To make course content visually appealing, teachers should be encouraged to include images and videos into their curriculum. Photo manipulation also allows teachers to color coordinate their units/lessons; insert some of their personality into content; allow users to share some of their personality into their submissions and engage visual learners in ways that just can't happen on the printed page or the written word.
Tools for manipulating images/videos:
Images
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has a mission that will make creation tools available to all. Everything from graphic design to audio tools. It's like an online Photoshop. Images can be hosted and shared through the site or downloaded for private use. Founders of Aviary also created the popular photo manipulation site Worth1000.
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recently acquired by Google, this site offers editing tools and frames for photos. Allows users to import photos from a number of social networking and photo sharing sites. Uploaded photos can have special effects and other items incorporated into images.
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- Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) allows users to set copyright access and incorporates digital photo data from the camera which took the image. Users are also able to geotag maps with their images.
- Picasa (owned by Google) is great if you use other Google Apps as it allows for quick access to stored photos. Allows for user and geo tagging in Google Maps and collaborative albums. Google Docs will also pull images directly from your Picasa account if you want to insert images in your presentations or documents.
- Photobucket mainly a storage site. Allows users to upload; store and share images/videos.
- Add Voice to any photo. Talking photos could be a great way to generate interest in your resources.
-This is a pretty funny way to get your pictures to talk. You can customize the mouth and how far it moves while speaking. When you upload the audio file, Blabberize takes care of the rest. Videos can be shared in various methods. Here's an example I made for a Moodle course template.
- Create animated GIF images by uploading a series of images.Videos
Creating interesting visual content has never been easier.
allows users to upload images; text and music to be automatically turned into a multi-media presentation. You can also find out about getting an educational account that allows for more features.
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allows users to share links and embed videos from a variety of television shows and movies. The News and Information Channel sorts content by: Current News; Documentary and Biography; Live Events and Specials; Politics; and Science and Technology. Users can also set up subscriptions to their favorite shows.
allows users to create their own virtual theaters.
"the first, comprehensive, client-free online video messaging platform ideal for both personal and business communications. It offers everyone the ability to create and receive video messages in a self-contained, spam-free environment."
-upload screencasts to Twitter. Web based recorder, so nothing to download. Plays on iPhones/Pads/Pods as well.
When working with Screencast-o-matic videos, make sure to close/restart your browser after every few (3-4) videos or you will start getting Java overload errors.
Jing (from TechSmith) allows users to create screen capture flash videos/images and provides hosting space for users to share their creations. See the Jing FAQ for more. Jing does require a software download. TechSmith also provides Screencast.com; Snagit; and Camtasia Studio. All of these have free and professional editions. One drawback is that the downloaded copies of videos (if you use the free version) are in SWF format which is notoriously difficult to convert and embed in Moodle.
- Video Ant, the Video Animation Tool (developed at the University of MN) is video annotation tool-synchronize web-based video with time-line based text annotations.This is a very cool and under-utilized tool.
If you want to find or upload and share videos you've certainly heard of Google owned YouTube but there may be some features in YouTube of which you are not aware:
- Users are able to annotate/insert links at different times during their videos (like in Video ANT);
- Provide closed captioning;
- YouTube EDU has been around for awhile now;
- Videos can be uploaded in HD;
- Embed code can be customized with various frame sizes/colors
If a video is marked for reuse you can download videos from YouTube with help from KissYouTube. This site will allow you to download an FLV file which is easily embedded into course activities and resources.
My recommendation for downloading content from YouTube would be to use one of the extensions that you can download for the Google Chrome browser. Most of them provide you with options for file format when you download. When downloading content from YouTube, consider the copyright restrictions, not everything teachers do falls under Fair Use and most YouTube users will quickly grant permission to use their videos if you just ask.
Since most schools block a fair amount of content from that site you may want to consider:
May be streaming the video you're watching from YouTube so you'll want to verify before using it with your class if your school blocks YouTube.
Videos that you upload to those sites can be embedded into your course content in the same ways as the examples above.
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