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Tag: Audio

Moodle Munch: Dec. 2020

Published 1st December 2020


Recording of the two case studies from today

My second Moodle Munch featured two presentations today, the first from Lisa Callaghan at Dublin City University Library who have used H5P to develop an interactive library skills tool, and the second from Ciara Reilly at the Marino Institute of Education who talked about their use of podcasting.

I really need to get H5P working in our Canvas. The tutorial Lisa has developed in H5P replaces a 2013 version made in Storyline, which itself replaced an earlier HTML / Flash version. However, the benefits of the new H5P version seem to come through the deployment of it using a Moodle plug-in called Subcourse which allows the library to create and manage the content centrally, and to get stats on it, a problem they had with the previous versions. I think it’s this method of pushing out content that’s really interesting. Within Canvas we could use Commons to similar effect, but this doesn’t automatically update the content, instead each course which has imported it from Commons gets a notification that a new version is available, and then the option to update. I got the impression that Subcourse in Moodle fully updates the content fully automatically. There was a useful discussion about the types of content that can be produced in H5P, and how accessible each tool and option is. Someone posted a link to this support document which breaks it down.

The second talk from Ciara was on various way of using podcasting to engage learners, such as delivering content in different formats to provide a break from screens, using it for audio feedback, and getting students to produce audio content which from their experience has helped students who are less confident writing to “find their voice”. Again, interesting debate on the pros and cons in the comments. It was interesting to note the increased use of podcasts during the pandemic, something I’ve found anecdotally and which colleagues here seemed to agree on. Ciara surveyed their own students and found that 52% reported listening to at least 4 podcasts per week. They also discussed the technology platforms they have experimented with, including Anchor.fm, Audacity, Vocaroo, and the native audio recording tool in Moodle’s Atto text box editor.

Recordings are available in the embedded YouTube above. They got that up quick, before I finished writing this! Makes me feel ashamed of the month-old draft blog post on my desktop about CanvasCon.

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Panopto Admin Training

Published 6th February 2019

panopto_settings

Second day of Panopto training covered everything we need to know in order to setup and administer the new system. This included a comprehensive run through of all of the configuration options and system settings, how to manually manage user accounts and the folder structure if required, and an overview of the various support resources which are available to us including the main support site and the process for logging incidents with their service desk.

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Panopto User Training

Published 5th February 2019
panopto_nutshell

It’s official. Contracts have been signed, Canvas integration has been tested, and now we’ve had our first batch of training for Panopto, the University’s new lecture capture system which we’re branding internally as reVIEW.

This session covered how the system will be accessed and used by Viewers (students, essentially), and Creators (lecturers). There wasn’t a lot to cover for Viewers. We’re planning on having everything integrated through Canvas, so it’s just a case of navigating to the relevant item or accessing the reVIEW tool in the menu. Playback speed can be varied between half and twice speed which is nice, caption styles can be customised, and the search functionality is impressive – it doesn’t just work on text, but also for spoken terms thanks to a machine speech-to-text engine.

It is possible for students to be given access to create their own videos by using ‘Assignment’ folders which can be configured for them by module tutors, and simple quizzes can be added at any point throughout videos to check comprehension. Results for which can be fed back into the Canvas Gradebook.

There was much more content for Creators as would be expected, covering recording and editing. Recordings can include multiple sources, including any webcam and mic connected to the computer – and more than one source – PowerPoint presentations, and your entire computer screen. Recordings are uploaded to Panopto’s servers progressively which will help in a lecture theatre environment where people need to get out quickly for the next class. Editing and post-production is done through the web using HTML5, no plug-ins required, and it is possible to edit individual sources in isolation as well as the entire video.

Closed captions can be added automatically based on the speech-to-text engine which Panopto is using to drive the in-video search, but it is also possible for Creators to request a variety of human transcription services which are contracted for separately. We’ll soon discover how well it can handle academic language and the interesting range of accents we have in this neck of the woods.

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Panopto Demonstration

Published 12th March 2018

Joined a web meeting in which a representative from Panopto demonstrated their lecture capture system as this is another area of interest for us currently. I already have some experience with Panopto from a pilot programme at Northumbria University a few years ago.

Using pretty much any standard webcam, Panopto can record lectures or workshops and the recording can be combined with a presentation in a web-based video editor. It can also be used for recording someone in front of their computer, much like the tool in the content editor of Canvas. Videos are stored on a private YouTube style repository which could potentially replace our existing media library, and video feeds can be live casted which is also something we use our media library for. One feature I don’t recall from my prior experience is the ability for students to add their own notes at specific time stamps which I like the idea of, and there is what was claimed to be a universal search function for any word or phrase spoken or shown on screen. I wonder if that has been tested with the unique range of accents we have in these parts.

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