http://andywatson.edublogs.org Andy Watson's blog on educational ICT in Scotland Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:26:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've moved my blogging activity to  Jist Haiverin http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2008/02/11/blog-activity-moved-to-jist-haiverin/ PQDVD have developed software which appears to be like Crazy Talk but much cheaper. Seems to be worth a look.   http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/12/19/talking-photo/ Andrew Brown's Captivate series introduced me to a number of facilities in the program which I hadn't fully appreciated. However, there are times when still images aren't good enough for training purposes, such as when you want to illustrate a video editing process. With this in mind I've been playing ... http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/11/02/camtasia-studio-5/ Another WOW! http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/06/29/anyone-for-coffee/ If you use TeacherTube (discussed here) to store pupil videos, you can easily link to them on your blog (or website). For WordPress and Edublogs blogs just follow this advice - Q: How can I embed a video for my Edublogs/WordPress blog? A: Here are some steps: 1. Copy link provided under "Edublogs/WordPress ... http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/06/08/embedding-teachertube-videos/ Yet another animation program. Tales Animator uses a scripting language to animate figures to produce good looking cartoons. The scripting language is fairly easy to use but would be too difficult for younger kids. Another free download with lots of extras available on the site. http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/06/04/tales-animator/ Many teachers use the Digital Blue Movie Creator for stop motion animation. Although it is easy and fun to use, it has some limitations, particularly the quality of the output. MonkeyJam lets you create stop motion animation from any web cam, digital video camera or sets of scanned images and outputs ... http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/06/02/monkeyjam-stop-motion-animation/ I'm just catching up on this. Thanks to Neil Winton's post. SCRATCH is a free program which lets kids create animations by using a simple programming language. It seems to be quite powerful and, apart from the fun the kids would have, it could be used to create quite adventurous programs. ... http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/06/02/scratch-animation-and-programming-for-kids/ Comic Life is a popular program on the mac which lets you create comic strip stories very easily. The company is working on a Windows version and has released a free beta version for testing. It seems to be fairly robust. The only problems I've had are printing to a network ... http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/05/28/comic-life-for-windows/ Google Docs is a simple online word processor (and spreadsheet) with basic functions. With a decent online connection it responds quickly and can be used as a place to store documents. One of its strengths for a teacher is the ability for documents to be edited collaboratively. As an alternative ... http://andywatson.edublogs.org/2007/05/23/google-docs-a-useful-collaborative-tool/