Monday, March 18, 2024

Microsoft Clipchamp for creating a video from pictures

 Microsoft Clipchamp (a desktop app) is very handy to use for creating a video from pictures. It has built-in music audio files which you can add easily to your picture track as background music. The resulting video is an MP3 file which you save in your own computer, or upload to Youtube. 


Ocean of new knowledge

 Machine learning, Deep Learning, Algorithm, Big Data, DALL-E,artificial neural network ... ...., 唉,吾生也有涯,而知也無涯,惟有專注於科技於英語教學的應用層面。

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Stormboard and Miro vs Padlet for Presentation

 Checked out Stormboard, and revisited Miro, to see if they were good for on-site presentations. 

I think they are good for creating an overview diagram for showing (the relationships between) subtopics and ideas. 

Although Miro does have a Presentation mode (with contents marked as frames), the effect is not that good. 

My tentative conclusion at this point is that Padlet is still the best choice, in that you can start by showing the overview Padlet, and then proceed to the Presentation mode. You can return to the Overview padlet any time you like. 

In the presentation mode, each card constitutes a 'slide'. The embedding function of each slide is praiseworthy: You can play a Youtude video, an uploaded PPT within a slide. Now, when creating a Padlet, you can use the screen-recording function, and record a narrated webpage, which will become a separate slide. 

In sum, Miro and similar apps are good for viewing by others; Padlet is good for realtime presentations. 

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Deleting line breaks in copied text in WORD

 So far, this is the best solution that I've found: 


Method 1: Use the Find and Replace feature

  1. Highlight the text that you want to remove the lines from.
  2. Press Ctrl+H to open the Find and Replace dialog box.
  3. In the "Find what" field, type ^p. This will find all hard returns in your text.
  4. In the "Replace with" field, type a single space.
  5. Click the "Replace All" button.

This will replace all hard returns in your text with a single space. This will remove the lines from your text.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Are we doing anything to support EMI students' learning of the content subjects through English?

 這陣子中學觀課,偶然看看學生其他科目的教科書,內裏的篇章無論是文字和概念都比同級英文教科書的篇章深得多,今天终於忍不住,把學生中二Science教科書的其中一頁影下來,供 language awareness一科 的学員在稍後的 language across the curriculum 一節中討論。


有時不禁想,今天英文科閱讀教學仍在甚麼text type和reading skills 中糾纏,固然英文科有我們的課程目標,但從學生角度,直覺就是英文科的英文「淺」得多,會不會因而輕視英文科?

Monday, March 11, 2024

Young teachers' AI buy-in

 今年Part-tme PGDE觀課和去年有一個很明顯的分別,就是今年不少老師用AI 去create teaching resources, 他們都是教齡一至三年的年青教師,對新技術接受度高;有時候是倒轉頭我從他們獲得使用AI的點子呢!

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Youtube Trimmer

 Now that Vibby is apparently gone forever, I've been looking for a good alternative. 


Youtube Trimmer is easy to use. You can easily set the start and end of a Youtube segment, and share the clip with a link. 

https://www.youtubetrimmer.com/

Friday, March 08, 2024

Photo Gallery widget in Start.me

Been using Start.me for a while, yet it was not until 5 minutes ago that I found out this useful widget within Start.me: Photo Gallery. It works like a self-progressing photo album. 

Which means it will be useful for a Start.me which is shared like a website for other people to view. 


 

Saturday, March 02, 2024

Downloading a Wakelet Collection

 Wakelet collections can be downloaded as a PDF file. The featured links in the original collection are clickable in the downloaded PDF. 

Use Onenote to OCR from an image that contains text

 Some tools can convert a pdf document to editable text. But if the pdf document was made from an image (e.g. a picture taken of a book page with a mobile phone), the conversion may not work. 

In this regard, Google Keep is doing a marvellous job. 

But for desktop work, so far, Onenote's OCR capability is still the best; and it's totally free. 

Just copy or insert an image (containing text) into a page inside Onenote. Then right-click, and choose "Copy text from picture". There you are!

The Text Recognition function in Kami

 It does not really grab the text from an image (containing text) that you upload. It simply turns your uploaded file (docx; pdf; jpg) into a PDF, which you can then edit (e.g., highlight; add text box; add audio comment) within Kami. 


Text Chat Animator

 TExt Chat Animator is a desktop app for creating a fake text chat. 

https://chat-animator.com/

The Pluses: 

- You can submit a picture to use as an avator. 

- Four people can take part in a chat. 

- You can insert emojis. 

- The generated chat appears like a movie. 


The Minuses:

- You don't start from scratch with your chat. You have to delete each sentence in the provided chat and type in your own sentence. 

- As it is all web-based, this process is not that smooth. 

- The final product must be in the form of a movie, or a GIF. But the generation process is slow and lagging. 



Use Autotext for giving Stock Comments

 In WORD, the function Autotext can be used for giving stock comments. 

But after my testdrive, I think that instead of saving the first few words of your written comment (on an assignment submitted in WORD) as autotext, if you have several stock comments to use, it is better to list them out in a separate document, and give each a code. Then, when you need to give a stock comment while looking through a document, type the code to get the stock document. 

In doing so, we can avoid having the autotext pop up when typing a word which happens to be included in one of the stock comments. The separate document will also provide an overview of what stock comments that we can use. 

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/shortcuts-for-word-to-add-quick-text-commonly-used/284c20fc-087e-4df0-86c9-4de752a978d4



Sunday, February 25, 2024

Deepdream

 Tried Deepdream for creating an image from a text prompt, or from an image with text prompt.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

AI tools for generating images

 The Bing Image Designer isn't available to Hong Kong yet. 

I tried the Image Creator inside poe.com. The result is OK and looks like a hand-drawn image, without the fantasy feel that pictures created with Bing Image Designer have. 



Microsoft Clipchamp for creating a video from pictures

 Microsoft Clipchamp (a desktop app) is very handy to use for creating a video from pictures. It has built-in music audio files which you ca...