Google Calendar Rocks

I've been doing a lot of work with Google software lately and I find them to be so useful. When my wife was starting to get "confused" as to when I had appointments and meetings - even though I am officially on leave, I thought I would set up a Google calendar of events and share it with her. Then she will be able to see when I have different meetings and classes. Yes, we have Outlook, but she can't view it real time and if I print a calendar out at the beginning of the month and add an event, I have to keep printing revised versions to hang on my refrigerator.

BUT HERE IS THE COOLEST THING ABOUT GOOGLE CALENDAR!

You have the option to set reminders about your upcoming events. One of the methods of reminding you is to text message your cell phone!! I was so excited when I learned that!! I am so forgetful sometimes with all the things I have to do that the text message is a life saver. I have set it to remind me of an online discussion being held May 1st which I am to participate. So Now I have no excuse about forgetting! :-) Of course, it is possible that I leave my cell phone in the car and never see the text message. BEG


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Kick Butts

This is a student made video about their research on Argentina.

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Embedding Your Video Into Blogger

This is a screencast on embedding your video into Blogger.

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Uploading Videos to Google Video

This is the screencast about putting your video on Google Video.

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MICCA Presentation Resources

Video Podcasts
(VodCasts)

The Evolution of the podcast

Resources list from presentation

Royalty Free Visuals and Audio

Digital Juice (Audio and Visual) - Digital Juice has a vast library of visuals. They are a little expensive but it will save you lots of time down the road.

http://www.digitaljuice.com

Royaltyfreemusic.com – Royalty Free Music has some clips available free of charge as well as libraries of music for purchase.

Music.Download.com – Download free music clips for classroom use only. Download.com contracts with artists for use of music in non-commercial projects. For publishing to the Internet, the artist’s permission is required.

Additional Resources from Will Richardson's MICCA Presentation: Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast Nation

http://www.jamendo.com - More royalty free music. You are free to use this in your presentations on and off the web but you must cite the artist and be sure you don't make it appear they are sponsoring your production.

http://www.ccmixter.com - More royalty free music. You are free to use this in your presentations on and off the web but you must cite the artist and be sure you don't make it appear they are sponsoring your production.

http://www.zamzar.com - Free file conversion tool. Convert your .WMV to MP4 or .MOV, your .DOC to .PDF, your .GIF to .JPG and many more!

Editing Software – Free

Windows Movie Maker – Free with Windows XP and Vista

iMovie – Free with MAC OS X

Avid Free DV – Free editor from Avid. http://www.avid.com/products/tryout.html

Windows Media Encoder – Free download from Microsoft for recording actions on a computer screen. Publishes as a Windows Media File.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

Editing Software – For Purchase

Ulead Studio – Ulead is a complete editing suite with easy to use interface for about $45 for educators. Ulead is available for Windows only.

Pinnacle Studio – Pinnacle is a robust editing suite that is also easy to use for around $80 for educators. Pinnacle is available for Windows only.

Frames – Frames is a program from Tech 4 Learning that will “stitch” together still pictures to create an animated movie. It costs $45 and also comes bundled with the Clay Animation Kit from Tech 4 Learning.

VlogIt! - VlogIt is the PREMIERE VodCast editor. It is specifically designed to create a Video Podcast. It comes with wonderful, high impact features and it is only $30 from Adobe. I highly recommend this product over any video editor if you specifically want to just do video podcasts. Even if you want to do more robust video editing, it is worth the additional money to have this available. Students and teachers quickly and easily learn to use the drag and drop features to build great video presentations. It creates Flash Videos for publication. VlogIt also has a service which you can publish your VodCast with just a click of a button. This is an extra cost.

http://www.adobe.com/products/vlogit/

Publishing your Vodcast

There are many places to put your vodcast. Here is what I find to be the easiest methods.

1. Upload the video to your school or class web server and create a hyperlink for it.

2. Use a blog site such as Blogger with Google Video

   1. Google Video will embed your video into your Blogger blog. It will also work with MySpace, LiveJournal, and TypePad

   2. View a screen cast of how to do this on the resource page shown below.

This presentation and related materials are all available at:

http://www.tjmiddle.org/micca

OR

http://techtimewithtony.blogspot.com

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Video Podcast Screencast

Ok here is the screencast I made for the presentation at MICCA.

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MICAA 2007

MICCA 2007 is this week and I have been working hard on the presentation about VodCasts with Kerri Cole. Part of our presentation is to show how easy it is to use Blogger and Google Video to post and syndicate Vodcasts. So I decided to create this blog site to use in the presentation. It is also the progression of the training series I started a couple years ago at school called, "Tech Time With Tony". I created a few videos about how to use MS FrontPage to create a professional portfolio. Of course that was before blogging became so mainstreem. I would certainly recommend to professionals to use a blog site as a portfolio of their work. It just makes sense. Read more!