Nice New Tool

Recently I’ve been investigating tools that will allow anyone to create screencasts.  I found a gem in Screenr [www.screenr.com].  I’ll be writing a review of this soon, but came across a really nice screencast on creating above-average Powerpoint slides by simply using Powerpoint.  Enjoy.

Our colleague David Wicks from Seattle Pacific University, is a leader in helping develop, dream, and implement relevant teaching and learning using Online tools.  He recently made an incredible screencast of the Blackboard Grade Center and I asked if we could share it.  A gracious collaborator, he accepted.  I think this is one of many amazing resources from SPU and Professor Wicks.

• Full Post:  http://dwicksspu.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/blackboard-9-grade-center-workshop/
• Follow David on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/dwicksspu

Ingredients

- Computer with access to the Internet

- Instructor access to a Blackboard course (the screencast features BB Enterprise 8 )

- The website at http://feed2js.org

- A website with an active RSS feed to be used in Blackboard

Directions

1. Navigate to the website that has an RSS feed.
2. Look for an icon on the page that looks like this:
3. If you don’t see that icon, look for some text that mentions “subscribe to feed” or “RSS“. Linked text that reads “Entries (RSS)” is a common way the feed for a WordPress blog is encountered, usually near the bottom of the screen.
4. You can right-click on the icon or text link and choose either Copy Link Location (Firefox), or Copy Shortcut (Internet Explorer).
5. Alternatively, you can click on the icon or the text and it should lead you to a page with a few options to subscribe to the RSS feed. What’s important is that the feed URL is now in the web browser’s address bar. Copy the URL so that you can paste it into the appropriate field in the Feed2JS website.
6. Navigate to the Feed2JS website.
7. Click on the tab labeled “Build” and paste the RSS feed URL into the box labeled URL.
8. Optionally, you can change the options for how the feed is displayed.
9. Click on the button labeled “Generate Javascript”
10. This will display code in the field labeled “Get Your Code Here”
11. Copy the entire contents of this field. This is the code we’ll place in Blackboard.
12. Navigate to the area in your Blackboard course where you would like to place the RSS information.
13. Click on the Add (+) Item button to create a new content item.
14. Provide a name for the content item (required)
15. In the Text editor click on the “Toggle HTML Source Mode” button
16. Paste the code generated from the Feed2JS website into the text field (overwrite any existing text that’s in that field to start)
17. Click on the Submit button

Information derived from the Digital Media Cookbook Website

The Workflows

If you’re reading this, you already know there are a myriad of ways you can create workflows for moving content.  I’ve spoken to several other schools that serve content many ways.  Some push the video into an FTP space where students push the files to iTunes U.  Some use other media servers and push the files to the Web.  Some stream.  Some use Woolamaloo to push to iTunes U.  Some use Automator.  Some Podcast Producer.  There’s also the OpenCast project and enterprise YouTube as options.  If you want to spend some more money, Tegrity is a solution we were very impressed with.  TechSmith just released Camtasia Relay which looks promising as well.  Whether it’s fully-automated like Berkley with cameras in classrooms that automatically turn on, record, and post with no interaction of faculty, to full-service models that use tape, workflows are definitely not one size fits all.  But in our business, they are necessary evils.

Putting the Pieces Together

Not only to we have to create workflows, we have to consider the UI for students, experience for faculty to get academic buy-in to get content to students, and make sure that it integrates with whatever back-end systems and infrastructure your campus has.  Oh, then there’s the budget issue.  If you can get the stars to align, you MAY be able to make things work.  Here is what we have set up in the “server room”:

• Active Directory
• Blackboard 7 (upgrading to 9 this summer)
• Vanderbuilt Bb Building Block for iTunes U customized by our software team
• Hosted iTunes U
• Leopard Server with PCP integration
• New Intel iMac lab and one 8-core Mac Pro

#1  Tape to iMovie/FCP to iTunes U

This scenario we import the Mini-DV tape into either iMovie (quick and dirty) or Final Cut Pro.  We create titles in Photoshop, export them as .jpg, and insert them into the timeline.  Either way, we export to m4v and upload the file to iTunes U.

Screencast Example

Classroom Capture from a classroom from our YouTube Channel:

#2:  Podcast Capture

We’ve tried this scenario and tested it with minimal success.  In a controlled enviornment, we’ve hooked up a MacBook via Firewire to the camera rig and hard-wired the MacBook to the network.  Then connected Podcast Capture to the rig, selected a class from an already existing workflow, and recorded using the naitive app.  It worked for recordings less than 5 minutes.  Posted directly to iTunes U.  However, it has not worked in a longer lecture scenario.  The problem with this is if the file doesn’t upload properly, the recording is lost.  We learned this the hard way.  So we always back up everything with tape.  This was mildly successful with speech classes in our COM department for students doing 3-5 minute speeches.  Mildly.  I’ll explain in scenario #3.

#3  Quicktime Pro with PCP

With Podcast Capture not reliable for us at this stage, we tried using the Firewire scenario hooked up to the camera rig (tape backup), and recording directly to QT pro.  This provides a .mov file on the desktop that can be uploaded to PCP.  This gave us a better success rate with short 5 minute speeches.

Uploading Options

We use a variety of uploading options.  None of them reliable.

• Woolamaloo |  Download Mac |  Download PC
  
• Woolamaloo Automator Actions for iTunes U |  Download
  
• Podcast Producer native app
• Podcast Producer Web app [was a free download but apparently Apple bought it and it's not available any longer for free]
• iTunes U Web interface

I’ll spend some time writing later about the iTunes U upload problems we’ve had.  Any of you who use iTunes U are more than welcome and encouraged to share your successes and failures.  So, these are what we’re doing at a high level.  I can provide anyone more details and open our house to all.  We want to partner with anyone who desires to share and provide the best tools for our students to learn.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a huge shout-out to Rich Wolf from University of Illinois at Chicago for writing these great apps and providing them free.  Thanks a bunch, Rich.  Keep up the great work.  Now that I’ve provided an overview of our process and workflow, what is yours?  Am I behind, or should I be presenting to you?  Let the conversation begin.

Walking You Through Our Process

This piece is pretty elementary.  but it explains in detail what we use and how we use these pieces to record a classroom lecture or activity.

Pre-Production

Right now we use a full-service model whereby either myself or our student staff will go to a classroom and capture the event.  We use a Web site with a form they fill out or call/email us directly.  We then use a shared calendar in Exchange where we schedule the event, contact the faculty member, and confirm that we’ll be there.  The students then will go to the classroom, record, and post-produce it in our video studios.

Post-Production

They either edit in iMovie ‘08 or Final Cut Pro.  We have several standard titles and slides they use to create custom intros and extros.  With Leopard Server integration and Podcast Producer configured to Active Directory, we are also using it to push video after creating some standard in/out movies for Quartz Composer to render in the workflows.  I’ll speak more to the workflow/uploading process in the next post.  Once the audio/video files are in iTunes U, the student contacts the faculty to let them know.  The faculty then creates a link in the Blackboard course to the media files.  We created video tutorials for faculty to use in order to understand the process as well.  This is still a work in progress.  Our workflow to Blackboard is explained in an earlier post as we were developing the infrastructure.  Feel free to post comments on how your process works.

With the advent of so many Web applications, it’s incumbent upon us to make sure we know what they are and how we can use them. A common need from Online faculty on a regular basis is how to edit photos for Powerpoint presentations, Blackboard profile pictures, and more. As educational designers, instructional designers, or faculty, I’m sure you probably have seen the obligatory 2000 pixel image that is simply scaled back in a presentation. There are free tools out there we can provide for both faculty and students. One is created by Adobe and is currently free. It’s called Photoshop Express or Photoshop.com.  http://www.photoshop.com

Below is a brief video tutorial on how to use some basic functions from this free Web application:

General Overview

I’ve been a subsciber to this service since it came out.  It definitely has grown in functionality since it’s beta release.  One major criticism was the lack of cropping to a specific pixel size.  Adobe responded quickly and offers this as a feature.  As a general image editor, Photoshop.com works well to offer basic image editing and manipulation.  Because Adobe bought Macromedia, the interface is Flash-based which makes for lots of smoothness.  The downside of Flash is that the interface is sometimes sluggish.  Definitely not worthwhile tackling on anything less than broadband for speed.  It does offer social networking capability to pull pictures from Flickr and Facebook, and more outlets.  It’s a nice feature, but it makes me think of Okurt as a social networking tool.  It’s nice.  But people already use Facebook.  Same principles here.  It’s nice.  Pretty.  Slick.  But I don’t see it as anything other than a free image manipulation tool faculty and students can use to forego purchasing software and edit photos in a sluggish, but intuitive UI.

Have you used Photoshop Express?  If so, what do you think?  Post comments.  Contribute.  If you’ve found another tool, let us know.

Focus

We can go into details in a future post about what tools we have decided to use for which application in the distribution of screencasts.  For now, we’re going to show you what we do and how we do it.  Then demonstrate an example.

Screencast Tutorial in Vimeo

Screencasts:  A Best Practice from Academic Technology on Vimeo.

Tools in Use

• Any Mac running Leopard
• Screenflow (v. 1.1.3)  |  http://www.flip4mac.com/screenflow.htm
• MobilePre M-Audio USB Preamp  |  http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MobilePreUSB.html
• M-Audio Nova Class A FET Mic  |  http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Nova.html

Step by Step Process

1. Resize our screen resolution to 1024×768
2. Upload the 760×420 desktop background with cross-hairs  Download Bkgd
   
3. Bring browser into the screen and center it on the desktop over the cross-hairs
4. Record screencast and end [Apple Shift 2]
5. In Screenflow, click the “crop” icon in the lower-left corner of the canvas
6. Enter 760 in the width and 420 in the height parameters.  Move the box on top of the desired recording
7. Click “Apply”
8. File -> Export -> Customize
9. In Video Settings:  Select “Framerate” drop-down and select 15 fps (frames per second)
10. Keyframes:  Automatic
11. Data Rate:  Automatic
12. Faster Encode, (single-pass)
13. Click “OK”
14. Click “Sound” and “Settings”
15. In “Channels” pulldown, change from stereo to mono
16. Target bitrate needs to be 64 kbps
17. Click “OK”
18. In “Dimensions”, make sure it is selected to “100%”
19. Click “Export”

At this point, the video will export to whatever folder you desire.  Your video should average around 1.3-1.5 mb/min, depending on what kind of screencast you are making.  Below, click on the image to see one of these screencasts in context, made exactly the way we have outlined.  It’s about three minutes long and around 3+mb.  |  Play Movie

Watch an Example

Like what you see?  Give us some feedback.  Have other ideas of systems and workflows that you have used and want to share them?  Contact us, post comments, and let us know.  We see this site as a way to collaborate and share to help take teaching and learning to the next level.

We’re excited to welcome another guest contributor to the community. Daniel Shackelford is a system administrator from Spring Arbor University. He is currently trying to set up and configure Leopard Server and Podcast Producer with some pretty amazing automation. Please welcome and post comments to his posts.

As we integrate Podcast Producer into our media publishing infrastructure it becomes obvious that manually setting up each course for iTunesU publishing could be onerous as our implementation grows.

So, taking a cue from George Cook (from Apple), I modified his pcastgroup script to work for iTunesU.

Note: This article and script are somewhat technical and assumes familiarity with the Podcast Producer infrastructure and technologies.

What it does:

• Creates an OD group for the course, using the course ID (ie. EDU360) for the name.
• Associates the course ID to an iTunesU tab ID (ie. 1234567890.01234567890).
• Adds a podcast admin group to the course group just created (or any group you specify).
• Sets up services for this group (calendar, mailingList, wiki, blog, webCalendar, webMailingListArchive).
• Generates a new workflow from a template.
• Generates the new template files for the workflow (template.plist, info.plist, InfoPlist.strings, multipart.txt.erb).
• Copy the finished workflow package to /Library/PodcastProducer/Workflows.

What it does not do:

• Any sort of verification of the info you throw at it, apart from checking to see if the group exists.
• Update an existing group with the changes listed above.
• Setup the group in a way that makes it available in the Directory app (I am working on this one).
• Create the iTunesU course (you will have to do that ahead of time in order to get the tab ID).
• Add users, grant access, or any user management tasks.
• Work out of the box. *Setup is required. See comments in the script*
• Generate a workflow that does anything but publish to the specified iTunesU course (no blog, etc.).
  

What I would like it to do in the future:

• Work with the Directory app so that the groups can be managed remotely by OD bound workstations. This does not work yet due to my difficulties in getting a plist into an attribute entry in OD. If anyone has some experience with dscl -createpl, I would welcome a little assistance.
• Be scheduled to go through existing AD/LDAP groups in a given OU and create groups and workflows for them and add the AD/LDAP group to the membership so that users in the AD/LDAP group can automatically publish to iTunesU.
• Integrate with Blackboard (or other LMS) so that the existing cross-reference list generated by the building-block we use can also be used to automatically generate the workflow. If this works, the item above would be unneeded. For us this would entail queries to an MS SQL database to get the course and tab IDs, so I am not sure how practical it would be. Might be easier in Ruby than shell.
• Generate a workflow that can publish to other outlets like group blog, wordpress, etc., as an option.

Well, here it is. Let me know what you think, and how it works for you.

pcastcourse.zip

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Daniel Shackelford can be contacted by emailing daniel [dot] shackelford [at] arbor [dot] edu