How To Embed a YouTube Video into Your Blackboard Course: Brief Screencast

Embedding a YouTube video right into your Blackboard course has many benefits. First, your students do not need to leave Blackboard and go out to the site. If part of their assignment is to write a reaction using the Discussion Board to this video, they can view it right inside the course. This is great for distance learning courses. Another benefit for embedding a YouTube video is that it enhancing learning by tapping into media. Media is a great way to address learning styles. This is also a great way to enhance your face to face or hybrid courses too. Check out the link below to view the screencast:

Embed a YouTube Video in Blackboard Course

-Angel Brady

How To Add the Assignment Tool in Blackboard: Brief Screencast

This tutorial will show you how to use the Assignment tool in Blackboard. This is a great tool to use as an alternative to the Digital Dropbox. the Advantage is that all your students submissions are separated out per assignment and you can automatically put the grade in Gradebook. Students do not get to see each others work, just like the Digital Dropbox. This is also a great tool for distance learning or a way to enhance your face to face course (less handouts and printing). Check out the screencast link below:

Assignment Tool in Blackboard

-Angel Brady

YouTube, Quick Capture, Pixelated Video and &fmt=18: Brief Solution

If you are currently using quick capture and your video looks super pixelated when you view it, try adding &fmt=18 at the end of the video’s url. When you add this at the end of the url, the video is a H.264 encoded clip at 480×360 resolution with a bitrate up to 850K (good for iPhone viewing). YouTube has been trying to up the quality of their video. Adding the &fmt=18 a was posted on VideoHelp.com’s website (go there to learn more). I would like to thank Suzanne Carbonaro for bringing this solution to my attention :-).

-Angel Brady

Office 2008 Interface for Mac Users: A Brief Intro (screencast)

So the new Office 2008 will be rolled out on campus. There is a big difference between Office 2007 (Windows) and Office 2008 (Mac). The Mac users still have the menu at the top, it was not replaced by the Ribbon (which what happened to Windows users). If you would like to see a brief screencast on the Mac Office 2008 interface, click below:

Office 2008 Interface for Mac Users

-Angel Brady

Creating a Meeting In Oracle Calendar: Brief Screencast

Here is a brief screencast on how to create a meeting in Oracle Calendar. Click on the link below. This screencast was made in TechSmith’s Jing.

oracle_cal_create_meeting

-Angel Brady

How to Create an Address Book for Thunderbird and Zimbra: Brief Templates

I recently created templates so I can create different address books for my Thunderbird and Zimbra address. All I did was export my address books as a .CSV file. I then cleared any contents I had in the spreadsheet. Now, I can fill in my info and i have the proper headers that will be brought into brother Thunderbird and Zimbra. This is a great way to move around your address book.

If you use two different email clients and you don’t want to recreate your address book in one on the other system, you can export the file and them simply import that file. The template is good if you are starting from scratch or if you have a long list of new emails for a certain group, you can just copy and paste that information into the template and then import it. I have the two templates already created and you can view them below. Enjoy!

Zimbra Email Address Template: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pH9M6WjhZVJIhWZCgsaRNBg

Thunderbird Email Address Template: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pH9M6WjhZVJJVjSluc6J6eg

How to Create Your Own Maps in Google Maps

This tutorial will walk you through how to create a map using Google Maps (and finding latitude and longitude coordinates).

1. Go to http://maps.google.com

2. Type in an address you want to find.

3. To find the latitude and longitude coordinates, type this in the address bar: javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter())); It will appear in a new window.

4. Click on the point and select: Save to Maps (you will need a Google Account to save this map)

5. Type in a title and a description for the Map (on the left hand side)

6. You can create points on the map by clicking on the placemark tool at the top left of the map.

7. To link or embed this map into a webpage or blog, click on Link to This Page at the top right of the map. You can customize the map size by clicking on the Customize and preview embedded map link.

-Angel Brady

How to do a Simple Mail Merge in Microsoft Office Word: Brief Screencast

The link below will demonstrate how to do a simple Mailmerge in Microsoft Word 2008. The steps are the same if you are using an older version of Office (like 2003). A Mailmerge is an easy way to print and create a bunch of forms, envelopes, and labels, that need info changed like name, mailing address, but are uniformly the same. Why type in each of those fields by hand? You can do it quickly with the Mail Merge manager. You can pool the data from an Excel spreadsheet you created. You then have the option of printing or creating a new document. Click on the link below to see a brief screencast:

Mailmerge in Word

http://www.screencast.com/t/fzro3v7T

FYI-The screencast was done using Jing.

-Angel Brady