DV for Teachers

There’s lots of buzz about Skype, the free service for making internet phone calls (voice-over-IP). Anne Davis participated in a NECC session about edu-blogging this morning over Skype – she sat at her desk in Atlanta, and I heard her during the session in Philadelphia. Great audio quality, no noticeable lag. [Read her post about the session for more on good edu-blogging.]

So, good, right?

Ask Doc Searls about it, though. He is an advocate for Linux, the open source operating system, and always looks for tools that are not proprietary or closed, or as he calls them, “silos.” He links to the Gizmo Project, which looks like an alternative to Skype and other closed systems.

Keep these things in mind, folks: open standards are best, most flexible, and most likely to be future-proof. More details on potential negatives regarding Skype, why Gizmo looks to be a valid alternative, and the ideas that drive its development here.

[Update: Browsing to Slate only moments after posting this, I came across their studiously non-rigorous comparison of several current VOIP systems. Gizmo was not among them, but Skype was. So, read. Know also I should have made clear that my only experience with any of these was helping Anne test her initial Skype installation before I left for the conference. Almost all I know of this is what I’ve read; my inclination is to hope for decent performance and cross-platform interop. YMMV, etc.]——-

Created the Podcasting Department today with this post.

”[T]here are amazing built-in tools that GarageBand users can use today to create rich and professional sounding podcasts. Below are just a few tips and tricks that are suggested to getting the most out of GarageBand for building this exciting new kind of broadcast….”

The general guidelines for this are very good, despite the descriptions of Apple software. It’s one of several possible tools for creating these, and that’s one of the values of podcasting: it needs no particular brand name or one company’s technology. You can make, recieve, and distribute podcasts on any platform with a huge variety of tools, many of them free. So go for it.——-

“The following educators have invited you to join them as they blog and/or podcast their NECC experiences! You can lurk quietly, or jump into the fray by posting comments of your own.”

As a negative example of the value of blogging as a timely and relevant posting of information, here’s the link to the list of folks blogging NECC… on the last day of the conference. Never too late, I suppose….——-

“Fill out the form and produce the origami cd-wallet with your tracks listed the way that you want them…”

Creates a printable template with tracks info or other data and folding guides for making CD sleeves.

Andy Carvin’s a one-of-a-kind. He’s director of the Digital Divide Network, “an online clearinghouse of news and resources regarding the digital divide,” EdWeb – Exploring Technology and School Reform since 1994, and several other projects. He’s here at NECC, blogging at a rapid pace and covering many aspects from food (mmm… cheese steak) to David Weinberger’s intriguing keynote. He’s a passionate and articulate advocate for education and the ways technology can serve us. I’m glad I met him here.——-

The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to

browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a “sounds-like” type of browsing and more

up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license

interact with fellow sound-artists!

We also aim to create an open database of sounds that can also be used for scientific research. Many audio research institutions have trouble finding correctly licensed audio to test their algorithms. Many have voiced this problem, but so far there hasn’t been a solution.

How can you help?

Individuals

If you have audio samples which can be released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License please add them! Label them correctly and help us build a huge database.”

There’s more at the link, from a Yahoo! groups message originally posted on EdTech. Looks great.——-

Steve Mullen at Video Systems:

“Native DV editing means that with a cuts-only production, exactly the same bits are output to a tape as were input from a tape. No quality is lost. For manufactures of HDV editing systems, however, “native” means any NLE in which MPEG-2 clips are placed into a timeline. This blurring of the definition of native has come about because legacy MPEG-2 NLEs were rapidly modified to handle HDV, but not in the same way as second-generation NLEs expressly designed to edit HDV (i.e. Final Cut Pro 5).”

Kind of technical, but a good brief explanation of how different NLEs can handle this issue.——-

Steve Pandolfo is leading a session demonstrating how the Grapevine-Colleyville ISD uses Cast:Stream and Live Channel Pro to limit the need for travel between schools and the central offices, especially in their large district. The system doesn’t allow two-way video; it’s one-way video but with simultaneous text chat for questions and discussions, and there’s polling for creating consensus on some questions.

They haven’t yet used it with students, but they’re considering ways to utilize it. Their current license is limited to 50 concurrent log-ons, and that’s one of the current limitations. One of their next steps is to upgrade their QuickTime Streaming Server to allow multiple up to four video participants with iChat AV.——-

“Video Cases as a Catalyst for Change”, the name of the Poster session here at table P19, doesn’t do it justice. Paul Skiera of Arizona State University’s PT3-funded Technology Based Learning and Research program is showing and selling the DVDs they produced, showing teachers modeling NETS-compliant technology integration in classrooms. Good teaching tools, good production values, available online in sets by standard, subject area, many different ways.

So, good, right?

I got to Paul’s poster session a little early, actually, while he was setting up: sticking up a banner for the backdrop, piling stacks of the DVDs (which kept falling over), hooking up one laptop to a monitor to show the website and web store with another showing an example video full-screen. And then, he pulls out a Sony PlayStation Portable, with one of the NETS videos playing on it. PSPs can connect wirelessly (to each other, not to access the web [yet, says me]), take up to 1GB Memory Sticks, will play (Sony’s proprietary, non-user burnable [unfortunately, also says me]) UMD disks, and have USB connectivity. Thinking about this, I got, well, excited.

For the price of a decent Palm – about $250 – a presenter, trainer, or teacher has a video player that connects to a projector or TV with up to 4 hours of video or other instructional multimedia on it, Paul says. He showed me the tool he uses to compress the video for the PSP. I’m still thinking about what that could mean.

This is a very, very interesting idea.——-

“Learn the version(s) of Mac OS included with computers produced since 01 Jan 1998.”

Now this would have been useful a few weeks ago when we were sending some old Macs so surplus and I was trying to figure out which system disks went with which computer.——-