DV for Teachers

Quick, to follow up on later: 10 useful Twitter presentations. Have a Twitter account? It’s a heck of a lot more than what some celeb had for breakfast. You can use it to create an almost instantaneous professional network that can give you the help you need when you need it. Check out these presentations to learn more about how it can work for you.

Update: More on Twitter! Mashable, the social network site about social networking (meta meta meta meta, on and on), gives us this on Twitter for Beginners, and the fine folks at Twitter themselves give us a nice look at what Twitter can do for business. If it works for business, it can work for education too. Read up on this and you’ll get an idea.

I’m at altitude, on my way to a weekend away with Ellen to Boulder. Got a free pass for in-flight wifi, so I’m going to post some of the too-many open tabs I’ve been meaning to close among my browsers. Yes, browsers—I use both Firefox and Camino most of the time, and once in a while I use Safari. This post is about a great add-on that makes the web more usable, by controlling all that animated distracting hateful nasty Flash. It’s great when you want to watch a video, but all the ******* ads that I see lurching around the screens when I walk through the labs makes me pity all the folks who don’t know that it’s an option. As the developer, Wolf Rentzch says, “The web is so much better without Flash.” He’s right.

So, with that, read about and (on your Mac, anyway) install ClickToFlash. From the website:

Ever wanted to get rid of the scourge of the web that is Adobe Flash, but still retain the ability to view Flash whenever you want? With ClickToFlash, you can! Using ClickToFlash, all of those icky Flash bits that have infected most webpages on the internets are replaced with a nice, smooth gradient and the word “Flash” set in a nice, pleasing font. When you want to view the Flash, just click on it!

The advantages of ClickToFlash are numerous. Since Flash isn’t loaded until you specifically ask for it, your CPU usage will stay at normal levels when browsing the web. This has tons of benefits: web browsing stays speedy, your Mac laptop won’t get as hot, and your Mac’s fan won’t come on as often. In fact, we guarantee* that ClickToFlash will quintuple your battery life and that it will protect those precious parts of your body on which you rest your laptop! (* note: not actually guaranteed)

Although similar to Flashblock for Firefox and Camino, ClickToFlash offers features over and above what Flashblock offers, and it offers them for Safari. Best among them, ClickToFlash supports viewing all those ADORABLE meowing cat videos, annoying dog videos, and hilarious rickrolls from YouTube without using Flash at all! That’s because YouTube also offers H.264 videos, which are used when viewing YouTube on the iPhone. With ClickToFlash, you get access to those same, higher quality videos.

Come join us! The web is so much better without Flash.

via ClickToFlash.

Lifehacker sends us Seven Easy Ways to Integrate Your Google Apps. I have got to study this to understand all the ways, once set up and understood, to make these apps work for me.

Mashable, the relentless site for news on social networking and blogging tools, today posts Back to School: 10 Terrific Web Apps for Teachers.

I would love to hear if any classroom teachers are using any of these.

Megabyte Computing offers a QuickTime X Preference Pane, adding some options back to the interface that Snow Leopard, a.k.a. OS X 10.6, removed. I’ve asked the developers for more information and hope to hear back from them soon.

Mothers Ruin Software gives us Suspicious Package for seeing what a pkg installer file will put on your system before you run it. A nice idea. Via.

I saw some very engaging student projects while judging at the Festival—previous post here. There were 160 judges there, working into the afternoon judging several categories, all hosted in the facilities of Georgia Public Broadcasting.

I worked with an instructional technologist from Muscogee County and a library media specialist from Fulton County. We looked at several student-created web sites, most on CD and some online. Lots of good creative work, some were rather cookie-cutter, and one or two a bit misguided or unfortunately marred by broken links or missing images. I particularly liked the emphasis on citing sources as part of the projects. One nice resource I discovered is Weebly, a free website host for several of the projects. The sites I have seen had few ads, and not to distractingly placed. A nice find.

Encourage your students to participate in the festival in your school!

I didn’t even know Movie Maker was missing features. We still have XP on our lab PCs, so we don’t have the latest Movie Maker. I don’t configure the PCs in our labs—so glad someone else has that enviable job—but I teach workshops on Windows Movie Maker. The newer versions have lost functions I take for granted, most importantly capture from DV via Firewire. We’ve just gotten some Flip cameras for student use, but most of our cameras are still DV-tape-based, and we have DV decks on 11 workstations. My usual browse of Lifehacker brought this portable version of Windows Movie Maker to my attention yesterday:

Based on version 2.1 of Windows Movie Maker, Portable Windows Movie Maker not only lets you use the missing features on Vista and Windows 7 systems, but it includes the missing transitions and effects from Windows XP, as well as several additional features to boot. Portable and stand-alone, you can use it when you need removed features, like analog capture, without messing with your current version of Windows Movie Maker.

Via Lifehacker which was via Download Squad which was via instant fundas which was via dvrexster who gives credit to winmatrix.

The Free Music Archive offers really free music, and it was picked by people! Via Paul Lamere’s Music Machinery blog, which I found via Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s Particles.

The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is being directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by outdated copyright law. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won’t put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

I’ve listened to some samples – good stuff! Some of this will find its way into our podcasts, I’m thinking.

Printable Paper offers free downloads of all kinds of forms. I was looking for a storyboard template, and they don’t have them, but oy do they have other forms, like crazy. Calendars, note paper, music staff paper, graph paper, receipts, all kinds of forms.

I found it via Jason Moore’s Xinsight.ca, who has a nice storyboard template here. He’s also got a 16×9 template for widescreen video planning. A well-planned storyboard can save you TONS of time when you’re actually shooting the video. Get’em, use’em, love’em.