DV for Teachers

I’ve got several additions to the earlier Word entry. The Word MVP Site has plentiful guides to the intricacies of Word. One that explained an old issue for me and several users I’ve known is the difference between page numbering in the document and page numbers in footers. That’s huge.

Here’s another: the ins and outs of Tables of Contents explained

as well. Did you know that the TOC is a single “field” in the document? Make a small change expecting it to behave like other text and you’ll get unpleasant surprises.

Finally, a reminder on basic formatting of your document for sanity’s sake.

If you’re in academe, chances are Word is one of the most fundamental tools you use, because if you’re in academe, then you’re a writer. It behooves you to know how to use your tools well.

Ellen pointed me to Zotero – The Next-Generation Research Tool, and whew am I impressed. It’s an “extension” for the Firefox browser.

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.

Scott McLemee of Inside Higher Education gave it high praise in September, and there’s increasing buzz around the web. Zotero’s site has an entire page of training screencasts here. It’s a tool that could change the way you do your research, and for the better, no kidding.

Here’s the information: Download SnagIt for Free – Full Licensed Version | Digital Inspiration Technology Guide

It’s a great deal on a not quite up-to-date version that should work well. Windows only.

A very useful article on copyright in the classroom from Inside Higher Ed. The guidelines are not clear, but this goes far to help clarify the murk.

There are few circumstances in which it’s legal to copy a DVD and screen it in its entirety to an audience without paying royalties. One of them is in the classroom.

That exception and others make up a patchwork of laws and rulings on the use of media for educational purposes that some professors have attempted to navigate but many others ignore altogether. What constitutes “fair use” in classes that rely on films, television shows and assorted media clips? In some ways, it’s still an open question. Copyright law and court precedent set the limits, but within those limits, colleges, scholars, studios and lawyers have struggled to define when exactly it’s permissible to use artistic works in the classroom and in students’ assignments.

One scholarly group, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, seeks to clarify the boundaries with a new set of best-practices guidelines for fair use. Its creators hope that it will give professors a tool for interpreting existing law as well as provide a unified set of standards to eliminate confusion between instructors and college administrations.

Much more information in the complete article, and a valuable discussion after.

Pop star Moby offers free licenses to student and independent filmmakers at mobygratis. Don’t know if internet use is acceptable, but the terms certainly seem to make the tunes available for offline personal and school use:

hi,
i’ll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password.
you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it’s being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you’re looking for,
moby

Go check it out.

Chris Pirillo runs LockerGnome, a huge, busy site full of pointers, tips, news, opinion, geektalk, and more. At his own site, last week he posted Top 100 Mac Apps.

I hadn’t heard of a few of these. Most are shareware, some are free. There are several similar apps too, so there’s some overlap. One that I hadn’t seen before includes HyperDither, which makes nice high-contrast 1-bit (black and white) images from your photos. It’s fun.

If that headline isn’t geekspeak, I don’t know what is.

Got a Jpeg or other digital file you’d like to make into vector art? Try the VectorMagic site, hosted by Stanford University. The above image, from their website, shows the difference between vector and bitmap. I tried it with a photo of Ellen and got an interesting, drawing-like effect. There’s nothing to download but the finished pic, and it all happens on the server, so it doesn’t tie up your computer. Try it out.

No matter what you might think. I’m showing a class a Wordpress blog.

This is a quick demonstration of how easy web pages can be.

I’ve had this page open for days and I’m finally getting around to linking it here. Schoolhouse is a “homework manager for Mac,” and I want to give it a try as a project manager for my own work, and to test it for other potential users. I know someone who will go to college next year, and he may have a MacBook. This might serve him well.