Dr Who Notebook Game

Just a very quick post to point you all towards this excellent Smart Notebook file to teach dictionary skills. It demonstrates an excellent use of linking to sounds produced by Lynne Horn.

If you click the correct answer K9 will say affirmative. If you click the wrong answer a Dalek will exterminate you.

Even if your subject is not languages, it's worth taking a look just to see how you could adapt this idea for your own subject. Would make a nice quiz for a plenary or starter.

You can record your own sounds or download them from one of the myriad of sound effects sites out there.

Remember - in Smart Notebook if you want to link an object to a sound, all you need to do is right-click on the object, select Sound and then browse to the sound file you want to play.

In ActivStudio it's a little more involved but still straightforward. Right click on the object and choose Properties. Select Actions and from the drop down box choose Play Sound. Click the Set button and choose your sound. Then click OK.

Flip Video Test

Hurrah. The postman has just arrived with my Flip Video I blogged about a few weeks back.

First impressions. It looks good. Is a little bigger than I imagined, slightly larger than my digital camera and my N95. But it feels quite sturdy and I'd be happy to put this in the hands of students to film stuff with.

Only gripe is that I'd like it to have a lens cover perhaps. It takes regular batteries rather than has its own rechargeable battery like my camera does. I'll reserve judgement on that until I've seen how long it goes on a single pair of Duracells.







Here's a test video, and another on my N95 to compare. I actually think the quality is slightly better on the flip video, but that may just be the way flickr processes mp4 files.

Flip Video Test:




N95 Test:

Judge for yourself!

Personally, I think the Flip video is great to put into the hands of students. The N95 is for me to use for those moments when I want to take photos or video - it means I always have access to a good quality camera. But I wouldn't want to give my phone to anyone else to use.

At £99 the Flip Video is pretty good value, and I could easily see a few of these being bought so several groups could use them at the same time.

Digital Blue Movie Cameras - your days are well and truly numbered. (although the choice of name has always amused me!)

update: other reviews of the flip video on Terry Freedmans blog, on Joe Dales blog and on Mark Warners blog.

TV on your Whiteboard

There are different ways to get multimedia content onto your IWB. Youtube is pretty good, but it can be something of a lottery. Buying professional CD's and DVD's is another option.

One other way that has interested me for a while, is turning your computer into a Television. This is becoming easier and easier.

A few years back I bought a plug in device that was the size of a paperback book. It was quite awkward to use and the picture quality and recording quality was pretty poor.

I have just bought a new device that has really impressed me. It's called the Pinnacle PCTV Nano stick and it is a hybrid Digital/Analogue TV tuner stick.

First thing to impress me was the price, it was only £35 in PC World. Secondly is the size, its tiny. And the third thing to impress me is the picture quality. Plugged into my normal house aerial the quality was pretty good, and we're not a particularly strong area for television reception.

Using the supplied, portable aerial was less impressive. I was not able to get a signal at home. I am going to look into some kind of digital booster and see if that makes things better. I don't want TV on the move as such, but it would be nice to have a system that I could use if no rooftop aerial connection was possible.




The Stick comes with Pinnacle TVCentre Pro software so that the television picture is shown in a window on your computer screen. This software will also let you use your computer as a hard drive/DVD recorder and it is this aspect that interests me for use on an IWB.

You can save TV programmes as straight MPEG files or DivX format. It will also export for devices such as ipods etc. I could take the DivX file and copy it straight onto my Archos to view on the train for example. File sizes can be large, but recording directly onto DVD would avoid filling your hard drive too quickly.

For a teacher who wants to record snippets of a TV programme to show to a class this is ideal. You could record adverts that use really bad science and then get the class to pick the science apart.

It could also connect to the coax output from a video recorder and let you digitise any of the old video tapes that you have hanging around in your department cupboards that haven't yet been put onto DVD.

Obviously copyright is an issue here, and I would check this with your school first.

There are several other PC/TV Sticks out there. Pinnacle are doing a few, and also check out Happauge for other PC/TV devices.