Adobe Connect – what equipment do you need?
July 27, 2010 at 9:00 am | Posted in hands-on | Leave a commentTags: Adobe, audio, web conference
Adobe Connect is intended to be an online meeting room for *individuals* scattered around the globe, so normally you are siting in front of your PC wearing a headset (earphones + mic) like a Logitech ClearChat (£28)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Clear-Chat-Pro-USB/dp/B000UC322Q
I highly recommend paying a bit more for a USB headset – the cheaper older sort with 3.5mm jack plugs have worse audio quality, although that is often down to the mediochre quality of the audio input/output circuitry built into office PCs
If you wish, you an also add a webcam so the other participants can see you. A cheap one (£15) will do, but more expensive ones give a better image quality, especially in the lower light levels encountered in offices. I remember my colleague, who does a lot of video conferencing, used to have to point a desk lamp at his face while he was online so that the camera gave a good image!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-QuickCam-Pro-9000-Webcam/dp/B002CNKVES
If you do want to have more than one person around a PC taking part in the meeting then I recommend using a special combined speaker/microphone like the Plantronics MCD100M that eliminates echo:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plantronics-MCD100M-USB-Speaker-Phone/dp/B0028HE7K2/
Needless to say, these are only items that I have used – equivalents are available from other manufacturers.
The equipment you don’t need are speakers and a separate microphone, as these often cause distracting echo. Some laptop PCs do an OK job, however, as they use built-in echo-cancellation software. I also recommend a wired internet connection since wireless connections seem to introduce additional lag that defeats echo-cancellation.
Film and audio archives for education
October 28, 2009 at 4:41 pm | Posted in useful links | Leave a commentTags: audio, film, JISC, repositories
I recently came across a couple of excellent repositories of audio and video material.
The first is Europa Film Treasures, a collection of mainly pre-WW2 cinema from across Europe
The link that led me to this showed the first film ever shot from an aircraft: Wilbur Wright and his Flying Machine (1909)- how this must have astonished the audiences in early cinemas and bioscope shows.
The second is the British Library’s archive of sound recordings, made available through JISC funding – over 28,000 recordings of everything from birdsong to traditional music from around the world to oral history.
Four short lessons on podcasting
August 10, 2009 at 10:53 am | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a commentTags: audio, how-to, podcast
Four really useful blog posts from Michael Hanley, covering the importance of pace, pitch, projection and pauses in creating effective educational podcasts. Audio examples allow you to hear what he is talking about.
Of course, good lecturers already make use of these techniques in their teaching, but podcasts rely on them because they are are audio-only.
Borrowing our Sony ICD-UX71 audio recorder
June 5, 2009 at 9:13 am | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a commentTags: audio
I spent some time earlier this year looking around for a device that met our requirements for ad-hoc recording of lectures and meetings:
- easy to use, so tutors can record lectures with minimal effort
- low cost, so that Schools and individuals can afford them
- recording in MP3 format, so no file conversion or editing is required
- direct connection to a PC or Mac with no need to install special software
- decent sound quality and a choice of input options, such as tie-clip or desk mic
- rechargeable battery so it is always ‘ready for use’
There are some great devices such as the Zoom H2 or the Eidirol R-09, but they are quite expensive, relatively complex and aimed at musicians, so in the end we went for a Sony ICD-UX71, available online for about £60. We also bought the matching Sony CS-10 tie-clip mic at £30 and ECM-F8 desk mic at £10.
If you are interested in borrowing this equipment to record a lecture or other event, please get in touch. The aim is to help you find out if the (minimal) effort required justifies the (low) cost involved – and to get some feedback from your students on the usefulness of your audio podcasts.
Using Learning Technologies to Bend Space and Time
June 4, 2009 at 1:23 pm | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a commentTags: audio, Camtasia, how-to, PowerPoint
This was the wildy inaccurate title of a talk I recently gave in the School of Chemistry – the subject was really about techniques to record lectures so that students can view them at a time and place of their choosing. This is a particular concern for Chemistry and Phyiscs owing to timetabling problems with their joint Natural Sciences degree.
A recording of this talk is available on Screencast.com, a video-sharing site linked with the Camtasia Studio software I use.
After the break are some details of how I made the recording Continue Reading Using Learning Technologies to Bend Space and Time…
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