Feedback

I find Xerte very inspirational!

It is highly accessible to both learners & teachers and facilitates the embedding of a wide range of activities to enhance learning and teaching.

I am curious to explore Xerte further as there are many templates I do not yet know when and how to use. I find the video templates slightly confusing due to the complexty of the formats available. Perhaps examples of what to use and when could be a valuable add in to make the selection ore user friendly.

Could we have an overview of the various video templates prior to the end of the session?

Overall a great training thank you!

Vikki Liogier

Epping Forest College

xerte

All in a mornings play:

http://xerte5.techdis.palepurple.co.uk/play_6670 this is a basic outline of a 'root LO' aka an LO that is just a shell to house links to various other LO's, the LO that this example links to was just to play around with the various options inside XOT.

Other tools to compliment use of XOT

These are just a few of the tools you might find useful as a compliment to Xerte Online Toolkits. There are obviously many other tools and sites that can be used together with XOT in one way or another. If you have your own favourites please email details to xerte@posterous.com

MAXOS http://www.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/Technical/Maxos/Pages/default.aspx although this will run from USB it will also run from a hdd if copied to the root of a drive. Even if you have access to tour own organisational XOT installation MAXOS can be useful for continuing to develop when you don’t have connectivity e.g. when travelling about and also for testing importing, exporting and customisation etc

Xerte - http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/downloads/setup.exe ideally this should be installed but again will run from USB or shared network drive if you install on a Windows PC first and then copy the Xerte directory to a USB stick.

Access Apps - http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/eduapps/accessapps.php contains a range of tools which can be complimentary to use of Xerte e.g. creating audio with Audacity or DSpeech, images with Gimp or Artweaver, Screencasts with CamStudio or Wink etc

FormatFactory http://formatoz.com
A great tool for converting Video to .flv as well as sound and image formats

Print2flash http://print2flash.com

For converting any documents to a swf file which can be embedded using the FlashPaper page type

iSpring - http://ispringfree.com

For converting PowerPoint files for embedding with the dedicated iSpring page type

PixelWindow http://www.pixelwindowapp.com/

A simple and free Adobe Air app for accurately measuring the exact size required for image use with different page types

ImageTuner http://www.glorylogic.com/imagetuner.html

A simple and free tool for batch resizing of images

Tinygrab http://tinygrab.com

A great tool for quickly capturing screenshots which are automatically uploaded with the url copied to the clipboard ready for use in XOT. Images are also saved locally for resizing/editing if required.

What would you add? What do you already use?

Xerte examples

In the subject librarian team at the University of Plymouth we have used some Xerte tutorials to provide support for information literacy.
Some examples:

For health students, a tutorial on PICO searching

http://xerte.plymouth.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=229

For education students, a tutorial on sources of information

http://xerte.plymouth.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=249

Other examples of tutorials can be found on our LiliPad website www.informationliteracyplymouth.org.uk

Julie Moody

Subject Librarian (Health and Education)

Finished LOs

I haven’t done any really interactive with the Learning Objects, but I’ve played with a few new templates today.

Context:

At Swansea University we are looking to run an”e-Learning and Cakes” session on learning objects in general, showing different ones (Xerte, Wimba Create, Blackboard Learning Module, eXe etc) with examples of each.

We also want to look at each and discuss its advantages/disadvantages. I’ve made a start on a draft one for Xerte, though it will need to be condensed – I was merely trying out some of the newer templates. The link for this is http://xerte5.techdis.palepurple.co.uk/play_6316

Another one that I did before coming on the session was one on the new features of Blackboard 9 (our VLE): http://xerte5.techdis.palepurple.co.uk/play_3643

Helen M Davies

eLearning Support Assistant

Library & Information Services

Swansea University