ClacksBlog

I found this post about online writing software.

It discusses the following online writing tools :-

Google Docs, Zoho Writer, WriteBoard, ThinkFree Online

I’ve not tried them.

Just returned from leave, and while I did take my EeePC with me, I didn’t overindulge in techie stuff and even managed to stay away from email for a few days.

A couple of things caught my eye while on my travels:

Firstly a lot of stuff in the Canadian press about work life balance and how blackberries and facebook are creating tensions between time on and time off.  What do you do when the boss emails you at midnight and possibly expects a response,  or when you get a friend invite?  Something of a minor backlash seems to be emerging against being always accessible at work.

Secondly, I got into a taxi in Quebec City, and the taxi driver had an Asus EeePC mounted on a bracket next to the driver seat and was busily instant messaging from his cab while stopped at traffic lights …. He was using the Linux version of the device and was connecting to the internet presumably using his phone as a modem while driving through the streets.

Internet access on public transport was very common in the cities I visited in Canada which did make it very tempting to go online while travelling.  What is the lesson from all of this? Well, the ubiquitous personal device is geting closer as the devices get more capable (neither the taxi driver nor I seemed to have any issues connecting the EeePC to the net) and the communications technology is becoming more pervasive, whether wireless or 3G.

The only fly in the ointment - Apple launched the new 3G version of the iPhone in Canada while I was there, causing the usual queue of geeks outside the stores trying to be the first. Apparently, however many of them were not able to use the new toys because the network crashed under load.

You Tube re-compress uploaded video files by turning them into flash video before putting them on their site.

As usual when it comes to digital video and audio there is lots of advice and guidance regarding the best format and settings to use before you upload your video to youtube.

Essentially, there are two schools of thoughts regarding format :-

Option One : Supply youtube with a video you have already compressed to their specifications.

Option Two : Supply youtube with the highest quality file and let them compress it for you.

In both scenarios youtube run their compressors over both video files regardless of whether they were already in the correct format.

There is a 100 MB file size limit and clips can’t be longer than 10 minutes.

Your video can take between 1 hour and 6 hours to become available to the public on the youtube site.

Some advice suggests it is best to upload different video formats and make them available privately on youtube and then make public the one that looks the best.

Here’s some more information I’ve managed to find out.

1 Uploading Tips from You Tube Site

You Tube Website has the following information on it.

You Tube accepts :-

• Quickime .mov,
• Common Windows Video Format .avi
• MPEG   .mpg

You Tube specifically recommends MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) formats at 640 x 480 resolution, 30fps with MP3 audio.

2 Uploading Tips from  Los Angeles Final Cut Pro Users Group

The LAFCPUG have an article on uploading videos to youtube.

The article recommends uploading the highest quality video file which you can while staying within you tubes file restrictions, the important ones being that the file is not larger than 100MB and that it is not longer than 10 minutes. The article also recommends the following settings :-

For videos up to 6 minutes long use the MPEG4 H.264 codec at 2000 kps video and 64kps audio at a resolution 320 x 240.

For videos longer close to 10 minutes use a data rate of 1,300 kps for video.

3 Uploading Tips from Ken Stone

There is an article on this site which is all about encoding for youtube with Apple’s compressor program, which comes with Final Cut Pro. The Click video edit suite has compressor.

The article can be found here “Encoding for You Tube Using Compressor”

The article recommends using the Photo JPEG codec. Youtube recommend 320×240 ratio but the you tube window is 425×318 at a 4:3 ratio rather than 16:9.

You can add a Letterbox filter if your video is widesreen.

The guy who wrote the article set up a youtube channel for his videos.

Summary

After having searched the internet, it seems that MPEG4 H.264 seems to be the favoured codec for good results.

Looks like ASUS are about to launch a version of EeePC as a desktop computer.

Not quite sure where this fits in the market, as the relatively low price of your average PC is such that there maybe isn’t a huge amount to gain by going for the ASUS device. However, with the news of a new OLPC which looks like a book, and word of HP launching an EeePC competitor the trend is definitely towards the ubiquitous personal device.

well, it is finally here. The folks from Clacks are undergoing Glow mentor training.

First impression is that Glow is big. Bigger than perhaps you might think.

Despite lingering reservations about elements of Glow not quite being best of breed, it is certainly fair to say that Glow will be more than the sum of its parts.

The trick to implementation will be to keep it simple, take small steps, learn one trick at a time and depending on your cultural references to quote either Corporal Jones or THHGTTG - “DON’T PANIC”

more a question than an answer, but what is the correct pace of change for ICT in the curriculum?

The answer is undoubtedly not a one liner  or probably even a one pager, but the debate crystallises down to whether the pace should in uniform leaps or whether it should be heterogeneous, dynamic, almost ad-hoc.
The heterogeneous approach allows the pioneers to charge forward, but also allows the less enthusiastic to lag behind.  Moving forward as a homogeneous mass means that everyone progresses at the same time, that the progress is potentially more secure, but that the pace is inevitably slower. With ICT this slowness is potentially a critical failure.

Heterogeneous progress is easier to achieve, it can be pump primed, led by the enthusiastic few, but the impact, at least in terms of numbers, is potentially quite small.

This is a tension which is not easily resolved. We have tried mass CPD before, and the results were a very mixed bag. We need to try to shift the baseline upwards through teh mass CPD required to access something like Glow, but also need to make sure that we do not constrain those pioneers  who are pushing the at edges developing and experimenting with new practice.

    Blogging live from Clackmannanshire Council Head teachers’ conference. Theme is CfE, and this morning has been about local examples of good practice. Have seen so far Coalsnaughton PS and their Community project where they have used all sorts of technology to produce a DVD which is a very good piece of community history.

St Mungo’s PS used Audacity to produce a CD of an original Blues composition.

Alloa Academy presented on a project called D-Day which is about running a practical exercise for pupils in conjunction with the army simulating a disaster and dealing with all aspects of dealing with refugees etc.

the common theme which emerges to me is that all of these projects are impressive and all have similarities : they all have an end product, they are all focussed on a single theme, they all have expert input, and they are all driven by an enthusiastic and committed individual. They all use technology, but the trick is that they each use a very small range of technologies. Teachers and pupils do not need to over extend themselves by mastering too many different things. The emphasis is on depth, not breadth.

The pupils are gaining transferable skills, they are dealing with cross currricular issues but they are doing it in a very specialised context.

Wii Video Games Blamed For Rise In Effeminate Violence

found this sitting in my drafts can’t remember why I didn’t press publish, but found it funny at the time

I found this information, on an application ProRemote that lets you use an iphone to control Protools music recording software.

I’m not sure whether it would any use or not, but it would impress anyone visiting the recording studio.

Slashdot | Peruvian Teachers Begin OLPC Training

Interesting to hear of these portable devices being used for real. Even more interesting for me is that the key aspect of this would appear to be the content on the devices rather than the devices themselves.

No social networking, no internet, just old fashioned content.  That doesn’t stop a good teacher doing all sorts of interesting constructivist activities but it does raise the question again of the balance between content and process and their relative importance.

Reminds me of an anecdote from my early days as a teacher: Mhairi was sitting at the computer with her hand raised. She was stuck! Being a young enthusiastic teacher, I went through the whole task again with her, encouraged her to problem solve, building on previous knowledge. I tried every trick in my repertoire to ensure that she could understand what was required and therefore be able to work out a solution for herself. Eventually she looked up at me and said “but which button do I press?”

There is a place in this world for button pressers and sometimes we try too hard to turn people into something they are not. And with that I guess we are back into the discussions around whether the curriculum is too academic and the need to value vocational activities.

Tags: olpc