Audio: LeMasney on How to use Powerpoint at Rider University Media Server

Audio: LeMasney on How to use Powerpoint at Rider University Media Server
I gave a presentation on How To Use Powerpoint today to a semi-packed room in the new Faculty Staff Training center in FA 113. Powerpoint was discussed in some detail, but of course, we talked about alternatives to Powerpoint, ways to avoid death by Powerpoint, Google Docs newest addition, Presently, and related topics. Take a look at Rider technology training site (log in as a guest if you wish) at http://www.rider.edu/training and click on the How to Use Powerpoint course to follow along with the audio if you want the whole effect. - John.

I will use a laptop and you will use paper and pencil. Are you ready…?

This is an anonymous post that I first found on RayNiles.com . It’s a little harsh about the traditional way of doing things, which I think often have merit and unique charms, but it does point out some advantages to having a laptop (and other technologies) in a learning environment.

This was posted on the Abilene, Kansas High School Dialogue Buzz website. It was an anonymous post, but VERY powerful. Feel free to share this with educators, parents and stakeholders about 1:1 and the power of the seamless use of technology. It seems to sum it all up!!

Let’s have a little competition at school and get ready for the future. I will use a laptop and you will use paper and pencil. Are you ready…?
I will access up-to-date information - you have a textbook that is 5 years old.
I will immediately know when I misspell a word – you have to wait until it’s graded.
I will learn how to care for technology by using it – you will read about it.
I will see math problems in 3D – you will do the odd problems.
I will create artwork and poetry and share it with the world – you will share yours with the class.
I will have 24/7 access – you have the entire class period.
I will access the most dynamic information – yours will be printed and photocopied.
I will communicate with leaders and experts using email – you will wait for Friday’s speaker.
I will select my learning style – you will use the teacher’s favorite learning style.
I will collaborate with my peers from around the world – you will collaborate with peers in your classroom.
I will take my learning as far as I want – you must wait for the rest of the class.
The cost of a laptop per year? - $250
The cost of teacher and student training? – Expensive
The cost of well educated US citizens and workforce? - Priceless

A short conversation about podcasting.

Yesterday I got an email asking a question about podcasting - it’s a good starting question, and I thought you all might like to hear the conversation. I imagine that this conversation will be getting a lot larger, but right now, this is where we’re at. The email, and my responses follow, and I’ve anonymized the faculty member just to cover myself make things interesting. This also tends to illustrate the problems inherent in having discussions about technology over email - the interactive questioning part can take days. It will take 6 more emails before we’re really going anywhere communication wise with this, but I would have more trouble sharing a phone converstaion with you. Not impossible, mind you, just a little more difficult.

>A Faculty Member wrote:
>Hi John
>Do you know of any free software for creating podcasts that would
> work on both Mac and Windows.
>Thanks

On Feb 15, 2007, at 8:21 PM, John LeMasney wrote:
Sure,

There are lots of pieces of free software for working with podcasts.
Are we talking about the production and recording of podcasts,
distribution of them, editing them, and are talking about audio
only or video/screencasts, etc.?

j.

>A Faculty Member wrote:
>Hi John
>Ideally — all of the below.
>
>I will be teaching a class next spring that we would like to have
>students making podcasts –  so production/recording/editing and
>distribution — ideally cross platform software.  While we would
>teach some production basics - this wouldn’t be a production class -
>so we aren’t looking for complex solutions for creating content like
>Photoshop or Protools.  Actually one of our goals for the course
>would be to specifically stay away from “professional” and expensive
>software solutions and instead use free or very cheap software that’s
>readily available to everyone.
>Thanks

Okay,

Regarding Audio:

Editing, recording, tracking, and mixing can be done using Audacity.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Audacity is an open source [free] audio editing and finishing application.

Regarding Video:

From any source, you can create podcast prepared video using transcoding tools in VideoLan Client.

http://videolan.org

VLC is an open source [free] video playing and transcoding application.

Regarding distribution:

Advertising, RSS feeds, distribution, and related content can be done using WordPress.com

http://wordpress.com

With a free account, WordPress.com allows you to create a blog that can easily contain podcasts.

If you’d like to see podcasting in WordPress in action, take a look at my podcast at http://techarts.wordpress.com or you can see the full blown Open Source wordpress engine locally installed at our media server at http://media.rider.edu

I’d be happy to give you an overview of how this all works.

John.

Campus Technology

In this online Article at campustechnology.com, it talks about a topic that has become rather important at Rider University, Emergency Preparedness. In my meetings about this topic, it’s specifically about technology, e.g. how to keep the web server up in the case of a blackout. This article talks about a presentation done by the people at Tulane, who had spotlights of national coverage on them regarding their response to emergency and their preparedness during Katrina, and the focus is that they realized the people are so much more important than the technology, and it’s actually possible to over prepare in terms of technology. I’m not saying that we’re over-preparing at Rider, but maybe we should consider the length to which we’ll rely on technology as a focus in the case of a real emergency.

Campus Technology
Moreover, they added, no level of hitech preparedness can ever be guaranteed to be enough, or to be precisely the right kind of technological preparation for any given disaster. How easy it would be to assuage our fear of future catastrophe by constructing a fortress of systems and tools! But that would not only be no assurance of safety, the panelists pointed out, it would represent a conscious decision to move dollars (always a finite commodity in institutions of higher education) away from the provision of learning—and the mandate to educate our students is the reason that institutions of higher learning exist.

Yale University to post courses on Web for free - Yahoo! News

This is particularly interesting considering that Angel just came back from an NJEdge meeting where one unscheduled topic was “Why should I put up wikis/mp3s/video of my teaching for free for anyone to see?”

Personally, I think this is a short sighted argument. If all someone needs from you as a teacher is a recording of a single set of lectures to render you all used up, you’re probably not doing your job as a teacher properly. Open learning just creates one more resource for people to use to learn.

Yale University to post courses on Web for free - Yahoo! News
BOSTON (Reuters) - Yale University said on Wednesday it will offer digital videos of some courses on the Internet for free, along with transcripts in several languages, in an effort to make the elite private school more accessible.
While Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others already offer course material online without charge, Yale is the first to focus on free video lectures, the New Haven, Connecticut-based school said.

The 18-month pilot project will provide videos, syllabi and transcripts for seven courses beginning in the 2007 academic year. They include “Introduction to the Old Testament,” “Fundamentals of Physics” and “Introduction to Political Philosophy.”

Codec Packs: Good or Bad?

This is a very insightful couple of posts from two discussions about codecs. My own experience has been that codec packs can, and often do, lead to trouble. If you need a codec, you’ll find out when you need it. This may be inconvenient the first time it happens, but not as inconvenient as losing major codecs because the scrappy mega pack wiped it out with a free alternative. The worst thing to do is to install 62 codecs, most of which you’ll never use, and many of which contain malware. I like the advice of both of these posters. Well, except for the idea of using WinAmp - you can effectively ignore that part. Also, note that these codecs are for Windows. If you have a Mac or Linux, you’ll likely need to look up equivalent but separate siolutions. Good luck on getting the latest WMV codec to play on Ubuntu, for example, at least legally.

WINAMP.COM | Forums - No pictures when playing Videos / Internet TV
I’m using WinXP, and I’m still yet to find a video which won’t play perfectly in Winamp.
Tested with MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVI, DivX, XviD, OGM, WMV, ASF.
Athlon XP 2400 , Radeon X700, M-Audio Revo, DX9.0c.

Basically, I think it’s all down to codecs & DirectShow filters.
It’s especially those dodgy codec packs which cause most of the problems.

All you need are:
ffdshow
DivX and Xvid (though ffdshow can handle these, so no need to install them)*
OggDS Filter for .OGM
An MPEG-2 DVD Decoder, eg. Cyberlink PowerDVD / Intervideo WinDVD / Gabest (though ffdshow can also be configured to decode mpeg-2)*
Haali Splitter for demuxing MP4, MKV, OGM containers (add ;MP4;MKV;OGM to in_dshow extension list)
AC3Filter for AC3 audio layer (ie. if video uses ac3 audio)
CoreAAC (if video uses AAC audio)
Windows Media 8/9 codecs for ASF/WMV/MPEG-1
QT Alternative, for MOV

Then if the relevant file extension isn’t currently listed, add it to the Extension List in the DirectShow Decoder config (Winamp > Prefs > Plugins > Input > in_dshow > config). Though note that Nullsoft in_qt.dll plugin is recommended for QuickTime MOV, instead of adding ;MOV to in_dshow config.

Note that ffdshow can be configured to handle most video and audio decoding, including divx, xvid, mpeg2, and many more, so there’s a high possibility that ffdshow is the only thing you’ll need to install (but you might still need to configure it to make it the default handler for some formats).

* re: ffdshow
Once installed, go to: Start > Programs > ffdshow > video decoder configuration
Under “Codecs”, make sure DivX 3/4/5 and XviD are both set to enabled.
If disabled, click where it says “disabled” and change the drop-down menu to “libavcodec”,
or for mpeg2 change it to “libmpeg2″
etc.

You might also need to enable some formats in the ffdshow Audio Decoder config.

If the video still won’t play, then use MediaInfo to determine the required audio & video filters.

eg. other video formats might include:
Matroska (mkv, mka)
Real Media RM (do NOT install the evil RealPlayer!)
etc etc.

And all codecs/filters should be installed individually, not all at the same time.

If your system / graphics card is old, then yes, you should also uncheck “allow overlay” in Winamp Prefs.

And Chris Woods’ expert advice in the post above is certainly top notch.
Though I have no sympathy for people who install WinXP on old OEM systems with hardware not designed for it.

Here’s another poster with similar feelings on the subject. This was a direct response to the question “What’s the best Codec Pack?”:

VideoHelp.com / DVDRHelp.com / VCDHelp.com Forum Archive Forum Archive Home -> Software Playing -> What is the best Codec Pack?

Gazorgan posted 2003 Dec 04 14:13

There isn’t one. Period. Most codec packs break more than they help.

You basically need the following:

1) MP3 Codec (Radium)
2) AC3 Filter
3) MPEG2 Codec
4) FFDShow
5) OGG-Vorbis package (lots of good things with ogg, for sound).

That’s it. If you are going to encode DivX or XviD then install those codecs individually. MPEG1/2 Encoding comes with whatever encoder you use.

All of the above are available for free over in the tools section. Get the fourcc changer also, it will help with XviD/DivX playback issues sometimes (it’s an app, you don’t install it, you modify an AVI with it).

EDIT: Forgot the WMV9 codec pack if and only if you really need it, it fubars certan DivX3 files, but FFDShow will deal with it. MOV usually requires quicktime, but it’s such a spyware biatch to deal with. RM is even worse for spyware.

So, there you have it - I couldn’t have said it better, so as usual, I won’t try. John.

Technology-Enabled Teaching/eLearning Dialogue

Most of the people who heard of this merger between Bb and WebCT seemed to think it was a great thing, but I didn’t. Or, I should say, I don’t now if it’s a good, thing, but I don’t think it will be. I think that the tools in WebCT will be merged into Bb quickly and clunkily. I think that prices will rise to the point that we simply couldn’t afford to continue to use Bb. I think that WebCT is difficult for the average end user, and I think that the inclusion of the tools that I saw in WebCT to Blackboard will probably complicate Bb’s expensive but easy interface. At any rate - here’s a page with some analysis, commentary, and suggestions for people like me, who feel some apprehension about the merger.

Technology-Enabled Teaching/eLearning Dialogue
1. The merger will be a boon to the open source community, providing a forceful rationale for preserving self-initiated pace of change, customization, managed cost, and multi-vendor support platform for innovation. Skeptical WebCT users will move in droves to Sakai and Moodle. (or) The merger is a major set-back for open source, the forthcoming standardization/harmonization between the two market leaders will facilitate content sharing and tool development among schools that use the new Blackboard. Finally, there is the opportunity for higher education to focus on content development and pedagogy.

2. Basic costs will go up more slowly; there is an economy of scale that can be leveraged to reduce the rate of growth in licensing fees. The new Blackboard will grow revenue mainly through volume and BuildingBlocks sales that add value to the core CMS functionality. (or) The two big fish are now one bigger fish; the uncertainty, and the competition, is over. There is yet another bigger fish (e.g., Oracle-Peoplesoft, Microsoft) waiting to consolidate the educational market with the corporate training market. Each phase of consolidation will be accompanied by rapid price escalation.

3. Others in the CMS space (e.g., Angel, Desire2Learn) will redouble their commitment to service–who but their current customers can really sell to the newly disenfranchised? (or) How can relatively small companies resist the urge to divert resources to sales and growth? Service may suffer, but there’s nowhere for the current customer to go so they will stay during turbulent expansion.

OpenDocument Fellowship - Resources - FAQ

Given all of the hullaballo over MA’s decision to use OpenDocument rather than MS Word’s Document format, I thought it might be nice to give a link to a FAQ about OpenDocument. Enjoy!

OpenDocument Fellowship - Resources - FAQ

What is OpenDocument?

OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument or ODF) is:

* An open, XML-based file format.
* An open standard from the OASIS standards group.

OpenDocument covers the features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. Some background information on the format can be read in “History of OpenDocument, From birth to world movement”, by Daniel Carrera. A non-technical overview of the format is found in “Everybody’s Guide to OpenDocument” by Marco Fioretti.

The short name of the format is OpenDocument.

Productive Strategies: List of Academic Lecture Podcasts

I would love to intigate smething like this at Rider. It would be a relatively simple task for the Instructors, no student voices would likely ever be heard, ceasing privacy/inclusion issues, and the workflow would ensure a auick turnaround and availability - additional benefits would be that the students would have a way to review the lectures. Oh, and there is still value added by coming to class, going to University, etc. because a lot of the value of in class education is the visual aspects, the human interaction, and the ability to dig deeper into the topic with an expert in front of you, none of which can be gotten with these mp3s. Together with the BBC’s annotatable audio tool this could be a fantastic teaching and learning tool.

Productive Strategies: List of Academic Lecture Podcasts

Several universities are making lectures available as Podcasts. Not every class is work well on an iPod, but the content is much more directed toward people who want to learn and not just be entertained. Of course the flip side of this is that some of the professors are boring in person, to say nothing of listening to their recordings on an iPod. You may need to look around to find someone who is interesting to listen to, but once you find the right feed, you have a tremendous amount of content regularly published for entire semester.

The Daily Princetonian - Blackboard merger may benefit users

Here’s one analysis of the acquisition of WebCT by Blackboard. I personally think that it’s very likely the merger will create a disaster. I also think that the revered simplicity of Blackboard will go away. Oh, yeah, and since there’s no competition to speak of, demand of services, support and features will rise and supply of those will fall, resulting in [incredibly] a larger price tag.

The Daily Princetonian - Blackboard merger may benefit users

“What people will see in the next year or two is more and improved features, but I think we would see them without this merger,” he added. Later on, Hood said, Blackboard will probably try to fuse its reputedly easy-to-learn system with WebCT’s more complex, feature-rich system.

“For people who want to do more collaborative work in their teaching and research, I think [WebCT] facilitates that more easily,” he said. “It’s not a simple thing to learn how to do. I would say, for example, the learning curve for Blackboard is an hour as opposed to the full day to learn WebCT. I know that the WebCT folks say that WebCT is so much richer [in features].”