Podmo Free Server at TTG TAFE

Over the past few weeks I've been "playing" with Podmo and we now have a working Podmo Free Server at Tea Tree Gully TAFE. It's possible for students and staff to logon to Podmo 24/7 and download content. Podmo are still "tweaking" their page that allows users to upload their own content onto the Podmo server, but when it is all working smoothly we hope to have an offical launch!

I think that the Podmo platform will especially be of interest to the Digital Media students who may like to upload their showreels to share with the public.

Something else I've be experimenting with is the ARED resources which create web based flash learning activities. Here are some links to my first attempts:

Motherboard Identification Activity

PC Port Identification Activity

PC Connector ID Quiz

PC Boot Up Sequence

Sue's blog

Sue has gone one step further and developed her own blog. To see Sue's blog click on her name on the bottom on the right hand side of the screen.
Cheers

Peta

Fashion mLearning trial

As I mentioned at the last meeting, my intention was to do screen recordings (with narration) of our PC-based classes and have them available in range of mobile formats. We only have one such class running at the moment (in Corel Draw) which is running on Fridays. Unfortunately, with other commitments on Fridays, I haven't been able to be there over the past three weeks to get this underway. So, in the end, I thought I'd just set it all up and leave the lecturer (Aileen) to it. I sat down with her last Thursday and gave her a tutorial on the software (CamStudio) and she recorded three demostrations in class the next day. I've converted them using Super to 3gp (for phone), mp4 (for iPod) and Quicktime movie (for PC). I've set up a bluetooth dongle on the PC and sent the file to a phone and put the mp4 on to my Palm (I don't have an iPod).

I'm generally pleased with the results although there's a few issues to attend to. Given the limitations of the mobile screen size, I had the software set to capture a relatively small window which tracks the cursor (ie. the cursor is always in the center of the window). This effectively shows close up detail of what she's doing and therefore makes best use of the small screen on a mobile. Unfortunately, Aileen changed the settings back to full screen! The results are still okay but they lack the detail required for it to be a truly useful resource on a small screen. However, full screen is probably better for reviewing the mov file on a PC.

The other issue was sound quality. I borrowed a microphone from the Marleston library and the quality was fairly ordinary - I had trouble getting the recording level high enough. I'll need to look into this - maybe we need to buy a decent quality mic. Anyway I'll do it again this Friday and see how it goes.

I also gave the lecturer an mLearning survey to hand out to the students which I'll hopefully have back over the next few days. I'll be there this Friday to do some bluetoothing/iPodding of the files to the students' devices and talk to them about this mLearning thing.

One thing that struck me was the ease and speed of the process. It took me just over an hour to convert all three files (albeit, there was only 11 minutes of total footage) to the three formats required. Potentially, the files could be avallable to the students before they leave for the day. At this stage, the distribution is only from a PC in the computer suite. Ultimately vodcasting is the way to go - I'm looking into it. A Podmo Free Zone at Marleston would also be nice.....

So far, so good.