The Center for Teaching and Technology is a unit in the College of Education at Michigan State University. The Center provides support for faculty, staff and students in their effort to use technology to enhance their teaching and learning, and conducts research about the use of technology in education. On this web site you will find information about the services and resources we provide, the activities we are engaged in, and the people who make it all possible.
A very popular item for checkout at the Center are the many different models of the Flip camera by Pure Digital. Currently, we have the Flip Mino, Flip Mino HD, Flip Ultra, Flip (original) and Flip Ultra HD. By have, I mean that at any given point, one of these models will be in the back inventory room. However, because they are so popular, we currently have a one week limit on checkout time. So, what is the big deal about the Flip cameras? They are incredibly easy to use. Essentially, these are the steps to using it:
Turn it on
Press the red record button to start recording
Press the red record button to stop recording
Done
Zooming in and out is limited to a digital zoom, which can make your image fuzzy, but for the most part, the video quality with these cameras is outstanding. Audio is decent as well. Getting videos off of the camera is also simple and the source of the name Flip camera. On the side of every camera is a button that you depress and out flips a USB connection. Plug it into your PC or Mac and it’ll ask you to install software called FlipShare that comes with the camera to transfer videos and edit them. Transfer the videos to your computer and you are done. If they need to be produced for the internet, the software has built in options for YouTube, Facebook, MySpace or Other websites which will give you a file to post to a private server like MSU’s Storemedia.
FlipShare Software internet sharing options
Back in January, I attended the Educause Learning Initiative Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas and was fortunate enough to meet Shawn Miller from Duke University who made several presentation on the Duke Digital Initiative projects, which includes a loaner system for Flip cameras. Shawn was kind enough to share some tutorials with me that he created for the faculty and students at Duke University on how to use the FlipShare software. His blog post with all of the tutorials can be found at the CIT Blog. I’ve embeded a few below.
Earlier this afternoon, Brendan Guenther from Virtual University – Design and Technology, presented on web accessibility resources and standards for online courses in ANGEL or other LMS platforms like Drupal or Wordpress. Brendan covered the topics of Universal Design, the scope for faculty, who helps our students, how to assess a course for accessibility, and basic techniques for compliance using HTML headers or alternate text for images. Listed below are some important links for the MSU community and Brendan’s PowerPoint as posted on MSU Google Apps.
On November 19, 2009, Michigan State University launched Google Apps for Education Edition which includes Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Sites. Gmail will not be supported through the MSU Education agreement with Google. Google Docs includes: Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and Forms.
Google Apps will be available to students, faculty, and staff at MSU by way of logging in with their MSU Net ID and password authentication. There are two guidelines posted at http://lct.msu.edu to help clarify appropriate usage for Google Apps and other cloud computing resources:
Support for Google Apps for Education at MSU can be found online at the ATS Help Desk Tech Base article website and by calling the Help Desk at (517) 432-6200.
In recent weeks, MSU renewed their contract with Adobe Inc. to continue the web conferencing service Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. (formerly Breeze Meeting) This online meeting technology offers the ability to hold meetings or share courses across the world. Adobe Connect features include: up to 16 web cams visible in a single connection, voice conferencing using Voice Over I.P. (VOIP), a whiteboard, sharing computer desktops, presenting a PowerPoint, break out rooms, sharing a link to a web site, chat and recording for future playback for those that cannot attend. Adobe Connect works with both Mac and PC operating systems.
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is different from Adobe Presenter. Presenter is a plug-in for PowerPoint that helps one create an audio narrated PowerPoint presentation which can be embedded into a course site in the ANGEL Course Management System. Unlike Adobe Connect, Presenter is for PC users only for content creation. Both Mac and PC end users may view the content though.
MSU has a limited number of licenses for both Connect and Presenter, so access is granted on a request basis. If you have a need for the Presenter Plug-in, email Distance Learning Services: reachout@msu.edu or call: 517-355-2345. To request access to Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, email Virtual University Design and Technology: breeze@mail.vudat.msu.edu Please allow for 24 – 48 hours of response time from either email address.
RT @EDUCAUSELI: Register Now: ELI Webinar, Beyond the Campus: The Future of Higher Education on April 5, 1p ET: http://net.educause.edu/ ... 2010/03/01
The website http://confluence.ats.msu.edu/ is unavailable as of 11:00 AM on Tuesday March 9th, 2010. Service sponsors are working to resolve the issue. […]
