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October 29-31 is the Internet Librarian 2007 conference. I’ll be part of the panel on Information Literacy in the Public Library, Monday afternoon. There’s a preliminary program here.
Meanwhile, the Florida Association of Computer User Groups has their Fall Conference on October 6, in Orlando, Florida. I will be leading a roundtable discussion on blogging.
In between conferences and other fun stuff, I was persuaded to organize another Software Freedom Day locally. Last year’s event highlighted some of the disconnect between expectations and reality among the visitors. The expectation seemed to be that Linux could resurrect any machine: “Here’s my computer. It’s 18 years old, and I used to use DOS on it. Help me put Linux on it so I can use it again.” Needless to say, we were totally unprepared for that. But I have since found that there are a lot of people out there who think buying a computer should be a once in a lifetime event. Well, maybe I exaggerate, but not much! I think I’d better dust off the dinosaur distros for this year’s event, just in case.
Here’s our announcement:
As part of the SoftwareFreedom Day celebration, the Palm Beach County Linux User Group will be giving away CD’s with free and open source software for Windows and Macintosh computers, including programs for graphics editing, browsing, word processing, anti-virus, e-mail, web editing, and games. Free CD’s of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system will be available, as well as demonstrations of Linux, and assistance installing Ubuntu on personal computers. Monitors will be provided for those bringing a CPU to install Linux on.
Stop by for giveaways, demonstrations, and to learn about Linux, a free and open source operating system available for any type of computer.
Unlike last year, we will probably get some curious people just from those passing by, on their way into the library. I wonder how many other libraries are venues for Software Freedom Day? It seemed like a natural to me (although it wasn’t my idea), since libraries are also in the business of open access, freedom, and making materials available for free (but for a limited time!). What’s really amazing to me is the sheer numbers of places all over the globe that are doing this.
Here is an example of a handout created in OpenOffice.org Writer, using screenshots:
The post on how to do this in MSWord is here. This particular post applies to OpenOffice.org 2.0 on Windows. Although most of the handouts on the ncrlab eSnips page were done in MSWord (a few are in WordPerfect), I actually use OpenOffice.org for handouts now instead of MSWord. It’s just more portable. It’s also easier in some ways (although there are a few minor gripes I have).
Since this is Windows, get screenshots using the Print Screen key and the Paint program, as described here. Once you have the images saved, open the OpenOffice.org Writer (select “Text Document” from the options). Click on the View menu, then go to the Toolbars submenu and click on the Drawing option to make the drawing toolbar available:
The toolbar will be visible at the bottom of the page. To insert an image into the page, click on the button on the draw toolbar to insert an image from file.
Navigate through the dialog box to the picture you want to insert (in this case, the large one from the Print Screen exercise), and open it. Notice the Grahics toolbar that automatically appears docked at the top of the page. Right click on the image and click on “Picture” to get to the picture properties dialog window:
It is not necessary to change the image wrap; the default works just fine. However, if you have problems shifting the image on the page, change the image wrap to “Optimal.” The best way to resize the image is to check the box to keep the image ratio then adjust the height or width by typing in the target size or using the arrows beside the boxes to adjust the size. With the “Keep ratio” box checked, the size will stay proportional as you increase one side (either height or width). This is also an easy way to make sure similar images are the same height or width.
Click the OK button to get back to the image. Now reposition the image by clicking inside the image and dragging it to where you want it on the page:
You could also resize the image by clicking on one of the corners and dragging diagonally, but the aspect ratio will not be automatically preserved as it is when changing the size in the picture properties dialog window, so it may end up stretched in one direction or the other.
Insert the smaller image using the same steps, arranging the two images on the page beside each other. Now add a box to the larger image. Click on the box shape button on the toolbar and select the rounded rectangle from the popup display.
Click and drag across the part of the larger image that was copied to create the smaller image. An opaque box will overlay the image:
Next, remove the fill by clicking on the “color” drop down menu in the graphics menu at the top of the page, and selecting “invisible.”
Now change the line width, and color (if desired), by clicking on the related drop down options on the graphics toolbar:
Do the same for the smaller image, creating a box around the whole image, and changing the line width and color to match the box on the larger image.
Now draw lines connecting the two boxes: Click on the line tool on the Drawing toolbar at the bottom.
Now click on a corner of one of the boxes and drag the cursor to the corner of the other box, creating a line between them. Then change the line width and color, just as you did with the boxes.
Create another line between the two opposite corners, adjusting the color and width as with the first line. The final effect should look something like this:
The boxes and lines can be moved by dragging when the cursor turns into a four-way arrow over them. If the box is snapping to a grid rather than staying precisely where you move it, hold down the Alt key while dragging. This will override any grid restrictions.
I have told a lot of people, and posted advice here, to use handouts with visual cues, like this one:
Someone asked how to create this type of handout with screenshot images, so here’s a rundown on how I do it in Windows. I have used OpenOffice.org, Word and WordPerfect, but this post will only cover MSWord; I’ll do OpenOffice.org and WordPerfect posts next.The first step is to get screenshots. If you don’t know how to do that, see the instruction page for Windows.Once you have the images saved, you are ready to put the images into the handout document. Open MSWord. I usually do this in Word 2000 or Word 2002, but these steps should work in Word 97. Make sure the Drawing Toolbar is visible; if it isn’t, go to the View menu, select the Toolbar option, and click on Drawing if there isn’t a check by it already. It should appear at the bottom of the window.
Type whatever text or instructions you are going to use, and move the insertion point a couple lines below the text (by pressing the “Enter” key). Click on the “Insert Image” button on the Drawing Toolbar:
Navigate through the dialog box to the image you want (in this case, the larger image saved in the Print Screen exercise), and select it to open. If the Picture Toolbar is visible (notice it “floating” above the image in the example?), click on the text-align button. (If it is not visible, right click on the image and move the cursor to the align option.) Choose the “Tight” option in the menu that drops open.
Resize and reposition the image where you want it (notice the enclosing box disappears and the black square “handle” boxes have been replaced with circles) by clicking and dragging on one of the corner dots (to resize) and clicking inside the image and dragging (to reposition).
Click on the “Insert Image” button again, and navigate to the smaller image to insert it. Change the image alignment as with the larger image, and position it where you want it. Click on a corner and drag to enlarge the image when the cursor turns into a double arrow.Click on the Auto Shapes button at the bottom and choose the rounded rectangle from the Basic Shapes options.
Now move the cursor to the part of the image you copied earlier and drag across what you had copied. An opaque box will overlay the image.
Move the cusor back to the Drawing toolbar and click on the “Fill” button. Select “No Fill” from the pupup menu.
Click on the “Line” button and select a wider width.
Click on the “Color” button and select a different color, if desired.
Repeat these steps to put a rounded rectangle around the smaller image. You can resize the rectangle at any time by clicking and dragging its corner. If the boxes or lines seem to be snapping to a preset grid (they won’t change position to exactly where you want them), hold down the Alt key (next to the spacebar) while you click and drag.Now click on the Line button and move the cursor back onto the document.
Click on one of the corners of one of the drawn rectangles and drag across to a corner of the other drawn rectangle so there is a line from one box to the other.
If the line is not the right thickness or color, change it now using the line width tool and color tool you used for the boxes. You can also change the length of the line by clicking and dragging one of the ends.
Draw another line from an opposite corner of one box to another corner of the other box.There is only one thing left to do: “glue” them all together. Click on one of the lines or boxes. Hold down the shift key and click on each of the drawn units until they are all selected. Keep holding down the shift key and click on the images as well, so that everything is selected.Click on the “Draw” button on the Draw toolbar. Click on the option that says “Group.” Now the images and boxes will stay together as one group as you continue to add to or edit the page.
The cognitive slowing that occurs with aging affects an older adult’s ability to maintain linear connections required for learning. Most teaching involves steps, but the older adult’s ability to remember those steps is affected by the aging process (see Tip #2). What may seem obvious for younger learners can no longer be taken for granted. They will not necessarily make the connection between a cause and effect without explicit instructions broken down into discrete steps. An instruction to “click on ‘New’ in the File menu” may be easy for a younger learner, but what the older adult hears is “file” and “new” and tries to figure out what is where. They need an instruction like the example above broken down into discrete steps, such as: “Move the cursor to the upper left corner and click on the word ‘File’. Move the cursor over the word ‘New’ in the list that opens. When the word is highlighted, press the left mouse button.”
Consistently using specific step by step instructions begins to take the mystery out of computers for older adults. It also reduces the load on their processing, which is already taxed.
Also, since repetition is important (see Tip #4), handouts or other materials intended to give them practice should use discrete, numbered steps. Numbering is important as a way of isolating each step. For example, instructions to copy and paste might be broken down into four distinct steps: highlighting something, copying it, moving to the destination, and pasting. Each step should then have detailed instructions. Using the example to copy and paste, printed instructions for steps one and two might look something like this (but would, of course, include relevant visual cues):
Step 1 (highlighting):
Place the cursor on the item to be copied
Hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor across the item
When the item is highlighted, release the mouse button.
Step 2 (copying)
Move the cursor to the top of the window
Click on the word “Edit”
Move the cursor over the word “Copy” in the list that opens
When the word “Copy” is highlighted, press the left mouse button
Tip #6: Use discrete, step-by-step instructions, both verbally, and in printed materials
I will be at Seflin’s Energize 2.0 conference in Miami next week. I’ll be doing the part about blogs, along with Robin Kear, who is doing the wiki part. Like the last conference, this is for librarians.
It seems blogs are suddenly a hot topic. This is the second of four presentations I am doing this year (so far!) on blogs and blogging.
So yeah, between conferences and the day job, I’ve been a little busy. I’ll get back to the disconnected tips soon.
After much trial and error, (there’s probably another post coming comparing video sharing sites), only one site has successfully uploaded and converted part two of the Connecting the Disconnected videos. It is not the sharpest image rendering, but at least it works. 🙂 I much prefer dotsub.com, but they are still working on why the clip, which works perfectly on my end, stops halfway through playback after uploading. This is what happens on all the other sites except for (drum roll, please) Grouper.com. One is supposed to be able to embed the video at Grouper here in WordPress, but after several failed tries, I have given up on that.
So here are the links to the two videos:
Be sure to turn the sound on for Part 2 🙂
These are from the first half of my presentation at the pre-conference workshop on Libraries, Older Adults and Technology, and are intended to give you a glimpse of what it feels like to be older and trying to learn new technology. Enjoy!
It’s time to share the pain here.
I have been trying to convert my presentation from the ALA preconference program two weeks ago to a video clip and make it available online, following a suggestion from Susannah Fox.
Converting it to a quicktime video wasn’t so bad, except that converting the whole thing creates a rather large file. So I decided to split it up. I finished part 1 and uploaded it to YouTube for a test, and linked to it from the North County Regional Library Sandbox to see what it looks like embedded in a page. Unfortunately, after many trials and gnashing of teeth, I have found that no matter how good the quality is, once the clip gets into YouTube, it is reprocessed and scaled down to a resolution of 320 x 264. The problem is that clips display in a larger window, so it has to scale back up, and becomes blurry.
For anyone interested in a how to do it, Clay Redding pointed me to this post on Digital Life: From iMovie to YouTube a.s.a.p.. Although I was exporting from Keynote to Quicktime, I was then importing it into iMovie and exporting it again in different formats. I finally just used the custom settings on the Keynote export window. It didn’t make any difference to YouTube. So I tried Google Video. As long as it displays at the “original” size, which is about half the size of the space it displays in, it is sharp. But like YouTube, it gets blurry when scaled up.
So, while I work out the issues involved in getting a good copy up and displayed, here are some pointers on exporting from Keynote for anyone who many be interested:
First, make sure everything transitions automatically, including the slides, and any “builds” within the slide. This means change any “click” transitions to automatic, and give them specific transition times:
When you have it ready, or want to take it for a test spin 🙂 go to the file menu and select “Export”
First, note all of the options. Exporting to PowerPoint works fairly well, but you will have to do some cleaning up afterwards. PDF is good for creating a set of printed handouts. Images and HTML are totally useless if you have any animation, sound or builds in the presentation. I tried the iDVD option simply because I had never used it. It might be what you want if you like a pre-canned delivery with limited options after the fact. The Flash export actually worked very well for me, but unless you are uploading to your own website, rather than linking to an online service like YouTube, it is not much use.
O.K, so once you choose Quicktime, you can get to the custom settings by clicking on the Formats drop down menu and clicking on “Custom.” The Custom Quicktime Settings window will automatically appear.
You can go with the automatic size settings, or choose “Custom” from the drop down menu for video (this part of the presentation did not have any sound, so I selected “No Audio”), and put in specific numbers. It helps to keep a 4:3 ratio (which gives 1.3333~ when the width is divided by the height). In fact, Google Video pretty much requires the 4:3 ratio.
Click on the “Settings” button to get to the real meat. If the Data Rate box is set to Automatic, you will have control over the Compressor quality (in the box on the bottom). Set it to Best Quality (multi-pass)
Even if you set the compressor quality to best, it will change back to high if you select a specific data rate:
(Google Video requires at least 260 Kbps, but prefers 750). You can change the compression type; I tried some of the others, but the H.264 worked best for me. If you are going to import it into iMovie, you might be tempted to just use no compression. Don’t do this unless you are using a superfast processor with a gazillion gigs of RAM. It tries to create a file that is about 4 or 5 gigabytes (and that’s just from a small presentation), and will just freeze keynote.
You can also choose a different frame rate (the box on the left). It will default to 12 or 15. I suspect YouTube and Google Video just step it down to 15 no matter what is selected, although Google Video specifies “at least 12 frames per second.”
Once you have all your selections set, click the OK button, which will take you back to the Custom Quicktime Settings window. Click the Next button and choose a place and file name, then click the Export button. You can sit and watch the progress in slow motion, but it might be a good time for a long break walking the dog or something:
It will take a while, and use a lot of processing power (the fan on my MacBook always kicks in after a minute or so until it finishes the export). If you want more options, select the highest quality compression, and import it into iMovie, where you can make further adjustments. Editing in iMovie may be another post, once I get the second part of the presentation done, which has a lot of animation and sound. 🙂
This comes via LawLibTech, one of the blogs I track:
RSS in Plain English – Video by Lee LeFever. A simple straigtforward way to explain RSS and RSS Readers by Lee LeFever of Common Craft, social design consulting firm. Lee has other short videos introducing technology, for example, Wikis in Plain English.
RSS in Plain English – Video by Lee LeFever – Blog on the Side – Darlene Fichter
This is really good stuff, creative and fun. You have to see it (with sound) to get the full impact. The wiki video is good, too. See them both on YouTube, or at the Common Craft site. The videos are less than 5 minutes. What a great job!
I will be speaking at a few conferences this year. The first one coming up is next week’s American Library Association, where I will be part of a pre-conference workshop on Libraries, Older Adults and Technology. I will be talking about (surprise!) Connecting the Disconnected, technology training for older adult novices. I’m not sure how interesting my little talk will be compared with the other speakers and topics on the slate. If you are going to be there, you are in for a phenomenal day.