If you have your own ideas or questions about using Online Learning, feel free to post them here.
At the pedagogy luncheon, Bruce was asking about options for video-chatting with students if Zoom proves unreliable. I've often used Discord for teleconferencing with colleagues. Discord is a voice and text chat app specifically geared towards people who play and stream games online. There's no lag, there's room for a group text chat for people to ask questions during videoconferencing, and they will likely not have issues with server bandwidth running out. You can use it through a browser or download the Discord app and run it through your computer.
The link is here: https://discordapp.com/
If anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them and help out. Discord is very easy to use and pretty user-friendly, though students should make accounts to use it. (It's free, and they can link it to their Centre email.)
(Edited by Moodle Admin - original submission Thursday, March 12, 2020, 2:55 PM)
I've put together a PDF tutorial for using Open Broadcast Software for recording lectures on your computer--it's an alternative to recording them in Powerpoint. OBS will record your desktop, plus audio from your microphone and from your computer, so if you're playing videos through your powerpoints this might be very useful for you.
Hi everyone,
I've made some quick updates to the OBS tutorial. I ran into some problems with recording at home, and had to work through them. I figure others might run into the same issue. It's a simple fix, and it's easier on your computer to record it with the settings I've suggested. Any questions, just let me know.
Amanda
Thank you, Amanda, for this excellent dummy-proof tutorial. I'm not sure if I will use OBS yet or not, but having your great instructions may convince me to give it a try. Do you prefer this over Zoom's screen-recording function?
Glad I could help! Yes, absolutely. I, personally, find OBS easier to use than Zoom, and I think the quality of the recording is better, too (though I admittedly haven't tested this outside of recording FYS presentations). Plus, if you happen to have a computer crash in the middle of the recording, you can recover the recording with OBS.
All good advantages, thanks! I need to record lectures with audio (my voice) for HUM and I may experiment with it this week. If I do I will report my experiences here.
I've been using OBS to make short video chunks of my PowerPoints & I think it will work well. Thanks Amanda for the easy tutorial! One question: Is there an easy way to have recording start only once I start a slide show? Right now I click recording & then have to go to the powerpoint and start the slide show. All those steps end up being recorded. Same once I end the slide show. It's not a huge deal but if I'm simply missing a step it would be nice to correct it.
Hi Anne!
Yes, there are apparently a couple of ways to do this. I can talk to my colleague Curtis about his method, which involves setting up OBS to record once you "tab over" to a particular window. The method I've been using (because I have headphones on when I'm recording, and I mute the "desktop audio" side of things, is to set up keyboard shortcuts, so when I hit "ctrl-R", it starts recording, and when I hit "ctrl-alt-R" it stops recording. The "ctrl-R" makes a big "DING" sound on my desktop when I'm clicked on powerpoint, but because I have the desktop audio muted it doesn't matter.
I'm happy to either talk to Curtis about his method, or talk you through setting up keyboard shortcuts, it is very simple.
Amanda