DV for Teachers

The University of South Carolina Beaufort offers this nice tutorial on web searches

So, you’re still getting those 1,670,000 responses to your search queries on the Web, and you’re still too busy to do anything about it, like reading the lengthy, and sometimes confusing, “help” screens to find out how to improve your searching techniques.

Look no further! Real help is here, in the USCB Library’s “BARE BONES Tutorial.”

I think I’ll use it as a guide for a workshop, either this summer or fall. (The cute dancing boney guy is from their site.)

Lifehacker points to an Ask Metafilter discussion of video editors with more capabilities than Windows Movie Maker, and one of the commenters points to this nice overview from Wikipedia. I found the feature comparison very valuable, as I don’t have the opportunity to check all the editors out there.

Just so you know, you may find some salty language at Ask Metafilter, a “how do I do it” portion of its parent site, the Metafilter “community weblog.” There’s a constant stream of thoughtful and frivolous posting in both places, and it’s worth your time.

I’ve “posted several times about free software”:http://www.dvforteachers.com/category/4/; here’s one of the latest compilations for PCs from Computer Shopper magazine.

The Best Free Software – Computer Shopper

You won’t find the very latest useful software in the aisles of the nearest computer chain store. In fact, that may be the last place you’ll find some really great programs, because many are not for sale. Instead, the publishers have made them available to the public free of charge. Computer Shopper has collected 50 of the best freeware apps…

The previous post got me wondering about learning more about Macs for those who are unfamiliar. If you’re new to Macs, or returning after being away for a while, here’s some help.

There’s the Mac 101 section at Apple, as well as Switch 101 for switchers from Windows, and there’s a “series of posts called Mac 101 at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

From Peachpit Press’s Chapters & Articles section comes The Art of TextEdit > Beyond the Basics

Need a fast and easy-to-use word processor/page layout program with lists, styles, tables, advanced typography, and support for multiple languages? Ladies and gentlemen, Neale Monks wants to introduce you to TextEdit, which is a viable, attractive alternative to heavyweight word processors.

If you’ve got a Mac, you’ve got TextEdit. It doesn’t have all the capabilities of Word, but that’s hardly a limitation for most users, and TextEdit will open and save Word files. That’s useful.

Leaarn more about TextEdit on the Apple website here and here.

Looking for a way to save the audio from an online .flv-format tutorial, Google found Gabriel Serafini’s site and his HOWTO: How to record a streaming .ram file to .mp3 using OS X.

He used the freeware applications SoundFlower to route the audio signal and Ben Shanfelder’s excellent Audio Recorder with specific settings in the Sound Preference Pane under System Preferences. It worked very well. now if I could capture the video portion without having to point a video camera at the screen….