HandBrake is a multi-platform, open-source, multi-threaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter. It can be used with Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. It is very user-friendly. I have been using this software to convert the videos that we make in our Interactive Video Network (IVN) rooms to make them accessible online for instructors and students. Using this software in no way releases the user of being liable for copyright infringement. Before using this software to convert a DVD, the user should make sure that doing so will not violate any copyright laws.
I found a new Web 2.0 tool that is pretty cool. It is a free virtual classroom called WizIQ. You must create an account to be able to use the virtual classroom, but it is free. You can create meeting times and invite other members to attend. It allows you hold live meetings with audio and video. It also has a text chat area. It allows you upload content that will show up in the content area for everyone in the room to see. It has a great eBoard toolbar with all kinds of visual tools to use to make annotations on top of your content (very impressed by the amount of options on the toolbar). It has a tabbed content interface to allow you to have multiple content open at the same time. It has a large set of math symbols to use as well. When I tested it with a colleague the audio and video worked very well.
The meetings are archived, but I couldn’t figure out how long the archives would be available for me to view. There are some other things that would be nice to have, such as application sharing, breakout rooms, and a call-in phone number for users that might not have a microphone. With that said, for a free application, this is a very nice. There is a premium membership that you can pay $49.95/year for additional features.
September 6, 2008 at 7:58 pm
· Filed under Web 2.0 ·Tagged rss
I have been using RSS feeds for a while now so that information comes to me and I don’t have to always go out looking for it. I have found that it is a great way to fulfill my quest for learning without having to go out and search all the time. I subscribe to blogs, news feeds, and podcasts. When I happen upon a new RSS feed that looks interesting I will add it to my growing list of feeds. My problem, now, is trying to keep up with all of these sources of information. I try to read at least a lit bit everday as well as listen to a podcast or two, but my feeds bring in more information daily than I can get to. I would love to be able to read, listen, and watch everything that comes into my inbox, but I can’t seem to find the time. I am struggling with where to draw the line because there is so much good information out there I want to learn from.
On the other hand, how amazing it is that we live in a time where there is such a wealth of information available on any subject available right at our fingertips 24/7.
We are struggling with how to create policy for using social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Ning, etc.) at our institution. We are concerned about security, that students’ private data will be misused and how our university could be held liable. Right now, the unofficial policy is to NOT recommend any of these tools to our faculty. It seems to me that there should be a middle ground, a way to develop reasonable policy to protect the institution, students, and faculty and use these tools to enhance our educational institution.
I would love to hear recommendations from anyone who has addressed this issue or who might be going through the same issues and how they are approaching it.
Ning is a social networking tool. The sign-up is free and you are able to create private and public networking sites. A public site is like a Web site where everyone can see what you put up. A private site requires that you invite users to join the site for them to be able to see the content.
I have been using Ning for about 6 months now. I have created 3 Ning sites so far, one for our family that is spread out all over the U.S., Europe, and Africa. I created this one as a private network so that only those I invite can join our network. I also created a private site for our Boy Scout troop. I created one public site for the Scoutreach Division of our local Boy Scouts of America, of which my husband is the director. He uses this site to communicate with parents, volunteers, and others in his district about events and what is going on with scouting in his district.
We are getting ready to roll-out podcasting here at our university. It has been over a year in the making. We began with a pilot last summer, but it has taken this long to work out all of the kinks of technical and policy. We had intended on using iTunes U but that has been put on hold for reasons I won’t go in to. We ended up developing our own internal solution. We got the idea from Mississippi State University but ended up developing are own from scratch. We use LDAP authentication so that only our faculty, staff, and students will have access to the application. Only faculty and staff have access to create podcasts and students have access to view podcasts.
We hope to be able to implement iTunes U at a later date, but we have run into road blocks with that so we are not sure when that will come about.
Many discussions of policy about use, accessibility, and best practices went into this before we are arriving at this point. We are set to release our solution university wide July 1st and so now I am feeling the pressure to finish all of the documentation as we will be offering our first training in just a few weeks.
In training, I plan to not only talk about the technical side of podcasting, but also include information about the pedagogy as well. I think it is is important to emphasize certain best practices and using the technology appropriately for their courses.
As we get materials up on our Web site, I will post links to those.
I am currently in the process of writing my first grant. I am working with my husband who is the Director of Scoutreach for the Boy Scouts of America in our local region and we are trying to open a Technology Resource Center for at-risk youth in our area. Many of the youth we work with have never had a computer in their home and have limited computer skills. We would like to use this center to teach them skills that will allow them to be more competitive applicants when applying for jobs. We would also like to use the center to help them improve their skills in other subjects, such as math, english, etc. We plan to have games on the computers that emphasize skills in each of these subjects to allow them to have fun and enhance their skills in these areas. We would also like to use the center to hold after-school camps and summer camps to give another place for students to get off the street and come and have fun while learning something new. I am very excited about this project and hope that we are able to find funding.
SlideShare is a great resource to find presentations on different subject areas. This site is so easy to use. The only thing you have to be careful with is if you download a presentation to make sure and give credit to the person who created it. I do like that you can embed the presentations inside of your Web site as well. It makes it so easy to share with others.
SlideShare allows you to create a free account. You can share your presentations publicly or keep them private and share them with those you choose to. The site also allows you to upload audio to synchronize with your presentation.
I’ve uploaded 2 of my presentations to SlideShare so far and I linked to them below:
I think VoiceThread is a great tool. I really enjoyed using this to create a slide show of pictures from a recent trip we took. I showed it to my husband and he was blown away. He wants to use it to create slide shows from our trips to send to family and friends. He got so excited about it.
Right now, they only offer free pro accounts for K-12 educators, but I sent an e-mail to the creator to see if they would ever consider opening this up for higher education educators in the future or offering site licenses for universities and he said that they would like to head that way, but because it is so small right now, they don’t have the resources to offer this right now. He said they really hope to expand in the future though. I still think this is a great tool for instructors to have their students use. I think that would be especially helpful in the K-12 environment where students can have the opportunity to express what they have learned with pictures and audio.
Eyejot is a video messaging tool that allows you to create a video message to send to someone else. Eyejot allows you to create a free account and create video messages for up to 1 minute for free to send to any e-mail address.
This is a very cool tool. Sometimes it is hard to put what you want to say in text form and having a video message option can make your messages more personal. This is a great option to send greetings to family and friends who you might not have been able to see in a while. I am always a little nervous being on camera (not my favorite thing), but I really like this tool.
This tool has a lot of potential for use in education. For classes that meet completely online, it is a nice way to create a community among the class by having them each record an introduction message which makes it feel more like you know the people in your class. This would also be great for students to practice to help alleviate their fears of being in front of the camera to record presentations for class.
Tools like EyeJot will become more of norm as more and more courses continue to go online. The downside to this tool is the limit of 1 minute messages on the free account. They do have paid accounts as well. EyeJot PRO bumps the recording time up to 5 minutes a message and the ability to upload pre-recorded video. It is $29.95 a year. They also have a PRO Plus account that is $99.95 a year which allows you to add your own branding/logos to the EyeJot messages and attach documents to your messages. You can compare the features of each account using a the comparison chart on their Web site.
