | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Picnik


Have you ever wished you had a simple way to edit photos? Is Photoshop too expensive and complex? Picnik is your answer and it’s free.

* Fix your photos in just one click
* Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
* Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time
* Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
* Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
* Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
* Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
* Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
* No download required, nothing to install

Picnik also works with your favorite online apps such as myspace, Flickr, facebook, photobucket, Picasa and more.

Give it a try! Picnik

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dealing with Copyright

Technology & Learning has a helpful article on Dealing with Copyright. As teachers are responsible for helping these media savvy students to understand and follow copyright guidelines, this quick guide to copyright will be of assistance. The guide also covers using Creative Commons licensing. For those unfamiliar with Creative Commons licensing, it allows students (and faculty) to use content (such as images) for free, or free with attribution, or in other ways designed by the person who created it.

You can check out the article here:
http://www.21centuryconnections.com/node/302

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Professor Proposes Taking Open Education Beyond Posting Course Materials

flag_chename_322.gif
By Jeffrey R. Young

These days many professors make their lecture materials and even recordings of their class sessions free online for anyone beyond the campus to learn from. But a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas hopes to try to offer even more of his course to a wider audience this fall by allowing outsiders to participate in course discussions online.

“Serious, you can just take this class for free,” wrote the professor, David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the university, on a post on his blog AcademHack. The course is a graduate seminar on “Networked Knowledge,” and Mr. Parry had already planned to make recordings of class sessions available online. But he’s now offering to hold a weekly online discussion group by video chat for those tuning in remotely as well.

Read the full article here: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3233/professor-proposes-taking-open-education-beyond-posting-course-materials

To check out the class blog, go here: http://outsidethetext.com/arche/thinking-thru-the-syllabus/

Posted in LMS | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment