19/09/2007 by nicola.

I was sent details of this new, educational website called “The Potato Story”

http://www.thepotatostory.com

Its a really interactive, well designed site.

The website is an initiative from McCain Foods that also supports the ‘Year of Food and Farming’. It has been developed to provide primary school children with fun and engaging tools to learn about things like food provenance, plant growth and nutrition. The resource also allows cross-curriculum links to ICT, literacy and numeracy at Key Stage 2.

the-potato-story-info-sheet.doc

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

19/09/2007 by nicola.

http://www.seriousgamesinstitute.co.uk/media.aspx?item=90

It was particularly useful to see corporate as well as general education uses of virtual worlds, there are now different options for deciding on levels of realism for graphics, avatars, movement.

Posted in Technology | Print | No Comments »

19/09/2007 by nicola.

This has probably been around for some time, but I only came across it recently:

http://www.wapedia.org/en/ Has over 1.5 million articles, the screenshot helps visualise what you can expect to see. Nice idea.

Posted in mobile learning, mobile web design | Print | No Comments »

19/09/2007 by nicola.

http://www.biskero.org/?p=1774
This post has a link to a Flash lite (Flash for mobile devices incl phones) tutorial.

Posted in mobile learning, mobile web design | Print | No Comments »

19/09/2007 by nicola.

http://www.vflyerwiki.com/wiki/doku.php?id=mobile

Another sign that the mobile advertising industry is on the increase, vFlyer allows publishing of standard flyers on mobile phones or devices. Navigation and design looks very similar to mLearning which is interesting.

Posted in mobile learning | Print | No Comments »

19/09/2007 by nicola.

http://www.digitallearning.in/news/news-details.asp?NewsID=10287&inc=1

A school in South Africa has become the first to implement a mobile eLearning infrastructure using laptops and headphones across wireless networks.The pilot is the result of a Public Private Partnership (PPP), where the state government partners with related private companies such as Microsoft and IBM

Posted in mobile learning | Print | No Comments »

19/09/2007 by nicola.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2zdbuc

Almost unnoticed, Nepal is developing simple and cheap technologies that make the best of local resources and don’t damage the environment.This article describes how Nepal is using traditional methods and resisting temptation of large-scale development of technologies.Whilst they might not get a greater economic payback in the short-term, villages themselves are finding ways to improve their lives without causing mass damage to the environment.

Posted in Technology | Print | No Comments »

19/09/2007 by nicola.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/revivinganorexicwebwriting

Anorexic web writing - content is the heart of a brilliant user experience. The article describes trends in web writing as favouring short or nearly non-existent copy , written by non-specialists, which produced impatient, lazy readers. Even though this has improved in recent years there is still tendency to try and keep as short as possible which may not always work.The article also revists the use of alt text - how to describe the full impact of a graphic for those who are unable to see it e.g. “University Tower” might not be useful to someone who has never seen the tower but “Evening view of UT tower aglow after a big Texas win” is more meaningful to anyone sighted or not because of what the words convey. Footer content also mentioned as the area to ’stuff’ copyright info etc and how it could be improved using a couple of examples.
The overall conclusion is that all writing on the web does not need to adhere to standards of copy only and for writers to write as though they are users experiencing the website.

Posted in web design, Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »