See Damaris Schools: FREE sample lesson for A Level RE (Philosophy and Ethics modules).

Now one way to do it would be with ‘clicker’ technology, though that isn’t very widespread at all in NZ (but I stand to be corrected). The other way would be to take an ‘Idol’ approach - TXT/SMS messaging that’s collated automatically and the results put up on an internal web page or such. Different costs, I guess. The one-off cost of the clicker against the ‘micro’ costs of txt-ing. Given the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones in the NZ context, perhaps working towards the TXT approach would work.

In a class of 300-odd doing the non-anonymous survey of hands doesn’t really cut it.

I’ve been playing around with Hot Potatoes which gives you some of this functionality. It feels a bit clunky in places, but it will certainly get the job done if you want basic multi-choice quizzes, crosswords and matching exercises.

If course if you want to create a quiz that logs the results against the student (say for assessment purposes) then you’ll need to step up to something more like an LMS.

(Oh, and I think I left NeoOffice (based on OpenOffice) off the original list too.)

Firstly, TidBITS - Endnote, Bookends, Sente, Zotero, oh my, which looks at possible alternatives to EndNote on the Mac by an ecologist - with follow up comments by others.

Then there’s a review and a follow up at on the SBL web site of Bookends (which, like Sente, integrates well with the Mellel word processor). See Society of Biblical Literature - Bookends Review: Bibliographic Software For Mac and Society of Biblical Literature - Update to Bookends Review.

Also, does anyone know anything about the Windows software Nota Bene?

I have Zotero installed on the old iBook and it’s integration with MS Word v.X for Mac is quite painless and seems to work well. Certainly I think it’d be useful for working on shorter documents (essays, articles and chapters) providing you were using a common citation style.

Of interest particularly to biblical scholars is Zotero Forums - Using Zotero with the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) style. SBL with EndNote is supported (see here), though it is only for versions later than EndNote 9, I think.

See also:

• Greenflame · MS Word’s native bibliography/citation handling?
• Greenflame · Thinking about writing tools

Links:

• Create a bibliography - Word - Microsoft Office Online (Word 2007).

• Microsoft Word Processing Software for Your Mac | Mactopia (Word:Mac 2008)
• AppleInsider | Road to Mac Office 2008: Word ‘08 vs Pages 3.0 [Page 3] (Some screenshots of the tools)

Here’s one from the American Library Association that uses Alex Ross comic book watercolor artwork (and a couple of others) to promote reading. See Comics Should Be Good! » Some Neat Posters

“Metal Swarm” by Kevin J. Anderson (Book 6(!) in the “The Saga of Seven Suns” series). Should be right up my alley - ancient powerful alien races continue ancient wars while plucky humans (with strange alien sometime allies) strive to survive. It’s Babylon 5 all over again - even down to the human politics and civil war. But it reads really badly - too many characters to follow and a million very short chapters focusing on different characters means it feels like watching a TV where someone’s changing the channel every 10 seconds. No time for empathy to develop with any of the characters, and by now it feels like it’s just going through the motions. On a plus side you can skip whole chapters and not miss much of the plot. Undecided on whether I’ll read the next book.

“The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” by Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Recommended to me by a non-scientist/non-theologian (in the professional sense) so I’ve picked it up from the library. As usual I’ve started reading from the back, in this case the first few pages of the appendix on bioethics which gives some nice summaries of that field. (See also: Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . PROFILE . DR. FRANCIS COLLINS . July 21, 2006 | PBS)

“Saturnalia: A Marcus Didius Falco Novel” by Lindsey Davis. Falco novels are like a comfortable old pair of slippers for me. When I don’t feel like reading anything too heavy then I get the next one out of the library. I didn’t really like the last one (“See Delphi and Die”), but you know what you’re getting and I’ve always been interested in Ancient Rome. “Saturnalia” improved on the last book, but still missed something of the dramatic tension present in the early novels. (Related information: Second-born (9) has been devouring the children’s equivalent of the Falco novels - Caroline Lawrence’s “Roman Mysteries” - effectively a ‘Famous Five in Ancient Rome’)-

“Practical Theology: On Earth As It Is in Heaven” by Terry A. Veling. Because it was spoken highly of over at Simply Simon: Practicing theology and Simply Simon: Practicing theology II.

“The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology (Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology)” by John Patton. Because it was near the Veling book on the shelf in the GSC library, and because it covers a wide range of perspectives on the field.

“Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction (Online Teaching and Learning Series (OTL))” by Rita-Marie Conrad and J. Ana Donaldson. A book that collects a large number of different online learning examples and is really useful for showing you what other people have down and why, and also for helping design your own activities and assessements.