Apple Macs in Education » Mac

Video Editing Challenge

jjakes — Mon, 07 May 2007 11:15:21 +0000

Here’s a challenge for you….please follow this link download the video clips and then use iMovie to produce a finished piece of work. Could be fun and you will certainly learn a lot. Please post finished pieces onto Google Video and then to your blogs.

Interesting application

jjakes — Mon, 07 May 2007 10:19:22 +0000

I was delighted to see the video podcast produced by a class in Australia who have created a site called Podkids. The work they describe is both fun and creative and is worth viewing. I was interested in the software that they had used to create their programme and was thrilled when their teacher replied to my email and pointed me in this direction www.pulpmotion.com. I have downloaded the demo and think that this is an excellent package and one that we should be looking at for producing exhibitions of students work and the short news style video presentations that would work well in any curricular area. The software costs 27.50 EUR which is equivalent to 18.75 GBP so is not expensive and there are volume discounts. The live news theme is very good so please have a look at the site and possibly download the demo version. Please let me know what you think of it.

Small but powerful applications

jjakes — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:35:18 +0000

I am always on the look out for useful applications for my mac and want to share these two as ideal ones to consider adding to your macs. The first one is called iShowU which allows you to capture and record anything you can see on your screen, along with audio from a compatible source (like a microphone) as well as any audio from the mac itself. It is produced by a company called shineywhitebox.com and wait for it ….. the cost is only £10.41 – a real bargain. There is a 30 day demo version but it does put a watermark on the tutorial that you produce. This tutorial on jjakes.edublogs.org was produced using this software and although these copies were not produced to the highest spec for the blog they look great running on the mac.

The second piece of software is specifically for those people like me who are beginning to create websites with iWeb. One difficulty was managing a number of websites and this small application enables you to manage your sites and removes some of the confusion. I love iWeb and am really looking forward to the new release that is promised. This is how Chris Greg describes iWebsites:

iWeb normally stores a user’s websites in one folder (or package) called “Domains.sites,” in the user’s home library located at “~/Application Support/iWeb/”. It expects this package to be present, but if it isn’t, it will create it when launching iWeb. iWebSites manipulates “Domains.sites” to create more than one website package (a “.sites” file) in the Application Support/iWeb folder. Simply, iWeb opens up “Domains.sites” when it launches, and whatever website happens to be in that package is the website that iWeb uses while running. iWebSites renames “Domains.sites” when creating a new site, and it leaves the newly named “.sites” file in the Application Support/iWeb folder. iWebSites enables the user to switch between sites (by creating the appropriate “Domains.sites” package), delete sites, create new sites, and duplicate sites.

The software appears to be free but Chris is asking for donation/sponsorship for running the Boston Marathon. If you are into using iWeb this is a must.. try it out here.

Macs go to Australia

jjakes — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:13:20 +0000

One of the Transformation Teachers participants will soon be leaving to live in Australia, Perth to be exact. No prizes for guessing who ….. She has fallen in love with her Mac and is quickly working her way through the creative tools. I know that she is determined to complete the course and will be emailing and communicating with us through the MLE and possibly even SKYPE so I decided to search to see if I could find links with enthusiastic mac educators over the water. Well you’re in luck click here and see for yourself. Well Ruth we expect you to take Aus by storm and I certainly expect to read about the work that you do within other peoples blogs before the Summer is out… The challenge is set. How long will it take before they get to know about you.