pencasts and moodle

[Christina Kelly]

Hi Folks
I've got myself a lovely livescribe pen for a Xmas present. Having great fun playing with it but I don't know how to upload my pencasts to the school moodle site. Any suggestions?
Christina

[Stephen Howell]

Hi Christina,

The version of the desktop Livescribe software I have does not allow export of the raw Flash SWF pencasts (but yours may do so). So, I use the 250 megs of pencast hosting space that Livescribe give with each pen (I think you can buy more though). It would be much better if the (re-)allowed this feature, it would save the hoop jumping below.

My process is as follows.

1. Upload pencast to Livescribe Community site (you will need to create a free account)
2. Make the pencast public (log into site and goto myAccount to make pencasts public/private)
   
3. Goto http://jamessocol.com/pencast/
4. On Jamessocol page (above) paste in a link to your file, here is an example of one of mine http://www.livescribe.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LDApp.woa/wa/MLSOverviewPage?sid=jXkSd5Kmzt8k
5. Select size you want the embedded pencast to be and click the 'Push Me' button
6. Select All and Copy the code generated (it can be a little slow to appear, but also sometimes does nothing!)
   
7. Log in to your Moodle
8. Go to your subject page, Turn Editing On
9. Click Add a resource... drop down menu and Select Compose a web page
10. Give a name to the new resource
11. In the composing window (Full Text window), click on the second last button on the bottom row of the toolbar, which is 'Toggle HTML Source' and looks like < > on my Moodle
    
12. Underneath <br/> paste in your pencast code from step 6 above
13. Click Save and Display and if you have Flash installed it should appear in a new window and auto load
14. Click Full Screen or just Play depending on students to present
    

This process works for me, but I'm doing it from memory so please let me know if I've forgotten anything.

Regards,

Stephen

2009/11/29 Christina Kelly <chris...@o2.ie>

[Seaghan Moriarty (Digilogue)]

Christina,

You can upload pretty much any web content into Moodle.

1) Enter your course, then click on 'files' (in the 'administration' panel),
and click upload.
2) Then to 'link' to your file(s), right click and choose 'copy shortcut'
(IE) or 'copy link location' (FF). This will give you the URL for your
file(s)
3) Back in your course (or on your website / email etc.), link to this URL

Notes:

1. Organise your content (intuitive filenames & categorise into folders)
2. You may run into maximum file size limits (contact whoever set up your
moodle and ask them to adjust)

HTH

Kindest Regards,
Seaghan.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Digilogue.net - www.digilogue.net
- Enabling technology for learning
communities and group communication.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blog: http://www.pedablogy.ie/
ScoilPac: http://www.scoil.net/

[Stephen Howell]

Hi Seaghan, Christina,

I think Seaghan's advice is helpful, but the particular problem you may be having here is that LiveScribe (the smart pen makers) prefer not to let you access the content created with the pen directly, they rather you host with them. Without a simple way to access the pencasts or host them yourself, many people won't bother to embed them in Moodle (or similar). This is a pity, and it would be nice to reduce the hoops I posted. Apparently, the desktop software on Mac or Windows had an old version which did allow SWF export to disk. I never had this version myself so I'm not certain.

Regards,

Stephen

2009/11/29 Seaghan Moriarty (Digilogue) <sea...@digilogue.net>

[Seaghan Moriarty (Digilogue)]

Absolutely spot-on, Stephen.

My advice was technically correct -but useless as I was not aware of the particular context for livescribe

 

Yes, Stephen’s advice on using the ‘embed’ code, should work great. Test in Firefox as well as Internet Exlorer as some browsers use different <embed> parameters.

A poor (but quick) alternative might be to just add a link (‘link to file or webpage’) in your Moodle course.

 

 

 

Kindest Regards,

Seaghan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Digilogue.net - www.digilogue.net

- Enabling technology for learning

communities and group communication.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blog: http://www.pedablogy.ie/

ScoilPac: http://www.scoil.net/

 

[Fergal O'Neill]

Hi Christina!

Where did you get it and how much did it cost? I think it is a mathematicians dream for putting up those (almost live) worked solutions onto the school moodle.

Fergal O'Neill
Naas

Email: fergal...@gmail.com

2009/11/29 Christina Kelly <chris...@o2.ie>

[Stephen Howell]

Hi Fergal,

Sorry to answer a question to Christina, but I have a particular interest in these pens as I have a (small) e-learning project grant to investigate their use in teaching programming, maths and interface design in ITT Dublin. The mathematician who is collaborating on this project tells me he really enjoyed making worked, described solutions for his students and he sees potential in how they might be integrated into the lecturers toolkit. I won't give his name out here but I can put you in touch with him if you are interested in getting some maths oriented feedback.

I presented this pen at the last CESI-meet, and I based on the feedback, I wish I was on commission!

I bought mine in Target in America for 150 dollars, but the pens are on sale from Amazon and there is a UK/Ireland supplier in Antrim, google will bring either up. I think the pre-sale price was 130 euro + 20 for 4 (special and required) A4 notepads or thereabouts. My students are buying them at the moment for Christmas as there is a sale on. The 1Gb version does me fine, but 2/4Gb versions are available. If you want a demo of them, and can make it into Tallaght, email me and I can show you the one we have.

Regards,

Stephen

2009/11/29 Fergal O'Neill <fergal...@gmail.com>

[Claire Coleman]

That sounds very interesting. I'm a maths teacher and I'm sure like others we'd be interested in what they can do in that area. If there are any websites available with info???? Just a little research before I ask santa for one. Thanks

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Ger Sharpe <gera...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,
After the last Cesi-meet I too went ahead and bought the Pen.
Again as a Maths teacher it is a godsend for doing out notes and in
particular past exam questions etc. If you do not need to put the end
result on the web i.e you are just using it to take notes etc you will
find nothing better.
One (or maybe three) words of warning. The software provided is very
poor. Trying to organise your notes into folders etc is impossible and
trying to upload your pencasts can be particularly frustrating. They
have recently upgraded their servers and over the last couple of weeks
it's nigh on impossible to get anything up. The response from customer
service again is very poor. Just read their forums before you buy to
see. One last thing, the 250MB storgae may seem a lot and I'm sure for
some people it is but if you are planning to do a lot of notes online
it will quickly be used up. I am now taking down stuff from the server
in order to make more space so if you want to have notes up all the
time you need to be careful of your limit.
Rant Over!!!
Ger

On 29 Nov, 23:02, Stephen Howell <stephen.r.how...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Fergal,
>
> Sorry to answer a question to Christina, but I have a particular interest in
> these pens as I have a (small) e-learning project grant to investigate their
> use in teaching programming, maths and interface design in ITT Dublin. The
> mathematician who is collaborating on this project tells me he really
> enjoyed making worked, described solutions for his students and he sees
> potential in how they might be integrated into the lecturers toolkit. I
> won't give his name out here but I can put you in touch with him if you are
> interested in getting some maths oriented feedback.
>
> I presented this pen at the last CESI-meet, and I based on the feedback, I
> wish I was on commission!
>
> I bought mine in Target in America for 150 dollars, but the pens are on sale
> from Amazon and there is a UK/Ireland supplier in Antrim, google will bring
> either up. I think the pre-sale price was 130 euro + 20 for 4 (special and
> required) A4 notepads or thereabouts. My students are buying them at the
> moment for Christmas as there is a sale on. The 1Gb version does me fine,
> but 2/4Gb versions are available. If you want a demo of them, and can make
> it into Tallaght, email me and I can show you the one we have.
>
> Regards,
>
> Stephen
>

> 2009/11/29 Fergal O'Neill <fergal.one...@gmail.com>

>
>
>
> > Hi Christina!
>
> > Where did you get it and how much did it cost? I think it is a
> > mathematicians dream for putting up those (almost live) worked solutions
> > onto the school moodle.
>
> > Fergal O'Neill
> > Naas
>

> > Email: fergal.one...@gmail.com
>
> > 2009/11/29 Christina Kelly <chris.ke...@o2.ie>

>
> >> Hi Folks
> >> I've got myself a lovely livescribe pen for a Xmas present.  Having great
> >> fun playing with it but I don't know how to upload my pencasts to the school
> >> moodle site.  Any suggestions?

> >> Christina- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Stephen Howell]

Hi Ger,

> One (or maybe three) words of warning. The software provided is very
> poor. Trying to organise your notes into folders etc is impossible and

This is true, though I heard today there is a new improved version of
the software due soon.
Apparently, it will allow saving in various formats. I would like it
to allow more notes
organising (I teach 4 modules so I would prefer to split the content
that way).

> trying to upload your pencasts can be particularly frustrating. They
> have recently upgraded their servers and over the last couple of weeks
> it's nigh on impossible to get anything up. The response from customer
> service again is very poor. Just read their forums before you buy to

I didn't realise that about the servers, I had no issues uploading
last year and earlier this year but I tried last week and
the upload failed, I assumed it was my work connection being poor, but
sounds like the issue was at their end.
I have only had to contact the customer service (by phone) once (when
the pen refused to download after weeks of working fine)
and they were excellent to me, they helped me update the firmware and
they seemed knowledgeable.

> see. One last thing, the 250MB storgae may seem a lot and I'm sure for
> some people it is but if you are planning to do a lot of notes online
> it will quickly be used up. I am now taking down stuff from the server
> in order to make more space so if you want to have notes up all the
> time you need to be careful of your limit.

I thought it was OK, but I haven't hit the limit, you are probably
producing many more pencasts than I though.

> Rant Over!!!

Ranting is good customer feedback for some companies, keep it up!

Stephen

[John Hegarty]

I downloaded version 2.01 today which came out last week - I don't see any huge changes though I have read it is generally faster and smoother. There is a section on the left now for applications - similar to the apps section in iTunes - where you can manage any application you have bought and installed on your pen. Again the process is similar to Apple's app store. No options to export files that I can find. You can export the audio but that seems to be of limited use to me.

jh

2009/11/30 Stephen Howell <stephen....@gmail.com>

[Stephen Howell]

Hi all,

A nice fellow emailed me last night to ask if he could repost my
instructions on uploading to Moodle (above) to his blog, he seemed to
know that a version with improved features in the new year (or Q1
2010) was coming, but I'm not sure when/if it was announced, I will
look forward to it when it arrives. One of my 4th year students is
developing software for dyslexia detection with the smartpen as his
4th year project. The pen-app store could be really useful, I could
see myself paying for good on-pen software, though I rarely buy iphone
apps.

Regards,

Stephen

On Nov 30, 1:49 pm, John Hegarty <jhega...@clongowes.net> wrote:
> I downloaded version 2.01 today which came out last week - I don't see any
> huge changes though I have read it is generally faster and smoother. There
> is a section on the left now for applications - similar to the apps section
> in iTunes - where you can manage any application you have bought and
> installed on your pen. Again the process is similar to Apple's app store. No
> options to export files that I can find. You can export the audio but that
> seems to be of limited use to me.
>
> jh
>

> 2009/11/30 Stephen Howell <stephen.r.how...@gmail.com>

[Christina Kelly]

Hi Fergal

I bought my pen direct from livescribe website as part of a pack. Amazon.co.uk currently has the pen (not pack) on offer and with free delivery but be warned - the sterling price shown on site includes UK VAT and we get charged Irish VAT which is higher (of course). The 2GB Pen (with charger/docker and one pad of dot paper) from Amazon currently comes in around €140, don't know how long their offer will last.

I've followed advice from various CESI members and have managed to uploaded a pencast to moodle. Thanks all.

For info, I used the newest version of desktop software from livescribe to upload my pencast to their site. Then I made the pencast public. Once public there is the option to copy the embedding code into moodle and also to download the pencast as a pdf which can also be uploaded to moodle. It is a pity that the pencast must be hosted by livescribe. Hopefully, someone will come up with a way around that.

Christina

----- Original Message -----
From: Fergal O'Neill <fergal...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, November 29, 2009 8:40 pm
Subject: [CESI List] Re: pencasts and moodle

> Hi Christina!
>
> Where did you get it and how much did it cost? I think it is a
> mathematicians dream for putting up those (almost live) worked

> solutionsonto the school moodle.
>
> Fergal O'Neill
> Naas
>

> Email: fergal...@gmail.com
>
>
> 2009/11/29 Christina Kelly <chris...@o2.ie>
>
> >

[DavidH]

Hi,

From the Livescribe forum there is clearly a demand for the ability to
export pencasts in different formats and upload directly to the web.
There is a work around here but I have not tried it yet -
http://www.livescribe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1974&highlight=facebook+download
- read the third comment by Gazzzz.

The software could definitely be improved, I would like the ability to
highlight text and to edit audio - don't forget to turn off your phone
when recording! I wonder do they see the studnet market as potentially
more lucrative than educators hence the lack of features? I have also
found uploading very slow, however I still think it has good potential
and hopefully will be improved.

David

> > > Stephen- Hide quoted text -

[Tim Fahlberg]

The post below talks about using screen recording software (like Jing - free or Camtasia Studio - not free) to record the video. 

I blogged about how to do this using JingPro ($14.95 per year) to record/produce a pencast to mp4 format which is uploadable to YouTube where it can be captioned, etc.  You can also use Jing (free) with the main limitation of Jing/JingPro being 5 minutes of recording.  So for longer recordings I'd recommend Camtasia Studio or something comparable (what do you use in Ireland?) 

The main thing you'll likely want to do is to enlarge your pencasts before re-recording them (using James Socol's tool) as you can't easily record pencasts when they're playing full screen. See How to Convert Pencasts to Screencasts or How to Share Pencasts on YouTube.  One very nice thing about playing back pencasts on Livescribe's site is that you can easily enlarge them and then pan across them - something useful for people with limited vision.  But on the other hand if you convert pencasts to mp4 then you can share them on YouTube if they're less than 10 minutes or on TechSmith's Screencast.com if longer (and TechSmith offers 2 GB of free space and 2 GB of monthly bandwidth for free as well). 

Oh right - the other thing you can do if you have trouble getting decent quality audio when you re-record a pencast is to export the audio from the Livescribe Desktop and then, using software like Camtasia Studio, add it to the recording you created with Camtasia Recorder.

Full disclosure: I work for Livescribe in Wisconsin (USA) but my background is in screencasting and mathcasting in particular.

Hope this helps between now and when Livescribe offers an export to Flash and/or mp4, etc.

Tim
Tim Fahlberg

[Seaghan Moriarty (Digilogue)]

Hi Tim,

 

I’d have to agree with you, having used Jing and another OS package – Camtasia is head and shoulders above the rest, but not free. The editing tools, Zoom & Panning and production options are excellent.

 

I’ve always thought that tutorials using screencasts / livescribe to demonstrate the thinking and process involved in many Maths exercises – and may be involved in a project in the New Year which does this through the irish language (Gaeilge).

 

Thanks for the update and yes, Flash (SWF / FLV exporting will really extend Livescribe functionality)

 

Kindest Regards,

Seaghan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Digilogue.net - www.digilogue.net

- Enabling technology for learning

communities and group communication.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blog: http://www.pedablogy.ie/

ScoilPac: http://www.scoil.net/

 

From: cesi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cesi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tim Fahlberg
Sent: 30 November 2009 20:31
To: cesi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [CESI List] Re: pencasts and moodle

 

The post below talks about using screen recording software (like Jing - free or Camtasia Studio - not free) to record the video.