Mobile Musings

New free resources

2010-08-10T19:25:47Z

Here are two series of social studies vocabulary videos that are available for free download. These are good for use with ELL students or others who need extra vocabulary support. The videos can be downloaded onto mobile video players for individual use.

Ancient Egypt

Ancient China

In addition, I’ve been working on some shareable media sets — collections of open-licensed photos, diagrams, maps, audio, video, etc. that can be used by teachers or students in word-processed documents or presentations or used to create web sites or other multimedia presentations.

The following shareable media sets are now available:

Social studies

Science

Forces and motion (coming very soon)
Diversity of life
Genes
Properties of matter
The planets
Weather
Cells

For each media element in the set, just right-click the file to find the credit, license, and source link.

I hope to do more of these over time. Let me know if you have ideas or requests.

Podcasting compilations

2010-08-09T16:17:15Z

For anyone presenting about podcasting or just trying to show some of the possible uses in education, here is the “fastest 5 minutes in podcasting” clips I use. Note that each clip is only a small snippet of the actual podcast. Sources and links are below, and there is also a 3 minute version that omits administrative applications.

Fastest 5 minutes in podcasting

Fastest 3 minutes in podcasting

Credits:

Administrative

Albemarle Co. Public Schools

Los Angeles Co. Office of Ed.

Professional Development

PD to Go

Engadget

T4 Podcast – Jordan School Dist.

For students

Grammar Girl

Books Talks

Colonial Williamsburg

Quirks and Quarks

For parents

LD Podcast

By students

ColeyCast – Tovashal Elem.

Jamestown – Jamestown Elem.

WKSN – Kate Sullivan Elem.

CarverCast – GW Carver Elem.

Our City – St. Andrew’s Priory School

Radio WillowWeb – Willowdale Elem.

Room 208 – Wells Elem.

Phonecasting and plagiarism

2010-07-08T17:35:11Z

One of the challenges of Web 2.0 apps is that there are frequent changes to the business models, often resulting in services that were originally free going to a pay-per model or sometimes going away altogether. I understand that everyone needs to be self-sustaining, but it’s a challenge for schools using these tools. (This is one of the reasons I love open source software — you know it’s always going to be free.)

This recently happened with two tools I use. One is Gabcast, which used to be free, but now has a time limit of 4 minutes as a free trial plan. In looking for another free tool to do phonecasting (recording audio from a phone and posting it directly to your blog of podcast), I haven’t quite find one that fits the bill. I tried phonecasting.com but had some challenges getting it set up. I’m still looking into a few other options, so stay tuned. (drop.io allows you to record files by phone but is lacking some other useful features. It is really intended as a broader file sharing tool, rather than just a phonecasting app.) If you have an app for this you like, please let me know.

I also used a web site for checking for plagiarism that was free but now charges. In looking for alternatives, I found The Plagiarism Checker from the University of Maryland, which looks good. They also offer a premium version for a fee, but the basic one worked fine for me. (I tested out others as well, but they seemed to think everything written at a high level was plagiarized, even original work of my own.) I have not used this application extensively, but in trying it out, it seemed to work well. I also looked for open source alternatives, but didn’t find any.

If you have your own favorites in these categories, please add a comment and let us know.

Building blocks for multimedia creation

2010-07-06T16:47:22Z

There are so many great open resources that teachers can use legally in creating multimedia projects (reports, PPTs, web pages, wikis, etc.) with their students, but they take a lot of time to find and correlate.

As a part of a recent project, I’ve started putting together “media sets” — bundled collections of photos, maps, diagrams, videos, etc. on very specific topics for teachers and students to use.

Here’s an example of one on Ancient China. It includes a timeline, photos of art from various dynasties, maps, etc. Each piece is open-licensed. You can right-click the file to get source and license information.

We also have media sets for ancient Egypt, contemporary Asia, contemporary Africa, American westward expansion, human interaction with our environment, etc. with more to come.

Questions for you:

Is this something that is useful to you?
What would make it more useful?
What other topics would you like to see?
Would you be interested in attending a 3-hour workshop at a conference at which participants would all build media sets on topics of their choice?

I’m especially interested in answers to that last questions, since it’s the time of year when I’m submitting workshop ideas for conferences. How about it?

Blocking problem

2010-06-30T11:48:01Z

It’s surprising to me that in 2010, there are still big districts that are blocking all Web 2.0 apps — wikis, blogs, etc. These are some of the most powerful tools we have for differentiating instruction.

I have to think these decisions are being made by people who aren’t in charge of instruction and who are mainly motivated by wanting “no problems.” (And as I always say, if you want no problems, just pack the computers away or don’t even by them.) I restate my offer here to talk to leadership teams at these districts about the benefits of these tools and the ways they can be implemented safely. Please let our teaches and students have the tools they need for 21st century learning!

Are whole categories of tools blocked in your district? Do you know who is driving policy on this? Have efforts been made to revisit these policies? What are the barriers?

iTunes import settings

2010-06-26T16:34:41Z

I noticed recently that when I updated my iTunes software, it reverted my import settings back to AAC. Not very nice of it.

(As background, AAC is the default audio setting on iTunes. It works great with iTunes or an iPod, but doesn’t work with other players like a Sandisk, Zune, Palm, etc. MP3 is a much more compatible format that is preferred. If you don’t change this setting, all the music you rip on iTunes will not be accessible on other players.)

To change this in iTunes:
- Go to the Edit menu (iTunes menu on Mac).
- Select Preferences.
- On the General tab, click Import Settings.
- For Import using, choose MP3 encoder.

Doing this will save you a lot of time if you ever want to listen to audio on some other device.

Open-licensed music for your multimedia projects

2010-06-24T19:17:00Z

Engaging your students in creating standards-based projects is a great way to differentiate instruction.

But what to do when your students want to rip their favorite CDs to include music in their project? If you are posting the work online, this probably doesn’t fall under “fair use,” and it is important to model good copyright adherence with our students.

Creative Commons and open music to the rescue! There is now a wealth of open-licensed music that you and your students can use in your projects.

I love the sites ccMixter (contemporary; note that there is a small amount of music here with “adult language” but this site is not blocked in most schools) and MusOpen (classical) for this, but if you’d like to give students a little more limited selection of music to streamline the time they spend on it, we’ve set up this page with a limited selection of open-licensed music that you can use for free and legally for any student work.

Make sure to have your students attribute the source for any works they use, including music. For these music files, just right-click the mp3 file and view properties to see the source and license details.

Enjoy! And if there are any particular types of music you’d like to see added, let us know.

Blogging and Web 2.0 in schools

2010-06-09T13:22:09Z

Blogging in schools is a great way not only to convey information, but to engage students in learning.

Some of the ways teachers use blogs with students are to give writing prompts, have students respond to reading, do formative assessment, have book discussions, and prompt reflective writing.

What ideas do you have for specific ways you could use a blog in your classroom?

What other Web 2.0 tools do you think would be useful in your classroom?

Chroma key in Windows Movie Maker

2010-03-23T20:45:35Z

I have been asked many times how you can do “green screen” in Windows Movie Maker. (This technique, also known as chroma key, lets you import a background image, for example, the Taj Mahal, and then composite in video of a person over it. The video is shot with a solid green or sometimes blue background, which is then electronically brought in as the background image.)

My standard answer has always been that Windows Movie Maker doesn’t do that. You need a more sophisticated video program. But it turns out that is wrong.

I also assumed that iMovie would do this. Then I was at a school the other day working with 2nd grade students on weather reports that were planned to be chroma key’d in to pictures the kids had colored. I tried to do this on iMovie, but was surprised to find that the version they had didn’t support this.

So I did a little digging on chroma key and Windows Movie Maker and found this: a very easy to install and use add-on to WMM that makes chroma key a simple transition effect!

In a matter of minutes, we had some very cute videos!

Flipshare conversion to WMV

2010-03-09T18:53:13Z

I’ve reported here earlier about an easy way to convert Flip camera movies to WMV files so that you can import them into Windows Movie Maker.

Imagine my surprise last week when several folks in a workshop I was facilitating agreed to a Flip upgrade, only to find that after the upgrade to Flipshare v5, converting to WMV no longer worked.

While I am still waiting for an answer about whether this is a “feature” or a “bug,”* I did find a way to un-upgrade and return the conversion functionality. Here it is:

Connect to your computer and open the Flip icon. Delete all files except for the DCIM folder.

Empty your recycle bin.

Disconnect the camcorder.

A. Uninstall FlipShare
1. Go to Control Panel>Programs and Features and remove Flip Share.

B. Reinstall FlipShare 4.5
1. Reboot your computer
2. Ensure that your camcorder is not connected to the computer
3. Click on this link and follow the on-screen instructions: http://download.theflip.com/update.theflip.com/app/fvsw/451/update/Setup_FlipShare.exe
4. Reboot again and launch FlipShare

(And obviously, if you want to keep this functionality, say no to future Flip upgrades.)

* Note to anyone from Cisco who might be reading this, eliminating this functionality would be tragic to many who use Windows Movie Maker as an editing platform. Using third-party conversion tools for this (as your tech support responses suggest) is not an option to many. Please bring back the conversion utility!