Tek Trek

Have you ever found videos on the web that you wanted to share with your students but, you really wanted to keep all that content in your LCMS (e.g. WebCT/Blackboard)? Well, then Omnisio may be a tool you’d like to check out. This free web app lets you share those found videos in your LCMS and (and this is the key point) let’s you and your students comment on the video! Now, I’m not talking general comments that show up at the bottom of the video as text. Nope, nothing so mundane as that! I’m talking comments right on the video that show up at the point in the video where they’re posted and in the location on the video where the person clicked to add a comments.

I can see plenty of educational uses for this. For example, your students could post comments or ask for clarification about something they see; or you could post questions for your students to answer about a particular scene in the video. You could even post demo videos and ask students to comment on/describe what is going on and why. Or, you and your students could simply post comments to carry on a discussion about the content of the video.

Interested? Check out Web 2.0 - Whoo Hoo or Boo Hoo and add your own comments simply by clicking on the screen anywhere and then typing into the box that appears. I would have embedded it but WordPress doesn’t allow it (Blogger and several other sites do and so does WebCT!).

I stumbled across this nifty little tool today. It’s called Read the Words and it’s a web application that reads text you give it and outputs an mp3 file that you can download or embed on your site. I used it input the RSS feed of this blog and got back separate mp3 files for each of last 5 posts and it only took about 1 minute.

Here’s the recording of my post on xTimeline. Unfortunately, it not only read the xTimeline post, it also read all my other RSS feeds on the page on either side of that post (in other words, it didn’t distinguish between the columns. However, I also just copied and pasted the text from this post to be read and got back this recording which turned out fine.

You can also type in text, upload word documents or PDF files or even put in the URL of a web site you want to be read. This tool would be useful for anyone who needs to create audio files for their visually impaired students or who simply want to provide content in audio for those learners who prefer to listen to learn.

On first look, it seems like this tool has some potential, strange RSS reading notwithstanding. LOL.

Most of us teach courses that involve covering a little historical perspective of our topic, but learning those dates is not really high on our students’ lists of exciting activities!  But, with xTimeline, students just might find it a bit more engaging.  This web-based application lets individuals or groups create public or private timelines in a very easy, intuitive way.  I can completely see this being useful for everything from group project planning to individual or group efforts at creating timelines for everything from the history of a topic to the sequence of events in a novel. 

I created and posted an example of how I might use it to plan out my huge wiki project. Enjoy!

Tool Viddix
Type Web Application
Requirements Internet-connected computer, browser
Cost Free!

First Thoughts
Educators often have a need to present information; yet most presentations don’t seem to be all that engaging. Even beautiful presentations from dynamic speakers like Steve Jobs leave a little something to be desired when simply viewed. So, when I first stumbled across Viddix, I was immediately interested in it’s ability to create some dynamic, interactive presentations - just the sort of thing you might want if you are interested in gaining and maintaining the interest of your learners.

The basic setup of Viddix is a two-screen layout. The left screen holds your video, while the right screen can hold polls, text, images, links, and even dynamic content like RSS feeds and even other embedded videos. The right screen content is tied to the timeline of the video on the left so that it becomes visible at designated times during the video. The content on the right can be interactive - links can be clicked on, polls can be answered, etc. Plus, there’s also a comments feature so people viewing the presentation can ‘talk back’ and future viewers can read those comments and post their own. All in all, my first thought was “slick!”

Of course, even while thinking about the cool-factor of this tool, I was initially also concerned that it might be too difficult to learn or that it might take too long to put together a decent presentation. Additionally, it seemed like two screens might increase the potential to create a presentation that was more distracting than engaging. However, after putting together my first presentation, my fears about the difficulty of the tool were put to rest. The distracting v. engaging concern is another story - but, that challenge is more about an individual’s presentation skills rather than something inherently problematic with the tool. LOL.

First Experience
Here’s my first presentation with Viddix.

Exploring Web ..

The movie on the left actually took more time to put together than putting the entire finished Viddix presentation together. The interface was easy to navigate after only a few minutes and it was remarkably easy to add all that content that shows up in the right screen. My only complaint (and it’s a small one!) is that I would like to be able to set the start and end times of each of the content pieces that show up on the right. Currently, you can only set the start time and then that content piece stays up on the screen until the next content piece pops up. You could work around this, however, by simply putting up a blank screen so it’s a minor thing. For a lengthier description of the process, I’ve posted how I did this presentation on my wiki.

Aside from an overall positive first experience with this tool, I feel I must mention the wonderful support I have received from the Viddix team. Very soon after completing my presentation, I received an email from them. The email gave me warm feedback on my presentation and let me know the team was there to help if I needed it. They even reminded me to publish my presentation (for which I will be forever grateful because it saved me from embarrassing myself during a conference workshop). I have tested countless new web apps and this is the very first time I received an email like this. So, because of the tool and especially because of the Viddix team, I highly recommend you try out this unique application.

Discussions are great educational activities. There’s nothing like a rousing discussion to help students learn about different perspectives on a topic, reflect on their learning, and just generally share information and build community. However, not all students really like the text-based threaded discussions we normally use in our classes: some students are uncomfortable writing for an audience and some just don’t find all that text very appealing.

Fortunately, some new web services out there allow you to easily create threaded VOICE discussions. These services are similar to text-based discussion forums, but instead of typing your post or your reply, you record it! And then, instead of reading all those posts, you simply listen - either at the site or in your favorite RSS Reader (my current favorite is Google Reader because it handles text, audio, and video feeds).

Of course, if you’ve been reading any of the posts in this blog, you know I have a preference for Web 2.0 services rather than software that you have to download. So, I was very happy to find Vaestro. This online service lets you listen to and participate in hundreds of different conversations going on in the Vaestro community… all without even creating an account or downloading anything to your computer! You can also create your own channels, forums, and discussion topics and administer them just as you would any text-based forum. So, go check it out. I think you’ll like it. Or, watch my vaestro overview, administration, and moderation tutorials. They’re not perfect, but they do get the point across.

When I have used this tool more, I will post a more extensive review.

I’ve been using Box.net for some time now for my classes to make handouts available to students who miss class or need another copy.  Last fall, when I was using a blog to keep my students up to date on what what happening in class, I included links to the folders, one for each class.  Since I’m using a wiki instead this semester, I’ve used the widget to embed the class folders on their pages in the wiki.  (I also put in a link in case the files didn’t show up.)

All I needed to set up my free account was an e-mail address.  With this account, I get 1 gigbyte of storage, 10-megabyte file size limit, and 10-gigabyte per month bandwidth.  (More storage and larger file size limits are available with paid accounts.  For more information, go here.)

I’ve been very pleased with the service provided, and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone who needs to make files available online.  I haven’t tried editing documents and images online yet, but I’m sure that will come in handy.  It’s also great that there are no advertisements.

Also posted at 4R x T.

This semester, I’ve been using Wetpaint and PBwikis for my classes, and I have two Wikispaces wikis that I’m using for other professional endeavors. I decided it was time to compare and contrast them:

I really like Wetpaint the best, primarily because of the following:

• automatically generated navigation bar
• social networking features
• easy-to-use editor
• widgets for the services I use (like SlideShare)

The primary disadvantage is the limited amount of file storage (attachments). However, that’s easily overcome by embedding or linking to Box.net folders.

While searching for a Flixn replacement, I stumbled upon:

• veotag - upload videos and then add live tags along the timeline. These tags can be clicked on to take the viewer to specific locations within the video.  Here’s a nice example.
• viddix - upload video and add ‘cue points’ - text, polls, html, rss, images, and other media. The video is played in the left panel and the cue points are played in the right.  See the viddix example.

All of us probably teach courses in which there is some information that needs to be memorized.  In those instances, flash cards can certainly be a helpful study strategy. Knowtes is a free online service that provides your learners with the ability to create flash cards, schedule study intervals with automatic email reminders,  and create study groups to share their flash cards with each other and help each other study.Help your students become better learners.  Tell them about this service. Then, give them assignments to create flash cards (with text and images) related to your course materials and share them with the others in the class.  The act of creating the flash cards would help them learn and then studying from them will help them even more.My Knowtes ID is tektrekker.  Look me up if you create an account! We can share flash cards!

I use Flixn.com quite a bit for quick updates to my learners, so I panicked when I found out they were phasing out their free video recording service.

Of course, there are other services out there: Bubble Guru, Hellodeo, SeeTheFace, and Vlip to name a few. But, since I’d been relying on Flixn, I hadn’t paid any of them much attention. Now, I’ve got less than a month to find something new to replace my old standby. <sigh>

Must-have features for the new online recording service include:

• privacy - I don’t want these messages posted to the web or some social network unless I can make them available to only a select group of people.
• embed-ability (new word!) - I want to be able to paste the video code into my LMS or my private class blog or wiki.
• 3-5 minute record time - I want to have enough time to make a few quick statements and emote a bit.
• free - is that too much to ask, do you think?

A quick (and I do mean quick!) preview of the above-mentioned services revealed that Bubble Guru was not free, Hellodeo was buggy (will have to revisit this), and Vlip was not private. SeeTheFace looks promising but I’m not sure how long the recordings are or how many I can have on the free account. Stay tuned for more info.

In the interim, if you’ve got any suggestions that meet the requirements I’ve listed, please do let me know.

update: after saying that SeeTheFace looked promising, I spent some more time with it and, while it has some seriously cool features, can record for 5 minutes, and can be private, it’s doesn’t have embed-ability. <heavy sigh> The search continues.