Tomorrow morning, Linda LeBlanc will be with us. She's going to give us a tour of FSC's online library resources. She always does a great job and I know that there will be valuable information presented to will be useful to all of you even if you're already familiar with some aspects of their capabilities.
After that we'll discuss some ways that we can gather and store resources for our projects-graphics and essential file formats, nomenclature requirements, etc.
More on the above later, but please try to arrive at the lab tomorrow by 8:30. I'll be there as close to 7:00 as I can and you should feel free to get there anytime after that if you need to do some work there or you need any help from me.
Assignment:
Sometime before Tuesday, please do the following:
Fitchburg State College Online Library Activity
After listening to an introduction to FSC’s online library services, please access one or more of their featured. Then locate two available full text articles that you think other teachers in your field would find useful. Please email them to yourself (any email account you choose) and send a copy of the best one to me at the same time using the “cc:” function of your email software. I won’t respond to them. I’m only curious to see the kinds of things you come up with. I always learn more from you than you do from me.
Please use any available class time to accomplish the above.
I’m including the name and address of our presenter below:
Linda LeBlanc
Access Services Librarian
978 665-3062
lileblanc@fsc.eduAt some point today we need to spend some time in a debriefing of our class in TI last week-effectiveness, navigation issues, office metaphor, the help desk, etc.
After lunch we will begin to search in earnest for things that will appear on our projects. With that in mind and in an attempt to head off any potential problems, I want to cover issues related to:
- Web authoring and editing software Nvu (http://portableapps.com/apps/development/nvu_portable) and graphic editing software-GIMP (http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable)
- Overall page setup-single long page or connected ancillary pages
- Content construction-unformatted!
- Collecting graphics judiciously
- Web page nomenclature
- Fonts and styles
- Indents
- Bullets and numbered lists
- Links
- Backgrounds and colors
- Publishing to the Web (FTP and uploading)
My main goal is to help you get a project published not to "teach the software" as they say. When we're done, we will have published your project to MEC's Web space and you'll have a copy that you can modify, as need be, and use on your school's site.
FYI ONLY!!! Take a look at Google's Sketchup program. Let's classify it as one of Google's most powerful special tools. It's offered in a couple of version levels of which the basic (although certainly robust) is free for download by anyone. The basic version is "open source", can be accessed from a flash drive, doesn't need to be installed on a computer's hard drive, and therefore leaves no "footprint".
I''d like to give you a personal anecdotal example of how I used SketchUp. My 23 year old son was working in Asheville, NC. He's very "outdoor oriented" and spends much of his free time mountain biking, mountain climbing, hiking, and canoeing. It was natural that he came across an ad (Craig's List or other somesuch venue) offering an Old Town canoe in exchange for some construction work to be performed.
Two women who owned an old garage needed two corner posts replaced and estimated that it would take someone roughly 10 hours to complete. Tom contacted the women and then called me for advice. Actually he had no clue how to do the work, but he is in good shape, honest and dependable, and resourceful (I happen to be one of them).
After discussing it with him including details of the agreement (materials, hourly rate should the work run over the 10 alloted hours, etc.), I tried to get him to visualise how the work would be done safely. I wasn't confident that we were on the same page, so I decided to use SketchUp to show him exactly how to do it (one picture is worth a thousand...), by drawing him a 3D model and sharing it with him.
His only connected computer belonged to his employer, so he wasn't comfortable using a non-approved program on it. In spite of my assertions about the "no decernable footprint", he said he wouldn't use SketchUp on the computer. For that reason, I knew I'd have to use a different format for him to view my creation.
And so I recorded my SketchUp file, as I used its "Rotate" tool to view it in 3D, using a program (not open source and not inexpensive) called Camtasia Studio. I put the file on a CD and mailed it to Tom. He got it and he "got it", did the work successfuly, and received his canoe.
I'd like you to take a look at the file by going to http://cgi.mec.edu/~groves/SketchUp/corner_jack2.avi Please take five or six minutes to do so.
Please remember it is one perfect example of a practical use for SketchUp. Had my son had the Internet connection then that he does now, he could haveve used his own computer and we could have done to whole lesson online without the aid of the US Postal service.
I wanted to simulate problems that you may run into so I located a favorite instructional YouTube video on folding a shirt in seconds just as an example. Then I wanted to download it to my hard drive and run it later much as you would do for your students.
Well, I found a couple of pieces of software, both free and open source that could help her in her efforts and may be of interest to you as well.
The first one from sourceforge is called xVideoServiceThief. Do not let the "T" word scare you. Sourceforge represents the wonderful people who freely gave us Audacity among other superb programs. Mac or PC, you can go to http://xviservicethief.sourceforge.net/ and download the applicable version for you.
When you unpack it, you'll see a small number of files and folders. I used another cool, free, and open source screen recorder program called CamStudio to make a short video for you which shows the files I'm taking about and how to paste a YouTube URL of a video that you want to download into the operative box. You can see my video later at: http://cgi.mec.edu/~groves/videothief.avi. When you've downloaded your target video it will be deposited into the "Downloads" folder. You can access it there.
You'll need a second (open source as well) program to view it. It's called FLVPlayer and it's available through Applian Technologies at http://download.cnet.com/FLV-Player/3000-13632_4-10467081.html or http://applian.com/. I made a second vid for you using CamStudio again that shows you how to "drag and drop" technique to run a captured YouTube video with FLVPlayer. You can see that by going to: http://cgi.mec.edu/~groves/shirtflvplayer.avi
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