Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing quizzes that can be printed to paper or published directly to your WebCT CE, Blackboard, Moodle and other eLearning system course.
Give your online course a voice! Wimba Voice Tools are perfect for language learning and creating vocal exercises in any subject, or just adding that “human presence” to your course. These web-based voice tools facilitate and promote vocal instruction, collaboration, coaching, and assessment. Increase the interaction and student engagement level of any online class by allowing students to easily embed vocal interactions into the page level of their CMS. Have an actual “discussion” board instead of the traditional text-board. Wimba Voice tools are also perfect for Podcasting!
Quickly and easily convert your Microsoft Word documents into accessible, web-ready HTML content for your website, Blackboard, Moodle, or WebCT courses. From one Word document you can generate a set of web pages that include navigation and interactive features which can quickly be uploaded to your course. Your students will think you’ve spent a great deal of time learning web design! We absolutely love this one!
We will be glad to offer a demo, or give you a quick Getting Started tutorial on any of these applications. Call (210) 458-4053 today to schedule an appointment! We can also help you install a copy of the software (if needed) on your UTSA office computer, and/or recommend any additional peripheral equipment you might need (such as a headset microphone.)
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Impatica for Power Point makes it easy to add narrated presentations to your web site or online course. You can create and add fully narrated and animated Power Point presentations to your course without plug-ins. Impatica for Power point simply converts the Power point file into a compressed format that is optimized for streaming over the internet. The Impatica file is typically 95% smaller than the Power point HTML files. Impatica for Power point supports most of the features of Power point, including text, graphics, transitions, animation effects and, of course, narration.
The Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office provides a simple way to create highly accessible and standards compliant Web versions of Office documents that are more accessible and usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. The HTML generated by the wizard supports everyone from legacy browsers and slow Internet connections to the needs of blind users with screen readers. Documents created with the wizard can be put on the web, e-mailed to colleagues, or added to your online course and read with a wide variety of Web browsers.
The premiere web page creation application is available here for you to use.
Create Adobe PDF documents for your course.
The latest image editing software.
We also have a flat-bed scanner with OCR and black & white and color Laser Printers.You are free to walk in and use any of these applications on your own anytime Monday - Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. If you would like assistance or need training, please give us a call first so that we can be ready for you when you come in.
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Viewlet Builder's screen capture process automatically reproduces the movement of your cursor, allowing you to create Flash tutorials or simulations. Instead of spending time on the technical aspects of creation, now you can spend more time being creative by using callouts, notes, interactivity and audio narration. Publish your finished tutorials as small, secure Flash files that can be delivered over the internet or embedded in your course.
Camtasia Studio is a screen video capture program for Microsoft Windows. After the presentation has been captured, the presenter is able to revise it by cutting and/or pasting different parts, as needed. In addition, the presenter is also able to overlay their voice, as well as sound effects or music onto the presentation. Camtasia allows audio/video recording while screen-capturing is in progress, so the presenter can narrate the demonstration as it is carried out, or you can wait until you have finished the screen-capture, and then record the narration from a script as the application is playing back the recorded capture.
Character Builder software lets you build multimedia materials using animated characters, or avatars that engage your students. It adds “virtual people” to your course. You can use it to turn your Power point slides and other materials into uniquely effective presentations and quizzes.
Poser is a 3D rendering and animation software program optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional form.
Add narration to you Power point presentation. Create and edit your own podcasts for students. Add music and sound effects as well as the sound of your own voice to personalize your course.
We also have a video camera, sound mixer board, and professional quality microphones and headsets for use in the studio.
Articulate Rapid E-Learning Studio Second Edition combines powerful products into one integrated package with everything you need to rapidly create e-learning courses from Power point, and to develop stunning interactive content, quizzes, assessments and surveys
These are advanced tools that will require extensive training and/or support. You will need to schedule an appointment to use the studio as we have limited space and equipment.
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If you have ever been daunted by the high cost of software – take heart! There are a number of folks who are creating no-cost applications. Know as “freeware” or Open Source software, these tools allow you to do many of the same things that you would do with more expensive applications. They are also great for struggling students on a budget! Here is a list of our personal favorite.
OpenOffice.org 2 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Available at http://www.openoffice.org
Free Power point to Flash converter creates web friendly Flash movies from your Power point content keeping its visual parameters and animation effects. Generated Flash slideshows will look as if they have always been a Flash movie. Available at http://www.ispringsolutions.com/products/ispring_free.html
The Gnu Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in GIF format. It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the printing and graphics industries; however, it is not designed to be a Photoshop clone. Available at http://www.gimp.org
Audacity is a digital audio editor application. Available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity
Want to get free sounds to use on your course?
Click here to open a Sound Clips page
CamStudio records activity from your screen and audio from a microphone into AVI video files and can also convert the AVIs into Streaming Flash videos (SWFs) using its built-in SWF Producer. Available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio/
PowerTalk automatically speaks Microsoft Power point presentations. Designed for those with difficulty speaking or an audience containing people with visual impairments. Uses standard synthesized computer speech provided with Windows (SAPI 5.1). Available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/powertalk
NVDA is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows Operating System. This software can enable blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows, for no more cost than a sighted person. Available at http://www.nvda-project.org/index.cgi
Fire Vox is a free and open source extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser that transforms it into a self-voicing application. Available at http://firevox.clcworld.net/
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iGoogle is your personalized Google page. Add news, photos, weather, and stuff from across the web to your page, and share it with others! Available at http://www.google.com/ig
Create, share, and edit documents on the web. Import your existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, or create new ones from scratch. Access and edit from anywhere. All you need is a Web browser. Your documents are stored securely online. Share changes in real time. Invite people to your documents and make changes together, at the same time. It's free -- you don't pay a nickel! Available at http://www.google.com
Share ideas with discussions or email, create pages, and share documents with group members. You can control who becomes part of the group.
Start a blog! Now you can embed presentations, add YouTube videos and schedule posts for future dates! All available from your Google account
Start your own blog. We’ve even used it for a complete website! Available at http://wordpress.com/
Wikispaces makes wikis easy: 10 second signup, WYSIWYG editing, free plans, and a huge list of standard features. Users get a subdomain on wikispaces.com. Free version supported by Google ads. No limits on numbers of pages, spaces, or members. Full RSS support; easy space backups in zip, tgz, complete linked HTML. Free spaces can choose from a variety of themes, paid spaces may edit their own HTML templates and CSS. Available at http://www.wikispaces.com/
What's a podcast? Your own audio broadcast, where you can easily record voice messages, mix in your favorite music, and share it all for the world to hear. Available at http://www.gcast.com/
Please be advised that we do not offer support for any of the free applications or services that are not hosted by the UTSA Center for Distance Learning. For more information on using any of the free tools or online services, please contact the ID2 office.
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Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute: authors create and collaborate, instructors rapidly build and share custom collections, and learners find and explore content. Available at http://cnx.org/
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. Available at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
At Merlot you can find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education. Available at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."
Text works can be found at http://creativecommons.org/text
Software can be found at http://creativecommons.org/software
Provides hundreds of stock photos licensed for free commercial and non-commercial use. Available at http://openphoto.net/
Flickr's Creative Commons pool provides a Searchable and browseable database of licensed photos from this photo sharing service. Available at http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
Open source Movies provides thousands of videos were contributed by Archive users and community members. These videos are available for free download. Available at http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_movies
Free Music for use with podcasts are available at http://www.opsound.org/pool/artist/
This site aims to provide a location where musicians can upload music under the Creative Commons license for use in Podcasts, Mashups, Shoutcasts, Webcasts and every other kind of 'casting' that exists on the 'net. Available at http://www.podsafeaudio.com/
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