8 Free Screencasting Tools For Tony!

• Free Screencasting Tools List (Updated)
  
• Tony Karrer's blog

"Toast! Cut! Cam! Jing! Flow! Wink! You name it, they record it!"

"...I'm now back to searching for a free tool that works to create screencasts that I can use for my blog. I don't do it very often, so it needs to be free. The best thing would be if I could also do it while recording voice from myself and someone else. In other words a screen sharing tool with voice and screen recording. And it needs to be low cost or free." - Tony Karrer

Here we go, Tony:

• Screenr
  Create screencasts for your followers as easily as you tweet. Just click the record button and you'll have your ready-to-tweet screencast in seconds.
  
  
• Flowgram
  A new communications platform that lets anyone package and share anything on the internet. A flowgram combines the advantages of slide presentations and screencasts with an interactive user experience that fully exploits the fact that almost all the information we might ever need is already on the web. Using the zero download Flowgram Maker, creators can assemble and annotate web pages, photographs, videos etc on any topic, and add a voice narrative which provides context, emotion and consistency.
  
  
• FreeScreencast
  RECORD your screen, UPLOAD, and SHARE online with ease!
  
  
• Jing
  Snap a picture of anything on your desktop. Record a video of what you do, or what you see, Instantly uploaded. Share in email, IM, or blogs.
  
  
• Webinaria
  Create and share software demos online with their screen recording/ screencast software.
  
  
• ScreenToaster
  Is a free online screen recorder, enabling you to record your screen activity, publish the video on the Internet, and stream the recorded video in Flash.
  
  
• WebKut
  Is an AIR application that allows you to capture web pages, or parts of them in a very simple way. It provides you 3 capture options: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection.
  
  
• CamStudio
  Enables you to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs) .
  
  
• Wink
  A Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc).

Tony is already using Jing, which means that there are another seven for him to explore. Hm, I am pretty sure that Tony is familiar with most of the tools suggested here, but are you?

Have fun exploring free screencasting tools! If you got any other free cool screencasting software to suggest, show me the URL. And then...

As a result of this wonderful learning conversation (comments) and exploration (adventure), we have discovered several more free screencasting tools, which are:

• Screenjelly
  Records your screen activity with your voice so you can spread it as a video via Twitter or email. Use it to quickly share cool apps or software tips, report a bug, or just show stuff you like.
  
  
• Screencast-O-Matic
  Is a Java-based application that anyone can use to create screencasts of their screen with no additional software to download. Without even registering to the site, you can record anything that happens on your screen just by setting the capture size, choose if you want audio included, and click go. When done, you can publish the screencast online or download it in .mov format. Free to use.
  
  
• uTIPu
  Record and share your screen in a video. You get unlimited public video sharing, 250MB private video sharing, and you can upload directly from TipCam.
  
  
• Capture Fox - Firefox Add-on
  You can capture your screen and record your voice to make screencasts (tutorials, e-lessons, etc.).
  
  
• oRipa Screen Recorder
  Is a handy tool to record your Windows desktop activities in real time and save it as a video file. oRipa Screen Recorder also captures anything you can hear on your PC, such as, music and talking through the PC's microphone.
  
  
• ISU (I Show You)
  Is a free software for Windows platforms that enables you to easily record a sequence of operations in real-time as you perform them on your screen. After the screencasting session ends, you can edit your recording by drawing on it, adding notes, or recording a voice over narration. When done, you can send it to your friends via email, messenger or any other application.
  
  
• Debut
  Is a free screen capturing software for Windows that anyone can use to capture video or still images from any device. The setup comes in just 400kb and, after you install it, you can capture any part of your screen, or even capture videos from a webcam. You can export the video in any format and save the screenshots in JPG format. Debut is completely free to download and use.
  
  
• AviScreen
  Is an application for capturing screen activity (ScreenCast) in the form of AVI video or images. Beside the usual options defining the capture area, AviScreen has a unique feature called “follow the cursor”. Using this mode you can produce a video or image of relatively small dimensions while covering all mouse activity over the whole screen area.

And if that is not enough, Nico Canali De Rossi and Luigi Canali De Rossi (aka Robin Good) has done a great job in comparing many of these screencasting tools mentioned above (comparison table), enabling us hopefully to make a wiser and quicker choice. In addition, as a result of exploring their great post (2nd November), I discovered another interesting tool called Tablefy. This tool enables people to easily publish and compare their data online (dynamic comparison tables). The irony of this whole learning adventure is that their post was published a few days earlier than mine (27nd October, 2008) , meaning if I had found it earlier, it would have saved me...

But then again, we might have missed out on some of the screencasting tools not mentioned yet in their post.

In short, learning and discovering together and apart makes a screencasting lot of sense :)

Do You Want To Learn Arabic?

• ArabicPod
• Madinah Arabic
• Learn Arabic (speak7)
  
• Babel - Arabic
• Arabic.org

Arabic is the mother tongue to over 225 million people in Africa and Asia, and there are as many as 246 million non-native speakers (source). Arabic is spoken throughout the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Mauritania, and Chad. In short, learning a bit of Arabic makes whole lot of sense, whether you are doing it for religious, social or business purposes.

LEARN ARABIC FOR FREE?
Here are five (5) learning spaces to get you started:

• ArabicPod
  
  This website created by Mohamed Moshaya and Ehab Saleh is dedicated to providing innovative and effective methods for learning Arabic. They use web 2.0 technologies such as podcasts, videos, games, etc. to provide a rich learning experience. Although, they only launched recently (March 2008), their free online lessons have been downloaded more than a million times. You will really enjoy their podcasts, which involves two guys having an engaging chat while learning Arabic (Thumbs up!). I also like that one can rate and provide comments to each podcast, which again facilitates learning conversations and continuous improvement. All of their audio podcasts can be freely listened to and downloaded. For most of the other content, there is a subscription fee which is setup to cover the costs of running the website. I hope that some noble investor will come in soon to cover the costs, so that we all can enjoy the rest for free.
  

• Madinah Arabic
  This free site has been designed to teach the Arabic language inspired by one of the most popular courses being used today - the Madinah Book Series by Dr. V. Abdur Rahim which is used by Madinah University to teach English speaking students the Arabic language. This course will eventually contain (under development) everything an individual needs to learn the Arabic Language (Classical and Modern Standard) from complete beginner to advanced level. If you prefer a straight-to-the-point kind of course (efficient learning!), you have found it right here. I don't mind that the audio provided is being chunked to phrases and words, but it would be wonderful if we could also download the full lesson in one MP3 file (conveniently access lessons on our IPods and Mp3 players). But, besides that it is a splendid and noble initiative.
  

• Babel - Arabic
  
  This is an online course in Arabic. It teaches you basic sentences, how to write, how to count and introduces Arabic grammar. All with sounds! This course will teach you about 400 of the most common words in Arabic. All lessons are the product of cooperation between an Arab native and a non-Arab who have managed to learn the language.

• Learn Arabic (speak7)
  Learn Arabic for free, their lessons are available to anyone who wants to speak Arabic, from grammar, vocabulary, expressions, phrases and more.
• Arabic.org
  Here you can learn the basics in Arabic language, and they also offer professional Arabic translation and calligraphy services. Interestingly, this Arabic owned small firm is located in New York City (of all places). They want to create an online site devoted to Arabic. It will be interesting to see how this evolves. They should also consider offering Arabic courses on ITunes (free and commercial versions).
  

Whether you are 10 or 72 years-old, I suppose you might find one of these four learning opportunities a useful starting point to learn the basics in Arabic. I like the variety of approaches each initiative has taken to facilitate learning. Some people might want to learn through learning conversations (e.g. ArabicPod), while others might want to learn efficiently in a book-style format with audio support (e.g. Madinah Arabic). Either way, these five learning initiatives provides us with different approaches to satisfy different learning styles. Why not use all four to get us started?

Finally, click here if you want to learn Arabic in less than 9-minutes (video). WOW!

Do you have any better suggestions to learn Arabic online for free? I am still a beginner :)

ZaidLearn's PowerLink Collection Smashes The 1000 Barrier!

• Delicious Version
• Diigo Version

"Imagination is more important than knowledge..."
Albert Einstein

IMAGINATION!

WOW! Dear President Obama, thank you so much for your support and encouragement. I am literally flattered to get your recognition and appreciation for my historical achievement. "Zaid, I have been a fan of your site, ever since you discovered my little secret. Your discovery led me to your work, and I have been following ever since."

Sometimes I wonder where I get my imagination from! Nurturing our imagination is a critical learning tool to facilitate creativity, innovation and invention (perhaps the most important!). Imagination is an amazing visualization tool, and many people apply this to improve their abilities and skills in the real world. For example, great footballers (soccer players) often use their imagination to visualize how they might score before a game, and it often helps them to make the right decision when the real opportunity comes along.

However, imagination is also important to our mental health and happiness. When we were kids, we could have lots of fun with ourselves using our amazing imagination. I remember scoring the winning goal in the FIFA world cup final, slam dunking Shaq in his face, running the 100 meters in 4 seconds, winning Wimbledon without picking up a tennis racket, beating Mike Tyson in the first round, fighting aliens in galaxy Gaga, etc.

But then when we grow older our imagination and dreams seem to fade away, and the real world hits in. We come to realize that perhaps we will not be able to achieve such remarkable things that our imagination inspired us with when we were young. Our urge to greatness (Freud), or urge to feel important (Carnegie) in the real world becomes a burden, which leads many into depression, and some to mental hospitals... (Enjoy your imagination!)

I will continue this interesting 'Imagination' stuff in another post, but now let's get back to...

POWERLINKS

I am glad to announce that my PowerLink collection has smashed (or broken) the 1000-barrier. In other words, the PowerLink collection consists now of more than 1000 links (or URLs). If you are looking for juicy learning resources, I strongly recommend (Isn't this shameless self promotion!) that you subscribe to one of my PowerLink collections (Delicious or Diigo). Currently, there are 130+ delicious users already subscribing to the delicious collection. It is called 'fans' there, which I find kind of annoying. 'Followers' would probably sound more appropriate. Perhaps they could let us change the term to whatever word we like. Now that would be cool!

Though, you don't need to be a delicious or Diigo user to subscribe. Instead, one can for example copy/paste the link (e.g. http://delicious.com/zaidlearn) into an RSS Newsreader (e.g. Google Reader) and swoosh you will get the latest updates as I discover. Better yet, if you think that I discover a lot of rubbish, and only want to for example subscribe to the new learning tools I discover, you can subscribe to a particular tag (http://delicious.com/zaidlearn/Tools). Here are three tags that might be interesting to subscribe to:

• Learning Tools (200+)
• EduGames(100+)
• EduBlogs (70+)

But, why subscribe to ZaidLearn's PowerLinks? Excellent point! Actually, there are many other great link collectors out there (Hint: check my delicious network for a few) with more links and fans (I mean followers!) than me (by a couple of miles!). In other words, you should subscribe to them, too.

So, why I am sharing all this with you. Actually, I want you to enjoy all the great learning resources I discover, which might not be reflected on this blog. Although, one can post daily updates from delicious or Diigo, I prefer not to, due to some funny mind boggling preferences. Also, one can actually find the latest updates on the right side column of this blog (somewhere there!), but that might not be so clear to most readers.

So, can you please answer the question? Alright, my PowerLink strategy is not to index and collect everything under the sun. Google does a great job at that. Coming to think of it, my PowerLink strategy is similar to how Warren Buffett might invest into a stock or company (Buffettology). In other words, when I look at a learning resource, I ask a few critical questions, and if they fail to meet them, I am not going to add them. For example, if I can't imagine visiting the link in a few years time, I will not add them to my PowerLink collection.

For example, there is no problem in indexing a few thousand learning tools, but how many of them would you really want to use? So, instead I only index those tools that I find useful, or really get me excited (and are FREE as far as I know!). For experts in the field that might sound annoying (they might want the full list), but for new comers it is often a blessing (or curse if you miss out) in disguise (No time!). It all depends! You might want to call it ZaidLearn approved learning resources. Nope, that didn't sound good.

Anyway, one way or the other, I do hope the PowerLink collection helps people out there. If it does, I am happy!


PRESIDENT?
Finally, I have decided to run for the President of the United States in 2012. "Have you gone pot! You are a foreigner, it is impossible! Even worse, you are a Muslim! They would...!" You got a good point there, but it is nice to imagine sometimes, what if? I firmly believe I could have done a better job than Bush (mark my words!). But, let's hope that President Obama is a positive change for America and the rest of the world. "He is not the President yet!" Can you imagine Palin becoming the President of United States? "You mean MCaine!" Is that any better? :)

The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU)

• Link to P2PU

"The Peer 2 Peer University is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well.

Find out more about what P2PU courses look like, and consider creating your own."

Oh boy, this project looks interesting! Though, you got to be patient, because you can't sign up for any courses before early 2009. In the meantime, you can join the mailing list, and be part of the fun before the big launch.


LEARNING STRATEGY?
P2PU learning experience is based on interaction between peers in small communities. They will offer scheduled "courses" that run for 6 weeks covering university-level topics. Learning takes place in small groups of 8-14 students. Each course package contains the syllabus, study materials and a schedule. Courses are designed by someone with expert knowledge, a "sense-maker", and facilitated by a "class tutors" who is familiar with the content, and can support the group of students...bla, bla.

In a nutshell, we can complete the courses faster than usual, enjoy small learning groups, and that makes a lot of learning sense to me.

I think eventually I will have to join and be part of this potentially great learning adventure. And it is wonderful that there happens to be at least one passionate Norwegian Viking (Stian Håklev) behind the scenes. You need real passion, will and support to enable such projects to succeed, and it looks like they have already established a strong team. In short, let's explore :)

Mathway Teaches Us How to Think Maths Step-by-Step

• Mathway
• Via John Evans

Mathway solves our math problems with step-by-step explanations. It is for students, parents, and teachers, and covers the following math subjects:

• Basic Math
  
• Pre-Algebra
  
• Algebra
  
• Linear Algebra
  
• Trigonometry
  
• Precalculus
  
• Calculus

In addition, it also provides Graphing and Glossary definitions.

I love the fact that it not only gives us the results, but teaches us the process step-by-step, too. Although, results are important, it is only when we master the process that we can really apply what we learn to other problems, scenarios and contexts. If we understand the process we can use the knowledge, skills and competencies learned to create new value added ideas, processes, services and products.

Isn't that what we want our students' to able to master in the era of learning, creativity, innovation and invention? :)

PhotoFunia Uses Face Detection Technology To Good Effect!

• PhotoFunia
• Via Hongkiat
  

1. Select an Effect
2. Select Your Photo
3. Here We Go!

Seriously, it is that simple! Alright, PhotoFunia needs to add more juicy templates to really get me super excited. But it is a good start.

Then you might ask (after testing it), "But how did you that?" My answer: PowerPoint 2007 and Paint!

As I realize that I will be hyper busy with workshops and presentations for at least one month, I will have little time to really sit down and write long (boring) blog posts. But instead, I will be posting 1-2 amazingly short learning nuggets every week that explore things that really give me learning goose bumps. This photo magic tool is exciting, but they need to add more cool templates. As that is probably the easy part, expect more to come soon :)

27 Inspiring Women Edubloggers

• SlideShare Version
• SlideBoom Presentation
• PDF Version (31 MB)
• Text Version (Delicious)
  

"Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" - John Gray

MALE DOMINATED LIST
Sometimes in life you begin to wonder if that really makes sense. Thanks to Stephen Downes, Janet Clarey discovered my 25 Edublogs presentation, and then pointed brilliantly out that 22 of the 25 listed are men. In a nut shell, it kind of added fuel to a discussion about "women, blogging, representation, respect, recognition, and readership" (my own intepretation) that was taking place at the Brandon Hall Research Innovations in Learning Conference (Sep 25-26, 2008).

To get a clearer picture of what I am talking about, I strongly recommend that you read all the comments. I found it especially interesting to read about how women themselves reasoned why women edubloggers perhaps don't get the respect, recognition and appreciation that they really deserve. You will find all sorts of reasons in the comments section and it has also continued in blogs elsewhere (e.g. Michele Martin and Cammy Bean). It is kind of interesting, so I will leave it for you to explore and reflect that. I believe for my part, I have added enough fuel to the discussion, and have other ideas on how to make a difference. But first...

CLARIFICATIONS
I just want to make a few important points about my link visualization presentations. First, none of my visual collections are rankings or top this and that. They are simply resources, tools or people that I find interesting and useful, and would like to recommend to others. If my collections were really rankings (e.g. the top 25 EduBlogs), certainly I would not reveal the No. 1 ranked first (unless I was an idiot). What an anti-climax would that be?

Though, I can't blame some people out there in the twitter or blogging world for billing it as a Top 25 EduBlogs list, because when you see that Stephen Downes is the first one to be mentioned in the EduBlogs list (with a No. 1 tag), you might assume it is. I think I should have made this clear in the presentation to avoid such interpretations. I simply use numbering, so that viewers know where they are, and how much they have covered. And I like to start and end a collection with a bang to get that first and last impression effect. In short, not ranking, just numbering.

Finally, besides stimulating my right-brain, I am driven to create these visualized lists, because this way of sharing stuff is proving to be more effective than any other method that I have tried. For example, my 101 Free Learning Tools presentation has now been embedded or mentioned in more than a hundred sites and viewed 15600+ times (in less than 2 months!). These presentations might not make it efficient and convenient to access the links, but they seem to attract more visitors and feedback from around the world. Anyway, to solve that problem, we should provide both a text-based and visual list. Anyway, the coming visual list will be the last (for a while), as I want to reflect deeper on certain learning or e-learning issues in the coming months (2 posts a month, I predict).


WOMEN EDUBLOGGERS
Thanks to Janet Clarey's great 22-3 discovery, I have taken on another learning mission to explore more women edubloggers and below is my discoveries in a visually stimulating manner.

27 Inspiring Women Edubloggers

Yes, it is a lesson learned. I have learned a lot! I have discovered some amazing blogs (from Venus). Overall, women edubloggers seem to discuss more personal stuff, but as long as it is linked to some form of learning, I am all ears. Sometimes we need to get personal to be effective in our professional life. We are all humans (at least those that read blogs), and showing a bit of cracks in our personal life enables others to relate to us more. We might not get a journal publication with our personal stories, but we might manage to motivate and engage more readers or learners to learn and think. The mashup of logic, facts, emotion, visuals and stories can engage and inspire a person to learn, so why not utilize these tools, if you are doing it for noble purposes.

Instead of breaking recommendation lists apart, perhaps it is time to celebrate and promote our own discoveries. If you ask me, Edublogs (both male and female) don't get enough attention, appreciation, recognition, respect or readership they deserve in the media, or by the educational community at large (period!). Maybe it is because edublogs in general are not stimulating or entertaining enough, or maybe it is also because we don't do enough to promote our own kind beyond our small little learning communities.

Anyway, I do hope that one day edublogs are as widely read as political and celebrity blogs are today. Never mind the celebrity and political life, but it would be great if more educators around the world are awaken to the amazing learning possibilities that this online world is already providing us. Let's hope for the sake of our kids, we don't wake up too late.

I am still learning :)