CITations

YouTube recently introduced a beta feature in YouTube: video annotation. You can add notes, links, highlight specific areas within a video and more. Quite nifty, if you ask me.

Annotation in YouTube is limited to the video uploader. There used to be a collaborative video annotation service, Mojiti. Unfortunately, this service, which was previously featured here, has shut down.

Another related service is dotSUB. This one allows people to collaboratively add subtitles to videos. Terrific for educators, especially those in language education.

Via Digital-Lifestyles, Hat tip to Vantan, who highlighted this in her Google Reader shared items.

Even though the initial buzz about Second Life (SL) has subsided, the virtual 3D online environment still piques the imagination of several people in NUS. In the near future, the University will establish a foothold in Second Life through the NUS Second Life Committee.

In the mean time, what is an educator to do if he or she wants to use SL?

Linden Labs, the creators of SL, are aware of the educational possibilities of virtual worlds. To awaken educators to the various classroom uses of SL, they have SimTeach, their official educators' resource. This wiki site is a good primer for educators who want to begin exploring SL.

Besides the official educators' resource, Jo Kay and Sean FitzGerald run the independent Second Life in Education wiki. This site offers an extensive list of educational uses of SL. They also offer lots of pointers and resources for educators interested in using SL for teaching.

If you're the type who subscribes to blogs, Second Life and Education (SLED) will keep you up to date with the latest educational developments in Second Life.

Autodesk, the 2-D and 3-D design software firm, introduces the Autodesk Student Community. The highlight is that students can download full versions of software such as AutoCAD, Alias Studio and Revit Architecture. The software is provided under a 14-month watermark license.

Besides access to free software, students who join the community get to:

• keep up to date with trends in architecture, design and engineering


• search for related jobs


• showcase your work


• participate in discussions with industry leaders and peers


• form networking groups with like-minded people


• access interactive training tutorials

If you are an architecture, design or engineering student, you might want to take advantage of this community. Faculty staff can join too.

Check it out at: http://www.autodesk.com/edcommunity

The buzz about Second Life goes unabated. Recently, NUS Computer Centre announced that it is currently working to establish a NUS student community in Second Life. It will be "designed by students, for students" as John Yap, FASS ITU Media Producer, notes in an article in The Ridge Online.

Second Life, like most online innovations, also possesses potential for teaching and learning applications. To that end, The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus highlighted a new orientation island, developed by the New Media Consortium, which is targeted towards students and educators.

If you are already on Second Life, you can visit the New Media Consortium's Education Orientation Island via this link.

Stephen Downes highlights a website detailing educational uses of Second Life. It highlights numerous Second Life projects covering a variety of subject areas.

P.S. NUS is hiring students for the NUS Second Life project.

The Google Earth Blog lists various ways you can use Google Earth in the classroom and points Google Earth educational resources.

These include National Geographic content, Juicy Geography and Google's own educational uses site.

If you've been wondering about the possibilities of Google Earth for teaching and learning, read the article.

You can also embed interactive Google Maps in your blog or website. Here are the steps:

1. Go to the area you want to feature. Click Link to this page.

You will see a pop-up, as shown below. If you are happy with the default size (425 by 350 pixels), you can copy and paste the code from Paste HTML to embed in website to your blog/website. If not, go to the next step.

2. You can customize the embed size. Click Customize and preview the embedded map. You will see a pop-up as shown below.

Choose a map size or a custom size, if you want specific dimensions. Copy and paste the code in your blog or website. Remember that you must be in HTML view when pasting the code into a blog post. That's all there is to it!

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!

eXe is an application which allows educators to design, develop and publish online teaching and learning materials on their own. Recently, it has gone 1.0, meaning that it's ready for prime time. Congratulations to Dr Wayne Mackintosh and his team!

For a quick overview of eXe, watch Brent Simpson's short introduction.

Try it out for yourself! You can download it here for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Oh, just a quick note: you can install eXe on a thumbdrive and have it available whether you are on campus or at home.

• eXe Website
• eXe User Guide
• eXe Updates

Direct link to Introduction to eXe video.

Mashable posted a very nice annotated compilation of PDF tools.

I use one tool that's not mentioned in the list: PDF X-Change Viewer. It loads fast, as touted. It also allows me to type into PDF forms meant for printing. Handy!

WikiMindMap makes use of Wikipedia to generate a mind map of the search term. I've used Changi as an example in the screenshot above. Students shouldn't be using Wikipedia as a primary source. Nevertheless, that doesn't detract from WikiMindMap's nice way of displaying the entry's related terms.

Click on the words on the branches to go to the actual Wikipedia entry. Click the 'recycle' logo to bring that term to the center of the mind map.

Hat tip to Ewan McIntosh.

Finding photos and images for use for educational purposes is a daunting task given the current copyright regime. The Creative Commons offers some hope. Recently, the Wellcome Trust announced that it has released its collection of photos for non-commercial use (via the Creative Commons blog):

Teachers, students, academics and the public can now download and use images depicting 2,000 years of mankind and medicine for free, thanks this newly launched website from the Wellcome Trust.

Launched on 15 June 2007, 'Wellcome Images' is the world's leading source of images on the history of medicine, modern biomedical science and clinical medicine. All content has been made available under a Creative Commons Licence, which allows users to copy, distribute and display the image, provided the source is fully attributed and it is used for non-commercial purposes.

Wellcome Images is constantly updated with new clinical, and biomedical and historical images from the Wellcome Library, Europe's leading resource for the study of history of medicine which recently re-launched as part of the new and forthcoming Wellcome Collection.

This is terrific news for educators!

For more general purpose images which are Creative Commons licensed, you might try Flickr. It is a photo hosting site which allows users to CC-license their photos for others to use. You'll be surprised by the number of CC-licensed photos. Use their Advanced Search, and make sure the "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos" box is checked. You can use the photos as the respective license describes. Do inform the owner as a courtesy!

Turnitin Bibliography by Charles P. Nelson via Stephen Downes

Charles has written and collated a rich treasure trove of Turnitin (an online plagiarism detection service) resources. While it is touted as a solution to a problem, not all educators approve of Turnitin's methods and philosophy. The bibliography reflects boths sides of the story. Charles also shares his thoughts about Using Turnitin, concluding that: "Turnitin, used properly, can be one tool among others, not simply for catching plagiarism, but more importantly for teaching students how to use sources appropriately."

If you're a NUS faculty staff, you can use Turnitin. Log in to IVLE, click Resources on the left hand toolbar, then click the Plagiarism Prevention link. (P.S. I am at a loss as to why it is labelled 'Plagiarism Prevention' here.)

Academic Culture eModule, Centre for Instructional Technology, NUS

Since we are on the topic of plagiarism, you might want to check out the Academic Culture eModule. This self-contained interactive module introduces university students to the academic norms, values and practices. Through video-based scenarios and interactive questions, students learn about Academic Conventions, Academic Inquiry and Academic Ethics. The eModule is freely accessible, so do have a look.

A Teaching with Technology White Paper: Podcasting [download pdf] by Ashley Deal via Stephen Downes

A useful primer on podcasting in education. This includes a look at what podcasting is, how it can be used in education and some examples of classroom use. This primer brings to mind a recent post I read by Jacob Christenson, reflecting on the reasons his department's podcasting project failed.

Free Geography Tools via Google Earth Blog

The Free Geography Tools blog is about the latest in "free tools for GIS, GPS, Google Earth, neogeography, and more".

Blog2Learn Wiki by Anne Davis

I'm glad that it's Blog2Learn instead of Blog2Teach. We're all learners! Anne's blog is a wide-ranging collection of links to edublogging resources and projects (K-12 through to tertiary level). Click on the SideBar link to see the navigation menu. Anne teaches writing, and she says this about blogs:

[They] give us an avenue to teach writing (blogging) as a cluster of complex thinking and writing behaviors that provide ownership to the student and the possibility of getting a multitude of responses from others. We have to orchestrate that. Yes, it takes time but we can truly model this process through our own blogs and provide the type of environment to support young writers and give them the challenges necessary to foster writing development. What a joy!

Mobile Learning, Vol 8, No 2 (2007), The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning via elearnspace

Mobile learning is an area in educational technology which is fraught with issues. The emphasis tends to be on how content can be delivered via mobile devices. This brings with the the problem of compatibility: operating systems, file formats, screen sizes, battery life, storage capacity... you get the drift. On the other hand, those that want to exploit the use of mobile devices in classroom projects need to overcome issues with sufficient and equitable access to the necessary tools. Regardless of what you conceive m-learning and how it will affect education, this issue of IRRODL has a number of peer-reviewed journal articles which explore mobile learning.

Reflections from EduBloggerCon07: Crafting a Compelling, Cogent Message for Change by Chris Sessums

Chris Sessums summarises a session he participated in at EduBloggerCon07, bringing together the thoughts of the participants:

For many educators who are actively engaged in the blogging process, weblogs have reportedly transformed the way they learn; it has challenged them about the ways they think about themselves individually, as well as the way they think about teaching and learning.

For many educators at this meet-up, blogging extends their ability to connect to other people and ideas, enhancing both personal and professional relationships. Weblogging has reportedly challenged them to learn more about themselves as well as challenging the way we think about a variety of subjects.

Two Zs: Zotero and Zentation

Zotero is a browser extension which "helps you collect, manage, and cite your research sources" from within the Firefox. I've not installed it yet, but it might be a handy tool. No harm trying - it's free!

I've mentioned Slideshare a few times previously. It's been called the YouTube of PowerPoint, and it works as advertised. But a presentation slides are just that: presentation slides. Where's the actual presentation?

Zentation promises to change that. You can upload your slides to Zentation and upload the video recording to Google Video (chosen for its ability to jump to any point of the video during streaming). Zentation puts them together. You get an shareable online webcast. Very nice if you're not on campus.

UPDATE: Slideshare allows you to load an accompanying audio file. I have not checked it out, but I gather that the audio and slide synchronisation is an issue.

Education is not cheap. Likewise, the tools students need to support their education aren't cheap too. Despite academic pricing, some software is still out of reach of some students. Also, a lot of software have more features than you will possibly use. What's a student to do?

There are alternatives to paid-for bloatware.

At home, I try to use as many web-based applications and free/open source software as possible. Many of the services I use were recently highlighted in Read/WriteWeb's feature on a whole bunch of useful Web 2.0 applications for students. Josh Catone suggests various apps for office, note taking, mind mapping, studying, bookmarking, collaboration, calendars, calculations and other tools.

However, some of these are not free services. Me? I'm a fan of the Google services. They're free, and they're great! I feel I'm too dependent on them, but I can't get away from their excellent software.

Here are a few more web apps to add to Josh's list:

• Slideshare: The YouTube for PowerPoint slides
• Motiji: Online video annotation service
• DotSub: Collaborative online video subtitling
  
• Fleck: Webpage annotation
• BibMe: Bibliography tool
  

For truly free software, check out Software for Starving Students. The creators of this website have compiled the best free and open source software for Windows and Mac. You download the relevant version, then burn the ISO image file to CD (burning instructions for Win/Mac).

From the CD, you can install various free/open source software "including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more." Since the software is on a single disk image, the individual titles might be slightly out-of-date. You can download the programmes individually from the software authors instead. Check out the software list, then click the titles to go to the homepage for the respective software.

Even if you're not starving or even if you're not a student, there's definitely something for you.

Do you have any other software to add to this list? Please share your recommendations in the comments!

Lifehacker featured a nifty online tool - BibMe - which lets you add sources, auto-creates entries in various formats (APA, MLA, Chicago), and enables you to save and export your entries.

I registered for an account, which says you can store up to 20 entries. I suppose they will eventually charge if you want to store more. Also, the website refused to acknowledge that I was logged in.

In any case, it's good particularly for the more esoteric sources. No need to refer to that style manual. Just choose the source on the tabs, search for it, then copy and paste the entry.

NUS isn't the most Mac-friendly environment in the world, from what I gather from users on campus. But they love their machines and wouldn't give them up for the world. I came across a few Mac resources over the past couple of days, so I thought I'd share them here.

Mac Academia is a blog featuring software, workshops and the latest developments in Mac technology for education. Even though it's a relatively new blog, it looks promising. Anyone in education whose heart bleeds Apple-juice should keep tabs on this site. Cheers to Siva for the link. (Check out his new module blog on Animal Behaviour!)

Students looking for software to manage academic work should take a look at Schoolhouse 2. I found this via Lifehacker. From the screenshot, it looks like something I would have used while I was studying. The software integrates most of the stuff need to keep tabs on: assignments, deadlines, notes, grades. It's free to download; if you try it and like it, do consider donating to the developer.

Finally, a couple of vital links Mac users in NUS (especially new ones):

• NUS ITcare eGuides: This page includes documents on configuring OS X for campus email, printing and networking.
• NUS PEAP Setup Guide for OS X [NUSNET only]: The instructions are in a PDF under the NUS PEAP Configuration Utility for Wireless section.

UPDATE How could I forget Software for Starving Students? Available for Mac and Windows.

There are a few books about blogs in NUS Libraries. Most of them deal with either personal blogging or business blogging. Yes, blogs are being used in public/customer/corporate relations and in marketing. However, I couldn't find any books on blogging in education, which surprised me because we are an institution of higher learning.

To rectify this anomaly, I sent a request to purchase new books. I'd never used this service before, so I wasn't sure what the outcome was going to be. I was pleasantly surprised when the library notified me that the book I requested was available in the Central Library. Kudos to the librarians in NUS!

Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms looks to be an easy read. Just skimming through, I can see that Will Richardson explains new concepts in plain language. He gives a quick overview of each tool, goes through how to set it up and shows how they can be used in the classroom. Although many examples are from the K-12 (primary and secondary school) environment, I believe the concepts are applicable to higher education. The content page gives you some idea of what Will touches on:

1. The read/write Web p. 1
2. Weblogs : pedagogy and practice p. 17
3. Weblogs : get started! p. 45
4. Wikis : easy collaboration for all p. 59
5. RSS : the new killer app for educators p. 75
6. The social Web : learning together p. 89
7. Fun with Flickr : creating, publishing and using images online p. 101
8. Podcasting and screencasting : multimedia publishing for the masses p. 111
9. What it all means p. 125
10. Epilogue : the classroom of the read/write Web p. 135

I see that there's already a request for the book. Better make use of the upcoming long weekend to read this and return it to the library so that others can get their hands on it! Oh yes, the call number: LB 1044.87 Ric 2006.

P.S. Some of the links mentioned in the book can be found at Will's wiki. It's too tedious to copy URLs from a print source.

Semester is back on track after the Chinese New Year break. I hope it was a good one for all of you.

Instead of pointing out something blogging/web 2.0-related today, I will introduce a website called Arts & Letters Daily.

As the title implies, AL Daily features "some of the best writing on the Web" (so claims The Chronicle of Higher Education, which runs it) relating to the Arts and Humanities. It is updated six times a week.

I can't find an email subscription service there, but if you would like to get updated on the latest content daily, you can subscribe to their RSS feed

Heard of The Long Tail? Chris Anderson's Wired article, now a expanded into a book, explores:

The theory... that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

About Me, The Long Tail blog

The popularity and power of blogging, as well as other social online media, fits squarely into this. The clip above, from FORA.tv, is a presentation by Chris Anderson explaining The Long Tail.

FORA.tv itself is a demonstration of efficacy of The Long Tail. It is something like YouTube for the thinking person (although that is slightly demeaning because FORA.tv's features trump YouTube's). Not exactly mainstream stuff, but it definitely has its niche. Would we have seen this in the pre-social media internet?

Fleck and Mojiti are two online annotation tools that I've been exploring. They help web surfers to refer others to precise points in a web page or video respectively, as well as to add descriptive notes.

Fleck can be deployed in several ways. You can start annotating other websites by putting the desired URL into Fleck's input field. There are other ways of integrating Fleck with your browser, from bookmarklets to browser extensions (the latter method requires registration, but the service is free).

You can see an example of a Fleck-ed page here. (Wait a while for the annotations to load.)

As you can see, once you annotate a page, Fleck provides a unique URL so that other users can see the annotations. The annotations exist on a separate layer from the website. It does not cache the website. That is, if the website changes, your annotation might not point to the right content.

Nevertheless, it's a nifty tool.

If you haven't clicked the Fleck example above, please do so. I've annotated Mojiti's front page to tell you more about what Mojiti does. In case you don't have time: it allows you to annotate online videos.

UPDATE 22 Feb | Just came across this via LifeHack. zpeech allows you to run a discussion/comments thread about any website on the website itself.

UPDATE 11 Mar | TechCrunch points to four other annotation services besides Fleck.

The University of Warwick, one of the most innovative universities in terms of social software usage and social networking prowess, has been producing short video news items and putting them on YouTube. The video above, discussing the phenomenon of Chinese support for the England football team, is one of the many which focus on research outcomes, current affairs analysis and campus events.

It is not a mere marketing tool, points out Alice Lau, from the University of Glamorgan's Learning Zone:

The aim of the project despite what everyone might think, is more than just advertising. To them, it is about communicating the research work in the university to the wider community in a very different way. It also provided a new channel for researchers to reach new people.

Warwick's iCast has high quality production values, suggesting a concerted and deliberate effort to put these bulletins out. While NUS may not choose to go this way to promote its research (although, in my personal capacity, I don't see why not), I think it trailblazes a way for individual lecturers to innovate in their teaching and personal branding.

Now, where is that camcorder...?

Google Earth (available for Windows, Mac & Linux) is an amazing tool. Its power lies in the overlays and 3D models, which users can create and share. A new blog, SinGeo, aims to be a resource for local overlays, 3D models and more.

For example, you can download a 3D model of the future Singapore Flyer. Or you might want to take a look at the Marina Bay Channel Development Plans. If you're a history buff, you might be interested in transposing a historical image of Boat Quay over Singapore at present (rather, close to present - GE's maps are slightly out of date). All in Google Earth, of course.

Aside from SinGeo, the Google Earth Community has a forum thread called Singapore, the Lion City. The first post in this discussion has a link to a constantly updated placemark file (version 4.7 at time of writing) which details almost every imaginable location in Singapore:  schools, transportation, places of interest, etc.

If you aren't interested in installing Google Earth, but want to access aerial views of the earth quickly, check out Flash Earth. This flash-based mapping website allows you to quickly zoom to any point on earth. Also, you can toggle between various mapping service by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others. But you don't have support for overlays, 3D models and other nifty add-ons.

If you're interested in international Google Earth resources, check out the (unofficial) Google Earth Blog.

P.S. I just realised that my other post in Cool Stuff also involves Google. I can't help it if they make cool stuff!

I found out about Google Tech Talks from Lifehacker.

These cover a wide range of tech issues, not necessarily restricted to search technology. In fact, most of them are not about search at all. Check out the talks at Google Video.

Here is one about an ongoing hot topic in Singapore: creativity [link to video].