Building a course reading list in Grazr

After reading OpenLearn Unit Content Feeds via OPML and Click On Series 2 by Tony Hirst (both of which use Grazr: “Easy feed grazing and sharing”), I was today inspired to create a del.icio.us bookmarks and RSS feed aggregator for one of my courses which starts in a week and a half. Here’s a report on my experiences! First-off I should say that Grazr is a web tool that takes either an RSS feed or an OPML file and, through the magic of Javascript, creates a dynamic feed viewer that can be embedded into any web page....

September 20, 2007 · 3 min

Google docs launches presentation tool

And Common Craft tells you why it matters! On on Tuesday 18th September, Google [announced](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/our-feature-presentation.html) the arrival of a new collaborative presentation tool which they call simply *presentation *. Annew member of the [Google Docs suite](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/our-feature-presentation.html) (which already includes a collaborative Word Processor and a Spreadsheet application), *presentation* provides a web-based tool for creating and developing presentations. It’s not as capable as PowerPoint, but probably passes the 80-20 rule. Plus it’s collaborative (you can share presentation development duties with others) and web publishable....

September 20, 2007 · 1 min

I've Made a DokuWiki Plugin!

I have just created my first [DokuWiki](http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki) plugin (in fact it’s my first PHP program!). It provides a way to mark-up Command Line Interface (CLI) transcripts, such as UNIX shell sessions, etc for user documentation. I’m using it to format a [UNIX tutorial](http://eehope.swan.ac.uk/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=eg-253:unixtut) for my students, but it could be used for other things. For some examples see: [test:cli](http://eehope.swan.ac.uk/dokuwiki/test:cli). For the plugin itself see [plugin:cli](http://wiki.splitbrain.org/plugin:cli) at the DokuWiki [plugins repository](http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:plugins)....

September 19, 2007 · 1 min

Note taking for students

Just a quick blog to note a couple of articles on effective note taking for students from [lifehack.org](http://lifehack.org): - [Taking notes that work](http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/advice-for-students-taking-notes-that-work.html) - [Using a wiki for note taking.](http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/advice-for-students-use-a-wiki-for-better-note-taking.html) Link from Wendy Boswell on [lifehacker](http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/156848762/how-to-take-killer-notes-299928.php). Powered by [ScribeFire](http://scribefire.com/).

September 19, 2007 · 1 min

Creating a custom search engine in Google

I was at a “lunch and learn” session on Monday talking about Personalized Learning Environments and someone asked a question about custom searches for research and RSS feeds. I just found this [article](http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2007/09/06/creating-google-custom-search-engines.html) cited in [Lifehacker](http://lifehacker.com/software/google/step-by-step-guide-to-making-a-custom-search-engine-297785.php) which may answer those questions. Powered by [ScribeFire](http://scribefire.com/).

September 19, 2007 · 1 min