Nillan Fakira

Date: 14^th March 2012

Another great turnout from the Hollings Campus staff for my Podcasting awareness presentation. Although the session was primary on podcasting, Dee and I took the opportunity to showcase other technologies, such as PaperShow^TM .

I’m glad to say that the live demo of not only demonstrating how to produce a podcast but also the export to a MOV file, Upload to the Podcast Server and Delivery via different methods in Moodle went without any hiccups.

At the end of the presentation, the staff had the opportunity to ask questions. From the many questions I was asked, I felt a sense of so much eagerness and enthusiasm to embrace the podcast technology. So many positive ideas on how best to incorporate this technology in their teaching was clearly an impression I got out of the session. At the end of the presentation, warm thank-you and appreciations for the session were given to us by the staff of Hollings.

Documentation and podcasts are available in the Moodle Staff Resource area under the heading Podcasting@mmu to help you towards your training.

You can upload QuickTime MOV, MP3, MP4 and WMV files to the podcast server.

A PDF of the slides is available here.

The link to PaperShowTM Podcast is available here.

Many thanks to AM and all the Hollings staff for inviting Dee and myself and looking forward to working with you all in the future.

A very enjoyable and productive meeting took place with an MMU student, showcasing MMU resources and resources under development on getting the best out of a mobile device whilst studying at MMU. The meeting revolved around the use of iPad. In this particular instance student has enrolled on a part-time course. For him it was essential to have as much learning resources accessible and at his disposable whist on the go, balancing his studies, work, home and social life to name a few.

Mymmu portal was demonstrated, digistised materials, past exam papers, RHS Moodle block was demonstrated and a whole suit of ipad apps were demonstrated and recommended for use, such as skydrive, dropbox, iBook, diiago, evernote, RSS, wordpress etc.

Since 18^th October 2011 to 21 December 2011

These podcast are accessible from myMMU portal.

iPhone_Sync_Student_Email_Account-multi.mov      5560

Sharing_Folders_in_SkyDrive-multi.mov                    1354

SkyDrive_Retrieve_Documents-multi.mov                   631

SkyDrive_Creating_Folders-multi.mov                         273

SkyDrive_using_Office_Web_Apps-multi.mov             228

Skydrive_and_web_apps-multi.mov                             200

Total               8246

If you have created podcasts and have uploaded these podcasts to the MMU Podcast server and TAGGED them using your unit code then this podcast will interest you. You can create a podcasts block and make them available to your students in your Moodle area.

Please note in order to use the MMU Podcast Block you must upload your podcasts to the Podcasts(PUBLIC) group. Any podcasts uploaded to the MMUOnly group will not show in your Moodle area using this Block.

Here is a podcast showing you how to create this MMU Podcast block in your Moodle area.

MMU Podcast Block

Length – 2min

If you are confident in using Blocks in Moodle then here are quick steps to get you going.

Login to your Moodle area

1. Turn Editing on
2. Scroll down to Blocks
3. Select the option MMU Podcasts
4. Click on Configuration Icon
5. Type in your Unit Code
6. Save Changes

Live@Edu is a service provided to students by MMU in partnership with Microsoft. Live@Edu offers students Microsoft Outlook email system for communication, SkyDrive for Storage (25GB) and collaboration, Microsoft Office Web apps for productivity. These web apps would enable students to create word documents, Excel Spread Sheets, PowerPoint Presentation and OneNote for note taking.

I’ve created podcasts

1)      What is Live@Edu (3.50min)

2)      Login in to SkyDrive (2.10min)

3)      File Management (Creating Folders) (1.24min)

4)      Creating and Editing Office Documents on the web (2.09min)

5)      Retrieve a document from skyDrive (55sec)

6)      Sharing Folders in SkyDrive (4min)

Equella is MMU’s Digital Repository.  I have been busy creating podcasts on how to use various options of Equella. You can view them in your Moodle Staff Resource area. Currently all Equella podcast are aimed at academic who may want to upload resources in Equella and make them available in the Right Hand Side of the Moodle column under the heading LIBRARY.

Apart from few PDF files to download you will also find the following podcasts available on Equella in the Staff Resource area.

What is Equella?

The Contribute Form

A Single file upload

Multiple Files upload

Zipped\compressed file upload, numerous files

Attach YouTube Videos

Suspend a Resource

Resume a Resource

We have upgraded our BB FlashBack screen capture software to version to Flashback Pro3. I have been busy testing and getting used to the new version.  The new version on start-up displays the welcome screen (can be disabled) and on selecting the record a movie option the user is prompted with record options immediately, rather than taking you through number of steps before hitting the record screen. Access to other Options is via this screen too.

The Options menu, accessible via Tools-Options has all the familiar tabs we are used too, such as the Display, Sound, WebCam, Keystrokes, Hotkey, File Size, Record Mode, Misc  and Advanced tabs. However an interesting tab called the ‘scheduling’ has been added. This tab offers scheduling recording on a specified start time and a stop time, configurable with options to enable on specific application that you want to podcast on and only record on the selected application. More experimenting with this scheduling tab is a must. I see potential in using this tab, especially if you are a keen podcaster who likes to podcast on the move, your lectures, and generally want to experiment advance options.

This version of Flashback also now offers resizing of your webcam window, unlike the version we have been using. Although Webcam recording hasn’t been a favourite option in podcast creation it’s something to try out and see how students take to seeing their tutor ‘embedded’ in a podcast.

Post-Production

The post production screen looks very similar to the BB Flashback version we have been using , but creeping in are a few new additions such as  inserting arrows, watermarks, pauses, cropping movies and inserting a start and end titles to your movies, which would help you quickly make your podcast that little bit more professional  looking.

Export options

As before export options are Flash, QuickTime (MOV), Windows Media (WMV), AVI, Standalone EXE and MS PowerPoint and an extra option now available to export it to MPEG4. This export option will allow files to be played on Apple devices such as iPad, iPhones and iPod. More exploring and investigating on these file formats is needed and how beneficial it would be for us in the environment we are working in.

More Feature of this version can be found here- BB Flashback Page

Another podcasting session held for Law department staff. Managed to go through the process of podcast production and editing of podcast, publication (upload) and delivery of the podcast by using our institutional VLE Moodle.