aclJohn's Communication Finds

The icebreakers website features instructions to several "playtested", high quality free icebreakers, fun games, and team building activities - perfect for...

• group facilitation;

• the first day of class (teaching);

• training; and
  

• icebreakers for 'meetings of all kinds'.

To achieve good group dynamics or just for fun, these free icebreaker games can be useful as...

• learner group activities;
  

• business and corporate training activities;

• learning provider group activ...

Visible Tweets is a visualisation of Twitter messages designed for display in public spaces.

Visit http://visibletweets.com/ to try it out.

• Just enter the tweets do you want to visualise; users can use all Twitter search operators shown at http://search.twitter.com/operators; and
• Choose the type of animation you wish to display...
  • Letter by letter;
  • Rotation; or
  • Tag Cloud.

An ideal tool to display tweets at workshops, conferences etc., in the learning environment and I'...

Communication via social networks - twitter, facebook etc. - where only authorized users will be able to read.

I haven't got my head around this resource and its full potential within the learning environment but, being able to communicate via social networks with a degree of privacy, has to be attractive.

How does it work:

1. Type your text (or copy-paste)

2. Set user name/password pair for the note

3. Get the software generated short link for the note

4. Send the link (...

Annotated Links lets users enter links (URLs), one per line, and a sticky note with instructions, questions, annotations etc.

Clicking the Submit button creates a URL that can then be posted via social networks, email, VLEs etc.

Again this has a lot of potential within teaching and learning.

Try it out at http://linkstore.ru/al/.

Dr. Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, a forward-thinking professor open to the intelligent use of new media...

• wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom;

• had heard of Twitter...

• collaborated with the UT Dallas, Arts and Technology - Emerging Media and Communications (EMAC) http://www.emac.utdallas.edu faculty

Watch the interesting video clip that was created at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVW...

alertful...

• is completely free;
• reminds users (and others) of important events by email;
• doesn't require registration

Note: At the moment there is no way to stop a reminder. Once sent it's gone, just like any email; if however upon receipt of an alertful email, sent on a recurring basis, such as a personal development review (pdr) once a year, by clicking "Unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email, users will receiving these email sequences.

Visit http://www.alertful.com/ to try it o...

pdfs are one of the most popular document formats as, regardless of platform (apple, windows, lynux etc.), they can be accessed using free pdf readers.

However securing pdfs is not that easy. Learning providers (especially smaller ones), practitioners and learners alike, won't want to purchase the relatively expensive Adobe Acrobat software just to encrypt their documents; so this is where PDFProtect comes in.

PDFProtect is a free online tool that lets users easily password protect PDF...

Ontext, a Russian online tool, is intended to provide a communication channel for rapid publication of textual materials onto the Web.

Why use Ontext?

• Publish text to the Web quickly;
  

• To overcome the limitation of Twitter and other similar communication channels;
  

• Save text on the Web by hiding it with a password;

• Run a simple text blog/reflection journal with an RSS-channel;

• Get access to stored data from anywhere on the Internet or via a mobile phone

To use Ontext...

Using mozaiq practitioners and learners can hide secret, encrypted messages inside an image that will be invisible to the naked eye and undetectable to everything but careful mathematical analysis.

Even if detected, the message will be...

• stored encrypted using a password of your choice;
• all but impossible to read!

Hiding a message like this is known as steganography; part art form, part science and many different methods to do it. The Wikipedia article on steganography provid...