Camstudio: Screen Capture Test (Windows)

Here’s my test of audio/video screen capture using Camstudio, in which I use Google to find Waldo. This was done on a Windows XP machine running Camstudio 2.0.  The audio was recorded using a Logitech Desktop Microphone. The final video uses the Intel Indeo Video 4.5 codec. The AVI video full-screen, 1.05 minutes long and … Read more

Disabling Emoticons in Moodle

By default, Moodle ships with a default number of emoticons turned on — filters that turn text smilies into graphical ones. This is all well and good — the nuances of speech can be lost in the written words, and emoticons help with that — but it can cause problems, particularly with some of Moodle’s … Read more

Currently Reading: The New Space Opera

One thing I make a point of doing every summer is to put together a reading list. I may not get through all the books on the list, but I do try, and if nothing else, it gives me a non-work, non-family, non-computer related goal to strive for. Last summer, I decided to promote my … Read more

Forcing a Google mini to show “omitted results”

Google’s motto may be “don’t be evil” but that doesn’t mean they can’t occasionally be overly helpful. Case in point our Google Mini (which serves up search results at Lafayette) was omitting results from the Library web site because it felt those results were too similar. You could still see them by forcing Google to … Read more

Gorilla, err, Guerrilla Usability Testing

One our first tasks in getting usability testing for Moodle up and running is to find software that can capture video of everything that’s happening on screen, while simultaneously recording the audio of the user’s thought process. We’re still looking at Windows options, but the hands-down favorite on the Mac is Silverback. This $50 app … Read more

Moodle Usability Testing

One of our semester-long projects is to do usability testing of Moodle. We’ll be conducting a number of tests in which we give people a series of tasks to complete and how they do them. We’re not alone in this; we’re working with a number of other colleges (including Smith College, Reed College, Macalester College, Kenyon College, Earlham College and Luther College) who will be conducting tests of their own this spring.

Read more