Tools for Learning: Flashcards Done Right, Video Tools, & Augmented Reality

So much for the idea of trying to do a blogpost every day this month. My computer was in the shop for a couple days, sick kid, etc. So, I will try to catch up a little now (and have a lot to share!). Starting here with a list of tools recommended at yesterday’s meeting of Instructional Designers on campus.

More on Flashcards

GWhiz: http://www.gwhizmobile.com/Desktop/Home.php
StudyStack: http://www.studystack.com/

NOTE:
School of Dentistry is doing something wonderfully useful with setting up a collection of oral pathology images with definitions as flashcards in an initiative that uses multiple platforms and tools at once. They are integrating mobile, web, and social sharing, which is exactly what I love to see people doing. Maximize the access and ways people can use the information. Very cool. 🙂 They evaluated a bunch of tools and selected StudyStack (as a really dependable, well tested platform that had the functionality they sought) and GWhiz for the mobile (because of the integration with StudyStack and the ease of both adding and extracting data).

There is a list of online flashcard tools earlier on this blog, which includes some newer tools not evaluated for this project.

Video Tools

Video is increasingly important on campus as a platform for:
– making content accessible outside of face-to-face class times (asynchronously);
– distance learning;
– in support of students and faculty who cannot come to class because of swine flu or other illness;
– to provide a date/time stamp on intellectual content presented in class sessions.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that several folk presented on video tools they are using educationally.

Camtasia Relay: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasiarelay.asp

NOTE:
School of Pharmacy is really leading the way for the campus with this tool, which makes it super simple for faculty to record, edit and post their own lectures WITHOUT in class tech support. By streamlining the process, this makes it more likely that faculty will take advantage of the potential of video, increasing access. The editing function is a little weak, mostly allowing trimming from the beginning or end of the video, but you can always shift to a more professional video editing application if needed.

VideoAnt:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/bhosack/videoant/
http://ant.umn.edu/vae.php
NOTE:
The Learning Resource Center were the ones who mentioned this video annotation tool. VideoANT allows you to host comments and discussion around a video link on the web, either one you host on your own servers or one hosted in another system. They like you to use the Flash video format, which is pretty common these days. This means you can grab videos from YouTube or Vimeo or other tools for annotation and class discussion. You can watch the video in VideoANT, mark places to add a note or comment, and also leave comments on other people’s comments. Imagine a class in which the teacher posts a video link, and at specific points in the video inserts a question, asking the students to pause and reply before continuing, then getting the whole class engaged in the conversation. Pretty exciting potential. For one of my Second Life videos, I often am asked for the locations shown. VideoANT allowed me to mark specific points in the video and annotate them with directions.

VideoANT Annotation of Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life: http://ant.umn.edu/vav.php?pid=60058091758860

See Also:
Viddler: http://www.viddler.com/
BubblePly: http://www.plymedia.com/products/bubbleply/bubbleply.aspx
Nico Nico Douga (Japanese video sharing site): http://www.nicovideo.jp/
Veotag: http://www.veotag.com/
Project Pad (NWU): http://dewey.at.northwestern.edu/ppad2/
DIVER (Stanford): http://diver.stanford.edu/
Close Captioning for Youtube videos: http://www.youtubecc.com/

More tools listed at the OpenCast project:
http://www.opencastproject.org/homepage
http://www.opencastproject.org/wiki/project_pad_audio_and_video_annotation_tools

Augmented Reality

What made the discussion on augmented reality interesting was the way once folks understood what it could do, they kept saying, “Wouldn’t it be neat if you could ?” to which the answer was almost always, “Oh, you can, here is the tool that does that.” The ones that seemed most useful were Cyclopedia and Wikitude, both of which allow you to use a mobile device to retrieve information about your immediate location and environment.

Cyclopedia: http://www.chemicalwedding.tv/cyclopedia.html or http://www.appstorehq.com/cyclopedia-iphone-74227/app
http://gizmodo.com/5372243/cyclopedia-augmented-reality-iphone-app-drenches-your-world-in-wikipedia