Optivote: Introduction Video

We had a demonstration of the Optivote voting system a couple of months back, delivered by Phil Stanley.

It works primarily as a multiple choise voting system for use in groups, similar to the ask the audience system in 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?', but it is very flexible.

I recorded the two hour demonstration and it is available as a streamed .wmv file, at 512kbps.

Phil seems to have started creating some screencasts, available on the Optivote site, which also might be helpful.

Digital Video Tutorials: Izzy Video

I've been starting filming a video podcast for LTD, and that has brought into focus my lack of skills in this area.

Izzy Video is a Video Podcast that covers many aspects of creating digital video. If you are doing the same, subscribe to this with iTunes or what ever you use. You can also download archived episodes from the website.

ePortfolios: First Steps

The ePortfolios pilot, using PebblePad, is starting about now. There are perhaps 20 students from the Law and Criminology department who have volunteered for the pilot, and we'll be putting sports students on next.

The only training resource I've needed to create is a simple PDF document called PebblePad: First Steps because Pebble Learning provide some decent resources on their web site.

Finally Philippa Butler from the Massey University College of Education, New Zealand has created A Review Of The Literature On Portfolios And Electronic Portfolios which goes into much more depth than I did. I've only scanned it, but it looks like another useful perspective which references a lot of the research around portfolios.

Via: elearnspace

From VLE's to Learning Landscapes

Graham Attwell's presentation slides give a good overview of the move from VLEs to personal learning landscapes (which would include the use of eportfolios).

The images on pages 51 and 52 display both models well.


Via: The Wales Wide Web

Screencasting: ZDSoft's Screen Recorder

Another piece of screencasting software is ZDSoft's Screen Recorder.

A free version is available. There are fewer options than in Camtasia, and you need to close down other pieces of software that deal with audio to use it (trying to record the screen when using iTunes made my PC crash), but it allows you to record a number of videos directly into WMV format, even quicker than with Camtasia. We could then put them directly on to the streaming server.

If staff wanted to create screencasts, but didn't have copies of Camtasia, this looks like a good free alternative.

Lightscribe Disk Labelling

I've been producing a few CDs to go external, and as I've not got CD labels (I've only just got a CD pen!) they don't look very professional.

So I got quite excited when, watching old episodes of GeekBrief, I heard mentioned the HP DVD 940e Multi DVD Writer. Using HP Lightscribe CDs and DVDs this allows you to quickly and easily burn professional looking labels on the CD/DVD. As we are doing more and more CDs and DVDs, this could pay for itself compared to buying labels.

Have a look at the way the burned CDs look.