Reformatting #multimedia recordings to publish them in #mobile formats

In preparation of my courses I am reformatting some multimedia sessions to fit mobile delivery. Here you see an example of a session given by David Metcalf on mLearning. The source of this recording was an online webinar which was than made available for mobile access through the simple process listed below:

How to publish a virtual classroom recording into a mobile accessible format?

What I usely do to reformat synchronous virtual classroom sessions into mobile accessible files is record the screen + audio of the sessions via Camtasia (there is a 30 day free trail version: http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/ )

With Camtasia you can record the screen and audio of the virtual classroom session. You can then edit the recording (maybe shorten some points, or skip immediately to where the session starts without the intro). After the editing you can produce the movie into a format of your preference (mp4, mp3 are most common and cross-device mobile standards).

You do have to take into account getting used to Camtasia, but it is an intermediately easy software (btw I am only an eLearning developer, not a Camtasia person :-D

There is a useful tutorial here on how to use Camtasia (14 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwAxdMZOnM

After I have produced my virtual classroom session into mobile formats (e.g. mp4 or mp3 for audio podcast), I cut them up into videos no larger than 15 minutes and load them up to youtube (youtube does not allow videos larger than 15 minutes at first, only after they check which type of videos you put up, they can open the channel for longer movies). This allows people with a variety of devices to look at the reformatted virtual classroom movies, as YouTube will now offer those recordings in the mobile YouTube format.

Reformatting virtual classroom recordings to publish them in #mobile formats

During the last MobiMOOC we had some synchronous sessions where mLearning experts gave their insights in mLearning. Here you see an example of a session given by David Metcalf:

How to publish a virtual classroom recording into a mobile accessible format?

What I usely do to reformat synchronous virtual classroom sessions into mobile accessible files is record the screen + audio of the sessions via Camtasia (there is a 30 day free trail version: http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/ )

With Camtasia you can record the screen and audio of the virtual classroom session. You can then edit the recording (maybe shorten some points, or skip immediately to where the session starts without the intro). After the editing you can produce the movie into a format of your preference (mp4, mp3 are most common and cross-device mobile standards).

You do have to take into account getting used to Camtasia, but it is an intermediately easy software (btw I am only an eLearning developer, not a Camtasia person :-D

There is a useful tutorial here on how to use Camtasia (14 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwAxdMZOnM

After I have produced my virtual classroom session into mobile formats (e.g. mp4 or mp3 for audio podcast), I cut them up into videos no larger than 15 minutes and load them up to youtube (youtube does not allow videos larger than 15 minutes at first). This allows people with a variety of devices to look at the reformatted virtual classroom movies, as YouTube will now offer those recordings in the mobile YouTube format.

The Christmas wave out: adding audio to blogposts

Just before I am zooming off into my (much longed for) Christmas holiday, just a post about an easy to install widget I added to my blog.

It is just a small addition, but it makes all the blogposts more accessible. I have added the free (you have to sign in though) audio widget from odiogo. This widget allows visitors to click on the audio version of any blogpost. Odiogo uses text-to-speech software to convert your posts into an audio format. It was amazingly easy to install (click on the URL, go down in the window and click on 'free sign up' in the blogger part of the window, enter your blog and email, and here you go).

For next year I have a plan, so hope is born. Yes! I will be working on the realization of this eLearning plan during the Christmas holiday (ooohh, the pleasure and inspiration!).

I hope you all have a GREAT end of the year and that you will have inspiring ideas, eLearning inspiration and A LOT of FUN! A quick image of my hometown (Gent) and happy wishes to all.

Instructional Design: What do you get when you mix articulate presenter, with captivate, with camtasia, with webquiz ... you could get THIS

How can you mix all kinds of software's AND social media apps? That is one of the questions I have roaming about in the back of my mind. On the verge of my vacation, I wanted to test a new software (Articulate Presenter) and see if other software that we use to build courses with can be implemented.

If you want to, you can see the result following this link (it is an nice mashup for different educational goals). It works with Flash, so sometimes he preloads to buffer the multimedia files.

The final product was produced by Articulate Presenter, but I mixed in Del.icio.us, Camtasia, phpBB, Captivate, QuickCam pro movies, a Ning community, Articulate Quizmaker quizzes, hotspot quiz and even a Canadian Bear!

If you are interested in the production specifics, you can click on the tab 'notes' inside the articulate presenter course.

The font size of the Articulate Presenter is rather small but at this point you cannot change the font-size, but this is a feature Articulate Presenter's developing team is tackling and hopefully they will program a solution soon.

I really enjoyed the first half of the year and so now.... I am off on my vacation (more specifics in the presentation).

script for podcasts

Today I was working on a script that would enable podcasts to be delivered straight from ITM to the world. So I got my dreamweaver opened, got some serverspace and started writing my XML file to get going with the podcasts.

It worked from my first trial! That was a nice surprise. The only podcast we have for the moment is a test-one that can be implemented in iTunes ( http://www.itg.be/tempupload\uploadfolder\podcast/podcast_itunes_script.xml )
, so no ground breaking Tropical Health topic yet, but still it is exiting.

But I still have to get some details right:
- lenght of the podcast, is there an easy way to get the length of a podcast (in seconds)?
- image: I had an image loaded up, but it probably is taken over by the multimedia of the podcast from as soon as that multimedia material is downloaded... so I am not sure if I need to put an image in.

The script
It is just an image, because the coding kept giving difficulties in my blogpost (I tried 'code' and 'pre' and 'tt' but to no avail: