www.mitchellmedia.co.uk

ITQ4AIT: Evaluating text to speech options for blogs

Ron — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:45:48 +0000

Those of us working as TechDis Accredited Trainers have also been piloting and completing the new ITQ for Accessible IT Practice. This is an excellent qualification to raise accessibility and inclusion awareness and understanding amongst staff, regardless of their job role, and to hopefully take this understanding and the support of disabilities and individual needs outside of the specialist roles such as learning support staff etc.

One of the core units is the Text to Speech (TTS) unit and part of this is to evaluate at least 3 different utilities or software which provide or include TTS functionality. For my research and completion of this unit I wanted to explore options which work online with blogs and ideally applications which provide additional functionality such as downloading the TTS as an audio file and/or an automatic podcasting feed and where possible other accessibility benefits. I also wanted to focus on solutions which made it easy for a blog visitor to listen to the text from a blog post without having to install any software and ideally not have to download software or have it already installed.

After some research I decided to try three different tools which I could add to my self-hosted WordPress blog to enable listening to at least some of the blog posts and page. I say “at least some” because even without testing I realised that not all posts would work successfully given the range of multimedia content e.g. I’m quite often demonstrating how to email multi-media content and various file attachments to blogs as part of training sessions so the heading of the post will be text but the main content may be a video or document which is unlikely to be converted.

This particular blog post is not only a summary of this testing but also one of the specific posts I used to complete these tests. The results and conclusions were then added after testing.

I added and enabled the plugins or code required to include these options in my blog and the three different tools I selected to test and evaluate are as follows:

TechDis Toolbar
This can be added to any website or blog or vle simply by adding some code and provides many more accessibility benefits than just TTS. Further info and code available at http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ToolBar/

VozMe
This is a free service which again provides the relevant code to add to different blogging tools. It doesn’t provide the additioanl benefits of the TechDis toolbar but does provide a link to download the TTS conversion as a .mp3 file and also the blog owner can choose between male and female voices as well as how the link appears. Further info and code available at http://vozme.com

Odiogo
This is another free service which provides TTS embedded with each blog post as well as an automatically generated podcast feed for subscribing to or download the posts as .mp3 files. Further info and code available at http://www.odiogo.com/

Evaluation and conclusions to be added soon…

Presentation used during the afternoon session at WNC today

Ron — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:43:03 +0000

Download now or preview on posterous

mlearning_intro_with_some_details_removed.pptx (290 KB)

This is the presentation and list of activities used during the session today but with some link and login details removed…

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

ipadio: Ron’s phonecasts via iPadio – 11th phonecast

Ron — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:40:02 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

ipadio: Castle College Thoughts

Ron — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:16:55 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Test of the WordPress Quizzin plugin

Ron — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:58:17 +0000

This is just a test of this ‘Quizzin’ plugin and how it displays and works on different devices. This post may well be deleted but for now it will be live while I’m testing.

I’m also keen to see if it inherits the wp touch theme and therfore looks good in itouch and iphone. We’ll see…

ipadio: Graciano Reflecting On First Presentations

Ron — Wed, 26 May 2010 10:44:06 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Using mobile technologies and my objectives for the event

Ron — Tue, 25 May 2010 11:02:25 +0000

I have two main objectives for the event:

1. To enable, facilitate and support everyone to contribute to a rich event report and resource everyone can use back in their organisations e.g. if you see and hear about the real impact of a particular technology, strategy, technique that you wish to implement or improve back in your own organisation how useful would it be to have access to everyone’s ideas and reflections regarding the same solution?

2. To demonstrate and disseminate the real impact the 3 years of MoLeNET has achieved and to use similar technologies and techniques throughout the day to evidence how simple and effective the use of m-learning can be.

Ron Mitchell

Posted via email from JISC RSC-London Engaging Learners – Evidencing Impact

Keeping the blog organised and easy to navigate

Ron — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:52:16 +0000

To keep the blog organised and easy to navigate and to make it easy to filter postings a series of tags have been added which you can use when posting by email. Although much of the day is about impact and teaching and learning topics it seems easiest to organise postings by the topic headings used in the event information. So to post ideas, examples, reflections please use one of the following tags in your subject line:

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: pre-event))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: Westminster Partnership and CETT))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: B6 College))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: Lewisham College))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: Choices4All))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: City of Westminster College))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: Kingston College))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: Havering 6th Form College))

A subject line which makes the subject of your post obvious ((tag: molenet))

Please also finish your post with your name but remember this is a public blog so you may wish to exclude your contact details and sig etc. You can prevent any automatic sig or footer appearing by adding

Posted via email from JISC RSC-London Engaging Learners – Evidencing Impact

Blooms links…

Ron — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:41:40 +0000

Not sure if these flash resources will work on the PSP but worth testing…

Bloom’s Taxonomy – An Overview tutorial (swf/flash file)

Bloom’s Taxonomy – Designing Activities tutorial (swf/flash file)

Posted via email from PSP Links

How to use PhotoStory

Ron — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:33:49 +0000

Nice YouTube demo of how to use PhotoStory. Output from PhotStory can be converted to .mp4 to run on the PSP so is an option for converting PowerPoint or PDF files into audiovisual resources…

Posted via web from PSP Links

Links to Connected Education site and resources

Ron — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:30:34 +0000

Home page: http://www.connectededucation.com

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/connectededucation

Case Studies: http://www.connectededucation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148&Itemid=42

St Hellens case study: http://www.connectededucation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=164&Itemid=134

Posted via web from PSP Links

PSP in Education video

Ron — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:26:22 +0000

Mainly has a schools focus but nice video clip summarising the place and use of PSP in education…

http://uk.playstation.com/psp/news/articles/detail/item121689/

Posted via web from PSP Links

mp4 test

Ron — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:46:10 +0000

Download now or watch on posterous

Using_the_PSP_2.mp4 (2788 KB)

just a test

Posted via email from PSP Links

PSP user manual

Ron — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:06:26 +0000

here’s a link to the PSP user manual

http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/psp/current/index.html

Posted via web from PSP Links

Why use Posterous for this

Ron — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:49:14 +0000

Typing url’s on a psp is a bit of a pain and so it’s useful to have a quick way of sharing existing and new links with a group and even easier if you can do so by email!

So I’ve set-up this additional posterous site for when I’m delivering training to share links to view on the psp and/or to share links to psp related tools and resources to view on a PC.

Posted via email from PSP Links

Group at West Thames College

Ron — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:45:21 +0000

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

eCPD Cohort 3 London – demo of making a blog post via email

Ron — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:28:30 +0000

This is a demo of making a blog posting via email – in this case via my Googlemail account. This email address is set-up to post to my Posterous.com account which in turn is also set up to post to my main WordPress based blog as well as posting to Twitter and Friendfeed. So what's the teaching and learning benefit of all this?

Well different learners may use different systems e.g. some may use Twitter and some may prefer Friendfeed, some may subscribe to my Posterous blog and others to my WordPress blog – however one posting (in this case by email feeds all fours places and could feed more if required. The RSS feeds from each of these systems could also be embedded in a VLE such as Moodle. This enables contribution via mobile devives to the web 2.0 sites mentioned but also to an institutional VLE.

I have also attached a range of files to this message: a couple of images, a PowerPoint file, a sound file and a Word document and once processed we should be able to see if and how these are displayed on the various sites.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Download now or preview on posterous

session4slide.ppt (181 KB)

Dspeech Demo by Dspeech – Tts
Download now or listen on posterous

DSpeech_demo.mp3 (355 KB)

Download now or preview on posterous

5_technologies.doc (1299 KB)

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

ipadio: Ron’s phonecasts via iPadio – 8th phonecast

Ron — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:44:21 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

ipadio: Shri

Ron — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:57:23 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Sue delivering ecpd session

Ron — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:35:01 +0000

Download now or watch on posterous

Uploaded – 12__01__2010-1.mov (7599 KB)

Group asked to consider and discuss what’s working well and what needs strengthening?

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

email to WP blog test

Ron — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:02:37 +0000

This is just a test

testing email to blog

Ron — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:53:55 +0000

Just a test

ipadio: Ron’s phonecasts via iPadio – 6th phonecast

Ron — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:59:06 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

ipadio: Ipadio Demo Ealing Hammersmith And West London

Ron — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:56:54 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

ipadio: Ipadio Demo To West Thames

Ron — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:48:41 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Fantastic keynote from Handheld Learning 09 – Zenna Atkins

Ron — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:06:27 +0000

This was a fantatisic and thought provoking keynote from Zenna Atkins Chair of Ofsted at Handheld Learning 2009.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
Chair of Ofsted, Zenna Atkins, provides opening address at Handheld Learning 2009, London. www.handheldlearning.org www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com

ipadio: Xerte Session

Ron — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:59:32 +0000

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Four new Xerte Page Types

Ron — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:37:41 +0000

A while back I started to develop some of my own page types for use with Xerte and Xerte Online Toolkits. I finally found a small bit of time to test and refine them so here’s some examples.

This first example automatically generates QR code and short URL from a link typed or pasted into the editor when authoring. The link could obviously be a link to the learning object itself e.g. displayed on the last page to share details of how to access the LO after a f2f session.

View full size >>

This second example displays the results of a twitter search feed complete with user avatars. Twitter is obviously growing in popularity and awareness of teaching and learning uses so being able to include one or more twitter feeds within an LO is a useful facility.

View full size >>

This third example is a tweak of the existing stimulating question page whereby the user is prompted to type a response to a question or task before clicking the button to compare their own response with a pre-prepared example or list of ideas and suggestions.

View full size >>

Finally this fourth example will only be of interest to those using the xlearn text wall system. It takes the RSS feed from that system and provides an optimised display of the messages for use in a f2f environment.

View full size >>

You can download an export of these templates here and either use that via the Xerte Windows application or add to your own Toolkits installation. The latter will require admin access to the toolkits installation.

I hope to create a guide at some point on how to create new templates and incorporate them into the default Nottingham provided template. Meanwhile I hope the zip is useful but as always you’ll need to use at your own risk etc.

For users of the molenet xerte online toolkits installation the new page types are already available.

Can we still use Gabcast for free?

Ron — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:34:12 +0000

There’s been some interesting discussion about this recently and after a test or two I’m still not sure!

Dave has blogged about this here: http://dsugden.posterous.com/gabcast and there’s been various discussions on Jaiku and by email. Dave’s post included details of the SipBroker number so I just tested that on a gabcast channel I set up previously and initially for a session I delivered to a PGCE group. I hadn’t used that for a while and so logged in and noticed my accounted details showing 5 minutes remaining. So I concluded that even if I connected for free via a SibBroker number that my remain minutes would reduce by the length of the recording. The reason I’m now not sure about all this is that so far the minutes haven’t reduced!

Here’s my test via the Birmingham SipBroker number:

Gabcast! PGCE #27

and here’s the full player for this PGCE channel:

I guess I’ll also have to check my next mobile bill to see if the SipBroker number actually cost anything!

Learning-to-change- changing-to-learn

Ron — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:18:51 +0000

THC & Newham Staff at MoLeNET development session

Ron — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:50:56 +0000

This was the first session looking at the MDA Compact 4 and how it might be put to good use.

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Post with image attached from htc touch diamond

Ron — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Process here is to select a picture select send by email and then add relevant text to email and of course send to posterous

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

1st day with the htc diamond

Ron — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:22:34 +0000

This is a test with this t-mobile device and hopefully will include some attachments. Had some problems setting up the mail account but seems fine now

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Info for those with Teacher access to the molenet moodle:

Ron — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:58:59 +0000

Hi all

Temi recently had some problems hiding items on the molenet moodle and I’ve been investigating the cause/solution which is proving a bit tricky. It seems if we try to hide, move or edit an item via the little editing icons alongside each item we get a blank screen rather than the editing options or the item being moved. I’ve tracked this down to part of the query string causing the problem e.g. at the end of the url you will see &sr=xy where xy equals a number representing the current topic number. If you remove that end part of the string e.g. &sesskey=aLrm8dUXJG&sr=10 the bit in red here and hit return the edit will work.

However this is obviously not right and I shall investigate further and report back asap.

From some tests I’ve just done the other solution is to enable Ajax on the site and then for you to update your profile to enable this too. This does allow much more efficient organisation of content and blocks but in previous versions of moodle was a little buggy. From my current tests it does seem the best option at the moment until I can get to the bottom of the problem with the normal method of editing so here’s where to go in your profile to switch this on:

Once you’ve selected [Yes: use advanced web features] click the button to Update Profile. Now when you turn editing on in a course you’ll see little crosses with arrow heads alongside items which you can click and drag to move the item. (see below) You can also click and drag on blocks and topics to move them around so it’s much more efficient to organise things.

Please let me know if this causes you any problems or indeed if you know anything about the cause/solution to the &sr= problem.

UPDATE: How wrong was I about all this! After researching I discovered the cause of the problem was that the site had actually been hacked like many others across the world. It was a long process to get it all sorted and anyone thinking they may have the same issue should read all the info on moodle.org http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=111710

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Another posterous test

Ron — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:42:29 +0000

So this time the test is sending a message and photo from an iPod touch which would obviously work from an iPhone too. In this case I selected a photo, press and hold to see options, select send by email, then add the relevant text above and below the image.

So the picture in this case isn’t relevant it’s just the view of a bay in Mallorca I took on holiday a couple of years ago.

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

blogging via email to Posterous.com

Ron — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:40:38 +0000

I’m just carrying out a few tests with posterous to see if it will work as a solution for some of the molenet2 activities at THC.

As a test I’m sending this via email and will copy and paste a screenshot from the site below:

The screenshot should appear above followed by this text. In addition the post should appear on my wordpress based blog automatically.

Posted via email from mitchellmedia’s posterous

Flavours of Xerte

Ron — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:52:31 +0000

This is just a quick post to share a document (pdf) I used recently to demonstrate the latest Xerte developments with the other MoLeNET mentors. Version 1.0 of Xerte toolkits is scheduled for release on 29th January and I believe will prove an incredibly popular and powerful authoring solution for practitioners as well as specialist developers.

I’ve been working with the team at Nottingham to integrate toolkits with Moodle and hopefully this will be available in the 1.0 release. Watch the Xerte site for news! http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~cczjrt/Editor/toolkits.htm

Also sample LO’s here: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/RSS/

Thank God for Norton 360! A sobering reminder and question – how do you back up your stuff?

Ron — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:00:46 +0000

About 11 days ago my main Windows laptop froze and it turned out the hard drive had developed a fault. Although of course not life and death it was nonetheless a traumatic experience even just thinking about the implications let alone dealing with them. Now most of my work I store and access from an external hard drive which I periodically backup to another drive but I do/did still store a lot of files on the D partition of the laptop some of which weren’t stored anywhere else. More importantly I store a lot of needed info and even files in my email inbox which typically resides on the C: partition which crashed. I also use an awful lot of different applications, had systems and sites stored on localhost and over the life of the laptop installed and configured a large number of programmes, utilities and updates etc. Now of course I did have an early backup created when I first got the laptop and also some of the files copied or duplicated elsewhere but still would have lost an awful lot of valuable almost irreplaceable stuff if it weren’t for the following:

1. I bought a new replacement hard drive and had a manufacturer supplied recovery disk which I used to restore the factory image.
2. I bought a SATA to USB cable/kit to view my faulty drive and was able to recover all the data from the D partition
3. That D partition also contained a regular back created by Norton 360 so after re-installing Office I was able to restore my email, calendar, contact, IE favourites etc. The more recent stuff I had via my Apple MobileMe account but certainly not everything.

With competing deadlines and family stuff etc it’s taken me about 11 days to get back to where I was before the crash. Fortunately I didn’t lose too much and may still be able to recover some files from the C partition but I’ve definitely learned from the process. I’ve purchased a second SATA drive and upgraded my copy of Casper to work with my Vista laptop and so now have a current duplicate drive which I intend to keep up-to-date periodically. Suffice to say I’ve also still got Norton 360 backing up my important systems and files on a daily basis and I’m going to be more regimental about backing up my external drives. I’m also going to ensure I have similar solutions for my MacBook and eeePC and already do for my desktop PC.

Now you may already be doing all this or have better solutions but if not please use this as a sobering reminder and think about how you back up your important stuff!

Just installed the simple-tags plugin

Ron — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I just installed the simple tags plugin so this is a test to see how it works.

It should help find things more easily on this blog/site by auto tagging but more importantly helping me tag and categorise more consistently.

BlogDesk

Ron — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:07:33 +0000

This is just a test post using

This is a free Windows based RPC tool for WordPress and other blogs. So far it looks like a really useful and fast way of posting including uploading images complete with alt tags and links etc

Using WordPress with an iPod Touch (or iPhone)

Ron — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:41:14 +0000

WordPress App

The plugins and apps for using WordPress with the iPod Touch (and iPhone) seem really great. The first thing I tried was the free WordPress app which seems to work really well including the option to include and upload photos.

iPod Touch screen showing WordPress App

The screenshot below shows the write screen.
There are limited options but anything more complicated would probably be best done on a larger screen device.:

iPod Touch WordPress App showing write screen

WordPress Theme
Having installed the WP iPod Touch plugin I have to say it seems to work brilliantly. The 1st screenshot below shows the standard blog postings with links to search and also a link to the menu.

WordPress iPod Theme showing postings

This is the menu view showing the icons I chose in the plugin configuration. There’s also a link in the footer to switch to view the site via the normal theme and back again. Although my normal theme seems ok on the Touch this optimised theme does work much better. Thumbs up to the developers for a great job!

WordPress iPod Theme showing menu

Taking screenshots on iPhone and iPod Touch

Ron — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:18:16 +0000

I was looking for a way to capture screenshots on my iPod touch and started searching online for a solution. I was assuming that I needed to download an application of some sort but then I found a video tutorial on technorati showing how easy it is using the latest iPod Touch software. Basically it’s get to the screen you want to capture, hold in the menu button then quickly press the on/off button and that’s it! The screen goes white momentarily and the image gets stored in a saved images directory in the main images directory. The clips below shows this in action.

There’s some example screen shots in my posting about the iPod Touch WP theme and App.

My first post on my new site/blog

Ron — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:37:41 +0000

Lake Louise Canada

so this is just a test post, a test of the categories I’ve just added and a test of uploading an image via my iPod Touch.

The image was a quick pic I took a couple of years ago of Lake Louise on a tour of the Canadia Rockies.