I am currently completing my final
year of the Multimedia Degree at Tipperary Institute,
Clonmel, Ireland. Before this, from 2000-2006, I worked
as a senior programmer for Interactive Services - an
eLearning company based in Dublin, Ireland.
Karen's Top 10 Tools
as at 23 February 2008
del.icio.us (free) - I find this
great for storing my own bookmarks (to
be accessible from any pc), for sharing
bookmarks with others, and for finding
out what my friends and lecturers are bookmarking (particularly in the
technology arena). In summary - a
fantastic knowledge hosting/sharing site
Google Search - I use this for college
research purposes. I'm not sure what I'd do
without it!
Wikipedia - I use this for college
research purposes.
Adobe Flash - This is the primary tool
which I am using for my final year project
in college to develop an eLearning player.
It is also the primary tool used at
Interactive Services for developing
eLearning courseware. It's great in that
both programmers and designers can use the
one tool to create interactive eLearning
content.
Mediafire.com (free file hosting site) -
I use this all the time for college work. It
is great in that it facilitates group
projects where file sharing is a necessity.
For example I am doing a 3D Studio Max
project with three of my classmates. We have
split this project up into different areas -
setting the scene, modelling, and animation.
Once the scene files are finished, we upload
them to mediafire so that the person doing
modelling can access them for inserting the
model. He then can upload the scenes (with
model) back to mediafire, where they can be
accessed by all of us for animation
purposes. I also use media fire as one would
use a 'virtual' key drive - if I'm working
on something in college that I need to
access when I get home, I upload it to
mediafire. It also serves as an informal
method of backing up files.
Yahoo mail with integrated feed reader
(free) - The new version of yahoo mail is
great. Email in general is an indispensible
facilitator of eLearning. The integrated
feed reader is handy in that I don't need to
navigate to a separate reader (such as
google reader) to view my feeds. I find
feeds are a great way of keeping up to date
with what's going on in the world, paticularly
in the eLearning/technology sector.
Moodle
(free) - Our college uses this LMS.
It's great in that most lecturers use it to
upload course materials and resources (such
as podcasts, pdfs, screencasts, diagrams,
slideshows, links, etc). The forums are
particularly useful for asking
questions about assignments, etc, and for
general 'brain picking' of our lecturers!
Moodle has good assignment management
features also - including assignment
description, notification of due dates
and submission forms.
Audacity (free) - Extremely useful and
easy-to-use tool for editing audio. I have
found it invaluable in the various
multimedia projects I've worked on in
college this year. I use the noise removal
filter for reducing static on voiceovers
that were recorded directly using the built
in mic on my laptop - handy if you dont have
a fancy audio recording booth. Of course
using this method, you won't have superb
audio quality, but for less
formal requirements such as creating audio
for college projects, it's ideal.
XML Copy Editor (free) - A nice simple
XML editing tool. I am using XML in the
development of my final year project (Flash
based eLearning player). Color coding of
elements, attributes, etc, and the ability
to increase font size by using ctrl and
mouse wheel are two simple features that
make working with xml, .xsd, .dtd, and .xsl
files much easier. It also facilitates
actual learning of XML, with an inbuilt
XPath expression evaluator, an XSL transform
tool, an XML validator, and 'well formedness'
checker.
Asterpix.com - Like youtube videos, but
with inbuilt interactivity. Interesting
possiblities.
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