lodeStar Learning Web Journal

By Robert N. Bilyk

This is a hastily written article that has two purposes: one is to correct a sin of omission, and the second is to introduce an interesting tutorial on the subject of preparing video for online learning.

First, the sin of omission.

Recently, Sheri Steinke (Anoka-Hennepin Community College), Jerry Mefford (Hennepin Technical College) and I presented at ITEACH/RSP in Minneapolis to a wonderful audience.

In my part of the presentation, I demonstrated how easy it is to grab the address of a flash video stored on services like Blip.TV and paste it into your learning object created with the Brancher template. (See the tutorial link below, for more info.)

As a result of the presentation, many in the audience will go home or to their office and try incorporating video into their learning objects – and fail. This will be where the cognitive dissonance will set in. It should have worked; it didn’t. (Just like the vegetable slicer that I purchased at the fair.)

I neglected to discuss one very important concept.

An instructor pasting in a Blip.TV address is in effect pasting in a network resource into a LodeStar Brancher activity. The operative word is NETWORK. After that he will preview the activity locally on his hard drive. The operative word is LOCAL.

So, here’s the catch: By default, the Flash player that LodeStar targets prevents a local resource from accessing a network resource. By default.

If the instructor were to make a leap of faith and simply export the activity to Moodle, Desire2Learn or wherever, suddenly we have an activity that is sitting on the NETWORK accessing a NETWORK resource. Network to Network is good. In contrast, Local to Network is bad. Network to Local is bad. By bad, I mean a potential security risk.

So what do you do to mine the riches that LodeStar’s video capabilities offer? The answer is follow these steps to tell the Flash Player to allow you, the instructor, to preview activities locally that access network resources. So here are the steps:

Launch the tutorial from the link below.
Right-click on the activity.
Select Settings from the Flash Player menu.
Click on the ‘Advanced’ button.
The ‘Settings Manager’ page will display. On this page, click on the link titled ‘Global Security Settings Panel’
Click on the drop down menu and select ‘Add Location’.
In the ‘Trust this location’ field, type the following, if you installed LodeStar in the default location:

C:\Program Files\LodeStar

If not, type in LodeStar’s location on the hard drive.
Click on the ‘Confirm’ button.
Select the ‘Allows Allow’ radio button.
Exit the page.

Return to this page, by repeating the directions to ensure that your changes were saved.
You’re done.

Will your students need to do this? Absolutely not, because they are accessing your learning activity on the network. Network to network is good.

Do you have to do this each time? No, just once per machine.

If you followed the instructions, you instructed the Flash Player to allow an activity in any location underneath C:\Program Files\LodeStar to communicate to the network.

If, for any reason, you do not think this is a good idea, then do not make changes to the Global Security Settings. Simply preview your work without observing the video and then upload to a learning management system, learning object repository or to a network server. Your video links will begin working.

And now, to learn all of the ramifications of including video in your online learning resource, click on the tutorial link below:

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Coll_bbilyk/PreparingVideoforOnlineLearning/BrancherVideoProducer.zip/Video_Producer/index.htm