New Flip camera

Pure Digital Technologies just announced a new video camera, the Mino HD. The resolution is 1280 x 720, and the price is just $229.

Based on the performance of the other Flip cameras, this one should be great. (I'm making my holiday gift list.:)

By the way, I'm facilitating the workshop "Become a Mini-Movie Producer ** CAMERA INCLUDED" (which includes the Flip Ultra) at NCETC in Greensboro, NC on Dec. 1 and at NCCE in Portland, OR on Feb. 17 and 18. I'd love to see you at either of these conferences or at your school or district.

Learn and benefit from my pain

Many of you have heard me singing the praises of the Flip video camera. I had one of the original ones and really loved it...never had a problem. So, for the holidays, I got a new Flip Ultra. This is the one with the tripod mount.

Now...problems have surfaced: I/O errors and various other problems when trying to copy video off the camera. And, of course, this is happening the one time that I have some really important video that I need to get off the device. :(

Upon a quick look on the web, I see that there are some known problems with this new model. If you have one, do yourself a favor and install the firmware update before you do anything else.

I'm doing that myself, and I'm sure I'll love my Flip again soon (after I finish crying, that is).

Postscript: I ran the update. It took a long time, because I had a lot of video saved on my device. They promised me that "videos stored on the camcorder will not be lost." And they were not. Even better, I can now get the video off the device. Yay! I am drying my tears and ready to shoot more video. (I also just plugged the camera into a projector and watched them on the big screen. Awesome!)

Free, open online course - Mobile Multimedia

Here is another free, open, wiki-based, online professional development course: Mobile Multimedia: Podcasts, Mini-Movies, and More on Handhelds.


This one covers finding, using, and creating multimedia resources for differentiating instruction with students.

In case you missed it, another earlier free, open, wiki-based, online professional development course I published earlier was Hands On: Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate Instruction. There is some overlap between these courses, but also some very different content.

Stay tuned for more of these. I am becoming a believer that wikis like these are a great professional development tool, because they extend learning beyond a f2f workshop. And because these are free and open resources, you may use them for whatever purposes you'd like, including using them for workshops at your own schools and districts. Please also add to them. (If you're about this, make your additions in the Discussion tab.) I hope they are useful.

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enVisionMATH - Are we there yet?

At FETC this week, Pearson announced enVisionMATH, a program that purports to merge print-based and digital learning. (Check out the animations flying off the page in the video below. Yeah, right. :( )

With a press release tagline that reads "First-of-Its-Kind Elementary School Math Curriculum Meets the iPod Generation on Its Turf," I was expecting for these glorious math movies to be available on mobile devices, like handhelds and mobile media players. In reviewing the information on their site though, it appears that this is all designed for desktop (and interactive whiteboard) use.

I hope I'm wrong (I haven't seen the actual product) and that this is available in a mobile format. If not, Pearson has missed the boat.

Free online workshop

Well, the workshop on "Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate Instruction" that I wrote about earlier is pretty well finished. I'm really happy with the content in it and think this is a great resource for schools using mobile tech and looking for resources.

I've structured this in a wiki, and it is intended to be used for either a face-to-face workshop or as an online self-guided learning experience.

This is licensed under a CC BY SA license, so you are free to use it for your own purposes as well.

This is my first attempt at using a wiki to facilitate both a F2F workshop and a self-guided experience. If you go through it, let me know what you think.

Great inexpensive video cam for classrooms

Many of you have heard me rave about the inexpensive Flip camera. I love it because it is very easy to use, has surprisingly good quality, and has incredible battery life, in addition to costing as low as $100.

Now the new Flip Ultra is out, and it addresses one of my few dislikes about the original Flip, which was its lack of a tripod mount. Very cool (and a great idea for a holiday gift).

Mini-movies for learning sight words

I've written before about the power of mini-movies to engage kids and teach core content with mobile technology.

One use of this is for teaching sight words to beginning readers. Here's an example:



These videos are relatively easy to create (or inexpensive to have someone else create). Once they're done, they can be viewed online, on handhelds (Palm or PPC), on iPods or other mobile video players, on game machines, and on DVD players.

One interesting thing we've seen in using mini-movies with kids (especially older middle school kids) is that they are more likely to watch an instructional video repeatedly if they can do it in private. This is one of the advantages of mobile technology.

Animal Alphabet

As a part of the fun I'm having contributing to Wikijunior (part of Wikibooks, offering free, open content textbooks), I've taken an animal alphabet book there and made video and ebook versions of it.

They're available for viewing and download here.

There are versions for the desktop, various handhelds, iPods, and even a Mobipocket ebook version. (One of the not-fun things about creating video is all the format issues. I think we've put about everything up here, but let me know if anything's been missed.)

If you haven't ventured into the world of contributing to wikis, Wikijunior is a great place to start. (Try the Human Body book or Ancient Civilizations.) The more people who contribute to these free "copyleft" resources, the better they will be. If you're not sure how to start, try something small like fixing an error or just adding a couple sentences. It's a lot of fun!

Video proliferation

I love the recent explosion of user-created video content that's going on in the world. It's creative, thought-provoking, and empowering. I've also written previously about the great potential of video to help differentiate instruction and enrich student learning.

However [rant coming]...the wide variety of video formats, codecs, etc. is driving me crazy! The more time I spend with video, the more time I spend with conversion tools and help pages about what device and software use what format and what codec, and the more time I spend mumbling about why this *%#%&*(# video won't play right.

One tool I've found really useful for this though is Zamzar. This is a free online converter that works not only with video, but also with images, docs, and audio. One really useful thing this tool does very well is to convert videos from YouTube and TeacherTube, so that you can view them on a variety of devices such as iPods and handhelds. You just upload the video (or a link) and select the format you want. Then they email you a link for the converted file. (They do seem to have some DNS problems with their email system, but I've found it works well with gmail accounts, so if you have problems getting an email, try that.)

As with all web-based content, make sure to watch for copyright and attribution issues. And with all Web 2.0 services, you should read the Terms of Service.

And for those who are curious, the name is a take-off on Gregor Samsa, intended to connote transformation. :)

Trying to make iPod content interactive

With all the iPods that are out there and the power of mobile devices to differentiate instruction, I've been looking at various ways to incorporate more interactivity into iPod content.

I started with Quizzler, a program that I really love for handhelds. A big benefit of this is that if you already have a bunch of Quizzler quizzes created, it's an easy port. However, the features of this are pretty basic and include no multimedia support.

Next I got the quiz program PodQuiz Maker. It's basically a front end to the Notes program. Good idea, but not the greatest implementation. It does have a way to link to sound and video files, but it's very awkward.

Then Apple announced the new iQuiz program as an iPod game. (Tony Vincent has written a review of it here.) It has a beautiful interface, but no way to link to sound or video files. For my envisioned application in education, this misses the whole point. (We want to be able to provide information and then have a way to interact with it.)

Next, I found Mogopop. This is getting closer. They have a nice web-based interface for content creation. You can link to sound, video, and images. There's no built-in way to do quizzes, but you can do this through hyperlinks. The program is very new and seems a bit buggy in places, but it has definite potential.

Here's a sample project I made:

Mobile curriculum...

plug in and iPod it
requires FREEmanager

(You'll need to download the Mogopop Manager program to download this to your iPod.) Once you get it to your iPod, it will be in Extras.

The next thing to build into this is recordkeeping. That's a big project though.

Does anyone know anything else out there for creating interactive content for the iPod? I'm not sure whether to wait until Apple realizes that closing their device to developers is unwise (probably a very long wait), hope some developers come out with better tools, or start working on something myself.

There's a better way

In the business world, PowerPoint has become a staple, and in some cases, overused tool. No meeting is complete without a PowerPoint presentation.

One of the most appropriate uses of PowerPoint, though, may be in the classroom. Like it or not, teachers spend a lot of time presenting information, and a computer is generally a more effective tool for this than a chalkboard or an overhead transparency. Coupled with a graphics tablet, an interactive whiteboard, and the participation of students, this use of technology can transform learning.

Using an LCD projector with PowerPoint and other tools is a great way to engage kids. (See previous posts on differentiating instruction.) What is more interesting to look at -- an explanation of sentence structure hand-written on an overhead that is barely legible because of the dark projector or an animated PowerPoint that is colorful, bright, and easy to read?

The real benefits of electronic presentations are all the other ways you can use them to expand learning. Here are a few ideas:

• Post presentations for current lessons online for students who were absent. (You might be surprised how much these are used even by students who were in attendance.)


• Create a library of past and future lesson presentations online for students to use for remediation or enrichment.


• Distribute presentations on mobile devices for students to follow along with in class. (I've seen engagement go up significantly as a result of doing this.)


• Give students electronic copies of presentations to add their own notes to. Challenge GATE students to add more details. Have ESL students record audio notes. Encourage all students to personalize for their learning style.


• Make presentations into mini-movies by using a tool like Camtasia Studio or CamStudio to add narration.


• Print reduced-size handouts of key presentations and assemble them as mini-books for students to reference. (They could also be distributed as ebooks, especially if you have mobile devices to use.)

I spend a lot of time in classrooms around the country doing technology integration mentoring, and I am surprised how many teachers are still writing on overhead transparencies, while a perfectly good LCD projector sits unused. (In the last two weeks, I have been in three schools where all the teachers had LCD projectors, but were still primarily using overheads. I'd like to think this is anomalous, but I don't think it is.)

If you're reading this blog, you're probably not using overhead transparencies instead of PowerPoint presentations, but maybe the teacher next door is. If so, try to talk them into using this technology. And if you're an administrator and every teacher in your building doesn't have an LCD projector (or they have them but aren't using them), get moving! This may be the one piece of technology that offers the most bang for the buck in improving student learning.