joanvinallcox's posterous - Roaming around the webscape!

Sep 26 / 10:45am

Learning my (non-technical) way

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.

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!

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":

Vimeo doesn't like really large files;
HD videos of approximately 15 minutes in length are really large files;
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;
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;
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;
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;
Google didn't help me, although it took time for me to figure that out;
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.
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;
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
Unfortunately I had deleted the presentation videos from the camera;
Luckily I was able to retrieve them from their storage space on my computer;
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:

Persistence is an important aspect of learning;
Large files are harder to move around;
HD video files are large;
Bloody-minded pride in completing tasks is an important support to learning;
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;
A corollary - not all salespeople know much about what they're selling;
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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Filed under // autodidact flip large_files learning

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Sep 18 / 6:47am

Gmail's Tasks, available too on the iPhone

Oh, and I almost forgot, you can add a Tasks app to the iPhone

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

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Filed under // gmail iPhone tasks

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Sep 18 / 6:34am

Gmail's Tasks, and Why I Use It ((no gallery))

This morning I will assemble a newsletter that has been sent to me by email, an article at a time. I find gmail's Tasks invaluable in doing this.

In the image below, the Tasks link in the left sidebar has an arrow pointing out its position. It used to be in labs (the green lab jar at the top just to the right of your gmail address) but is now integrated.

Arrows also point to what its window looks like opened, and where you can click on the icon to minimize it.

Tasks can sit tidily out of the way bottom right, or, if you click on the bar icon, open in the Inbox window. If you click on the angled arrow icon, it opens as a separate window. Or you can close it altogether by clicking on the "X".

Here's where to find Tasks:

Here's what Tasks looks like close up:

Notice the "related email" links - When they come in to my inbox, I label the message, but I also go to More Actions menu and down to Add to Tasks for every related message, and there I have it, listed in Tasks with the relevant link! You can also see