CITations

Dr Randy Pausch is a 46-year-old Computer Science professor from Carnegie Mellon University who is terminally ill. Recently, he delivered what was probably his final lecture. In this lecture, he talks about his childhood dreams and how he set about fulfilling them.

Here's an excerpt of his inspirational lecture (direct link).

Via The Wired Campus | The Chronicle of Higher Education.

More at CMU professor gives the last lesson on life.

Click to view the entire webcast. Mac users can download it here.

It is also available on YouTube in 10 parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten.

Something not EdTech related, but very important:

The NUS Chapter of the Red Cross Humanitarian Network has organized a Blood Donation Drive on campus. Please donate blood if you can. It might save someone's life.

Blood Donation Drive
Wed 3 October to Fri 5 October
1000 hrs to 1600 hrs
MPSH 4

To find out more or to register, please contact

You might be familiar with TechSmith's Camtasia, which some NUS staff use for screen recording. If you don't need such a powerful tool, you can consider Jing Project. It is a free tool from Camtasia, which is available for both Windows and Mac.

Jing is easy to use and let's you do annotated screenshots or short video captures of your desktop. Here's a short demonstration of how you can create a desktop recording using Jing Project. In this demo, I will demonstrate something simple - logging in to IVLE. Once you've installed and Jing is running...

Step 1 - Capture
Jing appears as a yellow ball docked on the side of your screen. I chose to let mine dock on the left. Mouse over the ball, and click Capture (the plus sign).

Step 2 - Choose area
Jing automatically selects the area your mouse is over. You can also select an area manually by clicking and dragging the crosshair.

Step 3 - Choose still or video capture
Click Image for a still screenshot. In this example, I've clicked Video. Recording begins 1 second after you click Video.

Step 4 - Record
Start doing what you want to show on screen. Talk as you are doing it. (You'll need a microphone for this.) You can click the Pause (||) button if you need to take a break. Cancel if you're not happy with the recording. It helps to plan and rehearse before hand!

Step 5 - Share or Save
Click Stop to finish the recording. You will be presented with a new window. You can preview the recording by clicking the Play button. If you're happy with it, you can Save it as a Flash (.swf) file or Share it. If you have not shared a video before, Jing will prompt you to set up a free ScreenCast account, where your video will be stored. From here, you can provide a link to the video or embed it in a website/blog. I have provided the link to the video as it is too wide to be embedded here.

View the end product | Check out Jing Project

Ever wondered how you can show YouTube videos within your PowerPoint presentation? The following video from reponzo01 shows you how to do this.

A few notes:

1. The video in the example is computer game violence, so be warned.


2. The creator of the video points out that this doesn't work very well on Macs.


3. The videos might take time to load when you come to the slide, as they are being streamed from the internet.


4. There is another version for offline presentations. However, there are issues, as noted in the comments on the video page.

If embedding isn't a priority but immediate playback is, you can pre-load YouTube videos in your web browser. Go to the video page and click play to start loading them. Click pause to stop the video from playing. The video will continue loading in the background. When you need to show the video, switch from your presentation to the video page and play the video immediately.

Oh yes, if you're looking for a place to host your videos, you can try TeacherTube. It's free and there are no upload limits!