I had a slightly unusual request by e-mail the other day from a friend of mine, Chris Fuller of the Edgehill College Spanish Podcasts( check out Chris's European Championship Football -Soccer - wiki). Chris is currently wondering whether or not to spend his hard earned expenses ( thank you British Council ) on a video iPod or not ( friends also have iRivers!).
Chris's email contained a windows media file attachment of animals names in Spanish, he asked if i could put the file ontot the iPod and play it!!!???
Initially my answer was 'Sorry no!' my Mac won't even recognise the file extension, let alone place the fiel into iTunes!!!
I remembered then that a week or so ago Chris had blogged about the file conversion site Zamzar, here was an excellent opportunity to see if it could handle the task. The file was duly uploaded to My documents, browsed for in Zamzar - converted to .mov ( I also converted it to MP4 just in case). A quick conversion - followed by a few minutes wait for an email with the link - hey presto file found and set to open with iTunes.
I guess wit the whole operation taking around 10 minutes, the file was synced with the iPod and Chris's words and slideshow running on the video screen - Well Done Zamzar, and all thanks really to Chris for asking the question and for giving the answer :)
** amendment to post 11.25pm Friday 27th July **
Following a conversation with Allanah King in New Zealand who was kind enough to leave a comment earlier regarding her 80GB iPod, we were discussing downloading video to the iPod and AK suggested an online converter that she uses called Vixy. Vixy is still in Beta form and is a bit temperamental but will easily convert YouTube or TeacherTube - or I guess SlideCast video's to a form which you can then open in iTunes and sync to the iPod.
Yet another plus point for the iPod - Thanks Allanah

** A Date for Your Diaries**

Saturday 13th October The Isle Of Wight Conference 2007

Joe is also floating the idea of having a TeachMeet style get together somewhere (tba) on the Friday evening (12th) prior to the main event. A get together like this is long overdue outside Scotland ( where Ewan has been running these prior or during SETT for a while now). This would be a fantastic opportunity for Face2Face networking almost for the first time in England I think ( unless you know of another ??)


Saturday 13th October:with Rachel Hawkes, Leigh McClelland, Chris Fuller, Lesley Welsh and Oscar Stringer.

Here are the proposed sessions so far:

Rachel and Leigh - Rhythm and Song (repeat of ALL London session)
Rachel - Assessment for Learning
Leigh - Digital Video (Maybe an explanation of MovieMaker and
interesting ways you can use DV in MFL)
Chris Fuller - A year as a MFL blogger and podcaster (session 1) and
blogging workshop (session 2)
Joe Dale - Death by PowerPoint? Keep your finger on the trigger
Joe Dale - Podcasting workshop
Joe Dale - Keynote (blogging, podcasting etc)
Oscar Stringer - One Stop Animation
Lesley Welsh - Interactive Whiteboards, ACTIVote and Classroom Performance Performance Systems.

This sounds like a cool event the price tag is £50 for lunch and sandwiches which seems pretty good value. More news on event venue and timings once I have heard from Joe. Thanks for the information Joe...

NEWS
If you go over to Joe's blog at the moment apart from his latest podcasting news which is fabulous to read, there is also a link to a Flashmeeting that Joe has organised for Tuesday 17th July 8pm -10pm (UK BST- GMT +1).
The main topic will be a sharing of experiences in blogging and podcasting over the past year, I am sure that the chat will be pretty lively if the last Flashmeeting is anything to go by...

Blogging from the UK E-Twinning Conference NCSL Nottingham

Today has been interesting to say the least. Firstly for the chance to meet with people such as Jeff Howson ( E2BN, Making The News and Flashmeeting) and Oscar Stringer ( not actually met yet !!!), and secondly to actually have Face 2 Face meetings with people that I respect within the UK blogging and podcasting community - Joe Dale, Chris Fuller ( and Ali of course).
Over dinner the chance to catch up and consider future developments in Web 2.0 tools in education.
Talking of which I have a site from Teaching Mr Stacey - it is called Gawker a downloadable time- lapse film program ( for the mac!!!!sorry pc users)
Thanks Mr Stacey ( Da iawn Mr Stacey - Bendegedig!!! Gwych!!)