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eduCanon; add interactivity to your videos

eduCanon is a really nice, simple and free tool that can be used to enhance the videos that you create. It's made by teachers for teachers. You can choose an existing video, bring it into the eduCanon dashboard, add in questions in various formats, choose the appropriate actions to use for the responses and you're ready to go.

Present.me

If you're looking to narrate some slides, PDFs, a Prezi, Google document and so on, you might want to consider Present.me. Upload some material, view it on the screen, edit what you're going to say, record it and then share it across social media. Free and commercial versions. Nice and simple.

Brainshark - adding voice to PowerPoint

Brainshark is an attractive tool - you can upload a presentation and then narrate it, creating a nice guide through what you're teaching, selling and so on. You can also upload photographs and narrate a story with them, or record your own podcast online. There are other tools out there which do the same sort of, thing, so this is another addition to that collection. Presentations cannot be downloaded in the free version - but you could always use a screen capture program to do that if you were desperate. I looked for pricing options, but couldn't find any - you had to contact their sales team, which makes me think it's going to be eye wateringly expensive. However there's still plenty that you can do in the freebie.

Keepvid to save YouTube videos

Want to easily download YouTube videos? There are a number of ways that you can do this, and one of the easiest is to use Keepvid. Simply visit the site and then input the URL of the video that you want. You can then just download it straight away. You do however need to have java installed, but that's the only issue.

 

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PixiClip; stickynote software on steriods

Stickynote software lets you create a little wall and then post stuff to it - Padlet is my favourite of these tools, but I thought that I'd take a look at PixiClip because it does promise a lot. You are able to record your voice, doodle, share material, use a webcam and so on. Pretty nifty. Except... I couldn't get it to recognise my webcam or my mic, and it wasn't interested in playing with the image that I uploaded. This might be a really good tool, but in all honesty, I have no idea! :)

via www.pixiclip.com

Bypass YouTube regional restrictions

ProxFree is a simple and completely free web proxy service.  Unblock and access any YouTube videos in your country now. If you can't watch the video that you're interested in because it's not being shown in your country for some strange reason, Proxfree may be a solution for you. Simply enter the URL of the video you want to watch, choose a server location and IP address and you're then able to view the video. If you still find it's difficult, try a different server location. Should you do this? I have no idea - it depends on why a video was blocked in the first place. However, it's always worth knowing how this stuff works, because if you work in a school for example, you'll need to understand how children may be able to see stuff that you're not expecting them to be able to view.

Freemake Video Converter

Freemake offers a variety of tools, such as the Video Converter. You can use it to download a programme in one format and turn it into another. This does have some interesting side effects. Suppose you download a programme from the BBC iPlayer, and you pick the Windows Media Player as the download option. When it's finished, you can drag the file to your library, and watch it - but of course you only have 30 days to do this. However, if you right click the file and select Properties, and then click the Media usage rights tab, you'll see that it can only be played to the specific date.

However, with the Freemake Video Converter you can click the video option, open the protected iPlayer file and select a different format, such as AVI and click convert. When it's finished, you can drag the converted file across to your media player library and click the Media Rights tab again and you'll see the restrictions have now gone. I wouldn't advise sharing the file with anyone else however, and of course you shouldn't use this option to keep a programme longer than the Media Rights attached to it in the first place.

Weavly

Mix videos, GIFs & sounds! I know no more than that.

Free Stock Footage

If you need some stock footage for a video presentation that you're doing, you might want to take a look at www.stockfootageforfree.com which gives you access to, unsurprisingly, free stock footage. It doesn't have a huge selection at the moment, and it is watermarked, but it's the first example of the type that I've seen. So if you want to slot in a television being smashed in slow motion, or a woman in a field plaiting wheat or any of a few dozen other options, this is worth taking a look at.

Wibbitz - Text to Video

OK, this is quite a fun and funky little tool - give it a URL or an RSS feed and Wibbitz will take the content and turn it into a sort of quick 'headline news' magazine for you. It does come with a very computerised voice, which doesn't work too well, but well enough. This is what my main blog looks like:

 

You can edit the video to change the size of it, and also the theme, so if you don't like the breaking story concept, you could switch it for urban jungle or piano groove for example.