All posts by James Clay

Making screencasts on your Mac

I have been looking at screencasting software for the Mac.

Screencasting is a way of capturing what you do on the screen as a video file. The more advanced applications allow you to record an audio track on top, whilst others also allow you to annotate and add text to your screencast.

They are a very useful way of explaining how an application works, how a website works, how to do something or explaining a process in an application.

They can also be used with presentation software, such as PowerPoint or Keynote, to create videos of your presentations which can then be converted into video files. These video files can then be converted by learners (or practitioners) into formats which work on mobile devices, or home DVD players, etc…

One of the original applications for this kind of activity is Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X.

Snapz Pro X allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime movie or screenshot that can be emailed, put up on the web, or passed around however you want.

Snapz Pro X works for me and I do use it quite a bit.

Snapz Pro X

ScreenFlow is pretty good too, but Leopard only.

Making screencasts on your Mac

It looks fantastic and unlike Snapz Pro X the resulting capture can be edited, annotated much more easily.

ScreenFlow is a complete workflow for creating screencasts: powerful enough to capture your desktop, video camera, microphone & computer audio at the same time.

Get Screenflow in the App Store.

IShowU is suppose to be very good. I did give it a go and seemed pretty easy to use.

Need to show something to someone? iShowU is your answer! iShowU is designed to record anything on your screen, instantly — both audio, and video!

I wasn’t too impressed with the results of capturing video, ScreenFlow and Snapz Pro X seeme better at that. However IShowU does have a range of capture option choices depending on what you want to show the video on.

Get IShowU in the App Store.

CamTwist can be used too, though the focus here is on web based video chat type video, so not something for high quality video or presentations. However for the web (ie via something like Ustream) it is ideal.

CamTwist is a software package that lets you add special effects to your video chats. It’s also possible to stream your desktop and still images.

CamTwist

One final option is to use screenshots (images) and iMovie. Capture a series of screenshots and then insert into iMovie and edit accordingly – though from experience this takes a lot longer than the above applications.

Get iMovie in the App Store

Overall there are many choices in screencasting on the Mac and of course with Parallels you can also now screencast Windows using the same software.

This is how I did the following screencast of Photostory.

Personally I like Snapz Pro X, but I think I might have a good look at ScreenFlow.

August 2011: Updated some links.
February 2015Updated some links.

Nokia buys Symbian and then gives it away…

Nokia has bought the rest of Symbian and has “given” it away to the community via the Symbian Foundation.

Nokia buys Symbian and then gives it away...

Probably in response to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, Nokia has purchased the rest of Symbian and has announced, according to the The Register, that it will be then “giving it away”.

Nokia has bought up the bits of Symbian it didn’t already own and is chucking the OS into an open-source foundation along with the S60 UI layer, accompanied by Sony Ericsson and DoCoMo, who are throwing in UIQ and MOAP(S) respectively.

The BBC adds:

Nokia, which already owns 48% of the UK-based firm, intends to develop its software to compete with Google’s planned Android operating system.

This is an interesting response by Nokia to the “threat” posed by Android and the iPhone.

Jaiku? Why not?

I like Jaiku.

I also think you need to “do” Jaiku for a fair amount of time (and commitment) to get some real value from it.

There is value from incidental chat, what is incidental for me, may be new and innovative for you and vice versa.

Here’s an example of how useful Jaiku is to me.

Jaiku? Why not?

http://xlearn.jaiku.com/presence/3775764…

Lils mentioned Bluetooth which reminded me I had not got the link to some Bluetooth software that she had mentioned before in a (live) training session, so I asked her.

Not only did I get the link, but an affirmation from (Gary at) Weston College on how they were using it successfully.

Personally I think of it as a more informal Champions mailing list with the added benefit of RSS feeds.

MoLeNET Dissemination Conference – 18th September

If you check my tag cloud on the right you will see the tag MoLeNET and you may have wondered what that was about.

Well MoLeNET (which is short for Mobile Learning NETwork) is, to quote the LSN:

A unique collaborative approach to the implementation of mobile learning via supported shared cost mobile learning projects within a wider community of practitioners and experts.

Gloucestershire College has had a MoLeNET Project, the Glossy Project which has been looking at mobile learning.

MoLeNET Dissemination Conference - 18th September

Well on the 18th September there is a MoLeNET Dissemination Conference in London (see attached PDF).

The aims of the conference are:

  • To disseminate nationally the good practice, lessons learned, research and evaluation findings, tips, tools and advice arising out of the MoLeNET programme in 2007/08
  • To demonstrate technologies, systems, learning materials and techniques
  • To provide a platform for practitioners to share and an opportunity for networking and building of future partnerships

I do expect to be there in one form or another, so if you are coming do come and say hello.

MoLeNET Dissemination Conference (PDF)

3G usage rises as prices fall

So you lower the price of 3G data plans and what happens, the number of 3G users doubles!

Duh!

3G usage rises as prices fall

BBC reports on a survey which has found this out.

Price cuts and the popularity of 3G are prompting Europeans to use mobile data like never before, says a survey.

The GSM Association survey shows that European data roaming traffic grew by 75% between April 2007 and 2008.

Over the same period the numbers of 3G users doubled and the average price of data roaming services fell by 25%.

Read more.

When I first used 3G in June 2004, I was paying £100 per month for 1GB of data per month, this went down to £75 pretty quickly. A year later it was just £45 per month and by 2006 it was just £25 per month.

Now you can get 3G for just £10 per month with as much as a 3GB fair usage limit, and as part of a phone plan it can be as little as £5 per month!

Also we are seeing an explosion in speed (just don’t tell O2 who are still stuck on 128Kbps), back in 2004, I was lucky to get 384Kbps, today with my Vodafone 3G dongle I can achieve 7.2Mbps (well I can in London, less so in Gloucester).

These fast speeds and low prices start to make 3G a viable option for many people and as a result we are seeing an increase in demand and users.

As mentioned earlier on this blog 3G usage is increasing really fast.

Now for all the economists out there, does this mean that the demand for 3G is elastic or inelastic in demand?

Photo source.

Apple announce new 3G iPhone

Apple announce new 3G iPhone

Apple announced iPhone 3G yesterday in a keynote by Steve Jobs at the WWDC in San Francisco. It will be available in the UK on the 11th July.

New features include:

  • 3G-capable. 2.8 times faster than EDGE.
  • GPS built-in
  • Thinner
  • Better battery life – 300 hours of standby, 2G talk-time 10 hours (as opposed to 5), 5 hours of 3G talk-time (competition is 3 hour 3G talk time), 5 to 6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7 hours of video, 24 hours of audio.
  • Flush headphone jack

Other new features are:

  • contact searching
  • complete iWork document support
  • complete Office document support (now includes PowerPoint)
  • bulk delete and move for Mail
  • save images you receive
  • scientific calculator in landscape mode
  • parental controls
  • language

I wonder if the Keynote (iWork) and PowerPoint support also allows you to show the presentation via an AV cable in the same way you can do at the moment with video and images.

It will be interesting to see also if iWork (or even Office) support includes editing and creating support, or is it just going to be reading, I suspect the latter.

Of course there are also all the features announced when the iPhone SDK was released earlier this year which include:

  • Exchange and ActivSync support
  • Applications
  • VPN

I do like the fact that an educational institution can put apps on the iPhone (or the iPod touch) without needing to go through the Apple checking process and the iTunes App store.

Downside is that you now need to activate the phone in store, so now unlocking just became a lot more expensive as you will have to buy into a phone plan as well as the phone.

Virtual Windows

If you want to run Windows on your Mac, you have had up until now four main choices, Boot Camp, Parallels, VMware and Crossover.

Now there is a fifth (free) choice, Virtualbox from Sun.

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

I have downloaded it, but not yet installed it or tried to run Windows on it. Certainly looks like it could be useful for a whole range of virtualization solutions.

A lot of people say I can’t buy a Mac as I need to run Windows, well it’s never been easier to run Windows on a Mac these days, and with virtualization you can run both OS X and Windows XP (and Ubuntu. Vista, even Windows 3.1!) on a single computer.

Learning from digital natives: Integrating formal and informal learning

The HE Academy have published an interesting report into research into integrating formal and informal learning.

Formal and informal learning have been viewed as competing paradigms. However, students are increasingly adopting the tools and strategies for informal learning within formalised educational settings.

Potential affordances of this integration have been largely unexplored and there is little evidence base to draw upon. This project will address this issue by providing an educational rationale for integrating formal and informal learning supported by electronic tools.

Download Report