Effective Use of Social Software to Support Student Learning and Engagement

A report of a study done in the UK.

"This study provides insights about the: educational goals of using social software tools; enablers or drivers within the institution, or from external sources which positively influence the adoption of social software; benefits to the students, educators and institutions; challenges that may influence a social software initiative; and issues that need to be considered in a social software initiative. ...Our investigations have shown that social software tools support a variety of ways of learning. ...The educator’s role is changing from being a provider of information to a facilitator or moderator, which raises training needs, workload issues, and adjusting to a ‘new’ way of teaching."

[the bold is my emphasis]

PRISM: Free Video Converter Software

"Prism is a free video converter for Windows and Mac. It can convert video files from avi, wmv, 3gp and more into avi, asf, wmv, mp4, 3gp and others. It can also convert DVD discs to your hard drive or compress video files to reduce size. Use this video converter software to convert video files into the formats you need to watch on TV, load to a cell phone, put on a website, create a presentation, watch on your portable device and much more. In fact, the possibilities are endless using this powerful video file converter."

Wireless tools for education

The link above is to a new page on my resources site. Please post a comment if you know of any sites about wireless for education so I can add the links to my page.

Here's something my colleague/buddy Randy Decker just told me about.

iTunes is a source of FREE wireless educational applications! Yes, it's true. Here's what to do:

Open iTunes and click to the Store.

Then select App Store.

Then select Education.

Then select Top Free Applications.

There are more than 90 listed today! Here's a screenshot of the top 21 I found, just as a sampler for you. (Sorry, blogger.com seems to make it rather small; you'll just have to do the search yourself to see things clearly.)

Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)

An excellent article containing at least one tip for each of us who do any writing at all. "...most of the time the author...is too close to the manuscript to make corrections. ...the 10 ouchies listed here crop up everywhere. They’re so pernicious that even respected Internet columnists are not immune."

Have you heard about Google Lively yet?

My title's link is to Google's site at lively.com. What's Google Lively? George Siemens said, "A quick initial reaction: it’s Second Life distributed." Google says it's "a chat experience in which you can communicate and express yourself using avatars in your very own space. Choose an avatar and use it to make friends and chat. Create rooms, decorate them to your liking, and make sure to invite your friends over."

Google Lively is a 3D Virtual environment released July 8/08. You construct your own rooms, avatars, and furniture, etc. right in your browser window on your own website or blog rather than having to go to a specific 'game' site. As Tech Crunch said, "Well, this sucks for Second Life."

Here's an introductory video, then you can decide whether you want to link via my title.

How to add YouTube videos to Blackboard course

Not just to your Blackboard course, but to any webpage.

YouTube - BlackboardTV Channel

"BlackboardTV (or 'BbTV') helps e-Learning innovators -- designers, instructors, students -- visualize online teaching and learning. The education and technology videos collected in the playlists on this channel enable users throughout the global Blackboard community to see, and learn from, e-Learning innovations in K-12 schools, higher education institutions and organizations."

See also YouTube BlackboardK12.

Free Online Video Editing Sites

ExtremeTech has posted a review of 5 websites that let you edit your videos online for free.

"Some people would be surprised that you can edit photos online without locally installed software, but surely video editing is too resource-intensive to be done over the web, right? Wrong! We review five online services that let you do things like scene transitions, cuts, splices, loops, audio overlays—and they're all free. We tested the following: Cuts, Eyespot, JumpCut, Motionbox, One True Media."

TeacherTube

Like YouTube, only it's all educational videos. Also includes Groups and TeacherTube Blogs, Lesson plan videos, student lesson videos, teacher-made videos.

Reuters reports from Second Life

Reuters of London have assigned a bureau chief, Adam Pasick, to a full time job reporting from inside Second Life! (He says it's difficult to explain his full time job to his mother/grandmother :) This site, complete with RSS feed, is filled with news, blog, videos, audio & video interviews with a range of Second Life subjects, Second Life Business News and Economy reporting, including a dollar value & daily spending charts, a Dollar/Linden currency converter, and lots more, all directly from Second Life. Of course, there's also a Reuters office tower in Second Life.

See this video report from CBC [note: you may be asked to install DivX to view it, but that's all Good!]. Complete with action videos taken inside Second Life, it's an excellent overview of what Second Life is growing to mean and do in our world. As a non-Second Lifer (I bet they have a word for us 'outside world' people?), I thought this video was one of the most informative I've seen so far. I've been told it costs money to "film" scenes from inside Second Life, so I guess this video is like an exclusive treat, courtey of CBC News and Reuters.

Setting up a vodpod - for video

A blog posting at EduBlog provides a simple tutorial. "Vodpod is a great way to show videos directly in your blog. No downloading needed for the viewer."

Video Blogging Resources

Video blogging made easy: From Telus, a step-by-step how-to for those who are new to videoblogging. The article includes links to other help/tutorial sites, so I'll include those here too:

• The Video Blog Handbook - a community project for documenting tips and tricks


• Node 101 - an educational resource aimed at teaching people how to video blog


• Freevlog - a multi-lingual how-to on video blogging


• How to video blog with Blogger - A tutorial on video blogging with Blogger and QuickTime

DropShots: A Free sonline video host -- "family friendly photo & video sharing service". s"We support MPG, AVI, MOV, WMV, and 3GP from all major digital cameras. You just drag and drop the video to our application and we resize, transcode, upload, and host your video. We use the Flash plug-in to stream the video, which is already installed in over 98% of browsers and has a 1-click install process. This makes video easy to post and easy to view."

Zippy Videos: "Your media sharing community." Free host for an unlimited number of videos up to 100mb each. You can create your own URL on the site for sharing videos.

AJAX: Web-Based Software, full-featured

Ajax has an MS-Word-like online word processor -- create a new file or open a .doc file from your drive, save to your hard drive, publish to the web, share & collaborate, all right from a website. They have other applications too, including a Sketch app, spreadsheet (xls) app, Tunes player, video mixing (eyespot), and more. This is from the Ajax blog:

The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Is It Time to Dump Your Desktop?” In it the author reflects on the possibility for businesses to switch to web-based software once it is “good enough” for a big percentage of users. In this article, Ajax 13 was mentioned as one of the companies that is producing online alternatives to Micrsoft's widely used Office software. The appeal that the low cost alternatives have, continues to create a growing threat to the MS Office Suite.

Freevlog: VIDEOBLOGGING Tutorials

This site has a bunch of great tutorials! You have the choice of text tutorial, an online video tutorial, or a downloadable video. TIP: While you're there, subscribe RSS to their tutorials so you always hear about their new offerings.

• A step-by-step guide to setting up a videoblog for free.
  
  
• Making a video:
  • Using iMovie (Mac)
  • Using Movie Maker (PC)
  
  
• Compressing your video for the web, using:
  • iMovie
  • Final Cut Pro
  • Windows Movie Maker
  • Avid Free DV (edit Quicktime)
  
  
• Setting up a Blogger blog (to host your videoblogging)
  
  
• Making a screen capture from your video
  
  
• Accessing free online storage for your videos:
  • Internet Archive
  • Our Media
  
  
• Publishing/posting your video to your blog
  

Video Blogging

Here are a couple of links on the topic. I'm adding them to a new VideoBlogging section on my blogging information page.
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How to Set up a FREE Video Blog: A tutorial, based using a blogger.com blog along with a couple other free online applications. Michael Verdi says,

I'll take you through creating your own free website/blog, using Flickr for free image hosting, and the Internet Archive for free video hosting.

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VLogger Directory (Video bloggers): A growing list of video blogs you can tour or subscribe to by RSS.