Screen Sharing using Skype

The latest version of the video conferencing software Skype (4.1 for Windows, 2.8 for Mac) gives users the ability to share their screens remotely – and for free! Although audio and video are great for communication, they are often insufficient to explain step-by-step procedures, such as inserting a video into PowerPoint 2007. Skype’s new feature allows users to share their desktops instead of using their webcams while continue to talk.

Potential applications for this new feature could be: demonstrating procedures, presenting documents, sharing videos, trouble shooting, etc.  

How to share your screen

Simply call a contact and click Share –> Share Your Screen in the IM toolbar (Windows) or Share –> Share Screen (Mac). If desired, one can either share the complete desktop or just a selection.

For more information, visit http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/screensharing/.

Adobe.tv and other helpful resources for CS4 training

As you may know Indiana University recently signed a groundbreaking software deal with Adobe to provides no cost downloads of a wide array of fantastic (and usually expensive) Adobe software to all IU students, faculty, staff and departments.  Now that the software is freely available to use, there is a need for training and tutorials on how to use all of this great software.  The IT Training group at IU does a good job at offering various STEPS workshops on the more familiar CS 4 applications such as, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Acrobat, Illustrator, and InDesign.  Hopefully they plan to expand their offerings because there is much more available in both the CS4 Design Suite, and the CS4 Development Suite.  Not to mention all of the others available on IUWare.

This brings us to the point of this blog post.  The staff in the IC find Adobe.tv to be an excellent resource for short Adobe CS4 how-to and training videos and we just wanted to share our good fortune!

Helpful training resources include:

• For example, Adobe.tv has an excellent series of videos on getting started with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.  Adobe.tv has many more published videos to help you learn and discover new features in the CS4 products on their Adobe TV site.
• You can sign up for a free 30 day trial membership at Lynda.com when you register your Adobe software; it includes tutorials on the CS4 interface.  See http://kb.iu.edu/data/axyq.html for more information.
• IU students, faculty and staff can download free Adobe CS4 basic workshop materials to use and learn on their own.
• And of course you can stop by the IC or make an appointment if you have any questions or need any help.

Afraid to use Endnote? Here are some tricks…

Endnote may seem complicated. However, once you learn a couple of tricks, it becomes a nice, helpful software that can solve most of your citation management problems. Here are those tricks:

1) Use Endnote in collaboration with Scholar Google: If you go to Scholar Preferences and turn on and change “show links to import citations into” option to “Endnote”, you will see an “import into Endnote” link at the end of each search result. This will help you to import the citation directly into your library.

2) Attach your articles to citations: When you download the .pdf file for an article attach it to the corresponding citation entry in Endnote by right clicking on the entry and selecting “File Attachments”. This way, the next time you want to read the article, you can search for it with some keywords and open it from Endnote.

3) Keep the Endnote library and article folder in the same folder: If you put all the .pdf files in a folder and locate this folder in the same folder with the Endnote library, then you can move the big folder around. Moving the big folder will not affect the links from the Endnote citation entries to .pdf files because the links are relative.

New Versions of MS Office for Mac!

MS Office 2008 for Mac now available!

Although MS Office 2007 for Windows has been available for a while, it’s been a long time coming for those on the Mac-side of things, but Microsoft has finally released Office 2008 for Mac. The being made available is Office 2008 Standard and is freely available for all IU affiliates. For the IU community both Windows and Mac versions of MS Office are available for download at the IUware website.

The new version of Office 2008 for Mac has many new features all which bring it up to similar functionality with MS Office 2007 for Windows. This new version is completely compatible with MS Office 2007 for Windows files (docx, xlsx, pptx).

Best,
- IC Staff

UPDATE (02/05/2008):

This IUware installer incorporates a custom fix for the security issue detailed in the following article: Security issue in MS Office 2008 Installer for Mac.

The original installer provided by Microsoft to IUware prior to 02/05/08 did not contain this fix. If you have previously installed Office 2008 you should run this custom installer found here: Office 2008 Standard Security Fix.

Thanks,
-IC Staff

Evaluation of Web-based Forum Systems

I’ve recently completed an extensive evaluation of web-based forum / bulletin board systems (mostly open source) for a particular consulting project and I wanted to post the results here so I would remember.

We had the following important requirements for the project:

1. Individual, password-protected log-ins (for reporting and privacy)
2. Differentiated user roles (e.g., administrators who can monitor and alter, if need be, student posts)
3. User-friendly search/sort function (so users can find discussions easily)
4. Simple, visually stimulating front page (ideally with no more than 5
   links* that are associated with visual images/icons) 
5. Polls that can be disaggregated by site (students vote “Yes,” “No,” or “Undecided” and have to indicate where they are from to vote)
6. Threaded discussions, organized by issue (e.g., freedom of expression, cyberbullying, violent video games)
7. Forums organized by partnership
8. Site coordinator forum, organized by site
9. Teacher forum, organized by site
10. Ability to turn off private messaging and internal email
11. Ability to register students under the same (1 valid) email address
12. Option of having closed registration process, or possibly open registration

There were three systems that elevated to the top: phpBB, SMF, and vBulletin. All are written in PHP/MySQL and run on *nix/apache. The first two (phpBB and SMF) are open source projects and are available for free, where vBulletin charges approx. $160 for a lifetime license. They are all very solid full-featured systems, and the interfaces and options were very similar. Although we slightly preferred interface of phpBB, SMF and vBulletin fit more of the unique registration requirements we had for the project. It was a very close call between vBulletin and SMF.

vBulletin has every feature required, including the ability to view (from the admin interface) individual responses of polls, and the unique registration options. However the downside is the initial cost of the software, and in education there is usually not a lot of money.

SMF had almost every feature as vBulletin almost won out except for the inability to use the same email for multiple registrations, and the inability to view individual responses on polls.

In the end, we would highly recommended any of the three systems as a top notch web-based forum tool! Depending on the particular needs, SMF and vBulletin have a bit more fine tuning available in their administrative preferences and general features.

Workshop: New Features in PowerPoint 2007

The IC staff presented a workshop this morning on Microsoft Powerpoint 2007. The workshop provided information about the new features and differences in the new 2007 version. In particular, the workshop covered:

Overview of new interface changes

New features for layout, formatting, and presentation

Incorporating media such as graphs, images, video, and sound clips

New features for quickly creating photo albums

Security and sharing options

Compatibility issues with previous versions

If you are interested in the resources used during the workshop, please visit our website.

Also, stay tuned to our website for announcements of upcoming workshops!

Teach with Tech Podcast: Episode 17

On Thursday I was delighted to join Chris Essex on his Teach with Tech podcast as a guest commentator. In the podcast we discuss the recent MacWorld Expo conference that Chris attended, and focus on the iPhone and AppleTV, which were announced at the keynote. We also talk about how these new technologies might be used by classroom teachers and higher ed faculty.

We also discussed some of our new favorite software packages, some of which we already use, and some that Chris discovered while attending Macworld Expo.

• Toon Boom, Mac/Windows/Linux animation and storyboard software
• Toast 8 Titanium, Mac disc-burning software
• Slick Transitions & Effects, Mac special effect plugins for iMovie
• Civilization IV, a Mac/Windows history/politics simulation game
• Sims 2, a Mac/Windows people simulation game
• SubEthaEdit, a Mac text editor with synchronous collaboration features
• Profcast, a Mac program that allows you to convert your Powerpoint and Keynote presentations into screencasts/videocasts.

You can watch the full Macworld Expo Keynote by Steve Jobs.

Also, you are welcome to check out other Teach with Tech podcasts at: http://www.indiana.edu/~icy/podcast/.

New & Cool Web 2.0 Technologies

On probably one of the last posts before the end of 2006, I wanted to do something on cool new Web 2.0 technologies. Having been a guest commentator on the Teach with Tech podcast with Chris Essex yesterday (download in iTunes), and building on some of my previous posts about Web 2.0, I thought I would bring some of that discussion to this blog with a top 5 list of recent cool Web 2.0 applications that I’ve come across. Please feel invited to comment and share your own list as well.

Top 5 list of cool Web 2.0 applications:

1. Vyew is a free web conferencing and collaboration tool that compares to Adobe Breeze. Thus far, I have been very impressed with its functionality and ease of use. Check it out, and signup for a free account at: http://www.vyew.com
2. The list wouldn’t be complete without an homage to Google Labs, which has a list of cool applications to numerous to mention all of them here. For example, see google docs, google notebook, google page creator, google reader.
3. Although still in limited beta, Scrybe is getting a lot of attention, and proves to be a very cool and useful time and task management web application. Check it out at: http://www.iscrybe.com.
4. Mogopop provides an easy way to create interactive notes content for iPods, allowing for mini text-based web sites that can link to audio, video, and other pages on your Video iPod. You can find mogopop at: http://www.mogopop.com. If you’re interested in rolling your own, and not afraid of a little html, check out this O’Reilly MacDevCenter tutorial on Buliding Interactive iPod Experiences.
5. Elggspaces is a site for creating your own social networks for collaboration, learning, sharing, working, etc… Perhaps a nice Web 2.0 learning management system? Check it out at: http://www.elggspaces.com. There is also an established community created by elgg founders for people interested in education and technology, which can be found at http://elgg.net.

Also visit the Teach with Tech blog for links and notes from the episode 16 podcast on Web 2.0.

Scrybe: Next Killer Web 2.0 App?

Scrybe is a very cool ‘looking’ Web 2.0 application that I’ve come across. It still seems to be in limited beta, but the hype–I mean–talk, thus far is very positive. It appears to be a set of tools (calendar, lists, thoughtpad, timezone management) with sharing features, and a plethora of time and task management tools, plus lots of “ajaxification”. The applications seem similar to that of Google Calendar, Google Docs, and applications from 37signals, etc., but from viewing the demo videos, scrybe may add even more polish and features than we’ve yet to see from emerging Web 2.0 applications. The work offline feature is something I’m particularly interested in. See the following list of videos on YouTube.

Well you may ask, what does all of this have to do with teaching and learning? New innovative technology can often have positive implications in any domain, and that is why I’m sharing. These technologies and tools have the potential to increase collaboration and communication in higher education, both in classroom management, and in teaching and learning. How about we brainstorm potential uses of tools like this for higher ed. Please feel invited to post comments, and share any ideas, or other interesting tools that you may have come across…

Note: I signed up for a limited beta account to Scrybe quite a while ago, but I’m still waiting and hoping to get an email invitation. If I do get a beta account, I’ll share my Scrybe experiences here…