Useful Resources From the OER

The goal of the OER movement is to "equalize access to knowledge worldwide through sharing online high quality content. Open Educational Resources are digitalized materials offered freely and openly for use and reuse in teaching, learning and research".

In supporting this, the OER wiki provides links to many useful resources including:
* Portals and gateways
* Repositories
* Development and publishing initiatives
* Software and tools
* Teaching using OER

Also, the recent publication "Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace", which brings together background papers and reports from the first three years of activities in the UNESCO OER Community, is available for download.

This publication captures "the conversations between leaders of some of the first OER projects, and documents early debates on the issues that continue to challenge the movement. The publication will provide food for thought for all those intrigued by OER – its promise and its progress".

Well worth checking out as well as the OER Commons mentioned in an earlier post.

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The Magic of Google Toolbar

Did you know that you can easily use Google Toolbar to find your search terms within a web page using the highlight button? If not, have a look at this short video? There is no problem if you have several different terms as they will all show up in different colours. Very useful for searching long, text based sites and for correcting HTML code!



This is just one of the many useful tools that can be added to Google Toolbar. My favourites include the spell check, translate and autofill.

As well as this, you can add buttons for one click access to your other google accounts such as gmail, google docs, calendar, groups etc. Use the button gallery to search for items that are useful for you - hundreds to choose from.

You can now even add buttons that support google gadgets - when you click on the button, the gadget will pop down from the Toolbar, no matter what site you are on and close when you are done with it.

And, did you know you can access all of your Toolbar settings and custom buttons from any computer, no matter where?  Just make sure you select the option to 'Access your Toolbar settings everywhere' in the Toolbar sign-in menu.

Then, when you sign in to Google Toolbar on any computer where it is installed, your settings will be updated and any changes you make during that session will be saved.

Powerful stuff indeed!!!

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Flashcards Collaboration

Cobocards is a handy application for creating flashcards. The editor is very easy to use and enables you to format text, add images, add mathematics formula and include links.

You can, also, print the flashcards (in pdf format) making it very easy to produce a nice laminated set for the tactile learner or for offline study! There are three print options available:
* Question on front and answer on back
* Question and answer on same page
* Sequential question and answer (ideal for mobile devices)

Cobocards provides lots of nice features, including tagging, commenting and tracking, which allow you to collaborate with others both in creating and studying the flashcards. Very useful for promoting collaboration in the classroom.

At the moment there is no facility to search for other flashcards created with Cobocards on the site. But, the Cobocards team are currently "working hard on a pool system" which "will be a platform for searching published flashcard sets, user, tags, etc". In the meantime, if you do know the URL of other published flashcards it is very easy to import them and edit them as you choose.

Cobocards is a work in progress and you are encouraged to add any suggestions for improvements/features on the users' wish list.

I like what I have seen so far and there is still more to come!!!

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Create Complex Interactive Flash Widgets

Produle lets you create highly customized flash widgets without having to know any coding. Simply use the full featured WYSIWYG editor, asset manager, dozens of web components and live data services. With Produle, it is very easy to add all sorts of multimedia content such as videos, images, text, slideshows and maps. You can, also, incorporate some interesting transitions and visual effects to make your widget stand out. It is also possible to build functioning sign-up forms and menus using Produle and once created it is easy to share your widget across different social media. This K12Online Conference 2009 widget inlcudes a countdown timer, menu bar and embedded videos. All done through drag and drop!!! Love it :-)

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