Screencasting – 23 Things Kansas

I’ve used Jing to create a couple of tutorials for use at NV. This is a piece of software that I don’t use as often as I probably should. Since my teachers seem to prefer printed directions, I tend to take advantage of not having to record my voice. One of the Jing tutorials I created was on how to use the free program, PaintNet, to resize a picture.

Paint.Net – Resizing Pictures

When creating directions, I often use another free program, Gadwin Print Screen. This program allows me to capture and area of the screen and paste it into a document.

Jing provides the potential to develop short how-to videos for a variety of computer tasks. In the library situation, these videos could show patrons how to make an ILL request, place a hold on a book, or search the online catalog. Creating short tutorials on how to use web sites or computer software would also be a beneficial use of Jing. Now, I just have to find the time and be willing to put my voice on the video – OR – better yet, find a student to create them for me.

Video on the Web – 23 Things Kansas

This year, the senior production students were required to post their movies  to YouTube and to embed them in their blogs. For their videos, they’ve primarily used digital photos with a musical background and turned it into a movie with iPhoto (Photo Story on a PC).

Yesterday, we had a teacher want to video their presentation so that students at a conference could view it. We used a Flip camera to record the presentation. However, I ran into problems trying to upload the video to YouTube. Of course, it was too long. I used Movie Maker to split the file into 3 different files. Since the upload was not working, I used QuickMediaConverter to convert the files from the native avi format into mpeg4 format. Even though this is a time consuming process, it is a valuable tool for this situation.

Enhancing Student Creativity

As I sat in various presentations at the MACE conference last week, I envisioned how the various web sites and software tools being demonstrated could be utilized to enhance student projects. Capitalizing on the poetry the freshman recently wrote over the book, The Outsiders, I decided to experiment.

My first experiment was to use the Wordle. website to create a picture to illustrate one of the freshman poems. Wordle utilizes words to create a picture. The size of each word in the picture is determined by the number of times it is entered. Thus, if one wants a word to dominate the picture, that word is entered numerous times. Below is the resulting picture:

Behind A Wall – Poetry Cloud

The orientation of the words can be altered, but the positions of individual words within the cloud cannot be manipulated. The user can select from a variety of color combinations and font styles to personalize their cloud. Using a screen capture program such as Gadwin, the picture can be saved as an image and added to the word processed copy of the poem.

My next experiment centered around the use of voice. Ideally, this would involve a recording of the student reading his/her poem. With the Voice Thread web site, one can record the reading of the poem directly from the computer. A picture can be uploaded as a visual behind the poem. A very creative student could divide their poem into sections and record each section with its own picture backdrop.
http://voicethread.com/share/390368/

If a student wishes to enhance the visual presentation he/she could use PhotoStory or MovieMaker. With each program, individual pictures can be added to a timeline. The audio can be recorded with the handheld voice recorders. These recorders create a “.wma” file which can be added to the timeline. If desired, MovieMaker would allow for the addition of music behind the voice. PhotoStory saves the file in the “.wmv” format and MovieMaker creates a “.wp3″ , “*.avi” or “*.wmv” file. All can be viewed with Windows Media Player.

• Movie Maker Example
• Photo Story Example

The final experiment was with the Animoto web site. This site is a quick way to create 30 second clips utilizing pictures and music. In order to use the audio clip created with the digital recorder, it was necessary to convert it from the “.wma” format to “.mp3″ format. This was quickly done utilizing the ZamZar web site.  With this particular project, the length of the poem was longer than the 30 seconds allowed by the free version of Animoto. Thus, the audio fades away before the poem is finished. This site would be an easy way to visualize a shorter piece of student work.

http://animoto.com/play/QoECFl7Qo2INLERgHvg9tA

None of these projects were difficult to complete and each could be completed in a class period if students have a clear idea of what visual imagery they wish to use. Some of the projects could be shared via the web depending on the file formats required by the various web sites.