If you use Microsoft Office, in particular, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, you can now store your files online, set up specific workspaces, share them, collaborate on documents and store 5 gb of files online.
You can access your Office files from any browser and you can send files to your “Live” desktop directly from within Microsoft Office.
One way to use it:
Create a workspace for one of my senior classes and share it to each of the students in the class. Students will be making sumaries of each chapter in the course and submittimg them for assessment. Each student can sign up to Office Live, create yheir own workspace, store all their school files on it – how many times do they forget their work or don’t have a memory stick
A screencast is a digital video recording that captures actions taking place on a computer desktop. Screencasts, which often contain voice-over narration, are useful for demonstrating how to use specific operating systems, software applications or website features.
Screencast production requires some kind of video-capture software and a microphone. The software, which can be a desktop client or web-based service, captures and synchronizes the video and audio files and compresses the completed movie into a format that can be shared.
Screencasts are an effective way of making tutorial videos. These videos can be shared on a ning, wiki or blog, or uploaded to Youtube. you could also upload your screencasts to a podcast hosting site like podbean.com or gcast.com to enable users to subscribe to any of your new content.
What do you need to make a screencast?
Screen capture software. There are some free programs – these will be discussed in this post or if you are looking for commercial software, use Camtasia Studio.
A digital microphone and headphones. Don’t use the computer’s built-in microphone as it gives poor soubd quality.
To produce free screencasts, here are three options.
With Jing, you can create screencast video, take a screen capture, and share via email , url or embed code.
How Jing works
Start with Camtasia Studio
All in one Recorder, Editor, Publisher
Publish for web, CD, or DVD
Proven solution, mature product
Use a USB digital microphone
for clean, problem free audio
Affordable – prices start under $40
Plantronics USB500 or Samson CO1U
Position the microphone to prevent popping
Move microphone away from mouth to prevent popping and to avoid breathing sounds
Avoid contact with body or clothes to prevent unwanted noise
Use an enhanced cursor
Enhanced cursor helps viewers follow the action
Use enhanced cursor movement to pinpoint important information
Find enhanced cursors in Camtasia screen recorder under ‘effects’
Close Unneeded Programs
Clear the clutter from the screen
Free up system resources
Reduce problem of device or resource conflicts
Set the size the stage
Take into consideration destination (web, CD, DVD)
Reduce screen capture area to minimum size
Set capture region in Camtasia Screen Recorder
Size and place all components to fit capture region
Do a trial run
A trial run will help you compose presentation
A trial run will reveal missing elements
A trial run will help you condense your presentation
Plan to Make Mistakes
Know that mistakes are easily removed during editing
When you make a mistake, take a breath and then repeat the segment where the mistake was made
Edit ruthlessly
Editing audio and video is easy in Camtasia
Edit out mistakes
Edit out unneeded or confusing material
Edit to keep the presentation brief and interesting
Publish to flash
If primarily a screen capture, publish to .swf format
If contains video, publish to .flv format
To minimize file size, publish at 10fps, 11.025 mono
I am untidy and disorganised; I’m the first to admit it. I have shortcuts all over the desktop just in case I want to use them quickly. Fences is a program that creates virtual containers, or fences around specific groups of icons on your desktop. It is drag and drop and you can move icons to any fence, rename the fence, change colours, resize, hide all your icons by doubleclicking an empty space on your desktop.
To create a fence, right click on the desktop and draw the fence, then give it a name and drag icons into it.
The graphic below is what my desktop now looks like.
Today’s students have hypertext minds. They can “multi-task” and “parallel-process” their information management tasks. Reading or researching in a book is foreign to them. Joes non netbook
Social media is all encompassing and nowhere is this more obvious than the stats below.
Social media includes the various online technology tools that enable people to communicate easily via the internet to share information and resources. In education, social networking goes way beyond Facebook and Youtube. The power of blogs, wikis and nings to communicate with either a class, parents or the school community is a good start for teachers into the power of web 2.0. Web 2.0 with its myriad of programs is overwhelming to a teacher who is used to email, Facebook and Office. This year, I have introduced nings to my staff; a number of teachers created a ning for their class and this foundation can be built upon for 2010.
For those teachers wnew to ICT, show them the following presentation. A teachers guide to Web 2.0. Simplistic but packs a powerful message
ICT for Visualising thinking is part of VELS curriculum planning in Victoria.
ICT tools that facilitate visual thinking are ones that allow ideas and information for all areas of learning to be easily and quickly drafted , filtered, reorganised, refined and systematically assessed in order to make meaning for students. Students use text and image representations, such as graphic organisers, ICT-generated simulations and models to help structure their thinking processes and assist in constructing knowledge.
Inspiration is one such tool which allows students build graphic organizers, including concept maps, webs and idea maps to plan and organise, research and evaluate, comprehend and communicate. There are Inspiration trainer resources to give you ideas on how to use Inspiration in the classroom. Inspiration is often loaded onto school networks and students can use it whilst at school.
Unfortunately, not many students have Inspiration installed on their PC’s at home. Help is at hand! A web version of Inspiration is now available. Webspiration is an online visual thinking tool with diagram and outline views that help you to think visually, structure your work effectively and express your ideas.
To sign up for your free account, go to http://mywebspiration.com/. Be quick before these free registrations close.
What makes Webinspiration very attractive is the ability to collaborate and share documents by simply sending an invite. Everyone works on the same document, contributing, posting comments, and viewing changes. Webspiration is ideal for team projects, study groups, reviewing and commenting on documents and co-authoring materials.
I’m using Inspiration with my Year 7 English class in their planning for Narrative writing. It is difficult to get computer time to properly finish their mindmaps and to discuss them as a group. Now, they can complete their planning online. As we progress onto oral presentations and persuasive writing, I can create an Argument Development template to which the class can contribute until they are ready to start their own.
TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating what is popularly known as a tag cloud or word cloud. You can upload a file, type in a URL of a website, paste your own text, type in words. If you want to omit some words, you can create a stoplist which might filter out words like, a, the, an; anything you want to include in it. TagCrowds can be embedded or printed. TagCrowd is similar to Wordle however, TagCrowd does not have the same tools for “tweaking” your tag cloud.
Possible uses:
as topic summaries for speeches and written works
as blog tool or website analysis
for visual analysis of quotes in a text
as brand clouds that let companies see how they are perceived by the world
for helping writers and students reflect on their work
as name tags for conferences, cocktail parties or wherever new collaborations start
15 hours of free computer training in 180 easy to follow 5 minute lessons. You can subscribe and get a tip emailed to you each day or just browse all tips and download the ones you want. This is the kind of relevant and uncomplicated computer training everyone needs. Remember: a geek is a good thing!
Have spent the last few years transferring my VHS tapes to DVD. Now I need to rip them to a file to use on WDTV live. Must be an easier way!03:27:32 AM March 08, 2010from web
Anyone have an acceptable use policy for using online spaces and for youtube. To open youtube for staff, initially, we need some processes03:05:44 AM March 08, 2010from web
Spent the day converting videos that i bought from itunes to play on the WDTV live. Very time consuming process.11:03:31 AM March 01, 2010from Tweetie
Just started my first moodle site - using it for my cisco courses. BUT it looks so daggy. Has anyone got some sites I can look at?11:13:37 AM February 25, 2010from Tweetie
wow gold:
Wonderful article. I been looking for one on a similar note. I guess you always have something up your sleeve.
wow gold:
this is exactly the post I needed to see!
murcha:
When I first started blogging, I searched and searched for something like this, but to no avail. Then wordle came along and I love using this. Wonder
