In an online teaching environment, it almost seems inevitable that we all get a few files each course that are in a format we can’t open. When this happens, we either have to spend precious time explaining to students how to save their file in a format we can use or learning how to download and install various plug-ins that might make the file more accessible to us. Neither is really an acceptable solution. Fortunately, there are a few online sites that provide us with better options: ZamZar and YouConvertIt.
Common Features
Both ZamZar and YouConvertIt are free web-based services. That means, among other things, that you do not need to download any software to your computer to use these services. Both also allow you to upload and convert up to five files at one time and then send the links to the converted files to any email address. Finally, both services provide conversions for a variety of text, image, audio, and video file formats. Of course, while they offer similar features, each service has some differences - differences that will impact your choice of which to use.
User Experience
Interface - both services have simple, 3-step processes that will have even the most novice computer user converting files in no time! Of the two, I think that ZamZar’s interface is more pleasing, but YouConvertIt’s interface seems less confusing when you are trying to upload more than one document to convert.
Convenience - ZamZar and YouConvertIt convert uploaded files fairly quickly - However, ZamZar had similar conversion times for all file types while YouConvertIt was quicker for audio, similar in time requirements for video, and much slower for text documents. Both also send a link to any email address you specify and the download process is quite simple. However, YouConvertIt keeps your converted files for 7 days while ZamZar only keeps them for 1 day. If you don’t check your email that often, the 7 day window is much more convenient.
Quality - The quality of the PDF and HTML conversions of a word document was similar for both services. Also similar was the quality of their .mp3 files when converted from a .wav format. However, when I uploaded a 24MB QuickTime (.mov) video file for conversion to a flash video file (.flv), ZamZar returned a very nice 1.6MB flash file while the YouConvertIt file was over 100MB and gave me errors. A second attempt with YouConvertIt yielded the same results.
Formats - Both services have a number of file formats that they can handle for conversion. However, each has some niche conversions that the other doesn’t. For example, YouConvertIt handles many StarOffice formats while ZamZar handles MS Office 2007 formats.
Recommendations
Both services are comparable so the choice is not clear cut. For basic text and audio conversion, either will work. If, however, you need the convenience of a 7-day download window, go with YouConvertIt. On the other hand, if you plan to be converting video into FLV or you need to convert MS Office 2007 files, then ZamZar seems the better bet.
I’ve been looking for a quick, easy, instantaneous way of getting info out to my learners. You know the deal - reminders about those upcoming assignment deadlines, encouraging words for deeper social presence, etc.
Since almost everyone has cell phones, I concentrated on mobile technology for my search. I found two possible tools to help: Joopz and AbbyMe. Each has their pros and cons (like all tech).
Joopz
This tool allows you to send and receive SMS messages (text messages on your phone) from a web browser. The messages can be sent immediately or scheduled in advance (woohoo!) and sent to individuals or up to groups of 10. The free version of this service lets you send 50 SMS a month. See Joopz for more info.
AbbyMe
This tool makes it possible for you to send phone calls from a web browser. The calls can be sent immediately or scheduled in advance and they can be sent to individuals or groups (no limit that I can tell). You type in your message and it gets converted to voice on the receiving end. See AbbyMe for more info.
Comparisons
Both of these tools were so easy to use - from account creation to sending the messages (I sent practice messages to myself). One concern I have is that not every person on the planet has an SMS capable phone - that would mean using AbbyMe instead. On the other hand, some folks (especially the 20something crowd) have unlimited SMS but only a handful of cell phone minutes at their disposal. So, for that crowd, Joopz would be better. I do like that you can have Joopz forward SMS responses to your phone if you’re away from your browser. That two-way capability does increase social presence… On the other hand, you can include media files with your message in the AbbyMe service. Neither require the learner to create a new account or sign up for anything.
I think I’ll give both of them a try and see what happens.
Of course, I’ll get permission first from each of them. It’s probably not a good thing to send SMS to folks without asking since they have to pay for them.I’ve no doubt that all of you who read this blog have some great ideas for teaching and learning with technology. Please, take the time to share your knowledge and experience with others: present at the Sloan-C Emerging Online Learning Technology conference in Carefree, AZ in May, 2008. Or, if you don't wish to be a presenter, at least come join us for the fun!
The process to submit your presentation abstract is phenomenally easy and Carefree, AZ is absolutely stunning in May. So, please, join the fun and submit your abstract. You’ll meet some great people and learn a few things as well.
Teachers and students frequently find it necessary to present something . Often, in the online world, that means either sharing already created presentations online or creating presentations online.
Share Presentations Online
Most faculty often have previously created presentations that they would like to use. Online services such as MyPlick, AuthorStream, and SlideShare are quite handy for this. I’ve posted the same presentation to all three services so you can compare them: MyPlick example, AuthorStream example, SlideShare example
Create Presentations Online
However, other software gives you ability to create presentations online from scratch! And, those are the ones I’d like to chat about in this post! Three tools, in particular, caught my eye: Preezo, PrezentIt, and Spresent.
Preezo, a very PowerPoint-like tool, is a good choice if you want to create a quick online presentation. Once you’ve created it, you can publish it to the web, email it, or embed it in a blog with a simple click of a button. If you’re already using PowerPoint, this tool will feel very familiar and easy to use.
If you’re looking for a presentation tool that is fairly easy to use and can also support online collaboration, then perhaps you might like PrezentIt. Interesting features include slide transitions, public and private options, and commenting tools. One downside, however, is that although you can invite multiple people to collaborate, you can’t do synchronous collaborations.
Spresent is a full-featured presentation tool that allows for inclusion of audio, video, charts, and other content. This is the tool for you if you need to create multimedia-rich, highly interactive presentations. Of course, because of all the cool options, this tool is a bit more challenging to learn.
I frequently ask learners to collaborate on assignments and, often, one of their frustrations with that has been the immense amount of time it normally takes to find a time they can all get together. Since I experience these woes in the workplace all the time and hadn’t yet found the solution, I have been unable to help them with this. Until now.
TimeToMeet and TimeBridge are two tools that I’ve recently run across that might be at least a partial answer to the challenge of scheduling time to meet and collaborate.
TimeToMeet gives you to mark up a calendar with your available times and then send a link to that calendar to as many people as you need to invite. Each person also marks in their available dates and the software figures out which time slots are available for every person.
TimeBridge works slightly differently. Instead of listing all your available times to find an overlap, you recommend some specific event times and then the software provides all your invitees the opportunity to say which of the proposed times will work for them. The system tallies these votes and lets you know which works.
TimeToMeet seemed easier to use for creating events. TimeBridge was slightly easier to use to respond to invites. I like TimeToMeet better because it finds overlaps in people’s schedules rather (a more democratic approach, it seems) while TimeBridge seems to be a more top-down (”These are the date/times available - choose one!”) approach. TimeToMeet has a personal secretary feature (make your available times known to people so they can schedule meetings with you more easily) that seems pretty darn cool. Overall, I think my favorite is TimeToMeet but stay tuned for an in-depth review of both - I may just change my mind after using them both for awhile.
A wiki, according to that most famous wiki, Wikipedia, is a web application that allows multiple editors to add, remove, and edit content. In short, they are great tools for group collaborations in which many people need to co-create documents.
There are quite a few (read, tons!) of wikis*. Some are quite easy to use (e.g., PBWiki, Wikispaces, and Stikipad) and others are a bit more challenging (e.g., Wikispot, Wikidot, and @Wiki). Some have just a few basic features (basic if you are used to high-powered wikis such as those that use media wiki); others are quite robust and include things like basic content management features (Cospire comes to mind) or include a blog (e.g., Netcipia)
So, how do you choose? Well, ask yourself a few basic questions:
- Is this a brief wiki encounter or do you have long-term plans? If this is just a small or short-lived project, go with PBWiki, Wikispaces, or Stikipad. Otherwise, invest a bit of time to learn Wikispot, Wikidot, or @Wiki because they have much more robust management features.
- Are your users tech-savvy or do they just need a simple tool to get the job done? If they’re not particularly tech-savvy, go with PBWiki or Wikispaces. They’re more friendly to use.
- Do you want to be able to embed video, audio, and some widgets? If so, go with any of the ones listed below except Stikipad.
*Note: For this post, I’m only writing about wikis that have free hosting services and are not specialized (e.g. Google Docs); however, if you’re the intrepid type, you can always go the host-your-own route - see the Wiki Matrix to find something that works for you.
Try ‘em Out
In order to really know which wiki works for you, you have to each one for a test spin. Of course, some folks don’t like to create all those new accounts to find just the right tool - that’s why you read this blog, right? :)
- PBWiki (password - wihe-guest)
- Stikipad
- Wikispaces
- Wikispot
- Wikidot
- Netcipia
- Cospire (must create login to edit)
Further resources
- Wiki Matrix - A great tool to help you compare wikis and narrow down the field so you can find the wiki that is most suitable for your needs.
- 7 Things You Should Know About Wikis - an EDUCAUSE article that gives a nice summary about wikis.
- Wiki in Education - A list of articles written about wikis and their use in education.
There’s certainly no lack of resources on the web, yet keeping those resources organized and easily accessible can be quite challenging. That’s where “start pages” come in. They’re great for helping you collect all those resources into one web page - a start page - that you can easily access. In short, you spend less time visiting myriad pages of resources and more time actually listening to or reading the resources you’ve previously collected.
Of course, there are plenty of options available if you are looking for a start page. Notable options in this category are NetVibes and PageFlakes. And, of course, there is iGoogle. They all provide easy, convenient ways to collect resources and they have some great special widgets to pull in info from other services. However, I was looking for something a bit…different. Those others are great but, well, they all seem quite the same - very squarish and columnar. Yet, there is one start page tool that I’ve found that is different - Protopage.
I like Protopage because it’s stylish. It doesn’t have that square feeling and you can organize content in tidy columns or in messy disarray all over the page. Plus, all the color choices are quite nice. Of course, I know that’s not the point of these tools, but - I am pretty sure that the more fun and personality you can put into your start pages, the more likely you probably are to use them. And, if you are interested in sharing them with others, then all the nice ‘personality’ features certainly will get your page noticed and remembered.
Because I really like to test out tools in relation to other similar tools, I created not only a Protopage, but also NetVibe and Pageflakes pages. Compare them for yourself by visiting: my Technology in Higher Ed protopage, my Higher Education, Technology, & Teaching netvibes page or my Higher Education, Technology, and Teaching/Learning pageflakes page. The primary difference among the three, beyond what I’ve already stated, is that Protopage and Pageflakes seem to be much easier to share with others without a password (especially if you have set up multiple tabs). So if you intend to use one of these start pages to promote your collection to many others, use prototype or pageflakes. If you find the secret to sharing netvibes easily, please let me know. This is only a first look afterall and I’m bound to miss something.
While I have a bit stronger preference for Protopage, any of the start page tools mentioned would be good choices for someone wishing to make collections of digital resources. Faculty would truly find this a useful tool for collecting resources for their own research or even class materials resources for their students. Students certainly can also benefit from the tool - collecting the resources they use for those course projects, for example.
So, go on out and start your own page. You might find that you save yourself some time and stay more up to date with your favorite resources.
Even though I have not posted in the last few weeks, I have been busy checking out lots of new tools. For my “first look” tool in this post, I have chosen Screencast-O-Matic.
Often, as online teachers, we find ourselves asking students to use tools they may not have previously used. In those circumstances, it’s good to provide a little support in the form of a quick start guide or tutorial. Most of us provide text tutorials, but sometimes video tutorials can be more helpful - especially to certain types of learners. That’s where Screencast-O-Matic comes in handy.
Screencast-O-Matic is an online screen capture service that is very easy to use. It allows you to capture anything on your screen and then either upload it to their server as a public or private file or download it to your computer so you can put it where you wish. I was able to create and publish this brief screencast of exporting bookmarks in IE7 in just a few minutes.
This tool works with Windows XP with browsers IE6, IE7, and Firefox 2.0 and Mac OS X with Safari 2.0.4 and Firefox 2.0. The file format of the video screen capture is .mov so folks will need quicktime to see it online. Of course, if you download it for placement somewhere else, you could always convert it to an mp4 which may be more accessible by different players (Windows Media Player, Real Media Player, Quicktime, etc.).
This is just a preliminary review. If anyone has experience with this or similar tools, a comment would be very much appreciated.
Oh - one last thing - although the screencast-o-matic folks don’t mention support for vista, I did the screencast using Windows Vista with IE7 and I didn’t run into any problems.
Anyone who has done any type of online research certainly can understand the feeling suggested by “arrrrgh.” You find an article and scan it. “Yes,” you think, “this is perfect.” So, you print it out and later realize that you didn’t add the URL and date/time of retrieval for your reference page. Or, you did remember you would need the info, but you had to laboriously write it out because you didn’t set your browser print preferences to add it automatically. Or, perhaps you bookmarked it instead of printing it but still can’t find it because, if you’re like me, you have about a kazillion unorganized bookmarks that you plan to get around to organizing but don’t because…well…you know. In either case (print or bookmark) you definitely experienced the third R of education: arrrrgh!
Fortunately, there are some web services that can help. 
This post will only go over a few of the many capabilities that each tool has - I’m hoping you will test it out and add your comments so we can all benefit from each others’ experiences with these tools.
First Looks
The three services I checked out were CiteULike, Connotea, and Magnolia. While not technically the same, all three have interesting capabilities that can make your research experience (and your students’ experiences) more pleasant.
CiteULike has strong citation and referencing capabilities. When you run across an interesting journal article or web site, you simply need to post it to CiteULike using the bookmark tool provided. Information captured includes author, title, and other citation information as well as comments. If you’re looking for a service that will help you compile that bibliography or reference page, then this will definitely do the trick. See my personal Tek Trekker CiteULike library for an example. The service also provides you with an opportunity to create a group and have members adding citations to the group area. However, the group request needs to be approved - I requested a group 2 days ago and am still waiting for approval. The one thing I don’t like about CiteULike is that when you click on the link to add the citation, it opens in the window of the article you are reading. Not very user friendly. I found myself opening articles in two separate tabs so that when I opened the CiteULike citation window, I could switch over to the other tab to see the article.
Connotea helps you add citations to articles, but it doesn’t include fields for author or some of the more complicated citation information. On the other hand, it has wonderful capabilities for commenting on citations and the layout of the page is quite easy to read. I created a personal connotea library called Tek Trekker that has the same two citations as my CiteULike library so you could compare them. Connotea has a group feature as well (and you can great groups easily and instantly). I created a test group for us called Web2Learning. Please feel free to check it out and add to it to test the service and this feature of the service.
Magnolia is probably the friendliest
service of the three. It has fewer citations options than CiteULike and
Connotea, but it is a much stronger group / collaborative tool than
either. Like both of the others, it has a little bookmarklet that you
can add to your browser tool bar to easily mark pages. But, by far the
thing I like best is that I can go merrily about my research,
bookmarking as I go for my own personal library and then copy relevant
bookmarks from my library to any groups I belong to. That means, in
short, that I don’t have to bookmark things twice - once for the group
and once for me. Anyway, if you are wanting to create group resources
more than you are wanting to create a reference page for your research
document, then this is the service for you. Check out my personal magnolia bookmarks … and please feel free to test out our group Web2Learning library
while you’re at it. This blog will certainly be a better resource if
you get involved and add to it and the other sites I’ve linked to in
the blog roll in the upper left side of this window.
Teaching and Learning Ideas
Idea 1 In the past, I’ve asked students to create
annotated bibliographies of their research for their research projects.
I do this because I want them to practice with APA formatting and with
summarizing and analyzing text. The first time I did this assignment, I
had the students turn in individual bibliographies. Then, I thought it
might be helpful to all of them if they could see each other’s
annotations so we switched to Google Docs. I can see that magnolia
would be a much much better tool for this type of activity if I wanted
to emphasize the collaborative aspect of this assignment in a more
friendly way than can currently be achieved with Google Docs.
Idea 2 - Share your ideas by posting a comment! I look forward to hearing from you.
I haven’t posted anything in a couple of days, but I have been busy checking out quite a few things.
A blog called Vox caught my attention when I got frustrated with Wordpress because I couldn’t embed something. So, now I have a new blog called Tek Trekker that is pretty fun. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet. However, you might like to try it out.
Then, as I was looking for some online research and citation services to test out for you, I ran into Magnolia, a social bookmarking site with the added bonus of community/collaboration. I can immediately see some interesting educational opportunities with this - but more on that later.
Finally, I tested out Jaiku - a social mini-blog similar to Twitter - to see if it might have any educational uses. I think it might, but I’ll have to test that out a bit more and get back to you. Or, perhaps you can test it out and post your info here.
So, that was my week - slightly chaotic with flashes of organization dancing around the edges. Tomorrow, I should be posting my reviews of CiteULike and Connotea for your reading pleasure. Until then, happy trekking through the land of tek.
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