DV for Teachers

Mike Bombich has released a beta of the essential Carbon Copy Cloner, which I use to back up my Macs to external hard drives. A “clone” is an exact, bootable (!!) copy of your hard drive. Do this regularly and you’ll never need to fear a hard drive crash.

If you’re in education and you use it, send Mike a thank you for his generous licensing for educators:

Please note that if you are using CCC for an educational institution, you should NOT donate to Bombich Software. My heart is in Education and all software that I write shall always be free to Education.

This looks interesting. Brad Bergeron tells us how to Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive. The implications for troubleshooting are good; what about security, though? I need to make sure my lab Macs prevent booting from an external drive.

Prepping yesterday’s talk with the librarians, I came across CamStudio, billed as “Free Screen Recording Software”:

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

There’s more info at the CamStudio blog. Since I’m on a Mac here, I can’t give it a test. If someone does, let me know how it works in the comments.

This it to show how easy and quick it is to post to a weblog.

I’m giving a brief talk about Blogs and RSS for a group of law librarians, and it’s a great opportunity to learn more about how these work. (“If you want to learn something, teach it!”) I’ve seen presentations about the power of blogs and RSS by David Warlick, who’s a great booster of the power of this technology for educators. I got started in blogging by reading Dave Winer’s blog, Scripting News. Dave invented RSS, and several other user-enabling web technologies. I’ve been running this DV for Teachers blog for six years and another for three. So. Blogs and RSS.

Blogs are available from many sites. I recommend WordPress.com as a place that’s easy for new users but with great features for more advanced users. I’ll set up a new blog to show you how easy it is.

A blog of course is an easy-to-update web site, usually on a single topic or group of topics. Some are written and edited by a group. They’re often highly personal, but all share the characteristic of being easy-to-update through a web interface similar to web-based email. Further, entries on the blog, called Posts, are usually assigned a category. Blogs, like most news sites now, also generate RSS Feeds that make finding information on blogs easy. RSS is Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary to some). Wikipedia has a good overview. Sites with RSS feeds almost always have an button or an button.

Essential links for RSS and blogs:

Will Richardson’s RSS Quick Start Guide – Aimed at educators, it’s a clear but thorough explanation and guide to RSS, including setting up feeds for search terms that bring the results to you.

Will and I recommend Bloglines, where you can bring your regular news and blogs to one web page, but also subscribe to specific search results too. You could also download and install several programs for RSS subscriptions, including AmphetaDesk, Feedreader, and the Firefox browser, which has it built-in (awkwardly, in my experience). NetNewsWire Lite is one of the free readers available for Macs. Bloglines is likely the the easiest for starting out, and it’s accessible to you wherever there’s a net connection.

Technorati : searches blogs for your terms. Example: Brian Nichols murder

Google Blogsearch focuses on sites with RSS feeds, which by definition includes blogs. More information here.

Google Custom Search – for this talk, I created a Law Librarian Search Engine. It was easy:

• Log in to Google (or create an account; all that’s needed is a working email address and a password).
• Enter a name, description and some keywords.
• Specify a list of sites to search – I found these by searching for law blog.

• Bing! – a pre-defined search ready to bring you the latest information.

Universities tap into iPods’ potential as learning tool | ajc.com

Universities across Georgia – and the nation – are betting that the ubiquitous iPod, essential equipment for many members of Generation Y, can serve as an effective learning tool. Many of these initiatives rely on iPods, but students use other handheld devices, too, such as PDAs and smart phones.

Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville has found many creative uses that go beyond lectures since it incorporated iPod use in 2002. History students watch videos about historical figures and make documentaries; music students podcast the music library; and journalism students create podcast series.

Ken Stone’s Final Cut Pro page is an essential place for learning about FCP. Last night his periodic email update included 4 links, two of which I’ll highlight. The “first is a QuickTime movie”: by Steve Martin of Ripple Training (often posted about at DV for Teachers) explaining how to “spotlight” a portion of the screen, to draw viewers’ attention to a person or object. It’s explained in Steve’s usual informal style, and includes valuable keyboard shortcuts and tips for navigating around the timeline and several menus. Steve’s video tips always teach at several levels. Here’s Ken’s page; look for “Final Cut Pro – In the Spotlight (Movie)” to find the link to the clip.

The second item is Seth Kenlon’s Exporting to the iPod Using Compressor. Video compression is much more art than science (so much of video is art, not science, all the engineering notwithstanding), and a difficult art at that. Kenlon’s detailed instructions will do much to help you understand the various settings within Compressor and their use and affect on the finished video. As he says,

The final but most important principle in good compression is testing. It is up to you to test different compression rates and different codecs, and to record the results. Every project is unique, every video different, and so there will never be one pre-set for a truly optimized end result. The best, optimized compression is gained by frequent testing and constant exploration of available technology.

From their A Digital Picture of Britain, a mini-course on good photography, with brief, clear tips and very good example photos.

Top photographer Tom Ang shows you how to get the most out of your digital camera. Choose a subject and use the dropdown menu to browse his tips and tricks.

Via FreeMacPhoto.com.

Encoding for Windows Media Using Compressor – Flip4Mac

Ken Stone’s site has it:

Let’s face it, for as much as we revere our Macs, we unfortunately live in a PC world. When delivering content for the web we also have to realize that a large population of the viewing audience will watch our movies on PCs and, unlike our Macs, those PCs do not come pre-installed with QuickTime. Even though the QuickTime player (and browser plug-in) is free for PC users, there are many instances where you may have to additionally distribute movies as Windows Media or where WMV is the only viable option.