Converting m4a to mp3

Have discovered an easy way to convert m4a to mp3. I already have dwhelper installed on Firefox on the Mac, so after making a voice memo on the iphone, I email it to a blog account that will host it (I used Posterous.com in this case) and used dwhelper to download it as an mp3. Great stuff!
http://liliansoon.posterous.com/lia-singing-in-french-0

MMS on iPhone, t-mobile

At last! I have MMS enabled on my iPhone with t-mobile.
Here are the settings in case anyone else needs them:

Pop your new T-Mobile SIM card into your iPhone (the tool to do this is in the box!)

1.) Tap Settings on the Home screen 
2.) Tap General
3.) Tap Network
4.) Tap Cellular Data Network 
5.) In the Cellular Data section please tap each field and enter the following settings:

• APN general.t-mobile.uk
• Username t-mobile
• Password tm
  

Instructions for saving Picture messaging settings:

Pop your new T-Mobile SIM card into your iPhone (the tool to do this is in the box!)

1.) Tap Settings on the Home screen
2.) Tap General
3.) Tap Network
4.) Tap Cellular Data Network
5.) In the Cellular Data section please tap each field and enter the following settings:

• APN general.t-mobile.uk
• Username t-mobile
• Password tm

In the MMS section please tap each field and enter the following settings:

APN general.t-mobile.uk
Username t-mobile
Password tm
MMSC http://mmsc.t-mobile.co.uk:8002
MMSC Proxy 149.254.201.135:8080

6.) Finally, turn your iPhone off and then back on again by holding the power key and following the instructions on the screen

7.) Once you have setup MMS you will need to send a message from your iPhone before it will be fully
configured to receive MMS messages

Some interesting Web 2.0 tools, Flips and PSPs

I've gathered some PDAs together 'oop north' and have learned quite a few interesting things from them which I am just going to drop into this blog post:

1. @juecov has shown me http://www.memiary.com/ which is also available as an iPhone app. Seems to me this might make a good mini-reflective blog if used on projects. We've often suggested that Twitter could be used like this, but memiary can keep things private and the fact that it prompts you to think of 5 things is a nice way to encourage reflective practice.

2. @GraemeBoxwell has given us a whirl on prezi.com, blabberize.com (create great talking heads), dipity.com (create timelines with your imported media) and xtranormal.com (create a movie with characters simply by adding text). And for a laugh, talkingpets.org

We've looked at recording videos with the PSP and @juecov has changed her order of Flip cameras to PSPs instead as a result of seeing them today. Watching me struggle with the buttons didn't put her off! I had to call up the manual to remind myself how to play back a video we had recorded. I guess I just don't use one often enough.

The two other PDAs are making a start at recording their case studies using a dictaphone and Flip camera, but will then use Prezi or Voicethread to present the case study. The advantage of using Voicethread for this is that the PDAs can continue to reflect on their progress and encourage their staff to add to it as well, even after the case study has been posted up to the online learning space.

Some interesting Web 2.0 tools, Flips and PSPs

I've gathered some PDAs together 'oop north' and have learned quite a few interesting things from them which I am just going to drop into this blog post:

1. @juecov has shown me http://www.memiary.com/ which is also available as an iPhone app. Seems to me this might make a good mini-reflective blog if used on projects. We've often suggested that Twitter could be used like this, but memiary can keep things private and the fact that it prompts you to think of 5 things is a nice way to encourage reflective practice.

2. @GraemeBoxwell has given us a whirl on prezi.com, blabberize.com (create great talking heads), dipity.com (create timelines with your imported  media) and xtranormal.com (create a movie with characters simply by adding text).

We've looked at recording videos with the PSP and @juecov has changed her order of Flip cameras to PSPs instead as a result of seeing them today. Watching me struggle with the buttons didn't put her off! I had to call up the manual to remind myself how to play back a video we had recorded. I guess I just don't use one often enough.

The two other PDAs are making a start at recording their case studies using a dictaphone and Flip camera, but will then use Prezi or Voicethread to present the case study. The advantage of using Voicethread for this is that the PDAs can continue to reflect on their progress and encourage their staff to add to it as well, even after the case study has been posted up to the online learning space.

Blogging with the iTouch part 1

At an Apple event organised by the Sheffield College on 26 Nov 2009 and sponsored by http://www.krcs.co.uk, I was lucky enough to learn a lot more about using Macs generally (Dave Foster's session was particularly good. He's the manager of the Leeds West CLC) and some new things about the iTouch that I didn't know about as a newcomer to these devices.

Quite a few of my eCPD PDAs and MoLeNET projects are using or going to use iTouches so I thought I'd mention a couple of useful things here.

First of all, if you buy a small mic for your iTouch, you can use it as a voice recorder. Better still, set up an Audioboo.fm account and you can create podcasts on the fly. Here's my first audioboo: http://audioboo.fm/boos/92908-mic-for-itouch

The first mic I saw for the iTouch was the thumb tack-like mic at the Sheffield event: http://tinyurl.com/ybptuge

This is nice and small (and easily mistaken for a real thumb tack!) and works simply by inserting it in the headphone socket of the iTouch. However, the disadvantage is that you have to remove the mic in order to hear the recording (since you have inserted it in the headphone socket, the iTouch will try to play it back through the mic).

I went on Amazon.co.uk and bought this one instead: http://tinyurl.com/y8vcn9a

This is much bigger than the thumb tack so less aesthetically pleasing, but

allows you to simply record and then playback without having to remove it from the headphone socket. There is a slightly different model on Amazon and if anyone has any other models and experiences, it would be good to find out what you think to your mic for the iTouch.

The iTouch does not have a camera which makes it somewhat limited in capturing what you see. I learned to do a screen grab of the iTouch screen by clicking the on/off button at the top and the button below the screen at the same time. Whatever you are viewing at the time is then added to the camera roll and you can use the image in your blog or podcast. You can browse to a picture using Safari on the iTouch and screen capture it (ensure you are staying legal in terms of copyright, of course).

Other ways of getting photos to your iTouch without having to sync to iTunes would be to email pictures to yourself. Tap the picture in the email and a menu comes up with options to save your image.

Thanks to Dave Foster and James Clay for their ideas and introductions to the hardware/software.

Evernote and Dropbox have revolutionised my life

Just a quick post to say how excited I am about the possibilities of
using Evernote and Dropbox with learners to communicate and share
resources.

Set up an Evernote (evernote.com) account and download the app to your
pc, your mac, and your phone. Any note you create on your pc
automatically syncs to your phone (so reminders, to dos, directions
etc are easy to access).

So if you have an account that you have set up to share with learners,
and they use the same account details for their phone/computers, any
note that you create can be accessed on their phones. Use it to share
lesson summaries, curriculum factoids, to dos, deadlines etc. Learners
can create new notes (text, voice, photos) on their mobiles or at
their computers and these sync to the same account. At the next
lesson, you have access to rich media resources created by the
learners to explore! You can set up 'notebooks' for each learner to
help sort the notes.

Dropbox (dropbox.com) does the syncing thing but with files. Create an
account that you are willing to share with learners and download and
install dropbox on your pc. (Dropbox doesn't work on mobiles). It
appears as a folder in My Documents. You simply put files in there
that you want to share with learners, and if they have downloaded and
installed dropbox using the same account details, they will
automatically have the same files on their computer. Also a good way
for the learner to share files with the whole class. You can also put
files in the public folder and copy a link - this is useful if you
have a large file to share with people - instead of emailing it, put
it in a dropbox and send the link to the file.

I know tutors who are going to try this out with learners so I'll
report on their findings when we have something to report.

Making a paper box

Thanks to Dave Sugden for making the video on the spur of the moment and Di Dawson for showing me how to make the box in the first place!