Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Solving email problems
Today I learned how to solve outgoing email problems.
The problem: Email was coming into a new installation of Thunderbird but outgoing mail was throwing up an error message.
We checked:What turned out to be the problem? Using a friend's network whose ISP appears to block the use of port 25
- The details of the outgoing mail server
- The usernames and passwords of the relevant accounts
- The security requirements of the mail server
- The setup of Thunderbird connecting to the Internnet (no proxy or other strange setting being used)
- The appropriate details like reply-to are filled in correctly
Solution - use port 26!
This may help others in future if you have a strange outgoing email problem.Labels: email, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 7:07 PM
Sunday, 10 August 2008
Handy programs to put on a USB stick
The first program I really felt I needed to carry around with me was Audacity - it was a program I was using a lot to introduce lecturers to podcasting, and it wasn't installed by default on the University's computers. So here's a great idea - keeping a selection of useful programs on a USB stick/flash drive. Useful for any trainer, especially in those institutional settings where you don't have admin access to the computer.
Audacity portable is here along with other portable applications from the same source.
Portable Apps is a menu driven 'work suite' for your flash drive (or any external drive - could be a external hard drive). You download the PortableApps.exe file, and when you run the setup (choosing either a full or a lightweight version) it installs working applications on your flash drive.
If you're not convinced, read a review of portableapps and another from Web Worker Daily
Here's a list from Snapfiles (with the downloads)
More tips from the blog Less Gravity
An alternative site of portable apps from the Italians WinpenpackLabels: flexible working, freelancing, homeworking, m-learning, mobile computing, portable apps, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:11 AM
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Your first experience of computer technology?
There's been an interesting discussion over at the ELESIG community (ELESIG is the HEA Special Interest Group for researchers into the learner experience of elearning),
about "What was your first experience of computer technology?" and how it affected people's subsequent ventures into using computers for work and learning.
I’ve been interested for many years in the expectations and attitudes to technology that learners bring to elearning, and find that establishing their early experiences can throw quite a light on the kind of support and encouragement they need.
As elearning professionals we can tend to assume that everyone knows the basics these days – but there are still numbers of people, especially but not exclusively adult learners, for whom computer technology is still a monster they haven't tamed.
In the ELESIG discussion Various experiences of early computers from VAXs to BBC micros to Sinclair ZXs and Spectrums, writing early programs in BASIC and using punched cards.
There were few negatives - as you might expect for a group so closely involved in technology - although even in this group some admitted that their early struggles influenced their now tentative approach to new technologies.
Obviously some posters were fascinated by computing itself - programming and playing with the technology - but a larger group had become more interested in the possibilities that computers represent, for communications and interaction, and particularly for learning: 'imaginative and cutting edge ideas then that revolutionised some students’ learning', 'something so inspirational and motivational that I wanted to give up my own time for learning'.
One particular comment I liked was about the person who said many years ago 'one day everything would be done by computers and they would be small, throw away items' - and she didn’t believe them. What predictions could we make now - especially about uses of technology for learning - that would be equally unbelievable?Labels: computers, early experiences, elesig, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:57 AM
Monday, 11 February 2008
Digital Radio - am I onto a losing thing?
The BBC reports today on the closure of two digital radio stations, The Jazz and Planet Rock from GCap Media. They state that "DAB Digital radio is being portrayed in some quarters as the 21st century's version of Betamax, the video format that lost out to VHS in the 1970s." Consumers seem to be turning more to the Internet for radio. However, you can't connect to the internet from your car ... but "only a minuscule number of cars in the UK have a DAB radio installed."
My car is one of those with a DAB radio installed - it's a SEAT Ibiza and it came with a DAB radio as its special feature. However, we can't get digital radio inside our house (because we're behind a ridge). So I have mixed feelings about whether DAB radio is worth it. But I certainly don't want to be stuck with the radio equivalent of a Betamax video!Labels: digital radio, media, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:21 PM
Monday, 18 June 2007
A mosaic of some of Flickr's images tagged "learning technology"
1. SmartBoard - saved Flickr favorites in a mosaic, 2. Wireless world, 3. montage, 4. kid_camera_rwanda photography workshop 2006, 5. Pioneer's" Hologram, 6. Ballroon Dancing Robot, 7. Nasa Exhibit, 8. Da Weeg (is nerdcurious), 9. The Techno TwoLabels: e-learning, images, learning, photographs, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:13 AM
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Culture and technology
So often those who start using learning technologies (or creative technologies, or social technologies....) carry over into the new context assumptions, methods and processes that were appropriate in the old context but not in the new. However, it can take time for new ways of working to be discovered and to develop. By throwing off the old it is possible to explore affordances of the new technology that the old does not have and may release creativity and innovation.
Some examples:
Stage play to Film
When film was first invented, films were merely recordings of stage plays because that's what people were used to. It took time - and the development of the technology - before film developed as a medium - simple things like zooming in, filming outside the theatre=studio, moving, short scenes - all those features of film that we are now very familiar with and have since gone on to influence another new medium - television - and on and on....
Manuscripts to print books
I have a book that was published in 1475. It still has the spaces at the beginning of each chapter for the initial letters to be painted in. Other features of early books which were carried over from manuscripts include the use of abbreviations (much easier when laboriously writing common words to abbreviate them) and the lack of spaces between words (to save precious vellum).
In many ways, I believe that multimedia hypertext should owe more to those original manuscripts than to the print book - which is a sort of cul-de-sac in the development of text...
Stagecoaches to trains
Early trains had carriages with side to side seating in, just like stagecoaches. It wasn't for some time that the longitudinal layout with a corridor was invented. The stagecoach had to be filled with as much seating as possible in a small space to be economic - but the train is a bigger canvas.
Roman to Arabic numerals
Have you ever tried doing long division with Roman numerals?
It can't be done. Long division could not be invented by the Romans, it needed a new system of number.
The use of technology is embedded in cultural practice, and the job of a learning technologist or e-learning champion is to challenge such practice.Labels: culture, e-learning, history, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:50 AM
