The Educated Kiwi
howto
Swiss Army Codecs
May 27th
Ever had trouble playing video in Quicktime, can’t watch those Xvids of Desperate Housewives you got from the bloke down the pub. Try Perian, a single installation puts all those desirable codecs into your Quicktime library so that you can watch Dr. Who before it is even on the telly in your country.
Extract Flash animations from Powerpoint
Apr 2nd
One of our teachers came recently to us with a problem…..how do you extract flash files from a premade Powerpoint?
This ended being a major problem as I could find no easy gui application so have put together the following instructions using an exe file I found on the net:
Extract Flash Files from Powerpoint
Step 1
- Download the extractaflash.exe file from here
- Place this extracted file into C:\
Part 2
- Open Powerpoint File
- Make sure the Active X control is enabled
- Go to the slide with the embedded Flash File
- ‘Select’ it with your mouse and drag it to the desktop – this creates a Scrap file….which is really called Scrap.shs
- Now move the Scrap file to C:\
Part 3
- Go to Start–>Run and type cmd
- On the Command line type cd\ [enter]
- Now type exactly ….. C:\extractaflash.exe c:\Scrap.shs c:\output.swf
- Your flash file is now called output.swf in c:\ that can be renamed to whatever you want to call it —remember the .swf extension!!
Quick Proxy fix
Mar 31st
Often we have bookmarks in one browser and not another and rather than having one for home and one for school by far the easiest solution is by using one of the firefox addons called Quick Proxy. This adds a small button to the toolbar (see the picture) which when clicked changes the network setting without you having to go to preferences then network….. very easy.
Flash video editing made simple@labnol
Mar 6th
Time and time again I find great howto’s on this blog. Digital Inspiration has a great q&a on flash video editing with many free tools. Just what you need to get some of those great clips to ignite a discussion without going a second to long or perhaps removing the soundtrack to let the students make up their own mind.
Big Cat Diary – Day 1
Oct 30th
It has just taken me a little over an hour to upgrade to OS 10.5 Leopard and the transition was almost seamless. The only thing that broke was Parallels and I have to say that I don’t really need it any more and can finally be rid of the comfort blanket.
I used Super Duper to make an exact copy of my Macbook pro and went straight for the upgrade and there will be no going back. It has just finished installing on the iMac so I can test out the new iChat collaboration tools and Back to My Mac, will let you know how it goes.
How Do I?
Aug 13th
Often Teachers ask how do I convert this pdf into word or I would like to upload this document for my class. While all these problems I can sort if I’m available quite often it is when they are at home on the weekends that they need this help. For many of these problems I find Digital inspiration to be an invaluable resource. The most popular articles are repeated along the sides of the page and there are reviews of some quite helpful software, such as Camtasia for screen capture through to which firewall solution you can use. There is also a helpful section on audio and video.
Check it out I hope you find it as useful as I have.
Adding YouTube to Moodle
Aug 9th
This is a quick howto on adding YouTube videos to moodle. It also works for other video sites, just use the embed code. The most important step is changing the editor to HTML mode before pasting in the text. But watch the video and it should be clearish.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_m2hG_YVIo[/youtube]
Del.icio.us howto thanks to commoncraft
Aug 8th
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU[/youtube]
New video posted on you tube from the folks at common craft a very good explanation of how to set up and why to set up del.icio.us or any social bookmarking service.
Go English Go.
Jul 17th
Yes the title of this post came to me from Go dog go which I am reading to my daughter, slightly better than Hop on pop. But I digress. The English faculty at Katikati college are doing some great work between the class blogs and wikis it’s awesome to see what is being produced. Of particular note is fun with fruit which has had 1600+ views on slideshare.
[slideshare id=65163&doc=bananaslide1102&w=425]
For a quick look at some of these sites check out
Lana’s class blog, Nat’s class blog, and Emma’s Wiki this is just the beginning I’m sure of some great work. For any help setting up your own blog/wiki either send me an email or I’m sure these guys could tell you how easy it was.
PDF converter
Jun 27th
KoolWire is a new and wonderful email based file conversion service to help you convert your Microsoft Word (.doc), Powerpoint (.ppt), Excel Spreadsheets (.xls) or even pictures into Adobe PDF documents.
Just compose a new email message, attach document(s) that have to be converted into PDF and send the email to pdf@koolwire.com. The PDF file(s) should arrive in your inbox the next moment.
Thanks to Digital Inspiration for this.
Downloading Photos
Jun 19th
Thanks to Mark for putting together this how to video for downloading pictures on winxp.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Bc7mAssj08s" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
This is also another example of some of the uses of youtube and google video etc for education.
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