Interactive Whiteboard Lecture Capture
This is a follow up blog post on lecture capture but this one integrated the capture of Smart Board interactions. With this device the presenter can write or draw on the projected image of a presentation and the smart board will digitise these inputs and place them on the presentation. (This could be a PowerPoint but Smart also have their own notebook software)
Due to the interactive nature of the whiteboard there are some new thing to consider when preforming lecture capture of this kind. The first is the presenters themselves, as there is a interactive whiteboard involved they will be spending less time in direct communication with the audience and more focused on the board to which they are contributing content to.
This leads to the problem of if you were to capture physical presence then a ‘talking head’ is no longer appropriate as it will be continually moving out of shot to interact with the white board. The alternative is to capture the talking head at a later date, remove video or take a wide shot angle of the whole room. This is a tricky decision as they all have their pros and cons. Additional capture is time consuming for the presenter and editor, No video you will loose the human presence and the wide angle shot means you are effectively have two videos of the same thing on with the presenter blocking the board in one and no human presence in the other.
Other point to consider when capturing this ‘live’ is the position of the microphone as the presenter will be moving around a lot they may not be talking in the direction of the microphone. Even though it is not good practice to talk the white board whilst presenting it may still happen. (SENDA compliance pg 44)
The benefit of using such a method, with smart board lectures is able to capture working and developments, which make the presentation much more engaging (therefore human presence might not be needed?)
If there is time available it might be better the lecturer to capture the smart board capture at a separate date form the lecture.
Technical aspects to capture:
As the lectern machines do not have lecture capture software on them you will probably be bring your own device to capture the lecture. This means you will have to connect the smart board to your device. You will have to contact Tech Services to assist with this as the wiring is locked away.
The device you will be capturing from does require smart board software installed (or any interactive whiteboard software) Smart and Promethean are the two main manufacturers of White boards. Smart Software does require that you provide a serial number of the smart board to install the software whereas Promethean just requires that you provide an email address. (Plymouth University is currently looking into site licences for this) One cautionary note, Smart software can only be used on a smart branded interactive device otherwise you are breaching copyright. Promethean can be used on any interactive device from any company.
In my previous blog post I advocated the use of Camtasia as the means of capturing the lecture and from my perspective it has functioned really well. when i did some testing with whiteboards and lecture capture I was introduced to Microsoft Expression Studio (authough I have not been able to test it fully it looked good and is available for free to PU staff: follow this guide)
Camtasia: Capturing Lectures
As in many of my posts I have discussed the constant development of resources and making them available online. In this case I have been working with the subject librarians to assess the possibility of recording a session and making it available online. The aim was to not only computer the speaker presenting the material in video form but also the material itself, in this case lecture slides and navigating web pages. My assessment of this would look ant the ease of doing this including postproduction the quality of the material captured and how quickly it can be distributed.
This is not the first time that I have looked at Camtasia I have done a considerable amount of work with the software testing its capability in producing quality presentations. In this case however was the first time that I have gone out and captured a full teaching session using Camtasia with a live audience with all of the equipment that I wanted. My initial testing of the software was an imperative learning process that has lead me to the decision that I have made on what equipment that I have used to create the final product. And I will start by looking at these.
In essence Camtasia captures three elements simultaneously, one video feed one audio feed and everything that is happing on the desktop of the computer. The first time I recorded a lecture (in my blog on final cut pro) where I recorded a lecture via digital camera and recorded sided using Cam Studio. As described in the post it required a lot of video editing to create the final product. With Camtasia this is not the case because on piece of software is recording all of the elements of the presentation there is no need to synchronise the video to the slides. From what I had learned from my previous presentations I went with a pretty similar setup (shown below)
This is the way the equipment was arrange for the presentation
Equipment:
Laptop with Camtasia: At the moment Camtasia is only available as individual purchases rather than a site licence.
DV Camcorder: I wanted to have a video of the presenter to accompany the slides that they were presenting. Even thought most laptops have built in web cams in the top of the screen they do not provide the best viewing angle or very good quality. I decided to get a digital Video (DV) camcorder so that I get the best angle of the presenter. The DV camera also has a video out connection that allows the video feed to be streamed directly to a computer via a firewire cable.
5m Firewire cable: I bought this length of cable to give me the ability to place the DV camcorder freely; also the 10m cable was 4 times the price.
The Setup
As this was being recorded in font of a live audience the technology setup needed to not interfere with the students in the classroom but be good enough for the audience viewing at home. I set up the laptop and connected to the projector and mirrored the displays (both laptop and projector showing the same desktop). I then setup the camera on a tripod in the audience, opened the display and turned it round so that it faced the presenter. I did this so the present could see if they were going to walk out of shot, I though it would look more professional if the camcorder wasn’t continuously moving side to side.
I then opened Camtasia selected the Camcorder as the video input (by default it always selects the webcam if there is one) the built in microphone (I was using a Mac an their built in microphones tend to be very good quality. If I were using any other brand of computer I would have connected a Logitech USB microphone). By default Camtasia selects the primary display to capture in this case this was fine, as I had mirrored displays.
The setup was quick and all I had to do then was click the big red record button. As this was the fist time I recorded a live session I remained in the room to deal with any technical problems that may occur but eventually I want this to be easy enough that I could loan out the equipment so that the whole session could be managed by the presenter themselves.
The presentation began smoothly with minimal differences to a normal presentation (Macs have a slightly different way of displaying presentation than Windows machines) the unforeseen problems occurred once the presenter finished with the presentation and wanted to demonstrate some elements of the presentation on the Web. As the presenter was not accustomed with OSX she did have some difficulty navigating the system. I originally thought that the presenter was only going to use PowerPoint and was not expecting this. I have used this Operating system for some time now and I forget how alien it can be to people especially non-technical people.
When it came the recording had some minor glitches, it appeared that the software hadn’t recorded the slides correctly as they were displayed on the projector. I had never experienced this issue before but I think it was something to do the integration with the PowerPoint as this did not occur once the presenter started to use the web. Generally I was happy with the video and sound quality, the room was not designed specifically for recording and there appeared to be relatively little background noise in the final recording.
Screen shot of final edited video
A new age of Cloud working
One of the key developments that will be occurring over the summer will be the migration of the student emails system to Microsoft Live. Not only will this mean that the students will have access to a live account they will also benefit from the other cloud services that Mircrosoft have to offer. The member of staff will however not be migrating to this system in the summer but will be supporting the students. I wanted to create some learning material that would support the staff in this transition so that when the students come with questions about the services that are available to them the academic members of staff will be able to advise them in their learning.
I have decided therefore to give the faculty an introduction to The Cloud and what it can do for them. Even though they will not be migrated (as a cooperation) over to this service they are still able to sign up for these free services and use them. I consequently want to give the members of staff an impartial introduction to some of the cloud services that could be used in and academic way, including collaborative online working and document backup.
To support my training that I will device I have created a one-page work sheet that would summery of all of the services, their functions and advice on how they should be used effectively and safely. I wasn’t going to rely on my own knowledge to create such a document but rather resource the entire learning technologist brainpower to help with the creation.
I created a first draft, a framework for everyone to start on and then uploaded it to Google Docs. I then invited members of The University Learning Technologists team to the document and gave them write permissions. My expectations that over the week during their busy schedules that whey would dip into the document have a look post comments and perhaps make changes. By the end of which I would have a suitable document that could be distributed.
I was rather surprised that within 20 minutes of inviting people to my document I had 5 people all collaborating on the document simultaneously, some correcting spelling and grammar, some providing comments and some challenging the appropriateness of the material for the intended audience. All in all it was a hive of activity, so much so I decided to screen capture the event so that I could show it to the academics to show how collaborative online working works in reality.
Many editing one document on Google Docs
This video has been compressed from 30minutes down to 2 and then captured via Jing
Collaborative online Working time lapse
In the video you can see that all of the contributors are listed in the top right hand corner with a coloured boxed assigned to their name. The colour that was assigned to their name was represented on the document by the same colour cursor; hence as the document was being edited al participants could see who was making what changes to which sections. Underneath the participants there is a chat window that allows the participant to have a running commentary on the work, and this does not effect the document in anyway once the participant has left the commentary is lost. And in the centre section is the document itself and comments can be made to this, which remains until one of the editors removes them.
I then downloaded the file to make final adjustments such as add a footer and crop one of the image both of which I was un able to do in the in browser editor.
Even when I downloaded the file to make the final editions the document maintained the comment that were mad online.
I felt I have learned first hand on the powerful nature of the online collaborative working and surprised at how quickly people were willing to engage with it and contribute. I understand that these are all learning technologists and can’t expect the same type of results that I have seen here from academic or students. That I why I decided to create my one page guide as platform neutral display and describing as many different options allowing for the reader to make their own choice on what method if any best suits their needs and the needs of their students. I really hope that I have good engagement with this, as I believe that this can really enhance the learning experience of user who can use this to create group work.
I recall when I was studying at University working on a piece of group work the amount of emails that would be sent with different versions of the document, or my group members writing sections and having to compile it all at the end, used to be such a time consuming task.
The one thing that I want to get out of the training that I provide to the academic is a sense of empowerment that they can go away and tell their students that there are all these tools out there that can be utilised in such effective ways.
Link to final document: What is the Cloud
Youtube video: Google Docs in plain English
Implementing Peer Assessed Discussion in SharePoint
This is a follow up from a previous blog where I was asked to review the plausibility of creating an assessed discussion area. For that blog click here. This blog will talk about how I have taken a student SharePoint page and developed into a viable solution and hopefully share some good practice.
What I have found from the discussion board that have been set up in the past is that a question or discussion point has been set and a whole cohort of students can then reply to this. What tends to happen is a couple of people reply and the people reply to each other comments. After a while it is very difficult to discern if student a replying to the original statement or to each other comments. This therefore make following the discussion very difficult especially if student contribute was to be evaluated.
When I came to setting up the assessed discussion areas it was paramount to have a clear representation of each of the students contribution and discussions with one another’s points of view. Subsequently with the help of academic I created separate discussion areas titled with each of the students’ names.
With this set up I created a separate area where all of the questions could be posted that the student would be required to respond to.
Unfortunately there is no batch process that allows for the creation of discussions areas for each for student this means that each needs to be created separately. From this it is not recommended for large cohorts, as the administration of these areas can be quite arduous.
After creating these areas it was essential I provided the students with an introduction to these areas encompassed with instructions on how to best us it:
On this web page, under phase two you will see a number of links on the left hand menu under discussions.
The assessed discussion link is the question set by Liz ******* this is the question that you will be responding to.
Under the link ‘Student Discussion Tile Based View’ is the place where you will be responding to this discussion. I have created a separate discussion for each student to type his or her responses into. To do this simply click on add discussion and add your contribution. You may want to type up your response before hand in a word document and once you are happy with the formatting spelling and grammar copy and paste it into your section. When you create a discussion in response to the question please use the question title as the title of you discussion making it easier for the tutor to find your responses. If you are unhappy with the contribution you have made simply click on you contribution select ‘view properties’ then ‘delete item’.
To respond to discussions that other have made simply click on the discussion you wish to respond to and click ‘Reply’ in the top right. Try to avoid creating discussions under other students’ names as this may cause confusion to the tutors.
If you find the Tile based view to small then simply click on your name and you will see a full screen version of your discussion.
The final link is the ‘Test discussion’ area. This has been created for those who are not familiar with online discussion and want to test out the functions of the discussions. Feel free to create discussions and reply to them in this area until you feel confortable with this format. Discussions created in the Test Discussion area will NOT be assessed and ignored by the tutors.
If you are having any problems contributing to these online area please email me direct: *****@******.co.uk and I will attempt to resolve these as quickly as possible
From these instructions I hope that the students will be able to respond to the discussion successfully. I will review the results after the assessment is over and get student feedback to see if they were happy with the process and the support.
Using Facebook Groups as a Teaching and Learning site?
At the university I work at we have a VLE that is cut off from the rest of the world. This provides a safe Learning environment for student that has no threat of scrutiny from the general public. All of the files and folders are located Local servers and therefore subject on only one stet of Laws. Facebook on the other hand is not designed to be a VLE and has the complete opposite concept; it is public to all who want to sign up for an account and is hosted in the United States. Because of this when I initially asked for advice on its use for academic purposes I was recommended not to use it.
So why would I go ahead and consider it for promoting Teaching and Learning? When I was asked to research the plausibility of creating an area on Facebook I was presented with obstacle that made it more difficulty to create and manage on the existing VLE. This obstacle was a large number of students for three other counties who had never seen The University’s VLE would have to contribute and discuss on learning from their cultures. This would involve uploading videos and creating discussions by all of the participants. Due the logistical nightmare that would ensue getting all of the detail of all these students and getting them on to The University system, I wanted to see if was possible to create such a learning resource on a system that the majority of young people are familiar with.
The Criteria
The crucial thing about this Page that I would create is that it is private to only the members. The teachers can decide these members but these members cannot see any of the personal details of the teachers and the same vice versa. This therefore means that the teachers and students cannot be ‘friends’ on Facebook. The key is creating a place where teacher and student can interact but the privacy of their personal lives is maintained. Without this assurance the students and teachers would be reluctant to join and contribute to this site.
How it can be done
Firstly I researched the ability of creating a private space. I had seen that Facebook had recently created groups that my family and I use to communicate with one another about family matters and to share photos of what one another was up to. From this I could see the true power that Facebook provide over the security of these groups allowing three stages of openness: Open (to everyone, Closed (people can request to join but only members can view and post) and lastly Secret (the group cannot be searched people can only join through request)
The odd thing that I found when I created the new group that I want to use as the teaching and learning site is that Facebook insisted that I had at least one other person in the group and they and to be one of my friends on Facebook. As this group is designed to connect people who are not friends I was initially stumped. So I created the group with one of my friends and told them it was for testing proposes. After I created the group however I was able to sent the link out to whomever I wished and they could request to join, friend or not. Subsequently I removed my friend and got the group administrators add and set and group admins allowing them to monitor and delete post on the site that they deemed inappropriate.
I set the groups as private so that only people the group administrators decided could view the web page. That meant that the web link could be sent out in an email to all the reverent students, they would then request to join the site. Then the teaches of the site, who administer the site would know who had requested to join and would accept only those who were students of the class. Until such time as the student was accepted to join they would only see the description of the page, determined by the page admins.
Educating those involved
I have read articles asking that Facebook be more secure, by default all members setting are set relatively loosely. For example by default everyone in one’s community (ie university, college, company) can see all of this information as well as all friends of friends. It is only when the user opt out of these setting one can regulate what is displayed to the general public.
As a test the academics and I wanted to see how much personal information is displayed when we clicked on each other as participants of the group. From this we could decide on how to regulate the settings to maintain professionalism even though the design of Facebook is social. After some testing I found that there are two sets of options that can be regulated to determine the openness of the users online presence.
The first is the most common that people know to edit and refers to who can see what on the profile page. To be on the safe side these should be set to friends only at the minimum. There is an option with the friends list to create groups and then these groups can have greater or lesser access to different areas of the profile page.
The second is the connecting setting, which refers to what people can see who are not yet friends. This information includes personal information pertaining to interests, gender and networks. This has been designed to help people find friends, but it can be quite revealing. The option to regulate this can be overlooked due to the dominance of the sharing settings. It is the small blue ‘view settings’ link at the top of the page. See picture below
The good thing about these setting is that it allows for ‘preview my profile’ which show how most people will see the profile page when searching for specific people.
Conclusions
As part of this pilot process the academic and I have agreed that it is essential to give a briefing to all of the students before they add themselves to the group so that they are aware of their online profile and how much they are sharing with the public. Armed with this information we believe that the students will be more willing to engage with the online learning area as they are assured of their privacy and are able to contribute and discuss educational issues with their peers.
As another personal note we believe that this introduction to ‘one’s online presence’ should be an essential part of student training as personal information could affect job prospects.
Windows Live SkyDrive
I remember when I first got the internet the first thing that I did was sign up for an email account. I don’t recall there being many different providers but I do recall that if you signed up for a Hotmail account that you could use this to instant message your friends via MSN. I have kept this account over the years and even though I have a one from all of the main providers it still remain one of my most used accounts.
Now that I have dispensed with the nostalgia I would like to take a look at their current offering. No longer limited to just Hotmail anyone subscribing to the Microsoft mail service now has a ‘Live’ account which supplies the user with 25Gb of email storage space and 25Gb of ‘SkyDrive’ storage among other benefits. The SkyDrive is not dissimilar to Google Docs, which I have reviewed in a previous blog, in that it gives the user storage space on the ‘cloud’ to store their files and access them anywhere on a computer with an internet connection.
Documents appear once logged in under the 'Office' button at the top
The first thing one would think is why would I sign up for a Live account when I already have a Google account? The main difference in the file management is Google converts all uploaded documents to their own file format allowing them to be edited on the Cloud, whereas Live uploads documents as is. Consequently only Microsoft documents that are uploaded are editable. (This is possibly an assumption of Microsoft that everyone uses their software to create documents e.g. Office.) I tested uploading a txt document and I was able to view it but do nothing else with it.
Unusual for Microsoft the full functionality of creating and editing documents on this system is compatible with all of the leading internet browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari) but this is not the pier de resistance, what Live gives is a cut down version of the Office 2010 suite to edit these documents. This effectively means that I could go to a computer that does not have Office installed on it and be able to create or edit documents. There is an option to open in Office if the full functionality of Office is needed to do more advance editing (though this is not supported in Chrome). When save is clicked this file is automatically saved back to the SkyDrive, although if you do leave the document open to long the user will be prompted to sign in again to their SkyDrive. This additional log in did not occur with Google Docs.
Adding a picture, Typically this works the best in IE
The Office on SkyDrive is more advanced than on Google Docs, it includes automatic formatting of text such as capitalisation of ‘i’ and at the beginning of a sentence. It also has the option for spell checking but not grammar.
SkyDrive on the go
If you own a Windows 7 mobile device you will have Office installed which will automatically synchronise your documents to the SkyDrive using the built in app. For iOS users there is very limited functionality, viewing documents can be achieved but the devices are unable to contribute. I am rather surprised with this as SkyDrive is supported in Safari. At the time of writing I was unable to get my hands on an Android device, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was limited to the windows mobile OS.
Conclusion
This is just Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs and as they own the office suite they are able to integrate this into their product and create greater functionality from a documents editing point of view. Otherwise there is not much that differs these products, both give 25 GB of storage with a 50Mb maximum file upload. This is where I think these products let themselves down as there is still the manual process of uploading documents. I have a fast internet connection so I experience very little lag time loading documents. I much prefer the concept of locally stored documents that synchronise themselves to the Cloud (such as Dropbox and SharePoint Workspaces) Documents open as easily and quickly as they would on the machine and do not require a constant internet connection. Say this Microsoft do produce a product call Windows Live Essentials that incorporates a folder synchronising tool as well as photo editing and movie editing, but this is limited to the Windows 7 and Vista operating system.
With ever growing competition between providers I can see this being aimed at younger users as a loss leader, allowing them to use this facility for free on the Web developing the users’ skills, making the Office interface intuitive to the user. I especially see this being aimed at the Student market that would no longer have to purchase the Office suite for their machines and they could go on campus for the full functionality.
First look into Microsoft SharePoint Workspace
I am testing the capability of Microsoft SharePoint workspace, available as part of the new Office 2010 suite. Effectively this piece of software work in the same manner as Dropbox, in that it downloads identical files off the internet and store them on one’s local machine. This allows the documents to b manipulated even if there is not network connection and the files are synchronised once a connection has been re-established. Unlike Dropbox (my Review) the interface is not another set of folders within ‘My Documents,’ instead there is a separate application that opens, similar to explorer that displays all the documents on one’s synchronised SharePoint site. Also unlike Dropbox it is not simply synchronising with the cloud (an arbitrary space on Dropbox servers) but to a specific SharePoint site, in this case I have attached it to my mysite. (The name of my personal space within SharePoint). This means that not only do I have all of the documents that I have uploaded to my mysite but I have a local copy of all the discussions and links that I have created on my mysite.
It was relatively easy to setup, I tested this on a Domain machine so I did not need to authenticate. All I had to do was open SharePoint Workspace (located with Launch bar) select new SharePoint Workspace, whereby the application displayed a list of all the SharePoint modules I am an own of and I simply selected the one I wished to access.
As the description of the software suggested I was then given a local copy of all of my documents that I have located on my mysite as shown below.
I decided to create a document to see if it was just as easy to manipulate files within this application as one would normally be used to on a standard PC. What better way to do this by creating this review on to this system. It was simple I clicked on the new document button and a blank word file opened up for me to start writing. Notably I was only given the option of a new Word document and no other.
As I have selected to create this document within SharePoint Workspace when I ask to save I am immediately directed to the directories within mysite.
Although it does not look like the conventional ‘Save As’ as the content is being accessed from a website it is no less intuitive than what most PC user are used to. Looking at the left hand menu I can see I have shortcut links to all of my online files spaces so that if I had more than one SharePoint site synchronised to my desktop I can easily swap between then. I also noticed that these shortcuts only appear when I am creating a Microsoft office document and didn’t work when I was saving the above screenshot in paint. That is a shame as I would like the option to save automatically any of my file instantaneously to this shared space as Dropbox does.
Another noticeable difference that I have noticed is that the save icon in the top left hand corner has gained two green arrows to show that the document is synchronising rather than the conventional saving.
Opening documents I have to locate to locate it with the Workspace application, I would prefer if it were another folder within ‘My Documents,’ and as one would expect it is as simple as a double click to open it. I did notice some slight delay befor I saw the MS Word logo appear, this may be because the Workspace application is checking to see if there is Internet connection.
Navigation within the folder structure of my mysite documents is only intuitive if one is used to ‘explore view’ on folders as there is no back button but rather a table of contents that one can navigate back and forth through.
PROS:
I know where all of the data is being stored even the stuff on the cloud, because I have selected the specific site that I wish to synchronise my data I know where it all is. Therefore I know that because my cloud storage server is located in the UK it is therefore only subject to European law. This is especially handy for cooperate data which may be sensitive. With the case of Dropbox I had to read the terms and conditions thoroughly to find that I did have complete and sole ownership of the data but the servers were still located in the US, which starts to get complicated in legal terms.
Instant availability: This is particularly useful for those who wish to distribute files quickly. This is good if the intension is to give people access it read only access, it does not allow for collaborative work, but in some cases this is a good thing. In Dropbox one has to invite people to join a shared folder in which invitee must then create a Dropbox account. Alternatively the files can be made publicly available to the whole world.
The files are stored on a specific site so they are as easy to locate as the site is. Permission are determined by the site and not at the user level so as long as the user has the ability to access the site they will automatically be able to view new documents.
Multiple sites can synchronised to one machine, allowing for multiple management of files of multiple site in one place. This can be very affective as there is no need to log-in to each of the, sites there is no Webpage timeout to worry about and quickly allow one to see what documents are on what sites.
CONS:
No collaborative workspaces, this is a separate application within the Launchbar that allows for direct file sharing. This is not as intuitive as Dropbox’s share folder system and the file are just stored on each of the users’ machines and not on any Web servers so they are only accessible from the machines that the two users are on.
It doesn’t integrate into existing file structures, though it does support drag and drop, so this is a small con and one that is a comparison to Dropbox.
It doesn’t allow programs other than the office suite to save directly to the online space. These have to be saved to the local machine then dragged and dropped onto the SharePoint Workspace window.
Conclusion:
It may be a bit harsh using Dropbox as a comparison as they have been created for very different intensions. It would appear that Dropbox has been designed for the consumer in mind whereas SharePoint Workspace is more of a corporate file distribution tool for managing the content of multiple sites. But Dropbox is the only other Cloud technology that I use on a large scale. I feel that I will continue to use Dropbox for storing my personal file with the ability to access and edit anywhere, with the ability to invite user to contribute to the files. SharePoint Workspace is very much the tool I will be using to distribute information that is designed for work, one to many situation where the files are for consumption only. I would highly recommend it to those who need to manage the content of multiple sites as it allows for a single point of management and eliminates the whole process of going to each site logging in and uploading files.
The Cloud is getting better
This came in the form of the ability to edit documents on the mobile platform. I have found it very difficult so far to easily access my documents and be able to edit them when I am not in the office. To full test the functionality of Google Docs I have decided to create this document on Google docs on my iPhone. (Well the first couple of paragraphs) They claim that this is now available for both iOS devices and Android devices so the experience may differ accordingly dependant on screen/keyboard size.
When creating long pros on the move I use notes, a standard application of the iPhone. It is easy and simple to use and has basic text editing functionality. To finalise the information Ii email it to myself and then save or publish the information on a desktop. As I have not found a suitable alternative to this process it will be interesting to see what Google have developed to make this process more intuitive.
It has the same ease as typing into any other document on the iPhone, mainly due to the fact that it is using the build in iOS keyboard so my ability to input text is no different than creating a note. There are some noticeable differences, it seems to section areas off into paragraphs, so if I were to tap select all it will only highlight the information within the paragraph. I am not sure why they have done this but only after some more testing will I determine if this is a good or bad thing. This may make for easier editing and manipulation of the text once the writer has completed writing the text.
The text appears small on Google docs than in notes which may affect its usability and there is higher contrast as you are typing with black font on a white background, whereas in notes it is black on yellow.
When you run out of space at the bottom of the page the screen does readjusts its-self but this causes the title bar of the document to appear at the top of the screen which uses up considerable screen real-estate and often covers over what has been recently written. There appears to be no spell-checker other that the auto correct function that is built in with all iOS devices.
I would have preferred if Google had created a dedicated app to view Google docs rather than making a mobile compatible web-page as I feel the user experience would be slicker and it would provide me with offline functionality of locally stored documents. I defiantly feel that this has taken cloud computing to the next step I like being able to edit my documents on the move. I would prefer if it had a more Dropbox feel to it in that a document that I create online would automatically be saved onto my desktop machine and vice versa. I have tested the web-page ‘time-out’ by leaving the Document for a couple of hours and I was still able to edit the document and it had live updating on both the iPhone and desktop machine.
Immediately after creating part of this document on my iPhone I i went to access it on my Google docs. Even though it is still hosted on a web-page I now have an interface that looks like a limited version of Microsoft Word. I now have an automatic spell checker but I lose the auto correct function which is noticeable when I type the word “i” and it remains in lower case. (I had to manually go through the document and correct them all) In the end I still copied all of the information from the Google docs application to properly spell check and grammar check.
In conclusion I like this development but I think it has a long way to go before I start using this over my desktop document editor. I still don’t like the lack of seamless integration of Cloud documents to the desktop that products such as Dropbox provides, especially as Internet connection cannot always be assured on the go.
The Playstation Move Vs the Nintendo Wii
I have decided to blog about this when I was reading Mark Lyndons Blog on it. His review was an initial review on the two consoles. I decided to post a reply commenting on the difference between the markets that Nintendo and Playstation inhabit. I was first expecting to be short and sweet but it ended up being a whole page rant, so I have decided to blog it.
PLaystation Move Launch, courtesy of Popculturegeek.com
The are many who think that the Playstation Move will be the end of Nintendo’s dominance of the casual gamer market. It is widely acknowledged that the Wii console has brought gaming out of the back room and in to the family room for all. The Wii is marketed at everyone from eight to eighty and they have designed it to make it easy to pick up and learn. This marketing strategy has worked well for Nintendo as sale of the Wii has out done both the PS3 and Xbox 360 combined in 2009. This is the reason that Sony and Microsoft have created their motion equivalents is to try to break in to this lucrative market.
I have had experience with the Nintendo Wii and have bought a Playstation Move last November so this will look at the difference between the two. This is by no means disregarding the Xbox Kenect but I have not had enough experience with it to comment on how it will compete with the market leader.
I am not sure that the Playstation Move is going to be the Wii Killer. I think the major problem that Playstation have is appealing to the mass market. Currently the Playstation is seen as the hardcore gamer product that is hidden away in a back room. So those who are going to but Move controllers are ‘families’ with Hardcore gamers in which case they will never get a chance to play it and those who are buying the console new with the intension of using for the Move. Now that the PS3 has come down in price and is now more comparable to the Wii but looking at the game offering it can be hard to distinguish which games are designed for the Move controller, whereas all of the Wii games are Wii controller compatible. I really think that Playstation need to rebrand their Move games, i.e. putting them on white boxes like the Wii games and put the message about there that “Yeah we do family entertainment too but we make it look better”
Case in point I bought a Move kit with two controllers and tried to get my girlfriend involved. She liked it but her main complaint was that it was not a Wii. I explained that this controller is more accurate and the graphics are better. But this was good enough she didn’t feel that she could engage with the hardware/software because it wasn’t designed for her in mind. I have brought it out subsequently when friends come over but otherwise it does not get much use. I know that this is a personal experience but I would suspect that this occurs for a lot for those who have a console and trying to get others involve who are not strictly speaking ‘gamers.’
Nintendo Wii Console courtesy of greggoconnell
Other contributing factors that Wii has that trumps the Move:
4 years of game releases. When you but a Wii you get Wii Sports for free a full game and arguably one of the best games that has been released on the console so, except for the sequel Wii Sports Resort. The Playstation Move comes with a demo disk in which you have to install the games individually, not very family friendly. To my knowledge they have about 30 games out on the Move but only a few of these are aimed at the family/party gaming experience.
The second one is the Mii one of the greatest creation of Nintendo for the Wii. This allows everyone in the house to have their own persona that goes into every game. Users can create this cartoon version of themselves that they can make look like them and all of the game data, such are scores and achievements are attributed to that character across all of the games that support the Mii. Sports champions, which is seen as the flagship product to the Move and has the most equivalent games, makes no attempt at this instead it has pre render characters but there is no way for multiple player to personalise each character and monitor their progress.
The Wii is truly multiplayer which engages all of the plays in the room. Bowling on Wii Sports will supports up to four players playing consecutively as they would do in a real bowling tournament. In fact all of the games support four players with the obvious exception of boxing. Sports champions tends to force you to play in teams of two for example bocce (lawn bowls).
Nintendo have a similar model to Apple in that they make their own hardware and software. One designed to fit onto the other. This is why such concepts like the Mii’s can work so well across a large number of games. A lot of third party publishers for the Wii have in fact criticised this say that only Nintendo game make any money on the Wii. But this doesn’t change the fact that this integration works and the customers like the results. Sony however rely on third party developers to create the games for this console so realistically online persona integration seems unrealistic.
I defiantly feel that the PS3 has a long way to go to attract a proportion of the market that the Wii has created. My recommendation is that if you do not have either console and you are looking for motion control fun then buy the Wii you will not be disappointed.
BETT 2011 conference
I attended this conference for the 12th to the 14th of January in which time I went to a couple of seminars and visited numerous stands displaying the latest that educational technology has to offer. I would like to take some time to cover some of the technology that I feel may have an impact on the faculty or members of staff may find them interesting. If anyone wants more information on any part of this report please don’t hesitate to contact me as I have collected brochures and may be able to answer specific questions.
The overall theme of the conference was touch technology it seemed that every other stand was demonstrating some interactive whiteboard or demonstrating some new table device or software that runs on such a device. So I think that I will start with those advancements then go into more specialised technologies later.
Interactive whiteboards
Promethean have released a new piece of software called ‘ActivInspire.’ They claim that this software will work on any interactive white board and is free to download for all staff and students, although you may be required to register. This may be a piece of software that we can have deployed to all of the lecture machines within the Rolle building giving the students to have an opportunity to interact with this software before they have to do it for real when they go on placements in schools. They have also updated their current boards to support multiple pen touches, the faculty’s promethean board would be eligible for this upgrade with a small addition of hardware and a firmware update.
RM has a range of projectors that have a camera integrated into the projector that can make any surface interactive. The demonstration device that they had on show was a projector attached to a rotating whiteboard that that could be changed from a standard white board to an interactive table without having to reconfigure the projector.
Tablet devices
Since the release of the apple iPad last March every company has seemed to have jumped on the bandwagon in creating a tablet device of their own and BETT was full of them. A word of advice if you are considering getting one of these devices you will need to find out what operating system they are running. Most of the devices are currently running Android 2.2 which from goggle’s own admission has not been designed to run tablet size screens. This may limit the software that can be run on the device so if you have a specific piece of software you want to run you will have to check before buying the device. As you would assume with a wide verity of devices there is a range of prices ranging from just under £200 to up to £600+. When picking a device make sure that you check build quality and battery life because these are the area that will have corners cut to try to undercut competing devices.
They have produced two devices one 10” tablet and one 7”. In the first instance I did not see anything that though would set these devices apart from any other except that the 10” device has the option of coming with windows 7 home premium. I thought this was odd because Microsoft released a number of table machines in the 00ies (2000′s) and they fell flat on their face mainly due to the operating system not being designed for touch screen and the batteries being so large that the things weighed a ton. I didn’t get to play with the device much but it seemed like it had the full functionally of another windows 7 device in that you could edit Word documents and PowerPoint and save them to and external memory stick. Unfortunately the brochure does not tell you how long the battery will last but the smaller tablet (android only) says it will work for about 4-6 hours of “heavy, continuous use.”
I found the two devices that they had very interesting the first was an android 10” tablet like most others but you could but a docking station with it. This docking station comes with three cleaver connectors, as well as charging the 8 hour battery it comes with two USB and one HDMI ports. This effectively means that when it is docked you can have it attached to a larger screen and keyboard and mouse. This won’t function like a regular computer but will allow you to use the tablet to input longer amounts of text that the touch screen would be comfortable to do. Dependent on the apps developed for the device will shows its true usability. Unfortunately the device has not been released yet so the vendors were able to comment on the price of the device when released next month.
The second device that caught my attention was not a touch screen but rather a Netbook. In and effort to save space, weight and increase battery life Toshiba designers have made this device so that it only runs Android software. The vendors told me it does take a little time getting used to but this device has an almost full size keyboard but is the same size and weight of an iPad. The solid state hard drive, 8 GB is quite small but does mean that the device turns on instantly, the memory can be expanded by 32 GB through and SD card. The cheapest I have found this device online is £218 compared to £250 being the starting point of Netbooks with Windows on them.
Educational Software and Technology
As the theme of the conference a large number of retailers had developed software specifically designed to go on touch devices a significant number of which were aimed at the iPad and iPod Touch market. Although the hardware needed for a school to purchase these devices represent a quite significant investment. The faculty has invested in two iPod Touches located in Benjis office so if you wanted to test any Educational Apps they will be more than happy to lend them out to you. The number of educational apps goes into the thousands so I won’t be listing them all. If you want to find out more about apps in you subject area then drop me an email and I will be happy to go through them.
The concept behind many of the applications is to minimise ‘downtime’ by allowing the student to be able to study whilst on the move. Some examples of these are GCSE/ A level question practice on the go. One such app (Ko-su) allows the tutor to create their own questions from a range of text audio and picture questions and distribute them to their students over the web. All the student needs to have is the free app of their device and the class code to download the questions.
Proloquo2Go is an application that may be useful for students with disabilities, helping them to form sentences with visual representations of words.
Other Apps at BETT
Pop maths: practicing numeracy (primary)
Poppet: creating mind maps
Sketch nation: creating games. Space invaders by drawing elements and creating the game
Pro keys: music app, virtual keyboard, drums and other instruments
Strip designer, for designing comic strips and creating story boards.
Pollock’s Toy Theatre: designed like a paper theatre allows students to record the movements of characters around the screen and voice over the lines.
Other points of interest
I picked up a guide entitled ‘Using Facebook in the classroom’ this gives an overview of the do and don’t for teachers using this online social site as teaching and learning resource. I only have one physical copy if anyone would like a copy contact me.
www.twig-it.com is a subscription web service that uses spider diagrams to explore different areas of science with videos and teaching resources such and practice questions and lesson plans. These resources have been designed for secondary.