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All posts by James Clay
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Video Clips Archive
The US NARA has a wealth of videos available via Google edit now via YouTube which (as they are in the public domain) can be used for teaching and learning without having to worry about licensing or copyright infringement.
Obviously they have a particular slant, but could be useful to demonstrate how government information films have changed, or for those undertaking space science.
So what do you do with forty iPods?
Showing Digital Video Recordings
Here in the UK in order to show television recordings to your students you may need a licence, this is run by the Educational Recording Agency (ERA).
One thing I have found that a lot of people don’t realise is that the ERA licence only covers specific broadcasts from the following broadcasters.
BBC television and radio
ITV Network services (including ITV2 and ITV3)
Channel Four and E4
Five television
S4C
It does not include for example films or adverts or commercial radio.
However this is not an issue (except for labelling purposes) to quote the ERA:
However, if you record these broadcasts for non-commercial educational purposes your recordings will not infringe copyright, unless a certified Section 35 licence applies. This is because Section 35 (1) states that where works are not covered by a certified scheme, then educational establishments may reproduce and communicate them electronically on-site without infringing copyright. You will need to adequately acknowledge, i.e. label, any broadcast recordings you make under Section 35 (1).
So you can record adverts for showing for instructional purposes, or as one college I am aware of recorded The Terminator for a media lesson, without needing a licence.
Note to those who wish to hold digital recordings of tv shows, the ERA licence for ERA licenced recordings only covers the on-site computers and therefore you can not stream to students at home for example.
Digital recordings stored on-site, e.g. on an establishment’s central server, may only be accessed from on-site terminals. A suitable security or password protection system needs to be in place to ensure recorded material is not accessed by students at home or anywhere off-site, as this is not permitted under the ERA Scheme or any part of Section 35.
Usual disclaimer applies, all material in this posting is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. In all copyright matters, consult a legal expert or lawyer.
Presentation, not Presently
Following my post about Presently, the official Google Blog has announced that they are releasing presentation software and are going to call it Presentation.
In April we announced that we were working to bring presentations to Google Docs. (Astute readers may recall learning about this even earlier, which caused a bit of excitement around here.) And today we’re unveiling the new Google Docs presentations feature and invite you to try it at documents.google.com. Maybe more than any other type of document, presentations are created to be shared. But assembling slide decks by emailing them around is as frustrating as it is time-consuming. The new presentations feature of Google Docs helps you to easily organize, share, present, and collaborate on presentations, using only a web browser.
This will provide a real solution to delivering online presentations and also enable learners to access PowerPoint presentations via the web (say delivered from a VLE). Not every learner will have Microsoft Office installed and though PowerPoint Viewer is an option for some, it is not an option for all.
Regardless of whether you think PowerPoint is not an useful e-learning tool (death by PowerPoint anyone) or is, it is used on a regular basis by a lot of practitioners across the world.
I think despite the dominance of Microsoft Office there is room for a web based presentation application and I am hoping that Presentation will fit the bill.
Faculty 2.0
Okay so we had Web 2.0, e-Learning 2.0 and now we have Faculty 2.0!!!
Actually this is a title of an interesting article on how institutions should not try and bolt on technology to existing practices, but should be using technology to systematically change the institutional practices to improve and enhance learning.
Should the goal be to persuade and assist faculty members to adopt technology, or should it be to enable systemic transformation? When technology is “bolted on” to an existing process, the usual result is a modest improvement in the process and also higher costs. To obtain both greater improvement and reduced costs, higher education institutions must redesign the process so as to take maximum advantage of the enabling capabilities of technologies.
Too often I have seen this “bolt-on” approach in colleges and almost avoidance of using technology for systematic change.
Which type of institution are you working for?
Free Virtual World
You’ve heard of Second Life (which I don’t get) now there is MetaPlace!
The BBC is reporting on this new development in virtual worlds (which isn’t quite ready yet).
A free tool that allows anyone to create a virtual world has been launched. Users of Metaplace, as it is known, can build 3D online worlds for PCs or even a mobile phone without any knowledge of complex computer languages.
Read rest of article on BBC News.
QR and Datamatrix Codes
It would appear that the last mobile phone barcode I posted was not a QR code at all but a datamatrix code (thanks Roger).
This is a QR Code.
I generated this code at the Kaywa website.
I am using the Kaywa reader software on my Nokia N73 to test the concept and it reads both the QR codes and the datamatrix codes really easily. I have done tests both on screen and printed.
Very clever concept and having showed a few people in college we think there are a lot of potential uses.
QR Codes
The current craze in Japan is for QR Codes that allow information to be sent to a mobile phone via the camera.
Simply put the information or link is encoded into a barcode type graphic.
You then take a photograph of the barcode, and with special reader software you are able to convert the barcode into information, which could be a link to a website or just plain information.
You can make simple barcodes on the Nokia website, there are also links to various applications which can read these codes.