Powerful Current Data Visualizations

Google Labs' Public Data Explorer lets you view and create charts based on public data such as mortality, fertility and unemployment rates. The charts and maps animate over time making the changes easier to follow and understand. I love the interactivity of these charts.

This employment chart, which is very relevant in Ireland at the moment, clearly shows the rapid increase in unemployment over the last 3 years linked no doubt to the rapid decline in the economy over the same period!!!



It is quite easy to find out from this chart that, in Ireland, over the last 50 years, the average family size has decreased from 4 to 2 children while the life expectancy has increased from 70yrs to 80yrs (approximately). Astonishing to see that the life expectancy in Afghanistan and Zimbabwe is almost half that value!

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Set of Useful eLearning Tools

The Learning Tools from UBC Arts ISIT are a set of useful eLearning tools that can be used to enhance teaching, while also providing a different learning approach for your students.

Although, several of the tools are specifically geared towards language learners, most of them can be used for any subject area.

The tools include:

• Language Pronunciation Tool - a revolutionary linguistics toolkit designed to enhance a student's comprehension and pronunciation of a particular language. 
• Vocabulary Memorization Platform - helps students memorize the spelling of words by playing a series of games. 
• Handwriting Tool Handwriting Tool - a language learning tool that helps students learn to write and use Asian characters.
• Timeline Tool - a web- based tool that allows you to construct an interactive timeline with audio and visual effects.
• Multimedia Learning Object Authoring Tool - enables you to easily combine video, audio, images and texts into one synchronized learning object.
• Image Annotation Tool - allows you to upload images and quickly create text boxes referring to parts of a diagram, painting, or photo.
• Image Zoom Tool - allows you to upload large size images and quickly author a presentation with zooming functionalities and text explanation of the image. 
• Interactive Video/Transcript Viewer - an application providing a more functional way to view video archives and preserve oral narrative, especially for academic purposes.
• Pachyderm Presentation to VUE Converter - extracts concept mapping information from a Pachyderm presentation.
  
• FileShare - for sharing large files (up to 2GB per file size) with others.

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Great Tutorials from GCFLearnFree

GCFLearnFree provide "quality, innovative online learning opportunities" for anyone who wants to improve their technology, literacy or mathematics skills.

There are over 200 tutorials available including topics such as Facebook, Microsoft office, open office, computer basics, email and Internet safety.

GCFLearnFree also provide free online classes, for the Microsoft applications, where you can learn to use these applications with the help of an online instructor.

You can also create an account to store your own personal profile and learning history.

A very useful resource indeed!

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