CCV Software - Serving education since 1982

Visions Technology Introduces Weaving Web 2.0

mary — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:52:30 -0400

Learn how Weaving Web 2.0 Tools Into the Classroom tools can build web based communities, with people working together using online word processors, spreadsheets, and databases. See how to share your pictures and files with the others. Weaving Web 2.0 Tools Into the Classroom tools allow students to create information that was, in the past, done by professionals. Both teachers and students explore in a way that will engage them and create self-motivated users of 21st century tools.

Topics include:

Podcasting
Blogs
Wikis
Social Bookmarks
File Sharing Applications
Google
ZOHO
NUMSUM

A Wiki space page accompanies the book to keep-you up to date with new Web 2.0 features.

Now Available! Microsoft Office 2007 Professional with Trend Micro Internet Security 2008

mary — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:40:29 -0400

This new bundle includes Office Pro 2007 with Trend Micro Internet Security 2008, for $199.98. This combines the productivity of Office Pro 2007 and Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 products to keep your work moving smoothly.

Visit JourneyEd.com or CCV Software to see the full range of academic software solutions for K-12 and Higher Education.

Staff and Faculty now to receive student pricing on Adobe products!

mary — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:31:51 -0400

Adobe has announced that they are extending student pricing to faculty and staff permanently! This CLP licensing program change will bring reduced costs to educators.

To find out more, visit our Adobe licensing page.

Macworld gives Ableton Suite with Live 7 a 5 mouse rating!

mary — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:41:15 -0400

Ableton Suite with Live 7 is a digital-audio workstation (DAW) program that lets you trigger prerecorded audio with a Mac’s keyboard, mouse, or a MIDI controller. Unlike traditional DAWs, MIDI control makes Live a playable instrument as well as an audio editor and MIDI sequencer. The new Ableton Suite with Live 7 delivers refinements to features found in previous versions, as well as introduces new capabilities that will be welcome to musicians, DJs, and producers.

Ableton Suite with Live 7 is absolutely the tool to use for creating and modifying compelling grooves on the fly. Live can also behave like a traditional DAW, providing an Arrangement view where you linearly record digital audio and MIDI tracks as well as add prerecorded clips, virtual instruments, and effects by dragging them from Ableton Suite with Live 7’s File Browser pane. As with Apple’s GarageBand, you can alter the speed of your composition, and the clips will stretch (or warp, in Live parlance) so that they match the tempo of the piece without changing pitch (and without introducing ugly audio artifacts that can cause the sound to warble or stutter). Unlike GarageBand, Live lets you manipulate clips in a variety of ways. Not only can you add and chain together effects (using Live’s built-in effects, Audio Units and VST effects for audio files, and MIDI effects), but you can also edit MIDI controller data (change the velocity data on a series of notes, for example), and you can edit individual samples to change such elements as their pitch, volume, and panning. Live 6 brought support for editing the audio in a QuickTime movie, multiprocessor support, and instrument and effect racks. Ableton Suite with Live 7, while not a massive departure from what came before, includes its fair share of powerful and musical new features as well.

Read&Write GOLD Is Solid - www.powertolearn.com

mary — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:59:36 -0400

If it is your job to look at computer applications for your school or district, you know that so much of what is available these days for schools is to assist in record keeping or is a throwback to older software days of drill and practice, ostensibly getting ready for standardized tests, or something disguised as "new" just because it has moved to an online format. For the latter, gone are the platform issues, but software that didn't take advantage of the technology then still has the same problem now, and that isn't fixed just by moving online. When I write this column, I always find I am trying to avoid one of these abysses or another.

But there is a piece of software that takes advantage of all that has come before it, adds it own brand of better to it, as well as understands what technology has to offer students with dyslexia and other learning differences. It iss for me an oasis in a desert of silicone and like any oasis, Read&Write GOLD from Texthelp is most welcome. It's a piece of software that has so much to offer making it hard to do it justice in a short review.

If I had to sum up what Read&Write GOLD is all about in just a few words, I guess I would have to say that it is a word processor/research tool with every assistive technology for students and adults with dyslexia and other language based learning difficulties onboard. And it is just waiting for a challenge to its might.

Whether a student needs to go from text-to-speech or speech-to-text, the right tool is available in Read&Write GOLD. Text-to-speech is available for reading text files, web sites and PDFs. Scans of digital content, even partial screen scans, also make sources, not usually accessible, available to the onboard text-to-speech reader. Students can also make sound files of sources and export them to be read aloud later by their computer or downloaded in mp3 or AIFF format to be listened to on an iPod or other player. In reverse, students can dictate text and have it show up in the Word-like word processor.

Nova Development among the Top 5 productivity software publishers in the United States - familiar characters to help children get the most out of learning

mary — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:30:31 -0400

Sesame Street First Steps from Nova Development is an exciting way for parents to interact with their young children while encouraging learning. Play games and learn the fundamentals of language through a variety of charming and engaging activities along with Elmo, Ernie, Big Bird and Zoe. Designed specifically for ages 1½-3 years old, Sesame Street First Steps entertains children with sing-along songs, cause-and-effect explorations and a vital introduction to letters, numbers, colors, objects, shapes, seasons and animals. With bright colors, delightful music, animation and easy mouse activities for kids, early learning has never been so much fun!

Sesame Street Learn, Play & Grow from Nova Development focuses on early childhood learning and self-esteem building for children of age groups 2-4. With Elmo, Big Bird and Cookie Monster as playmates, Sesame Street Learn, Play & Grow provides children with a variety of different learning activities including Language Development, Counting, Music, Art, Shape Games and much more! Preschoolers will also discover basic, yet critical, pre-reading, pre-math, categorization and creative expression skills through activities that grow progressively challenging as each area is mastered.

Founded in 1984, Nova Development is a worldwide developer and publisher of consumer graphics and content software products for Windows and Macintosh platforms. Nova Development's unwavering commitment to value-priced, imaginative software programs has made it a leader in its market category.

Now among the Top 5 productivity software publishers in the United States, Nova Development has a history of providing new technologies that consistently expand the uses of desktop computers for a variety of users, from home to school to business. For a full list of products for ages 1 to adult, visit our Nova Development product page.

Golden Globe-winner Dario Marianelli offers his thoughts on winning Oscar and Bafta-Nominations for Atonement score using Sibelius 5

mary — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:05:50 -0400

Dario Marianelli, composer of the Golden Globe-winning and Oscar and Bafta-nominated score for Atonement has been revealing the thinking behind the acclaimed score, and how Sibelius 5 helped his creative process. The composer has also used Sibelius to repurpose the score for a live performance-taking place at London’s Wigmore Hall in March.

The Italian-born and London-based composer used Sibelius 5 to help craft the score that includes many out-of-the-ordinary flourishes, such as typewriter keys beating time to the music to signify the obsessive writing of one of the central characters, Briony.

On the thought press behind the score he says: “From a really early conversation with Joe [Wright, the Oscar-winning director who also worked with Dario on 2005’s Pride and Prejudice], I knew that Atonement needed two distinct musical themes. There’s the relentlessness of Briony – we called her the girl with faulty brakes, she just can’t stop until she’s wrecked everyone’s lives! Then there’s the intense love story between Keira Knightley’s character, Cecilia, and Robbie” (played by James McAvoy).

To create the first of these two themes, Dario built up an evolving, percussive composition, and then amplified the tension further by adding the metronomic sound of Briony’s typewriter keys over the top of each beat. “That was just one of those crazy ideas, and it just really worked”.

For the love story theme, the composer used a more traditional, strings-based approach, which matched the mood and also the wartime period of the film.

“Panorama view in Sibelius 5 really helped me with arrangements of both these themes – because I don’t think in pages, I just think in music. With Panorama, there are no breaks in your thinking, you can think more laterally.” said Dario. Panorama view hides page breaks in scores, instead, displaying them on an infinitely wide page.

“My orchestrator, Benjamin Wallfisch, is able to send me proofs of the orchestrated cues at an incredible speed, and I can check and correct them directly on the screen, adding to the orchestration as I go along.”

“I think Sibelius 5 is a really fantastic program. I haven’t found anything that I can’t do with it yet. And I don’t think I ever will.”

Now Sibelius 5 and Photoscore Ultimate Bundle are available together! Photoscore Ultimate is a scanning software extension for Sibelius 5 software and an advanced version of the PhotoScore Lite. It can also scan music into other MIDI software such as sequencers and can also be use stand-alone to scan in, play back, transpose and print scores.

Photoscore Ultimate reads printed music in seconds. Not just the notes, but also slurs, dynamics, lyrics, guitar tab, chord diagrams and more. The output can then be edited or transposed, played back, parts extracted and both the score and parts printed.