Recently I attended a presentation by Andrew Doutch - www.andrewdouch.com.au; let's just say that I was very impressed.
The presentation focused on how Andrew (or know to his students as Douchy) using web 2.0 technology to educate his students.
3 years ago, Douchy was approached by the Principle of Wanganui Park Secondary College, in Shepparton to research how he could use emerging technologies to connecting students and teachers. He has come a long way since then, winning numerous awards and watching the average grade of his students increase dramatically.
His own biology podcast has a listening audience of more than 3000 students and he has inspired and helped numerous other teachers at his school and in other schools to create podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts, websites, discussion boards and blogs.
After listening to Andrew, who gave us 100's of tips on how to follow in his foot steps, I decided to start playing with the technology to better serve our customers.
For example, Design Experts have created "personalised screen-casts" or "online video support tutorials". That way, our clients can learn first hand how to resolve their issue by watching a personalised video that we record for them and upload to their personal directory. If it is a common question, then we upload the video the the public folder, for example "adding metadata to a webpage"
Some of the tools that were mentioned were, that you might find interesting;
www.go2web20.net - a list of the worlds web 2.0 tools and applications
www.Jingproject.com - record screencasts
www.podamatic.com - create podcasts
www.ipadio.com - use mobile phone to create audio blogs
If you are interested in exploring these technologies in your business, school or organisation, Design Experts would be more than happy to help, or I can put you in contact with Douchy who offers consulting services to get you on the right track.
Cheers for now
Tim Gentle
