Archive for the ‘reviews’ Category
YouTube Center, a power user extension for your video usage in class
2013/08/27
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- YouTubeCenter comes for a variety of browsers, but note that Firefox seems the only practically supportable browser in our campus computing environment.
- To download and install, go to : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-center/ and click on:
- There is not shortage of settings (e.g. preselected is the Dash Playback, useful to speed up jumping around a video, by disabling streaming):
A comparison of options for student oral photo presentation assignment
2013/01/15
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- Objective: Student presents personal photos in target language (e.g. home). b
- Contenders for Tools:
- Voicethread (free version)
- University-environment
- For Multimedia authoring:
- MS-PowerPoint
- not yet contenders
- MS-Community Clips (screen capture recording, to be installed)
- benefit: single purpose, record yourself talking while flipping through the images on your computer
- cost: new tool to learn, and no long term perspective
- Sanako Student Recorder: not a contender, it has subtitling options, but cannot author multimedia presentations (teachers used to with the Sanako authoring tool, but this is not longer supported).
- MS-Community Clips (screen capture recording, to be installed)
- As LMS: Moodle.
- For Multimedia authoring:
- Comparison:
- Student
- Authoring:
-
Assignment submission: Voicethread (free) has no support for assignments, only for sharing. Students have to find a way to submit their Voicethread,
- Sharing/peer-editing/grading:
- (Moodle would win where it has peer-grading options. YMMV:) Sharing within the class is possible, but sharing with "anyone" is a privacy (possibly FERPA) issue, and sharing with a handmade class list (no import) is tedious.
- Teacher: grading
- Managing submissions
- (LMS wins?:) Voicethread (free) does not allow an export that could be uploaded to the LMS. Student can email links or invitations like these: . It is up to you managing them, and completion of assignment and grading for the class. This is no LMS gradebook.
- (Voicethread wins:) PowerPoint can be saved as a slideshow that starts on click (save as .ppsx) (including with narration). But opening and listening, without the need for saving to a local file, remains easier in Voicethread.
- (Voicethread wins:) Providing feedback is possible, including oral – but is this insert recording? And providing editing access is not the default:
- Record-keeping:
- (Moodle wins:) Voicethread: Uh.. oh..?! I see no retention story, especially not in the free version. With Moodle, you can leave all that to the institutional support.
- Managing submissions
- Student: receiving feedback
- (A tie:) Voicethread’s audio feedback versus Moodle/PowerPoints gradebook access.
- Learning curve:
- Voicethread has the advantage of being a specialized tool (relatively few options, still relatively simple interface – few distractions).
- Other tools have the advantage of greater familiarity in the long run and reusability. Of course it depends also where you are working: stable positions get greater benefit from embarking on the institutional environment.
- Student
-
Summary: PowerPoint/Moodle remains the solution for the pedagogical task at hand that the LRC currently supports. Fortunately
- a narration of a picture presentation using PowerPoint and
- its submission by the student and grading by the teacher on the basis of a Moodle single file upload assignment are not too difficult.
How to easily merge MP3 files
2012/05/11
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- There are many ways, including many that are easier than doing it manually in Audacity.
- MergeMP3 is a free and easy one that worked here: