TechnoTeaching

I'm back from a week at a show at the NEC and catching up with what's been happening. Whilst there, I watched a couple of video podcasts on my ipod. One was an edition of Bonnie Mccaffrey's Quilting Show, featuring Ricky Tims, a well known, American quilter and teacher.

He spoke about his "Tech Teaching" seminars, which make use of similar kit to ours and which allow students to access a richer learning experience as a result of his use of multimedia presentations.

I've posted a link to these free videocasts before, but it could be that some of our newer bloggers could find them interesting too. You don't need an ipod but can watch online on your computer. Of course, if you have a video ipod, you can download them to watch whenever you like. Even at 4am, in bed in a galestruck farm cottage on the outskirts of the NEC! Oh, and don't be put off by the quilting subject content, will you?

Video podcast

An online friend shared this link to a terrific video podcast today - sadly, the little mp3 player doesn't have a big enough screen ;-)

But you can watch it on your laptop!

Now, where did all that free time of ours go?

Me again - podcasts this time

I mentioned podcasts yesterday - they are online "radio programmes" which are free to download and which can be copied to the mp3 player (black box) for you to listen to whenever and wherever you like. You could also connect the mp3 player to your laptop or the speakers and play snips of them to your class if you wanted.

As always, (almost) anything is possible!

Some podcasts are audio-only, others have videos too.

Explore, investigate and if you come across something you're not sure about, then ask - one of us might have the answer.

Here's a few to start you off:

Craft magazine has a podcast with some fun ideas

Then, there's Quiltcast

and Cast On which has a helpful page

on how to subscribe to a podcast.

Much help is available on this...don't panic if you don't get it all at once! Just have a go with things and enjoy the journey.

Oh, and don't forget to share what you find with us, will you?

(Find more podcasts by googling "podcast" and see what you come up with)