DV for Teachers

I was showing Pegg Albers some information about Podcasting, and bink I found this excellent step-by-step tutorial on How to Podcast.

Man, I love the web.

Michael Ash gives us QTAmateur for MacOS X.

QTAmateur is a small, simple QuickTime video player. It can play any format that QuickTime can understand, handle fullscreen video playback, and export files to any format that QuickTime can write.

QTAmateur includes a Batch Export function which can convert any number of movies at a time to another format. Simply drag the desired movies into the window, choose the desired format, configure the output, and let QTAmateur take care of the rest.

How very nice! Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

David Battino at O’Reilly digital Media gives a great tutorial, QuickStart: Digital Audio Editing.

Just as image editors like Photoshop gave us the power to zoom in on pictures and polish them to perfection, digital audio editors do the same for sound. In this article, I’ll introduce some of the most useful audio editing commands and explain how you can use them to create your own sonic diamonds.

With clear screenshots, he explains how to “read” a waveform, clean up some common recording glitches, and apply a smooth fade. Highly recommended.

This month’s School Library Journal links to A Book Lover’s MySpace.

Web rats (who also happen to be bookworms) are flocking to an online site to play, of all things, librarian. Their destination? LibraryThing”, where member users can create a sophisticated catalog of their personal book collection, view the collections of others, learn about worthy titles, and connect with like-minded readers. Without advertising or paid PR, LibraryThing has attracted 79,000 members and counting, becoming one of the Net’s sleeper hits, a testament to both the word-of-mouth power of the blogosphere and the enduring passion for books.

An exciting idea.

Dandelife has great tips for making the most of your inexpensive camera. Shoot from the hip, don’t be afraid to tilt the camera, avoid your flash, don’t be shy, take pictures of kids at their eye level, and more. Go!

The Plugin Site has free Photoshop-compatible plugins – dozens, for Mac and Windows.

No kidding – it’s a really great idea. (But how long can free services like this last?) Nice while we’ve got it, though:

PDF Pad is a comprehensive online destination where you can download and print the high quality documents you need for work, school and play, free of charge or registration hassles.

Nice. Choose the type of layout or graph paper you want, click the Print button, and load a custom printable PDF in several varieties of…

• Calendars
• Flags
• Graph Paper
• Smith Chart
• Staff Paper
• Storyboards

• Sudoku

How about ‘Passionate Learners” from a better Lesson? Teachers, take a look at this giude for better presentations, books and articles and consider how you could “grab” your students and keep them.

I’m always on the lookout for good photo editing tutorials, and this example and ensuing comment thread on Flickr show what you can do with a few clicks and Lab color in Photoshop CS2. The word is overused, but the results can be stunning.

This is aimed at new freshmen, but even staff and faculty could use refreshers on these ideas from the Online Education Database: 88 Surefire Tips for Succeeding in College, especially Number One: Take responsibility for your own learning. Words to live, and learn, by.