No. 41
January 23, 2002
Technology:
FlashCam
I'm sure you've heard of Macromedia Flash - the semi-standard for Web animations, interactive tutorials, product demos, and the mildly annoying, sometimes very elaborate "welcome movies" with a "Skip Intro" button (see http://www.linkit.nl/). Notwithstanding its predominant use as eye candy, Flash can be employed very effectively in creating educational multimedia, especially software tutorials. If only its learning curve weren't so steep...
I'll let you in on a secret: hard as it is to believe, you don't have to learn how to use Macromedia Flash in order to create multimedia tutorials - you just need to get FlashCam from NexusConcepts. FlashCam is to Flash what camcorders are to moviemaking: you don't need to go to a film school to record your daughter's birthday party. It makes it almost too simple: just take a series of "snapshots" of a portion of your desktop, e.g. to illustrate steps taken to create a table on Web page being designed in Dreamweaver; each of these snapshots will become a frame in your movie. Then, with FlashCam's intuitive tools, add your voice narration, mouse movements, transitions (e.g. "fade out"), and captions. You can change order and timing of each frame. When you're happy with the movie's playback, simply upload it to any Web server, provide a link to it, and it will stream in a browser of any visitor. (New browsers have a built-in ability to play Flash movies; for older browsers, installation of a free plugin may be required.)
FlashCam costs only $79, significantly less than Macromedia Flash, and as long as producing educational content is concerned, it is one of the best investments one can make. Educators don't really have the time to learn sophisticated multimedia tools, and they should not have to. FlashCam is at least as easy to use as Lotus ScreenCam and RealPresenter, but offers much greater control over what comes in and what comes out of the production process, without increasing the complexity of the tool itself. That by itself is worth checking out.
Flash Cam's incredibly simple interface
Online reading/viewing:
New additions to the ACT Knowledge Base:
Book chapter by D. L. Cogburn, Ph.D. (in press):
“Globally-Distributed Collaborative Learning and Human Capacity Development in the Knowledge Economy.” In Mulenga, D. (ed.), Globalization and Lifelong Education: Critical
Perspectives. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers (PDF format)Virtual Hosting
ACT has put together a small database containing a sample of remote (virtual) hosts we would feel comfortable recommending:.Web Resources for Internet Novices
Beginning of a clearinghouse of learning resources for people relatively new to the Internet. Covers a range of topics, from basic skills, to HTML, to databases, to groupware.
Conference:
- Held April 11-14, 2002 in Orlando, FL
- It's an annual conference for individuals and organizations working in nonprofit technology -- a great opportunity to meet peers and build relationships, share resources and ideas, and learn more about what's happening in the field.
- Who should attend:
- members of the Nonprofit Open Source, "Circuit Rider", or Community Technology Center movements
- IT consultants with nonprofit clients
- IT professionals who are on staff at nonprofit organizations
- nonprofit professionals who have become "accidental techies"
- activists or advocates who want to go online to expand their outreach
- specialists in research and evaluation of nonprofit organizations
- nonprofit management support professionals who need to learn more about
IT- idealistic professionals who are considering a career in IT for nonprofit
organizations
She said, he said:
"Our technology has already outstripped our ability to control it." - Omar Bradley in 1989
© 2002 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology
