Storytelling: A slideshow with Animoto

This is another ELTAS Tech Tools Day task.

Pre-task thinking:

• How do you use photographs for storytelling?

Animoto is an audio slideshow application that, in its free form, allows you to show up to 12 slides and a short video and add up to 30 seconds of audio. You can also add a text intro.
Positive: This tool is free and easy to use, so good for students, especially for those who keep photos online.
Negative: You can't change the sequence of the pictures, or map the audio exactly to the individual frames.

The following Animoto slideshow was made using

• photos I uploaded from my phone to Flickr and made into an album
• an mp3 audio file I made recording myself and using Garageband (part of Apple) including a jingle. You can use Audacity (great freeware) instead to create mp3s.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com

Task:

Share pictures as a slideshow and either

• add a short audio file in which you explain them
• write a text about them to post along with the slideshow
  

Step by step:

1. Select or create an album on Flickr with pictures from an event (up to 12 pictures)
   OR find up to 12 pictures online through Google Images. (Use "advanced search" to assure that the Usage Rights state that they are "labeled for reuse".)
2. Create a 30 second mp3 using Audacity
   OR write a paragraph to go with the pictures.
3. Go to http://animoto.com
   
4. For "add pictures", connect to your Flickr album and select it OR select pictures online individually OR upload them from your computer.
   
5. Add a title and description to your first slide.
   
6. For "music", either upload your mp3 recording OR add a piece of music Animoto offers
7. Let Animoto complete the mashup.
8. Embed on your blog or Ning (along with any text.)

Nik's Daily English Activities

Nik Peachey runs a nice blog for learners of English to encourage learner autonomy, and it's called Nik's Daily English Activities. It's worth exploring this site as a teacher starting to use online resources and tools. Experiment with his tips yourself to get a feeling for what online learning is before you and your students start exploring media for tasks and projects.

In one entry this past May, he recommended that learners subscribe to a poem a day and record it as a daily pronunciation exercise. Learners can check the pronunciation of words and phrases on another website and then record the poems themselves using software they download to their computer. I think this is a lovely idea for a short daily practice session. Here is the post, with all of the links you need: Poems for pronunciation.

The idea of students recording their own voices goes back to language lab days, doesn't it? But these days students can expand on this activity. Once they feel comfortable recording themselves, they can go on and actually make a podcast themselves for others to listen to outside the language lab and even outside their course group - thanks to Web 2.0.

Using TED in the classroom

The annual TED conference brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers to give short and concise talks about their work to their peers. It's an invitation only event, but luckily for us the best and most popular talks can be seen and downloaded (as audio or video files) for free.

The talks range in length from around 3 - 25mins and can be used in a number of ways in class.
One of my favourites, as it's short but also very interesting and relevant is this one by Richard St. John. In 3mins he gives us the 'Secrets of success in 8 words'.


Here's how I have used this in my lessons > level B1+:

1. Get your students to brainstorm what they think leads to success. This could be done as a pair activity with reporting to the whole class or as a whole class brainstorming activity.
2. Depending on the technology available to you, play the presentation in audio format only for students to listen for the key words. Play it 2 or 3 times if necessary. At this stage though, tell them to listen only for the key words. He speaks quite fast. This talk can be downloaded in MP3 format to you computer. From there you can either play it directly from a laptop, from an MP3 player, or burn it from your pc to a cd and play it on a cd player.
3. Compare St. John's tips with those the students brainstormed and discuss. You could also have a few comprehension or questions based on his content.
4. Show your students the video. This can be downloaded separately and shown on a laptop or using a projector, or viewed directly on the website, depending on which technology you have available in the classroom. If none of the above options are available you can get students to watch the video at home before the next lesson.
5. Conclude by discussing the power of presentation visuals, body language, and being able to see the person you're listening to. Your students will understand more from the video than from the audio version of the talk. In this sense you could change the topic and lead into the topic of presentations with your students, if they're Business English students, for example. If not, I still think this video/presentation is relevant for all students as success is not merely confined to business.

If you try this with your group(s), please post a comment and let me know how it goes or if you can recommend any variations to the suggested lesson plan.

Converting Flash video to mp4 and mp3 online

You know that the YouTube Flash videos (flv) are easy to convert online into mp4s (the iTunes format) and to download onto your computer using www.savevid.com. But online conversion of non-YouTube videos is not quite as simple. For any conversion you must first find the URL of the video you want to convert. How? YouTube and a few other sites post the URL plainly, but often you need to be a Sherlock Holmes to find the URL. Step one: Play the video. If it opens up in a new window, you'll see your URL in the browser window. If not, you're lucky if you have Safari (Mac), which allows you to find the URL easily, as Frieda Pattenden first pointed out to me:

Go to the Safari browser bar and select "Window". Then go to "Activity". This opens up a long list of file names that the computer is busy with. Look for a large one that will probably contain "watch?" or "flv".

Once you have the URL, you can use any of a number of sites to convert the file into an mp4 video or even an mp3 audio file. Since audio files are much smaller than video files, conversion into mp3 is often quicker than into mp4. I actually often like to go for a sound bite accompanied by a film still - a very nice media combination for teaching.

So: To convert online video to mp4 or mp3 I use Safari in combination with iTunes. The online sites I use for this are www.convertdirect.com for mp4 (video), and www.flv2mp3.com for mp3 (audio).

Option 1: video to audio

Let's start with coversion of Flash video into an audio file using www.flv2mp3.com:
Copy and paste the URL into the flv2mp3 URL window (see illustrations) and click "I accept the terms: OK".

The site then uploads the file and says "upload complete". Don't enter your email or the output file name. Just select "convert".


Once the file is converted (after a few seconds), your iTunes will automatically detect a new file to play and open up. In iTunes, rename your file and put it in a folder where you can find it. Mp3 - Bingo!

Option 2: video to video

Now for conversion of Flash videos into an mp4 video file using www.convertdirect.com:

1. Copy the URL into the URL window at www.convertdirect.com (this works with any FLV file, not just YouTube)
2. Select the output format MPEG4 + AAC.
3. Type in your email address. You can also download the converted file directly, but I find the process takes quite some time and don't want to wait. Leave your browser open: If you close it while the file is being processed, you can't be sure that the process will be completed.
   

The program will take some time to process the file and then send you an email with a link to a page sporting a big "Q" for "Quicktime". In your browser, save that page using "save file as...". Mp4 - Bingo!


If any of this doesn't work for you, or if you have any tips on finding the URL for videos using a different browser than Safari, we would love to hear from you.

Anything Audio

The Ask Auntie Web column in the Spring edition of MELTA News featured "Anything Audio". Over the next few days we'll be reprinting the column here with all of the links in place for your convenience.

A member, let's call her Audrey, wrote in asking,

Dear Cousin Web,
I think I'm missing out on audio available on the internet. I'd like to use it more in my classes, but I'd also simply like to listen to English broadcasts and podcasts myelf. I can listen to everything on my computer when I'm online, obviously, but what do I need to do if I want to subscribe to a weekly podcast from the web, like Working Lunch from the BBC? And how about the news features that play in RealPlayer: Can I download them, too?

Dear Audrey,
If you want to download audio files to use offline, then the mp3 podcast format is what you want. These files were designed to be played offline on the iPod or other players. Unfortunately, the streamed audio files used by news sites only play online (viz. "Working Lunch"). You can listen or watch online, but you can't take that file with you.

However, if you want to tinker with "ripping" (=rerecording files into a new file or file format) streamed audio files, you might try the VLC media converter (http://www.videolan.org/vlc) or Zamzar, an online converter (http://www.zamzar.com). You can also use recording software such as Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) to rerecord the online file while it plays. I didn't find a way to save the audio, let alone the video for "Working Lunch" to my computer, though. Have any of you tried to do this with success? If so, please send us your tips. Until then, there are plenty of podcasts ready to go.

We asked around at a recent MELTA Business English workshop, and the participants volunteered their favorite podcasts:

BBC Radio 4 (Gillian, Timea and Lisa)
onestopenglish (Gillian, Rosemary and Dianne)
Business Spotlight podcast (Joan and Dianne)
BBC 6-minute English (Marion)
BNET.com Useful Commute (Susan)
Guardian Weekly (Fran)
NPR: 7AM ET News Summary Podcast (Frank)
NPR: Car Talk's Call of the Week Podcast (Frank)
TED Talks (Anne)
The NYT Ethicist (Joan)
The Street (Brian)

Getting started with podcasts: From feed to desktop to player

One way to get individual episodes from a podcast series is to follow the RSS feed button (orange square). RSS (Really Simple Syndication) software organizes online sources of information for you. Clicking on the button takes you to the page containing the episode description(s) and the audio file name(s) ending in "mp3". Copy the audio file you want onto your computer. On a PC/Microsoft, right click your mouse and select "save as". On a Mac "right-click" using "control" and your mouse, or drag and drop the file onto your desktop.



If you want to get a podcast regularly, subscribe to it. Download iTunes for free (from http://www.apple.com/de/itunes). Then either

1. Open iTunes, click on Advanced and you'll see the option "Subscribe to podcast". Click on that and paste the feed link to the podcast you have selected (ending in "/rss.xml") into the box. Then click on "OK".
2. OR go online to the iTunes Store (the button is on the left sidebar in iTunes.) You will see "Podcasts" on the top right. Under that is "Kartegorien". Click on "Bildung" and, on the right, click on "Alle anzeigen". Browse, scroll down, select what you want and click on "Abonnieren" next to your selection(s).

The latest episode of the podcasts you subscribe to will automatically load whenever you press "refresh" in your podcast directory. When you subscribe, the whole archive becomes available. To download an old, archived episode you must click on the "get episode" button. Podcasts are free, but to browse the archive or download transcripts, you may have to become a premium member. This is often free, especially if you subscribe to the print publication (e.g. Business Spotlight or Spotlight); just register on the publication's website.
Save the mp3s you want to listen to onto your mp3 player using your player software. Every player is a bit different.

Converting your old cassettes to MP3 files

If you are like me, you will have a collection of ancient records, cassetttes, CDs and now MP3 files.

A while back I decided it was high time to get all my audio recordings into one format, namely MP3.

OK, but how do you do that? That's a good question, but converting an analogue audio signal to a digital one isn't as difficult as I'd first thought.

What you need is:

a cassette recorder

a computer with a sound card

a cable to connect the cassette recorder to your sound card

a free program like Audacity which can be used to record and edit sound.

Plug the cable into the 'Line out' socket of your cassette recorder and stick the other end into the 'Line in' socket on your PC's sound card.

Open Audacity and select the input type 'Line in'. This tells Audacity to record from the 'Line in' socket on the sound card. To do this, open the 'Edit' menu and then select 'Preferences'. A new screen appears - click on the "Device" selector to chose your input (in this case, soundcard) and change the "Channels" selector mono or stereo recording as appropraite.

Next click on the red record button in Audacity and press the play button on your cassette recorder.

After you have recorded the cassette or the tracks you wanted to record, press the yellow stop button on Audacity.

Easy, wasn't it?

Now all you have to do is convert your file to an MP3 format. To do that, go to the 'File' menu and select 'Export as MP3'.

The MP3 file you have saved to your computer can also be converted to WAV file and burned to a CD.