2008 - 2013 Flexible Learning Course

Just a quick update on what's going on in the various DFLP participant blogs. Hopefully more of us are using RSS now, and have subscribed to your colleague's blogs so that most of this is old news ;)

Rachel is on board with RSS also. She has commented about Dave's post about RSS being his primary means of information, with a note about Google's News Reader. Its great to see RSS getting more and more use in DFLP, it is certainly the next most used technology on the Internet next to email - more DFLPrs should get it going on.

Here's a screenrecording that demonstrates how to set up and get started with Bloglines.

And speaking of screenrecording! Early on a Saturday morning, as I sipped a cup of tea and read through the morning news feeds, I saw Rachel had posted another entry to her blog, this time about Screencasting - in relation to the DFLP assignment of creating a learning resource. We've seen a few experiments with screencasting in the DFLP group this time. The Community Learning Centre crew have mucked around with it, uploading their demos to YouTube. Rachel has posted references to a number of information sources on Screencasting which will be very useful to anyone else who thinks they might like to go down this road. Before you do however, do a search on YouTube, Google Video, and a few of the other video sharing sites, for the screencasts you need... do a search for "GIMP" if you're looking for image editing demos... do a search for "Google Sketch Up" if you could use demos on 3D drawing.. etc etc. There is heaps out there! Even screencasts of the screencasting software!! Rachel went another step further and found a screenrecording that demonstrates how to install the free and open source recorder, Camstudio.

Lyn has been getting to know audio. Lyn met with Terry to learn how to use the free and open source audio editing software Audacity. Lyn intends to record an interview of a colleague and post it on her blog. Unfortunately the recording got mucked up a bit, so we're looking forward to take two.

Matt is out at see with a bunch of new stuff, including an attempt to master Blackboard.. he has a great first try at screenrecording up on Youtube also! I'm not sure if he is reading the comments he is getting on his blog though..?

So, its great to see all the work that is gradually getting done - and most of it self directed! which is a fantastic sign. Hopefully all this blogging of the experiences is proving useful to others and we are seeing the socially constructed learning potential of this communication method...