Another quick article about a really handy free application. I needed an easy way to convert a whole set of video files from .avi to a format that would sit happily inside iTunes.

We’ve been using MPEG StreamClip for a little while at work now, it’s a great tool for converting video. But the reason I’m adding a mention here is because of the batch processing. Opening up the list view allows you to drag and drop all of your clips on to it, choose an output format and location (along with handy presets for iTunes), and set it to run until they have all converted. I’m currently typing this while my Mac processes 4 clips all at the same time, running nicely in the background.

Really nice piece of software for anybody that works with video, and it is available on Windows and MacOS. You can get your copy here.

Image source- Video editing makes me cry (cc licensed on Flickr by Rakka)

This week I was asked to have a read of the HowtoMoodle Course Creation Guide and write a review of what I found. The short version for those that don’t tend to read beyond the first couple of sentences is this is a very detailed and incredibly thorough reference manual, ideal for anybody who is involved with creating content on Moodle. As an eBook it’s just the right side of £10 (double for print), so if you ever sit looking at a Moodle page wondering what an option means I’d say this is definitely worth a look. Get it here.

The book is written very much as a course creation manual, taking you through every part of the process step by step. We start at creating a course, work our way through blocks, resources, activities and admin functions. When I say it is thorough I really mean it- coming in at 266 pages you’re certainly getting all the detail you would ever need. I’m not sure I would recommend you read from cover to cover as I did, but keep it somewhere close by when working on the site.

Each section works through what you would encounter if you were creating it, using screenshots to match up with what you would see on screen. Every option is explored, and it also takes care to describe how students would experience your course as well. For example, the assignments section shows you how to set the activity up but also goes through how a student would submit too. Seeing this side of things isn’t always immediately obvious to the teacher creating the resource so it’s a nice inclusion here.

The detail provided also makes this guide something of interest to more advanced Moodlers. I’ve been helping staff create courses for some time now so would consider myself pretty competent, but I found working through resources and activities there were little functions and tips that hadn’t occurred to me before. I’d never seen the Quiz Results block before, didn’t know that when creating a course I could choose to hide hidden topics completely, or that if I chose the ‘number of news items to be displayed’ to be zero then it wouldn’t create the news forum at the top of a new course. For me, these little things carried on throughout the text and made it really worthwhile.

I think the greatest strength of the book is their work on the Activities. This is always the harder part for people to get in to as there are so many more possibilities and many of the options can seem initially daunting. Certainly in my experience I find people struggle with the lesson activity, and the book goes to nearly 30 pages to take you through this. That kind of detail isn’t unusual either, the quiz (another one people seem to find hard) comes in at nearly 20. Another area that I felt was strong was the detail on question types, and the table explaining which activities work with the groups functionality is one I should print and keep somewhere on my desk.

Couple of things I would maybe suggest for updates. While most of the text was clear and concise, I found the descriptions of metacourses a little harder going. Admittedly this is a more complex option in course creation, but I felt it could be easier to follow. My other minor gripe was beyond the cover there isn’t any colour in the book. I think some of this in the screenshots could help with the presentation- particularly in eBook form I don’t think there’s any real need for it all to be black and white. The very last page that contains information about the book and author is beautifully presented (and in Moodle style), would love to see this format throughout. Could even go further and offer other media along with the guide- videos, etc? The additional content that comes with the ProBlogger 31 days book would be an example I would recommend looking at for a successful offering. Final thought for improvements is whether a ‘Quick Start’ section on a couple of pages at the start would be of use to readers new to Moodle. As a reference document this is excellent, but I wondered if a quick explanation of how to get going would appeal to new users without impacting on the detailed content further in.

As I said at the start of my review, this is an excellent reference document for all involved in Moodle course creation. £9.99 is only a few beers less on your next evening out, worth it for the definitive answer to the ‘what does this do?’ question that you usually have to find somebody in your IT department to ask! That link for their site again to save you scrolling back up is here.

I updated to shiny new iTunes today. This isn’t a review of iTunes so apologies if that’s what you were expecting. I got as far as opening it up and it told me I needed to be running the latest version of Safari in order to access the iTunes Store.

Obviously I’m aware I’m on the special Mac Fanboy list so don’t want to dent that too much, and while I don’t understand (or haven’t Googled) the technicalities of this particular update it doesn’t feel quite right. For me Chrome is the browser that works best for that job, do I really need to also install their web browser to use their media player? I do think iTunes is definitely the best tool for that particular job, and in general have nothing but praise for Apple. But…

I read a really good article on the BBC website earlier about the history of Internet Explorer. Remember how it shipped with Windows and was pretty much impossible to get rid of?

This month I’ve added the following apps to my iPhone.

Foursquare

Finally got around to having a play with Foursquare, just in time for Facebook to start doing pretty much the same thing. I like the Foursquare app, very simple to check in quickly, and I like that any tips people have left for a venue are easy to access. To be honest I don’t think I’ll keep using it, but that’s more about not having a large network of friends on there rather than any issue with the app itself.

BBC News

A nice visual way to display the latest news content from the BBC. Great if you have a wireless connection, little bit slow over the 3G. I still prefer The Guardian app for my morning news, and the Google Reader interface on iPhone is pretty good too.

Switchvox

This is the free app that goes with our shiny new VOIP system at work. It logs in to my extension number so I can pick up messages/etc, and I can also make calls back through the setup. You enter the number you want to call and the school system calls the iPhone. They also do an app for Blackberry, going to try that out in September too.

Boxee Remote

This month I switched from running XBMC to Boxee on my little media centre PC. Boxee also has a nice little iPhone app to remote control it. Two versions, one with the standard set of buttons but the second is a more interesting gesture based interface. Works pretty well once you get used to how sensitive it is.

Skobbler Lite

This is very cool. It’s GPS for iPhone, and it’s free! Uses the open streetmap project for all the map data and adds navigation on top of this. I’ve done a few local test drives with it and it seems to work really well. Picked up the destinations I entered with no problem, and once it has picked up the GPS signal the navigation worked really well. I don’t think I’m quite at the point where I’ll stop carrying around the TomTom unit yet, but I like this a lot.

Mega Jump

And a little game to finish off the list for the month. Feels kind of similar to DoodleJump again, but another really catchy little iPhone game.

And that’s the list. With any luck we’ll have some iPads on test by next month so the list should include a few things for that too.

Image source- iPhone 4 bumper by Yutaka Tsutano. CC licensed on Flickr

The problem with the school holidays is it gives me more time to think about things than usual. Most years I come up with something to trial in the school to suck up some more of our staff free time, this year I’m thinking maybe we could extend the idea to a few others that are reading this.

Earlier in the week I read this post on the Grumbledook blog and it got me thinking. We really need to be working harder on minimising our IT spend in schools and we’ve never really put Ubuntu (or any other Linux flavour) up to a proper test to see if we could actually work with it. Like the man in the short at the start of Toy Story 3 said, we stay with the familiar.

So, my plan is to attempt to run for the whole of November using Ubuntu. I’m going to dual boot my laptop/desktop and see just how far I get before I need something it can’t do. Throughout the process I’ll document how it goes, from the install through to how I find editing video there compared to with iMovie/etc.

But, I want to go further than that and really produce some useful case study work. In addition to my own personal set up:

1) As many other members of the Wildern team will do the same thing. This will obviously cover the technician roles, but also out into our media/programming/teaching types as well. The more people involved the better the results will be, and the wider the range of needs covered.

2) We’ll set up a dual booting IT suite and look to deliver our ICT curriculum using the same setup. Again, documented to look at all the various aspects of the process but with a focus on the impact on teaching and learning.

At the moment I’m feeling incredibly positive about this as a trial. Feels to me like something that the sector needs, and hopefully the data we produce from it will encourage others to try it too. I’m hoping I have the impact to get plenty of our own staff involved as well as the wider Hampshire area, but it would be great if others would be prepared to join in too. Drop me an email/stick something in the comments if you fancy it, and please pass on to others you might think might be interested. As a school we probably have some resource available to help others who want to try but don’t feel too confident, and if you’ve already been down this route we’d be really appreciative of any support/tips you might have.

Edit- this is getting a slightly larger response than expected so I thought a quick Google Form would be an easier way for people to say they’d be interested. No pressure, just add yourself if you want to know what’s going on. Thanks…

Image source- Tux by Matt McGee. CC licensed on Flickr

Today I needed to move a whole set of resources from one course to another. Last year we had a ‘Learning to Learn’ course on Moodle that all students followed during tutor time. However, the page grew over the year to a point where there were too many resources so this year we are creating a different course for each year group. So, what I need to do is move all the year 7 resources to a year 7 page, the 8′s to an 8, etc. The ‘import’ feature in course admin can help you do this. This is a nice easy process- you need to be a teacher on the course you are importing to and from and then just follow these steps.

1) Navigate to the course you want the resources to end up on.

2) From the course admin block select ‘import’.

3) Select the course you want to import resources from.

4) Pick the resources/labels/activities you want to import and from the options at the bottom of the page choose if you want to move all the course files and users as well. In general I would imagine you wouldn’t do this.

5) A page will load confirming what you have selected, hit continue and wait. There will be another few continue buttons while Moodle does the work.

And that should be it. You’ll end up back at the course where you started with all the resources you selected now in place.

One thing to watch out for- when migrating resources Moodle places them all in the exact same topic they came from. So, if you import a resource from topic 5 it will be placed on topic 5 on the new course. This applies even if the topic isn’t currently being displayed on the new course. If that’s the case go in to your course settings and display some more on your page and you should find any resource you were expecting to see but don’t.

1. If you’re new, come and introduce yourself. Even if you don’t need anything. Actually, especially if you don’t need anything. Always nice to meet people that don’t ask for a laptop/iPod/iPad/moon on a stick in the second sentence. This could probably work for existing staff too- I did have a good holiday, thanks.

2. If you can, book equipment for your lessons well in advance. We can do short notice but it’s easier if we don’t have to. I’m sure you all do your planning earlier than the night before right?

3. Before bringing any loan equipment back check that it’s all there. That includes that weird cable that came with the camera that you weren’t sure what to do with so left on your desk.

4. If you need a website unblocked let us know before the lesson you will be using it. We don’t block much, but it’s always worth checking if it’s something new.

5. Don’t keep all those vital documents just on your memory stick. They break more often than you would think. After 6 years I’m getting used to seeing the reaction of staff after telling them that all their reports/planning/dissertations are gone and I worry that it is starting to reduce my capacity for sympathy.

6. Backup your laptop before you bring it in for upgrade/repair. I know we can do it for you, but taking a backup of your 20Gb iTunes library that appears to mainly feature 80’s pop is probably a little out of my remit.

7. At the end of a lesson in an IT suite ask your students to leave workstations in a tidy state and check for any lost/damaged equipment for you. It saves you doing it and means we find out about any problems sooner.

8. Tell us about your ideas for new techs projects- we’ll be able to help. As a team we are here to support the ideas, if you have a good one we can worry about the how.

9. Do you actually need to print that?

10. Drop in with cake occasionally. We like it.

Have a good last couple of weeks of the holidays, we’ll see you back here soon!

Image source- I H8 PC by Mr Mo-Fo (cc licensed on Flickr)

Do you need an easy way to convert a whole set of FLAC files to mp3? Try Max. Max is an open source application for MacOS designed for ripping audio from CDs in a whole range of formats/bitrates/etc, but it also does bulk conversion between the formats for files already on your machine.

After installing the application I dragged and dropped a couple of FLAC format albums I had on my portable drive into it. It automatically picked up all the relevant metadata, I dropped in the album art, picked my mp3 conversion preferences and it converted and added it to iTunes. Simple, fast, and works perfectly. Well worth a download if you ever find yourself needing to do bulk conversion of audio files.

Image source- Cone Thing (cc licensed on Flickr by William Hook)

The list of applications I have installed and kept on my iPhone this month is a bit shorter than usual, but a couple of things worth looking at all the same. I’m particularly excited about the first.

RunKeeper

A little while ago I was all excited about Roadbud, but this month it seemed to die in a fairly dramatic way resulting in it losing all of my data. Have also had a few instances of it crashing when I’ve been out when phone calls or messages come in. I get a lot of both of those so it became something of a problem. So, I’ve switched to trying out RunKeeper. Largely the same set of features as Roadbud- it has better reporting at the end of the run, and also tells you how far over/under pace you are which I like. It doesn’t seem to have the StrongSong feature that Roadbud has though which is a shame.

What I do like about this application though is it all links back in to the RunKeeper website to store all your activities. You can see my profile here, although I have limited the public view quite a lot. Once logged in you get access to the location data, maps, etc.

The most exciting part of this for me is RunKeeper Live. An extra $20/year but it allows you to stream your GPS position out live while running so others can track you- this is going to be perfect for the marathon. It’s very cool. There’s a good demo of it on YouTube here if you like this sort of fitness related geekery.

FStream

FStream is a web radio player for iPhone. Combine this with the stream addresses of the BBC radio stations found on this website and you can listen to 6Music on your phone. It also gives you the option of streaming over the 3G connection so (providing it doesn’t use up too much of your data allowance) you can listen to radio stations on the move.

Image source- iPhone (cc licensed on Flickr by Christopher Chan)

The holidays give us a chance to try out some new things ready for September. The first activity we are adding to our Moodle installation for the new year is NanoGong. It’s a great little activity that adds audio recording capability to Moodle.

Setup of the module is as easy as any other. You have to fill in a short form to get a download link over on the NanoGong site (here), download the right version and drop into your mod directory. Visit the notifications page, the install happens, job done.

Once this is complete an additional activity appears in your dropdown menu when editing a course. Selecting NanoGong from this list allows you to create your activity. Settings are very straight forward- enter a description explaining what your students have to do, pick the maximum number of messages they can leave, maximum time and score for the gradebook.

When a student clicks the activity on your course a small applet loads that allows them to use their computer microphone to record short sections of audio. On the test version I am running here this worked quickly, the recording was clear, and there were no delays saving the file or playing it back afterwards. After the student has submitted their recording they have the option to go back and edit.

As a teacher my view of the activity shows all submitted messages along with details about who/when. I can play the files back, leave my own comments and grade the file. There is also an option to lock the file so the student cannot go back and edit once you have graded it. Any grade you enter here appears in the Moodle gradebook.

And that’s it. Nice simple module, but a huge number of possibilities for use in the classroom. We’ll add this to our training programme for September and I’ll feedback on any successful use later in the year.

Image source- Microphone (cc licensed on Flickr by visual.dichotomy)