Aviary gets your creative gloves on

The online creative editing tools @Aviary just blew my mind. If you have learners who need to engage in a creative process for assessment, then point them towards the funky set of online editing tools available at Aviary. These include a 'quality' vector editor, beat mapper, audio mixer, image editor and more. It's easy to sign up through an existing Gmail or Facebook/Twitter account, and you can save your work to your own harddrive or share it with the Aviary community. Before I share it with others, I think i might have a few projects of my own to sink my teeth into.

Joomla Moodle MashUp - jfusion

For a YOUTH WORK training course that I manage, we wanted our online learning portal to have the best of Moodle and the best of Joomla, hence the Joomla/Moodle MashUp we could but won't call Moomla. Joomla does now have a LMS componant called Joomlalms, but we are happy with and loyal too Moodle but also want the great design and plugin aspects of Joomla.


We achieved this Moomla site by using jfusion http://www.jfusion.org, see tutorial below.

SketchUp Contexts for learning

This great little 3D mapping app from the ever and sometimes suspiciously generous Google company, is great fun, easy to use and could be best described as an AutoCad for dummies.

How SketchUp can be used for students studying anything related to design; but it could also be used to help students build a context for learning. Imagine a student in a Retail or Events Management qualification, could demonstrate competence in setting up a room for clients or developing a new shop window fit out.

All this and more can be done in Google SketchUp, so download it now and start pushing and pulling your designs into existence.

Hard Linking

QR Code Generator Kaywa is a nice and easy way to generate hard linked codes for Text, SMS, URL's and Phone Numbers.

Here is one generated for a course site I manage.

To find a good QR Code Reader, check out this list of good QR phone apps, or visit beetagg for a proven Blackberry solution to coder reading.

I can imagine this will be helpfull when m-learning really takes off and we can orientate students to their online training spaces with one 'snap' of their mobile phone camera. This could be placed on an orientation booklet, presentation slide or for marketing your course, how about on the back of a T-shirt.