So many tools, so little time!

~ joanvinallcox ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday while glancing through my Tweets, I stumbled across a request by @wmacphail to go to an address. Since I've always found his work interesting, I clicked. I ended up on an app he'd embedded in a course wiki, which let me talk to him and another guest. We were on tokbox – http://www.tokbox.com/ – a videochat tool.

I wish I had time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

When I DMed @wmacphail my thanks for introducing me to tokbox, he sent me another link, showing me how LiveScribe works – http://www.livescribe.com/ – and I fell into equipment lust. I want one, but I'll have to save up first.


I wish I had time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

Then my colleagues in the HPCA Google Group sent around an amusing video with robot-like characters made with Xtranormal – http://www.xtranormal.com/ – and this tool looked like fun.


I wish I had time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

While scanning through my Posterous subscription to Steve Rubel's LifeStream this morning, – http://www.steverubel.com/google-preps-server-side-clipboard – I saw the link to the post about the Google Cloudboard – http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-cloudboard.html – and it looks very useful.


I hope I'll have time to experiment with it. I hope, when it becomes available, people will let me know how it works for them.

In my Inbox this morning, I found an invitation to Google Wave, and I'm so-o-o- curious, and so short of time!


I'm determined to have time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

Joan Vinall-Cox
Social Media & Learning

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Getting Published Seminar – Brian Henry

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment

I’ll admit it; I tend to be hyper-critical of people trying to teach writing, but only because I’ve spent over 35 years doing so myself. So when I signed up myself and the young teen I’m mentoring to a seminar on how to get published, I had a cynical edge. I was prepared to spend from 10:00 to 4:00 on a Sunday closeted in a small room in the back of Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore only because a colleague I respect spoke highly of Brian Henry’s impact on her writing, and because the seminar fee was relatively low, aspiring writers being a frugal crowd.

It didn’t start well. Just after 10:00, standing outside the locked doors of a store that didn’t open till 11:00 on Sundays, directly in the wafting stream of pot smoke, with a 16 year old entrusted to me by her parents – I was having negative thoughts. Then I saw someone approaching the door from the inside; it was unlocked and we were escorted in.

We found our seats, and settled in. Within 10 minutes, I was won over. As a long time teacher, it was clear to me that Brian Henry knew both his stuff and how to manage a class. When participants focusing on their own specific questions interrupted, he answered clearly and then steered back to his (well) planned presentation with no show of irritation. I really enjoyed his sense of humour, and his passion for what he was teaching. Both my young friend and I found him easy to understand and we felt we learned what we needed to know for our next step in getting her novel published – how to write a query letter. Listening to an actual agent who is taking on authors was a bonus.

So thanks, Brian Henry – http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/ – and here’s my recommendation to any aspiring writers in the GTA – sign up for one of his seminars – http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/search/label/*%20%20Brian%20Henry%27s%20schedule

Joan Vinall-Cox
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning

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Learning my (non-technical) way

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment

Alternate titles for my recent learning frenzy:

  • Feels so good after stopping banging my head against the wall
  • Arriving where I started and knowing the place for the first time (apologies to T. S. Eliot)

I have just spent most of three days figuring out how to fulfill a teaching commitment, one that I made before I figured out how to accomplish it. It has been a grueling but ultimately positive experience, at least so far.

I teach a course that covers from speaking to a live audience to podcasting, and includes formal group presentations. I want my students to see how they look and sound in their presentations, and I used this as a excuse to buy something I've been coveting – a flip camcorder.

After years of experiencing the result of my "ready, fire, aim", approach to new experiences, I was smart enough to play with my flip a little before using it in class. I recorded a couple of minutes of various friends and then deleted the videos at their requests. I recorded a few seconds of plants (they don't request deletion of their images) moving in the wind. Transferred it to my laptop – directly using the flip-out USB, which automatically opens the flipshare screen, as seen below.

20090926-erxktc6819cprwgafs4rncq1qb.jpg

I glanced at the flipshare screen, got frustrated because I didn't immediately 'get' it and decided to put my short practice video on Vimeo. No problem!

20090926-qcymch6r156cy97b6c76ybkfhj.jpg

So, feeling secure, off I went to class. I recruited volunteers to video each of the 3 presentations, retrieved my lovely new flip, and went home where I planned to upload each presentation to Vimeo and then embed each group's presentation on a wiki page private to them.

Then I encountered a series of "learning events":

  1. Vimeo doesn't like really large files;
  2. HD videos of approximately 15 minutes in length are really large files;
  3. iMovie, which I have only limited experience with, didn't want to accept 15 minutes of HD video whole, no matter how many times I tried and how many times I watched bits and pieces of video tutorials;
  4. iDVD, same experience, but after I had borrowed and set up my husband's Lacie DVD burner, with all kinds of wires to connect everywhichwhere;
  5. I phoned my friendly expert and he tried to tell me how to convert HD to SD but I didn't know enough to understand his suggestions and he was at a meeting and had to disconnect;
  6. He had also suggested YouTube and its private channels, and I forget why I thought that wouldn't work, probably file size and time length;
  7. Google didn't help me, although it took time for me to figure that out;
  8. Twitter people responded, suggesting Box, DropBox and YouSendIt I've used all 3 before and tried them out – same problem with large files, but the YouSendIt Pro trial looked possible.
  9. My long-suffering husband let me send a video to him using YouSendIt Pro's Trial – it took over 2 hours to upload and over 1/2 hour to download – that didn't seem like a good idea to me;
  10. My other responsibilities were suffering by now, but the idea of channels being private had finally met up with a vague memory of my flipshare screen
    20090926-jrtkfiasxnnteyrdk3dj6m8f9s.jpg
  11. Unfortunately I had deleted the presentation videos from the camera;
  12. Luckily I was able to retrieve them from their storage space on my computer;
  13. Still avoiding the manual, I managed to create 3 separate channels and send the links by email to the members in each group (and to me for all three) – it still took hours to upload, but my emails to me appeared to demonstrate success: I could click on the image of the video and see it.

Now would be a good time to glance back to the beginning to see my alternate titles – they'll make sense now ;->

What I have learned:

  1. Persistence is an important aspect of learning;
  2. Large files are harder to move around;
  3. HD video files are large;
  4. Bloody-minded pride in completing tasks is an important support to learning;
  5. Knowing some aspects of what you're buying, the difference is file size between HD and SD, for instance, is a wise approach, even if it blocks impulse buying;
  6. A corollary – not all salespeople know much about what they're selling;
  7. People are helpful, but ultimately you have to find the right set-up yourself.

I haven't yet heard from the students I sent the flipshare channel links to; keep your fingers crossed for me.

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/

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