Top Technology Tools Revealed!

Following on from a very successful Lunch and Learn session held on 18 June, here are the top 5 tools, along with details of the presentations given at the session:


Top 5 Tools:

Top 5 tools

View more presentations from lsdavihm.

Presentations from the session:

Flickr Creative Commons Attribution Helper

A Greasemonkey script for Firefox  (Matthew Allen)

(This guide can be found, complete with screenshots here

 Flickr is an excellent source of free to use images through Creative Commons licensing. This script, written by Alan Levine of http://cogdogblog.com/ takes the pain out of attribution for these Flickr sourced images.


To run the script you need to be using Firefox for your web browser and you need to have the Greasemonkey add-on installed for Firefox.


To Install Greasemonkey for Firefox

Open Firefox and then select Add-ons ... from the Tools menu:

Then select Get Add-ons

Yype Greasemonkey into the search box. Then click on the magnifying glass. Greasemonkey itself may not come up straight away (you might get a load of associated bits and pieces instead).

If it doesn’t, click on the See all results link at the bottom of the window and it will be on the web page that opens up. Click on the button to install it.


If it does, click on it and then click on the button to install it.

To install the Flickr CC attribution helper script


Go to: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/49395 and click on the big green button. You might have to restart Firefox for it all to take effect.

When it is all in and working, you can then search for a CC image on Flickr and you’ll find two small boxes on the page with either text or HTML to paste into your caption box (text) or underneath (HTML link).

Greasemonkey can be enabled / disabled via the Add-ons dialogue box and individual scripts turned on and off through its options menu


Xerte Learning Objects Creator (Helen Davies)


Xerte is a tool for creating learning content and has been developed by Nottingham university. They have made it open source and it’s therefore free to download and use. It come in two versions -


Xerte is a fully-featured e-learning development environment for creating rich interactivity. Xerte is aimed at developers of interactive content who will create sophisticated content with some scripting, and Xerte can be used to extend the capabilities of Xerte Online Toolkits with new tools for content authors.


Xerte Online Toolkits is a server-based suite of tools for content authors. Elearning materials can be authored quickly and easily using browser-based tools, with no programming required. Xerte Online Toolkits is aimed at content authors, who will assemble content using simple wizards. Content authors can easily collaborate on projects. Xerte Online Toolktis can be extended by developers using Xerte.


It is similar to Course Genie/Wimba Create http://learninglab.swan.ac.uk/coursegenie.html. Which you use depends very much on the context and what you are trying to achieve. Xerte is good for visual and drag and drop style content while Course Genie is better for more text based content, such as gap fills.

Xerte website - http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/


Google Earth (David Gill)

Google Earth lets you “fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.”


Google Earth has been used by Dr, David Gill in The Archaeology and the Visual World of the City of Athens. In groups, students were asked to use Google Earth to map explicitly the route of one of Pausanias' three walks through the city of Athens. The students were asked to tag key points along the way as described by Pausanias, provide links to the relevant section of Pausanias, and find images of the location and write a short description for each of the images.

Initially, the students were unsure about the assessment and most of them didn’t have any previous experience of using Google Earth. However, after several group seminars teaching them how to electively use it to complete this assignment, they seemed to be more comfortable with using it. Dr, Gill discovered that Google Earth is able to provide the students with a vivid visual understanding of geographical locations of ancient cities and monuments.

Some comments from students who took the module -

“Using Google Earth helps in coursework as it assists when making a particular point.”

“Google Earth provided an opportunity to make essays more interesting”

“Google earth also makes it easier to understand places in a geographical context”
Google Earth tour http://earth.google.co.uk/tour.html  
Download Google Earth http://earth.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/download-earth.html  



Prezi (Helen Davies)

"Prezi is a web-based presentation application and storytelling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional slides. Text, images, videos and other presentation objects are placed on the infinite canvas and grouped together in frames. The canvas allows users to create non-linear presentations, where they can zoom in and out of a visual map.

A path through different objects and frames can be defined, representing the order of the information to be presented. The presentation can be developed in a browser window, then downloaded so that an internet connection is not needed when showing the presentation.”

Download Prezi from http://prezi.com/

Getting started with Prezi: http://prezi.com/learn/getting-started/

Prezi presentations can be viewed over the web (it automatically generates a url when you save it) or it can be downloaded to your desktop and viewed as a stand alone presentation or embedded into Blackboard.