After many disappointing efforts to edit my screencasts in iMovie, only to have the software totally munge the video quality during the conversion to one of its native formats, I finally hit upon the right string of Google keywords to find what I needed to know. Simply put, you need to determine your resolution up front, specify that resolution in your screen capture software, and render the video in a codec that works well for this type of footage (I’ve read recommendations for both Apple Animation and Apple Intermediate).
Screencasts, of course, are mandatory for any online software training these days. We use this technology extensively in the Stratepedia Learning Labs to provide short-and-sweet how-tos for our own, web-based software and other apps we use. They’re also easy to incorporate into a Moodle-served course–just upload a video clip (or link to a file on a streaming server) and you’re good to go.
This tutorial provides the low-down. I use Snapz Pro as opposed to iShowU, but the same principles apply. I did a couple of tests this afternoon (one at 640 by 480 and one at 720p) and they both turned out beautifully. So now we get to redo our video clips–on the one hand kind of a bummer since much work has been put into them, but on the other a chance for us to one-up ourselves, even providing clips in high definition. These are going to look beautiful on our site, now that I’ve taken a shine to using pop-up windows in Moodle to display video clips and slide shows.
Everybody knows I use Moodle quite a bit, but what they might not now is I now use Keynote exclusively for anything I’m doing that’s slide-y in nature. Hey, if it’s good enough for Steve Jobs it’s good enough for me.
One of the things I like about it is just how easy it is to export the file into multiple formats. For a presentation I’m doing later this week I’m going to use a Moodle “course” in tandem, to distribute my files and hopefully keep the conversation going after everyone’s gone home. My presentation is actually several smaller presentations. I’ve been serving them up in both PDF and Flash formats. The latter is particularly useful–here’s what I’m doing:
- Export the Keynote presentation in Flash format.
- (optional) Open the HTML generated by Keynote and change the dimensions of the Flash container to, say, 800 by 600, or another size if necessary. This does involve getting into the HTML, but the only things you need to change are the numbers–everything else can stay the same.
- Log into your Moodle course and enter the Files area (in the Administration block). Upload both the HTML and the SWF files that were generated by Keynote.
- Turn editing on in your course, then add a File resource. Point it to the HTML file. Have it open in a new window, (optionally) turn off all the resizing, menu bars, etc., and make the window size 850 by 650 (or something appropriate to what you set the dimensions to in step 2).
That’s pretty much it. Not too difficult, huh? I love it when the tools actually make life a little easier.
I’m a week into my online Moodle course now. I’ve actually learned some things, and had a highly productive session involving the built-in chat and a wiki. It worked out really well–three of us worked together in the chat room, and plugged in content in a wiki-based rubric. It’s great because it gives me a real-world example of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used to solve a problem.
I just have one issue with the course: I’m pretty sure everyone else in the course has a K-12 focus, and being designed in a constructivist nature, I worry that this focus will drive what we learn over the remaining two weeks. Where are all the corporate training* people? I kind of figure it’s because K-12 people have more time to kill in June than the corporate-types, but it’d still be nice to not be the only one thinking about adult ed.
But it got me thinking about whether Moodle is really ready for professional development, or at least ready for professional development as I think of it. I don’t care about grades, or a top-down, instructor-oriented approach–I want to foster community and mentorship. My research at school is going to focus on this, probably using Ning, but I’m going to give Elgg a closer look shortly. Hell, I may even consider Facebook; everyone’s got an account there nowadays anyway.
* I consider myself closer to this group than the K-12 people in my program, primarily because I’m more interested in working with grownups than kids.
My Moodle course began yesterday. I’ve been using the software for a few years now, but it’s always been very seat-of-my-pants. My goal in taking this class was to get a better sense of the pedagogy behind it, but already I’ve picked up on a couple of modules I didn’t know about. They will be immediately useful in my own work.
I wish someone would write a slick, Web 2.0-style learning management system. Moodle’s nice and all, but that interface is horrid. I cleaned up what I could in my implementation, but there’s still much room for improvement. I also don’t like the fact that it’s in PHP, but I can get over that. The weirdest thing, though, is the development community. Moodle is the first open source project I’ve ever kept an eye on in which there was open flirting between members. This is probably an artifact of it being a touchy-feely constructivist application. All kidding aside, the downside of this educator-first approach to software development is, from my perspective, the occassional-yet-still-annoying dismissal-without-real-cause of interesting ideas–say, implementing OpenID instead of an archaic LDAP-based login system.
Oh well–at least it’s not Blackboard.