Loose Stitch is a user-friendly outlining tool that can be used in many ways to support learning.  An individual can use it to record and organize researched information.  Or, it can be used to help keep track of scheduled events or assigned tasks on a project.  As well, Loose Stitch offers convenient ways of sharing  recorded information.  It has been designed to be used collaboratively by a group of people working together on the same project.

I especially appreciate the ease with which Loose Stitch outlines can be embedded in wikis or blogs.  When an outline is changed, the changes are automatically reflected in embedded versions of the outline.  Of course, each outline can also be shared via its  unique URL.

By selecting text in an outline, I found I was able to use CLiCk,Speak’s text-to-speech to have outlines read aloud in Firefox.

Registration is not required to use the fully functional free version of Loose Stitch, but a “Pro” version is available with additional features.

Please take a look at the helpful screencast put together by Maureen at  DemoGirl.com, and think of ways that Loose Stitch might be used to support learning in your context.  (For enhanced viewing, view in full screen mode and select HD for high definition.)

Cobalt – Edusim is downloadable educational software for creating and using virtual worlds in the classroom.  This software is being developed specifically with collaboration and the interactive whiteboard in mind.  Edusim is still at the alpha stage of development, but I believe it holds incredible promise for  learners at all levels.  I suspect that Edusim will be especially appealing to some of the learners I work with who have identified “special” needs.

Here’s how Rich summarizes what Edusim offers:

Cobalt – Edusim is a 3D multi-user virtual world platform and authoring toolkit intended for your classroom interactive whiteboard (but equally powerful on the students laptop or desktop computers!) Cobalt – Edusim has been tested and works on the Smartboard, Activeboard, Interwriter, Polyvision, Mimio, eBeam, and even the Wiimote Whiteboard. Edusim is extendable allowing multiple classrooms to connect their interactive whiteboards for collaborative learning session.

Although Edusim hasn’t yet been released in beta, it is already available for download.  The site offers quick-start tutorials, suggested ways to use Edusim in the classroom, as well as helpful video examples.  Here’s the introductory video, showing Edusim in action.

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Loyal subscribers will notice that it’s been a while since my last post. I’m probably more sorry about that than you are. That’s because there is just so much that I’d like to write about! Sometimes, there are neither enough minutes in an hour, nor enough hours in a day. I’m back with one of those resources that has really grabbed my attention because of the potential it offers to all learners. Thanks once again to Molly, everyone’s favourite Demo Girl, for sharing it and for demonstrating what it can do.

Twiddla bills itself as a free “web-based playground” that requires no set up. Twiddla is indeed an online tool that offers a real time collaborative white board where people can work together to accomplish a variety of tasks with all manner of digital media. I think there’s also potential to use Twiddla as a presentation tool, as a study aid, and for creative expression.

For collaboration, Twiddla offers a whiteboard that can be shared by multiple users, as well as built-in audio and/or text chat that allows people to communicate conveniently while working together. In addition to putting whatever you want on the virtual whiteboard to brainstorm, or to create an effective presentation, you have the opportunity to bring web pages into Twiddla and to mark them up. It seems to me that marking up web pages is a terrific study aid for the learner or teacher who is doing or sharing online research.

Twiddla’s user interface is straightforward and extremely easy to use. Molly’s screencast at DemoGirl.com shares some additional features and does an excellent job of showing how it all works. I’ve embedded that here for your convenience. If you want to see a larger version of the screencast, you can do just that by going directly to DemoGirl.com.