I spent three days last week at the MACE MTI Conference in Bonner Springs, Kansas. There were some really slick presentations I hope to write more about soon, and a couple of total duds (Apple’s podcasting presentation probably did more of a disservice than anything to their wonderful suite of tools for this application). What excited me most, though, was meeting people who are really using technology in their schools. Where I work we constantly get reports that teachers are still petrified of technology. Granted, this conference was attended by the high-achievers, but overall I don’t buy it anymore. Folks at MTI represented all sizes schools, all grade levels, all ages, and all subjects. And they were extremely receptive to new ideas.
Anyway, I don’t want to keep going because it will turn into a rant–so let me just say that I’m excited about pushing an envelope or two and helping the people I met last week keep ahead of the game.
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.
Whew, I’ve been knee-deep in a week-long workshop on Teaching Content to All–although I’ve been getting regular exposure to the concepts being introduced for a good ten years, it was nigh time to get some formal instruction. It’s been eye-opening–even though I don’t really do face-to-face instruction, my shop is doing more and more online, or at least being asked about online instruction, and I don’t think anybody’s really begun thinking on how the two mix. This is something I’ve been curious about for awhile, so it’ll be good to have more grounding on both sides of the equation.
Anyway, I wanted to chip in my two cents on some of this week’s big gadget announcements:
- I know I’m late to the party, but Microsoft’s Surface computer looks awfully slick. It’s a shame its price will relegate much of its initial use to marketing (otherwise, why put it in T-Mobile stores?), but what a compelling new way to interact with information. I just hope Microsoft doesn’t screw it up by throwing a big Start menu and Clippy on it–notice how it looks nothing like any other Microsoft product, and suspiciously like something out of Cupertino? Seems like the company that’s given us AppleTV and the iPhone could merge ideas from these two technologies and bring us something absolutely stellar. In the meantime, I don’t think I’ve been this impressed by a Microsoft product since Office 98 for the Mac.
- Speaking of Apple, I’m encouraged by two announcements today–the expanded availability of iTunes U content via the iTunes Store, and support for YouTube watching via AppleTV. Even though it’s still sparse, I hope being able to see iTunes U firsthand will help institutions currently dragging their feet (Kansas Regents, cough cough cough) to ignore the attorneys and open up this emerging opportunity to both students and instructors. As for the marriage of YouTube and AppleTV–all of a sudden the amount of content for Apple’s TV-top box multiples n-fold. I was underwhelmed by AppleTV when I first saw it, but have become increasingly intrigued and excited by its possibilities in professional development. Now I just need to figure out a way to get work to buy one for me.
- And then there’s the Palm Foleo. So, I have a smartphone (or will soon, I should say). I have a laptop. And now I have a little baby laptop that only works with my smartphone? I think I’m missing something, or hope I do. I was hoping Palm would at least give an interface update to its aging operating system. Anyone who’s talked to me about smartphones in the last couple of months knows that I’m very much in the market for one now, and have whittled down my options to either going crazy with an iPhone (which would involve switching providers, plus shelling out a ton of cash, hence my hesitation) or being sensible with a Windows-based PDA phone. Palm isn’t even in the picture, and I think they’ve missed the mark with the Foleo.
I’ve come to realize that Project Management (capitalized) as it’s typically known is mostly a tool to keep managers looking busy to their superiors. I’m not interested in Gantt charts; I’m interested in communication and seeing what’s gotten accomplished–not what someone promised would be done by now and is now hopelessly off-schedule.
So we’ve begun (actively) using ActiveCollab. I wish there were some sort of stats feature built in so I could tell you how many tasks have been added. And, believe it or not, some of those tasks have already been checked off–I’m a big fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, at least the method he suggests for writing out tasks, and that’s helped create cross-offable tasks. Granted, there are only two of us using it at the moment, but rolling out slowly isn’t a bad thing.
I’m still disappointed that ActiveCollab is going to a commercial model, but I came to the conclusion that, hey, if it’s worth paying for, work will pay for it. And if not, I’ve got the old open source version until it breaks.
I’m going to a workshop on project management today; one of the perks of being faculty/staff at KU. I’ve felt a lot of internal pressure to become better at this craft and, while I don’t expect this workshop to cure any inadequacies I have in this department, I hope to get a few tips on how to move forward.
One big hump I’ve struggled to get over is software for managing this stuff. Microsoft Project is only an option if I boot it up in Parallels, but I’d rather not have to deal with its complexities. Basecamp and ActiveCollab are a little closer to what I’m after, not only in the simplicity area but also in the collaboration department, but I have a feeling getting work to pay for the former would be a pain, and it looks like the latter is sadly taking a commercial route as well. That’s too bad–its peers on Freshmeat tend to not be the user-friendliest solutions.
I suppose I could try writing one for myself–I actually did so, unknowingly, about ten years ago. In retrospect it worked pretty well–it kept track of projects, team members, and notes. Nothing fancy–some Perl CGIs, but the organization I wrote it for used it in some permutation for quite some time. Seeing as how many Web 2.0 project management startups there already are, and how many of them are written in Rails, such a task shouldn’t be that hard, right?
In the meantime, Dreamhost offers a one-click install for ActiveCollab, at least while it’s still open source, and I’ve set it up try to establish a little order in my life.