Thursday, 10 November 2011

week 5: inspiring and engaging students

This week, the course looks at all sorts of tools that encompass images, video, screen capture, audio and much more in order to engage students (and educators) whilst having fun!  The tools covered this week are:  Photostory, Microsoft Moviemaker, Screenr and Audacity.  


Below are notes taken from the course outline, lecture notes, research notes and the forum.


A great website about multiple tools (50+) for telling a story!!






Photostory
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx


"Microsoft PhotoStory is a free application that allow users to create a show and tell presentation from their digital photos.  The downloadable software uses the Ken Burns Effect on digital photos and allows adding narration, effects, transitions and background music to create a Windows Media Video movie file with pan and zoom effects.  Once a photo story has been made it can be played on Windows Media Player or burned to a DVD or CD" - Wikipedia

It is incredibly easy to use!!



Interesting/useful resources:



Features (Cheryl):


Photostory is a free program that allows you to create multimedia presentations from digital photographs.  Features include:

  • Edit pictures
  • Correct colour levels, contrast and red eye
  • Rotate and crop
  • Narrate and add background music
  • Use transitions from photo to photo
  • Customise motion
  • Zoom into a photo
  • Scan across a scene
  • Add text, colour and texture effects
  • Make your own music within the program
  • Save to format to be watched on DVD, email or post online
  • Cons:
    • System requirements - Pentium III with a min 256mb RAM along with Windows XP or Windows 7 and Windows media Player 10.
    • Size of finished file - huge if using more photos and higher quality (n.b. implications if file size too large)

Use educationally (Cheryl):
  • Cheryl:  Great for task orientated topics which incorporate a "how to" component
  • Cheryl:  For samples of students' work/encouraging group work for presentations
  • Naomi:  Using movies, narration, titles and dramatic music to create a presence - a very effective approach to delivery.

Some tricks of the trade and notes from the forum:
  • Need to save as a project
  • Grant:  wmv file plays best with Windows Media Player, but can be viewed with VLC Media Player (although a bit hit-and-miss as sometimes you can view the images and other time you can't).
  • Grant:  Once a photostory has been made, it can be played on a PC using Windows media Player.  Since the .wmv format is used, Windows Media Video Image (a sub-set of Windows Media Video) is incompatible with domestic DVD players, users wishing to create a DVD or CD will need to use third-party tools to convert into DVD compatible (e.g. MPEG 2) format first.  Version 3.0, although still a free download from Microsoft, removed direct Video CD burning, but supported a paid-for add-on from Sonic Solutions for exporting and burning the photo story to DVD.  Wikipedia
  • Able to mix narration and background music - PhotoStory gives you the option to (Grant):
    • type in notes on a slide
    • record narration on a slide (so you can record what you have typed)
    • add in background music towards the end of the process
    • play around with the volume of the background music so it doesn't overpower the narration
  • How long should a video be?  
    • Under 3 mins = necessary, under 2 mins = good, under 90 secs = great! (Steph)
    • Should be as concise as possible and get right to the point
    • Have we told a good story in a compelling way?
  • Convert the avi or wmv files into fash or mp4 to reduce the size - nice converters are youconverit or Zamzar



Windows Movie Maker

"Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software, included in Windows ME, XP and Vista.  It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration and Auto Movie.  New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be modified using XML code.  Windows Movie Maker is also a basic audio track editing program.  It can apply basic effects to audio tracks such as fade in or fade out.  the audio tracks can then be exported in the frm of a sound file instead of a video file." - Wikipedia


Interesting/useful resources:

Other useful information
  • Create polished movies in about 1 min.  Use the automovie feature to add transitions, soundtrack and title in about 1 minute.  Use artistic visual effects to add motion, pan, zooms and more.  Prompts help you to upload and share your movie on YouTube and other video-sharing sites.
  • Can use to import videos or make videos
  • Choose to save in "best quality"

Another option:  iMovie



  • iMovie works much as Microsoft MovieMaker - similar options available.
  • You can make your own movies using a compatible digital video, high definition camera to take the video which you connect and download to your Mac (version 10.3.4 or later).
  • You are able to edit and enhance the video, then share in a variety of formats - copy back to original recording device, upload on web, email, send wirelessly to a bluetooth device, burn to DVD.
  • Some of the features/help contents listed to help you work faster and smarter in iMovie:
    • Creating a movie automatically with Make a Magic iMovie
    • Deleting unwanted files and footage from iMOvie HD
    • restoring a clip to its original state
    • Crreating a colour clip
    • Creating placeholders to help adjust the timing of your movie
    • About direct trimming
    • Using bookmarks to mark your place
    • Using snap lines
    • Making waveforms more visible
    • Creating a still image from a video clip
    • Creating a still image without the pan and zoom effect
    • Showing more detail in the timeline viewer
    • Converting analog video formats to DV format
    • Selecting multiple audio or video clips
    • Exporting a high quality movie with reduced file size for distribution over the internet
    • Improving audio quality
    • Adjusting the playback quality of your movie
    • Choosing a format for new projects
    • Avoiding a bloack border around still images
    • Cropping photos in iMovie HD
    • Saving a copy of your project under a different name
    • Archiving a project on DVD disc
    • Adjusting footage to better fit the screen
    • Checking for the latest iMovie HD updates
    • Resizing the iMovie HD window to show the full resolution of your footage
    • Changing the length of a still image clip


Screenr

Screenr is a free and easy way to make a screen capture video recording with audio (aka screencast) and upload it as a post directly to twitter for free hosting from your browser - no installation or downloading required.  It also provides you with an embed code.


The beauty of screen capture software is that you can grab exactly what you want (Michael).


Interesting/useful resources:

Other useful information

  • Can sign in using any of your Facebook, Twitter, google, yahoo, LinkedIn or WindowLive accounts 
  • It is a webpage - so you do not need to download the software
  • Plays everywhere - even on iPhones
  • Record the screencast and hit the done button - this will take you through to the "My Screencasts" screen
  • If you don't want to embed a link, you can use an alternative domain:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UHBNM-LKD   becomes   http://youtu.be/_UHBNM-LKD
  • You are able to view your screencast as well as share it, download it, publish it, YouTube it, Facebook like it and tweet it.  (i.e.  You have the option of playing, sharing or embedding.)

Educational uses
  • Tutorials - so that content can be viewed over and over again in order to to develop mastery of the task or processes required
  • Giving of feedback - i.e. screencapture marking papers (using highlighter from Word) with voiceover



Other useful links/tools for screen capturing:
  • Camtasia (TechSmith) - costs a couple of hundred, but good tech support
  • ScreenHunter
  • PRINT SCREEN (on every Windows machine) saves a copy of the current screen to clipboard/memory.  With Print Screen, you have to do the resizing and cropping in some other tool (Michael).

Using GreenShot and Irfanview (Grant):
  • Free tools
  • Great for capturing single image screen shots to add into presentations or hard copy manuals
  • Greenshot takes a screen print of whatever is currently displayed and places it on the clipboard.  The area is editable - so you only need capture the part of the screen you require.
  • Irfanview can be used for further editing and web/other devices optimisation (must have the RIOT.DLL for web optimisation).  Simply open Irfanview, select Edit>Paste and there is your image!!
  • Sizing:  For an original "screen" of 1925x1200 px and a file size of 6.8Mb, to save this image (for the web) with the same dimensions, reduce the file size to 184Kb.  Then edit the image (reduce size) via Image>Resize/Resample back to a resolution of 450x281 (with constrain proportions selected).  Then save the image by File>Save for Web ... (Plugin) and save the image in your preferred format (JPEG, GIF or PNG). For this example, the finished file size would be:  JPEG = 18.6Kb, GIF = 43Kb and PNG = 137Kb.

Other options for screencapturing
  • Screenr is the simplest program to use to share in numerous locations - however, others are:
    • Camtasia
    • Screencast-O-Matic
    • Jing


Audacity

"Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.  It is the best tool to:

  • Record live audio
  • Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs
  • Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files
  • Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together
  • Change the speed or pitch of a recording
  • Etc ......

" - Audacity - About


Interesting/useful resources:


Installing Audacity:

  • Install the basic tool
  • To be able to save and export mp3 audio files however, you need to install the LAME encoder.  (mp3 is the standard fr audio files on the internet and is the format needed if you want to podcast audio material)
  • The LAME installation is a one-off installation - you only have to instal once!
Other useful links and information:
  • If you like recording and uploading, but don't want to edit and don't mind background noise or stumbles during the recording, try Audio Free Recorder.  Its easy to use - click record, click stop and save as mp3 and ready to upload!!
  • Must save as a project (AUP file), then need to create a MP3 file
  • iPadio for 23+ things!



















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