Welcome Class Leaders of the Laptop Lab!

For information on taking classes of the Laptop Lab, please visit the Laptop Lab homepage. Find hands-on classes via the ACPL Events calendar.

This is the resource area for the leaders and planners of the ACPL Laptop Lab program. Staff and volunteers will find links to the documents and materials to run the class. If you are logged in via Google Docs you will be able to edit (as collaborator online) or view and download locally to your computer as PDF, Doc, PPT, etc. or to customize and print as you need.
*What classes can I offer?
*Class Leader Checklist
*Inventory
*Frequently Asked Questions
*Survey
*Flyers
*What if? How to handle speed bumps...
(Currently a work in progress.)

Don't forget that whatever publicity you produce needs to include the following language:

This project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Service and Technology Act, administered by the Indiana State Library.

Aware of your visitor's needs, you as Class Leader will organize and lead the use of the Laptop Lab at your location. While the Library Technology Trainer Vincent Shaw is here, he will help you become comfortable in leading class. When scheduling the lab with Vincent, ensure that you have staff or a volunteer in-class to observe, participate, lead and perhaps create new class offerings.

If you have any other questions regarding the use of the Lab, access to files and more, you may e-mail pmartin@acpl.info Such as "Can I schedule the lab for use?" A library worker needs to go with a lab.

How to save online videos (Youtube, etc.) and even convert them; save them offline, into PowerPoint for a presentation.

 

It’s nice to be multimedia, where our listeners can see and hear fantastic videos that will aid in their learning and understanding. With limited budgets we can only produce only so much in comparison to the wealth already out there. But how do we get that in to our class room?



During power point presentations they can be embedded into our slides. The best way to do this is have them downloaded to your disk first, then imported into power point through the usual insert menu system. This allows us to have the additional benefit of freeing the media from streaming during high traffic times, which often causes video stutter and delay. I’ve encountered this during class and is critical that videos are reliable for the class leader as well as the students who’ve come to hopefully learn with minimal interference. The easier for everyone, the better.

imageThe hard part of this then, is how in the first place does one get those great youtube videos and flash files downloaded off the bandwidth-weary internet and onto a trusty local drive in the first place? Here are a few resources to do just that: 
 


     http://www.downloadhelper.net has the easy solution, push-button download and automatic conversion.

image1.) Firefox can download the video from Video DownloadHelper, a button extension that is a must-have.  It will even download the HD versions.

2.) Next there’s an auto-convert extension, working in the background for you, all in a very reasonable file size. There is a fee to remove the icon.  But it all is very automatic, so it can easily be worth the price.

    http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free  This is less automatic, but has no cost. image Additionally, this free video converter can batch-convert a large group of files, into many formats.  Just follow step one above, but substitute step 2 with the any-video-converter.


   

http://vixy.net Online, no install, web-service converts a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube's videos,etc) for you into DIVX and other formats like MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP), such as for your phone and PSP, then lets you download.
It converts FLV to MPEG4 faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder. When you submit a URL, it will download and convert to the video format, and then you can download the converted file. Not a problem if you have DIVX installed, because the Video portion is encoded in DIVX format, you won’t see anything in your media player. So that causes some work and may challenge during the play of the file.


    http://www.sameshow.com/powerpoint-to-flash.html  I haven’t tried this product, but I can see how useful it would be.  This will help distribute slideshows with transitions and animations, with very small file sizes.  I’d love to find a free version of something similar.

Remember to distribute this videos according to net rules of information property.  I try to include a bibliography or a clickable link in the PowerPoint to reference to the video’s original source.

 

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