Tools for Video Authoring

Ever create a video and upload it to YouTube? Everybody's doing it. Although the statistics haven't been openly available since Google acquired YouTube for $1.650,000,000 (in Google stock), Comscore estimated that in January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views.

Here is a video by Jon4Lakers about how to make a video using Macintosh iMovie HD and upload it to YouTube. It is not too complicated. You will note that he did this video while on a studybreak from "writing essays for business school" (note that it has been viewed almost 11,000 times - not bad for a studybreak.)

Jon4Lakers was also courteous enough to provide some instruction on how to use Photobooth on his Macintosh to create YouTube videos.

Wondering how to do this with Windows Movie Maker? It is a little more complicated, but JohnGregory08 from Australia provides a 10-minute video about using MovieMaker to create a video.

Want to know how to do specific things in Movie Maker?
Atomic Learning has a set of 63 free videos for Windows Movie Maker 2.

Screencasting
Wondering how to share what's happening on your screen? This is called a screencast. There are a number of programs that you might want to use: Snapz Pro X (Mac) or Camtasia (Windows)

Another option for screencasting is Jing. This is a free, on-line version of Camtasia by the same company, TechSmith. Dr. Z has already posted on Jing in an earlier blog posting. It is a powerful tool that will allow you to create an online video up to 5-minutes in length. Read his posting to learn more about it.

Here is a video that demonstrates and explains Jing.

The world is full of examples of educators using videos to involve k-18 learners in expressing and exploring new ideas. Here are a few examples. Those of you in the EIT class should have received invitations for becoming authors in this blog so add your own examples (followed by your name). If you aren't from this class but have ideas, add your suggestions as comments:

• A Vision of Students Today (Dr. Michael Wesch - Kansas State University)
• A Vision of K-12 Students Today (bjnesbitt)
• . . . your ideas? . . .

Photos: www.flickr.com/Aster-oid, jon4lakers. atomiclearning.com, jingproject.com

Resources for Building in Second Life

Now that my Emerging Instructional Technologies class is exploring Second Life and playing with the opportunities, I have been researching more into how to Build for Second Life. We have the good fortune of having a "Mansion in the Sky" over Iowa Island. The designer for our house is Spirit Finucane (see photo on the right.)

I was talking with Spirit yesterday after she helped me out of a jam. I asked her where would be a good place to begin learning about building in SL and she directed me to the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives (SLurl).
I had visited this place before, but hadn't spent much time there. It is a GREAT FIND for anyone who wants to learn about building. It takes you on a step-by-step progression through the process of building. Begins with defining the shapes of prims (primitive objects) and builds up from there. Each level of accompanied with a notecard that explains the concept. I learned a lot!!! Will have to return soon to continue with my education.

I have been looking for videos of "building lessons", but haven't found any overall resources. There are a few videos that I have added to the 10/2 posting of Readings/Watchings/Listenings/Doings for my Emerging Instrutional Technologies course.

What have you found for Building Resources. I plan to update this page as I learn more from my readers and as I explore the world. (I must admit that I am sitting at a coffee house right now that has a woefully slow wifi system so I can't explore SL much. Will update later.)

Dr. Z Reflects Blog Up for Blog-o-the Month in Second Life

BIG NEWS!!!

My blog DID win the "Blog-o-the-Month" for November at the Blogger's Hut on ISTE Island.
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My blog, Dr. Z Reflects, is "in the running" for "Blog-o-the-Month" for November at the Blogger's Hut on the ISTE Island in Second Life. I must admit that I am awed by the contenders. They include Westley Frier, David Jakes and Scott S. Floyd.

The winner will be selected through a good-natured poll that takes place in the Blogger's Hut in Second Life.

If you would like to vote in this poll (and hopefully support Dr. Z), you can get to Blogger's Hut by clicking on the Slurl below. As you may know, a Slurl is a URL for a location in Second Life:

• When you click on it, you will go to a webpage that says "Welcome to Second Life."
• Click on the "teleport now" button.
• Second life will now open on your computer. You must enter your username and code.
  
• Once you enter Second Life, you will teleport over to the Blogger's Hut. When you land, you might want to turn your avatar around to get your bearings.
• You will see 4 colored bars with "Dr. Z Reflects" on top.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/9/129/23

The Blogger Hut's manager, Scott Merrick, has even created a video describing how to vote.

Thanks for your support and I hope that things go well with you. See you In-World.

Dr. Z Runs for President

What if Dr. Z really DID run the world?

Unleashing the Tribe!!! Ewan McIntosh

Just watched (and listened to) Ewan McIntosh's presentation, Unleashing the Tribe: Small Passionate Communities. WOW!!!!

Unleashing The Tribe: small passionate communities

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cell mobile)

It is a 25-minute discussion of how the real technologically-based world of our students is affecting or should be affecting our educational system. He discusses the importance/opportunity of social networking in our students' lives and hopefully education. He notes that we, as teachers, need to question the comfortable ways that we teach. We need to stretch ourselves to connect with students to make the content more relevant and meaningful to the students.

McIntosh (don't know what kind of computer he uses) discusses how teachers are stuck in the model of having to master skills and material before introducing it to their students. If we wait until teachers master the technology, we will never progress. It is not about learning the technology it is about using the technology to provide learning opportunities that were not previously available. He states that "Technology is not transformative, it is pedagogy that is transformative."

An especially poignant point that Ewan makes is the connectedness of students and the lack of connectedness of teachers. He shows a "friend wheel". This is a socio-gram that shows how individuals in a group of FOF (Friends of Friends) are connected. It shows a great link between students and virtually NO links between teachers. Now I can see that some teachers might be reluctant to create "friend" links with their students. It is a sad commentary when teachers don't link to one another.

We need to turn the page in education. We need to make students more responsible for their education. As teachers, we need to look for various methods for attaining desired ends. I will pontificate upon this more in another post, but I wanted to share this presentation with you now.

BTW, you will note that Ewan is using Slideshare.net to house his presentation. He has a number of presentations there. Most of the rest of them are just the PowerPoint presentations which you have to click through manually. This presentation looks like an enhanced podcast where he has taken the audio track and then placed the PowerPoint slides in appropriate spots. There are many ways to do this but I don't know how he did this. He could have captured the sound and presentation using software like ProfCast. Or he could have used a digital recorder like the Zoom H2 to record the presentation and then used GarageBand on a Macintosh to add the slides.

Mathway: It Solves Math Problems

I just bumped into Mathway on a tech coordinator listserv that I get. It is an interesting site. You can enter math problems that range from basic math through calculus and it give you the answer. Good or Bad? I don't know.

I began by entering a formula, -3y+3x=-7(x+3) (don't be impressed, I found it on the page). It asked me what class I was taking that required me to complete such a task and I selected Pre-Algebra. I clicked on the Answer button.

I progressed to a second page where it gave me a wide selection of what to do with the equation. Look to the right and you can see the variety of opportunities that I have available to me.

As an ignorant purist, I decided to continue with the more mundane opportunity which was to Solve the Equation. It asked me which variable I wanted to "solve for." I selected y.


The next page (see left) was a total surprise to me. It did SOOOOO much more than just give the value of y. It took me on a step-by-step progression through what one would do to "solve for y". It showed each step, explained what needed to be done, and even had hyperlinks to a glossary for words that I didn't understand. WOW!!!


As if this wasn't enough . . . it graphed the answer for me.



There was even code for embedding this equation and linking to the answer from my blog (see below). This will be terrific for teachers/students who want to instruct how to complete specific equations online.

QUESTION: Is this a good thing?

Is it a good thing to give away the answers like this? Will students use this website instead of their own ingenuity to complete their homework? Will this be used for cheating on tests?

Probably!!!

There will be learners . . .no . . . students who use this site inappropriately. I call them students instead of learners because they won't be learning anything if they use this site to cheat. BUT if they use this site to help walk them through math problems that they are learning to complete in class, this site could be QUITE valuable. It is the next step after putting the answers to all of the odd-numbered problems in the back of the textbook.

This is the sort of interactive site that can place the learner at the center of his/her education. This is where the serious learner can access individualized tutorials to improve personal learning.

Podcasting from Your Phone

Podcasting is a great way to record what is happening or what is on your mind, but the technology is sometimes daunting for some educators. That's too bad because usually simple is best. Cell phones are in everybody's pocket in schools today. Yes, school policy usually restricts students from having cell phones at school, but they have them anyway. Wouldn't it be interesting to find an academic application for them?


I just returned from joining 15,000 of my best friends to ride our bikes across Iowa (500 miles) in a week. This was an annual experience called RAGBRAI and I rode with Team Flamingo. This experience is something that I wanted to share with my friends and readers so I created our Team Flamingo blog. I tried to maintain the text-based blog, but the wireless access was limited from the back of my bike. =-)

I tried posting to our blog using by texting from my Treo 800p smartphone, but Verizon decided to add 9 additional lines of advertisements to the end of each of my posts. I called up Verizon and went to their stores to find out how to stop this but it wasn't possible.

Ultimately, I decided to use my phone to post audio podcasts to my blog. It was easy to call the 888 number and leave updates about our progress. It was easy, it was quick and it was effective.
The coolest part of it was that I could embed the podcast receptor into my webpage/blog. This made it easy to access and enjoy.

I used GCast. It only took creating an account and then putting the receptor on my webpage/blog. I called up the GCast phone number, 888-654-2278. I entered my secret code number. Then I created the podcast. When I was done, I could review the podcast to approve or deny its posting. Once I have approved the podcast, it was posted within minutes. Best of all, this is FREE. You can even upload files from your computer if you want to include a file that you custom-made instead of limiting it to the phone versions. I found that I could even subscribe to the RSS feed of my GCast podcast using iTunes.

A similar service is Gabcast. You call a toll-free number (they provide phone numbers for multiple continents) and leave your thoughts through your phone. Gabcast has a three levels of service. The free version doesn't allow you to upload files from your computer but you can do that for $6 or $12 per month. Paying for the service will provide you with more storage space services as well. One capability that I found in Gabcast that didn't seem to be in Gcast is that you can link to individual recordings. They suggested that you could use this to verbally explain things like eBay postings or interesting webpages.

Westley Fryer wrote an informative article about these sorts of tools entitled Mobile Digital Storytelling for The TechEdge: The Journal of the Texas Computer Education Association. This is an informative article with lots of links if you want to learn more about it.

I don't know that this storytelling is the only way that students will benefit from this mobile digital recording system, but it provides an exciting way to chronical throughts, ideas and experiences.

Have you used these tools? If so, share what you have done.

Z