MicroHD Camcorder Experience on the PC

Flipshare experience on a PC
A auto graphic comes up for flipShare, suggesting it be installed. I do so by using the exe to install. Then computer needs a reboot.

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Videos on the camera automatically pop up when application is launched and device is plugged in. Software seems easy to use with some very basic editing tools (movie creator).

Exports simply and easily to Movie Clip format (playable in most media players).

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The program (FlipShare) doesn’t appear to have any editing tools for editing the actual clips. However it does have a ‘Movie’ function, which allows the user to string clips together to make a movie then export, or burn to DVD (with some simple DVD authoring options).

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Creating my own channel.
Add my details… the email it was meant to send me with the details of my channel never arrived.

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But I do like the instant sharing options!

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Presenting student or researchers’ work on laptops over wireless

In a recent discussion with the group working to get the SMART centre up and running, a situation was discussed  in which guests, researchers and students would like to be able to bring their laptops to the university, and in various meeting rooms and Common Teaching areas to share what is on their screen with other participants by publishing or sharing their screen to Smart/interactive whiteboards over the wireless network. And it would be good to be able to do this when working or meeting in small groups, where each group develops something on their laptop and then at the end of the lesson/meeting they can present their work to all the other groups. There would need to be some kind of interface to allow the different groups to push the work on their laptops to the various public screens in the various rooms.

Is this something you want to be able to do? Please add a comment.

SMART: live streaming of their eSim research

The  new SMART centre (stilll under construction) will have a number of special simulation rooms in which hi-tech research will be occuring. The would like to have each room fitted with an IP camera and to be constantly recording the activities in the room, and to be able to broadcast this via both high-definition TV eg UoWConnect and digital signage (located in various part of the SMART building and indeed around campus) as well as lower-definition streaming media format for delivery to staff and students via eLearning environment and other websites and also via mobile devices such as iPhones.

To enable multiple streams of the media to be processed and delivered, UoW would need to purchase a new server and locate this in the UoW data centre. I am liaising with vendors regarding quotations. I’ll keep you posted, so watch this space.

For information SMART centre, see their website http://smart.uow.edu.au/index.html

Articulate – an alternative to Adobe Creative Suite?

I met with Rob Wright from HB&s/Nursing on 29th March and he told me of the success he had been having with creating rich media teaching resources by building on PPT with products from Articulate, see http://www.articulate.com/

Rob said that he can integrate quizzes and output the lot as Flash files (swf) and import these into Equella collection (under development) for sharing and re-use. He said he is starting with some Science Education modules, with the aim of moving from lecture based resources to self-paced online learning materials. He also notes that the product has a strong user support community from both industry training and education sectors with regular blog postings around educational process and practical ‘how to…’ posts.

A screen shot from the Articulate website showing their products

I will contact Rob again and see if he can post some screen shots of the Flash modules that he has been able to output with this software. I am also talking to staff at ITS about the similarities and differences between this suite of products and that being offered by Adobe for media creation.

Brainstorming eLearning tech innovations with John

I ducked over to the Innovation Campus for lunch with John Glynn, head of the Business School. We talked blogs and collaboration spaces for communities of students, mobile applications and competitive advantage, case and role-based learning and e-simulations, alumni blogs and videos, and busted a few subtly racist myths of international student habits.

I feel the spirit of innovation growing on campus, and it’s a great place to be.

Elluminate VCF screenshots

This is a screen shot taken from a Camtasia movie of Elluminate VCS fron their website: http://www.elluminate.com/Products/Elluminate_VCS/?id=74/

The shot on the left shows 4 people  having a live session from home on what the website calls “low-end broadband.” Specifically, the video says that each participant is sending 162-200 kilobits of data per second (kb/s) and that they are receiving a total of 700 kb/s in order to see all 4 participants on their screen. This is not a high bandwitch requirement.

The right-hand screen-shot shows 2 people in a virtual class sessions collaborating on an xls file.

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Ning Social networks in teaching

Currently there are 3 undergrad classes that I’m aware of that use Ning as an entire learning environment, after a trial use by one class last session.

Ning lets anybody create their own social network and you can have sub-networks or special interest groups inside each network, which usually has a theme. I explored one called “Classroom 2.0”

After navigating thorugh to this network from an “education” themed newtwork i clicked on a network called “Classroom 2.0” and then i clicked on a “visit” link to go there. Once inside (ie on the Classroom 2.0 homepage) it looked remarkably like a WordPress blog. I wondered if it was based on WordPress with some additional code to create a visual clustering and linking between the different sites.

Can anybody comment on what exactly the students like about this particular site/network? How do they use it to stay in touch? Is it particularly easy to link through to find friends’ contributions?

The Classroom 2.0 social network (Ning) homepage      Another part of the homepage, with the special interest group links.

It certainly was easy to set up a new network, see images below you just name and pick a url, theme and colour scheme, and drag and drop the items/features to set the layout.

Setting up a Ning network

And here is what it looked like after i’d set it up. Empty. But ready to roll.

45 seconds later, a new Ning network site.