Adobe

Free tools to improve recorded audio

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Noisy classroom, poor-quality laptop? Trying to get the students to create multimedia stories on their school laptops or iPads in the classroom or library? Been there and done that. Adobe podcast is an online solution you can use to not only record a podcast but also get your students (and you) to learn the best … Read more

SMOOTHIES 23i2 – Microsoft Education Adobe Podcast and Animate from Audio

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In this week’s episode of Smoothies, I covered the new Podcast Tool from Adobe. It’s still in beta but it is fantastic. It allows you to record a podcast or an audio file in any environment. Through AI it cleans up any background noise and allows you to edit using text because it actually converts … Read more

SMOOTHIES and Learnshifting

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SMOOTHIES stands for Short Multimodal Online Opportunities To Help Interested Educators Succeed These Friday afternoon 15-minute informal online learning opportunities have been running since before the COVID pandemic and were the main reason I ended up running the upskilling training for teachers who potentially had to deliver classes online during the COVID dark days. To … Read more

FAIR – Fun, Aspirational, Inspirational, Respect

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When I was reflecting on words I know are crucial to determining purpose, direction and achievement for students, I settled on these four. The fact they formed the word “fair” which in turn is part of the phrase that Australia is famous for, namely giving people a “fair go” made me want to share these four words and why I think they are important for students, teachers, parents, carers and anyone wanting to give the best fair go to someone, to anyone.

It is also obvious that the component words of this acronym are not new as ingredients to creating an opportunity for a child to live their best life, but I do like the fact I have bundled them into a four-letter “F” word that I like.

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Easy Video Closed Captions – 3 problems and 5 tips

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I have previously created captions for inclusion as CC (Closed Captions) for some of our educational videos. It has become easier but there are three problems I have encountered.

  1. Accuracy of the transcription. You can’t be too colloquial or mumble. Accent is another challenge for the transcriber software.
  2. Formatting and placement of the captions. There are standards associated with caption font, size and placement along with number of characters for each speech segment.
  3. Editing and republishing with captions. Many times you transcribe, edit and publish your video, only to find that mistake you missed. This results in a visit back to the captions workflow. You want it to be as easy as possible.

I think I have finally found a solution that will lead to the wider use of closed captions in our departmental videos in education and training. But first, let’s look at some of the tools and processes.

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