Up Tech Tips is a series of handy technology related hints, tips and tricks written especially for University of Portland faculty who are engaging with technology in the classroom or in hybrid and online classes. Tips are written and/or curated by Ben Kahn, Academic Technology Specialist and Trainer at the University.
Here is how you can keep up with new UP Tech Tips:
If you are on an up to date version of Windows 10, you should have access to the new replacement for the venerable Microsoft Pain app – Paint 3D. The new application can create 3d graphics and is also super useful as a basic image manipulation tool.
Not a Windows person? See my earlier post on using the Preview app on the Mac for similar tasks.
With the Kaltura integration into Moodle, it’s easy for students to create and upload their own videos. These could be used to record presentations or screencast videos, to add video comments or VLOGs (video blogs), to conduct interviews, etc. You can either provide a forum for students to post videos to, or create a Media Assignment if you’d like the video to be private and/or gradable. There are many benefits to trying out the use of video for student projects:
Below is a video that can be shared with students to get them up and running creating their own videos in Moodle:
MediaSpace has long been a great way to upload and share your multimedia at UP. Many instructors, students, and staff have uploaded thousands of hours of streaming video content for teaching, learning, and sharing. But, once your video was up on MediaSpace, there wasn’t much more you could do with it. Until Now!
With the introduction of a new, modern, dead-simple video editor tool, anyone can trim and clip their MediaSpace content. Do you have a video with extra footage at the beginning that you always tell viewers to skip past? Trim it! Want to share an interesting 30-second segment from the middle of your two hour lecture video? Make a new clip!
To find out how this all works, watch the short demo video below. To try it yourself, visit any of your MediaSpace videos and choose Actions->Launch Editor from the video options.
Last week’s #UPTechtip on using Dropbox to request files got a lot of good feedback, so I wanted to follow that up with a few more Dropbox tips. Here are five more of the best tricks to know about in Dropbox to send you off to a cheery holiday break.
If you need to take and send screenshots frequently, Dropbox can be super helpful. Open the Dropbox app on your PC and Mac and go to the Preferences menu. From the Import tab, check the box Share screenshots using Dropbox. Now, anytime you take a screenshot it will save to a screenshots folder in your Dropbox.
On Mac, press Command + shift + 3 to capture your whole screen, or Command + shift + 4 to click and drag over a specific area with your mouse. On PC, press the Print Screen key to save to screenshot to Dropbox, or Control + Print Screen to save the screenshot to Dropbox and copy the link to your Clipboard so you can paste it right away. If you are a Snagit user, you can easily share your annotated screenshots or quick videos using Dropbox as well. In Snagit, just click share and choose the Dropbox output to get started.
If you have a lot of files in your Dropbox but not a lot of room on your local computer hard drive, you may want to turn on Selective Sync. This lets you choose which folders you want to sync while leaving the rest of your Dropbox files “in the cloud.”
To enable Selective Sync, open your Dropbox preferences, select the Account tab, then click Change Settings… beside the Selective Sync option.
Rather than sending individual files back and forth, it’s often easier to share an entire folder with someone. That way you can have a space that both (or more) of you can access and keep on the same page.
In Dropbox, go to the Sharing tab and choose Create Shared Folder. You can then add the email address of the person(s) you want to give access, and decide whether they can Edit (add files, delete files, comment, add to their own Dropbox accounts) or just View (see, download, and comment on) the contents of your folder.
You can download the Dropbox mobile app from your phone or tablet to access your files on the go as long as you have a cell or internet connection. You can even select files to keep downloaded so that they can be accessed offline (obviously, this takes up space on your phone).
One way I use this is to keep a selfie I took after a good haircut. That way when I go to the barber, I always have a handy picture to show them how I like my ‘do. Obviously, this is a bit of a silly example, but you can see how useful this might be in a variety of situations.
A new-ish addition to Dropbox, Paper is a super-modern word-processing app. It lives on the web and as a mobile app and allows you to add in text and media via an elegant and seamless interface. The idea is to allow brainstorming, notes, and collaboration for folks who are already sharing files through Dropbox, but I have to say I enjoy writing in Paper because of its clean, minimalist feel and the ability to easily embed all kinds of interactive and multimedia content from Dropbox or from elsewhere on the web. Paper also supports co-authoring, comments, a presentation mode, to-dos, code-snippets, many keyboard shortcuts, and Markdown syntax.
As more of our work and collaboration has moved online, most of us have a Dropbox account (or three) kicking around. I use my UP Office 365 OneDrive account to store and access most of my work, but there are also specific times or use cases where Dropbox comes in really handy! My favorite is the File Request feature.
If you ever have a need to collect a file from somone else and are having difficulties (mybe the file is too big too email, or they don’t know how to share the file themselves) you can take the initiative and create a file request in Dropbox. When you email them the request link, they simply click on it and add thier file as an upload. They don’t need to change any settings or sign-in, they don’t even need a Dropbox account! Once they have uploaded you will find their file in your Dropbox account in the File Requests folder.
For me, this has been very useful to collect guest audio when recording podcasts with outside experts at distance for the UP Techtalk podcast – guests could record their own (high quality audio) audio while we chatted over Skype (low quaility audio) and submit to me via a Dropbox request. What might you use it for?
Dropbox: What’s a File Request and How Do I Create One?
If you have intensive data storage or frequent professonal sharing needs outside of the University, you can purchase access to UP’s Dropbox Enterprise account. This comes with unlimited storage in Dropbox at a significant discount. Inquire with the Help Desk if you would like a quote! (Any account, including free accounts, may use the File Request feature).
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