Multimedia
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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009I’ve been fiddling with Prezi these last few days, and I’ve gotten to know the software pretty well. It has a few holes: it would be nice to have the “place” tool light up when it is selected; importing audio would be a plus; the line tool needs to be more sophisticated; and a text [...]
Xtranormal Video Makes Directing Easy
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009I just checked out Xtranormal Video (thanks Tami), a new site that makes machinima very simple. Just sign up for a free account, and you’re an instant auteur. I created the following movie in about fifteen minutes, though the rendering process took about twice that long. Notice the camera angle changes, the facial expressions of [...]
GoogleLitTrips Uses Google Earth to Place Literary Settings
Monday, April 6th, 2009One of the best parts about going to a good conference is coming home with new ideas–and new online resources. I hadn’t heard of Google Lit Trips before Saturday’s Bright Ideas Conference, even though it uses a popular web-based application (Google Earth) to help students understand literary texts. If you haven’t used Google Earth yet, [...]
New Media Tools: Screentoaster and the Levelator
Friday, January 16th, 2009Over the past few years, I have made a few screencasts–short movies of my computer screen, taken as I explain a particular application. You can see my screencast of Google Reader here, for example. I have also incorporated screencasts into longer videos, like my examination of Faculty on Facebook (also here). I used free tools [...]
More Cloud Computing: Switching from Live Mesh to Dropbox
Thursday, December 18th, 2008Ah Live Mesh. Grand concept. Not so good in practice. I’ve been a big fan of Microsoft’s Live Mesh since it came out in beta earlier this year. I love the way it syncs multiple computers seamlessly, and I love being able to get to my data from anywhere. All of this for free–if you [...]
Video and the Web: Hardware and Software
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008A number of former students have asked me for advise on student-produced video projects. Most of their questions are on the technical side–what format to use, what software, and what video camera. I have been interested in video production for some time now, and am very close to asking students to keep vlogs (video blogs) [...]
More Video News
Saturday, June 7th, 2008I was going to review a few more streaming video hosts, but I found a couple of comprehensive lists that do the job much better than I would. Check out the Top 31 Alternatives to YouTube (Chaos Laboratory) and I Like Sharing Videos, which has an even longer list. As for my own search for [...]
Streaming Video Services: A Review
Friday, June 6th, 2008Over the past few years, I’ve been looking for a convenient and inexpensive host for streaming video files. I have experimented with quite a few options without really finding the ideal service. The grant for the streaming video project has given me a reason to explore a few options–and hopefully, but into a service that [...]
Kids Play Games Online? Who Knew?
Sunday, May 25th, 2008Over the past few years, I’ve been refurbishing and redistributing computers (mostly laptops) that the university no longer needs and generously donates to good causes. A few weeks ago, one of the donated machines came back to me. Its owner, a 16-year-old girl, reported some problems with the operating system. I booted it up and [...]
Faculty on Facebook
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008For the last few weeks, I’ve been neglecting this blog in order to work on a short video entitled “Faculty on Facebook: Social Networking, Ethics, and the Academy.” The video is part of my presentation for an upcoming conference at GVSU. I’ve been working with a slew of programs (see below) but having a ton [...]
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