Integrating Livescribe Pencasts with Moodle

Tonight, I was teaching my graduate course and we covered different strategies that can be employed for students note taking. We spoke about outlining, mind mapping, and giving students partially filled in materials to help them with note taking skills. This lead me into a demonstration of marrying the Cornell Note Taking Method with the Livescribe Smartpen. I divided the page in my Livescribe notebook into the necessary columns and explained to my students how this could be used in the classroom to help students record the main ideas of the lecture. With the Livescribe Pulse pen I was able to demonstrate how a student could easily review the material that was recorded and how teachers could use the pen to embed the notes in a Learning Management System. At the college we are presently using Moodle as our Learning Management System and wanted to show my students how we could deliver the notes on the web using the Livescribe technology.

To get started I had my student take some short notes on the page and I sent the page to My Livescribe account. Once the page was successfully uploaded to my Livescribe account I made it public and clicked on the option to copy the Embed Code. Once I copied the Embed Code I went back to Moodle and using the Create A Web Page option - pasted the embed code and voila the page could now be played within my Moodle course for all of my students to see and listen to. Using this technique it is possible to embed Livescribe notes to wiki's as well as blogs. Livescribe makes sharing your notes a cinch and if you choose to you can view your notes on an iPhone or iPad using the Pencast app. So give these techniques a try and let me know how they work for you. Your students will be glad you did.

AT Class p. 1
brought to you by Livescribe

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My Livescribe- Sharing Your Paper Replay Notes

When you install the Livescribe Desktop software, setup an account, and link your Pulse Smartpen you automatically get 250MB of space on your My Livescribe account to upload your paper replay files. Once you have uploaded your files you have ability to share them as you wish. You can keep them private, share them with a friend via an email, or publish them for all to see. I wanted to give you an idea of what it is like once you publish your paper replay on your My Livescribe space. The publishing of the files are all done within the Livescribe Desktop software and is very easy to use. Once you have uploaded a paper replay file you decide how you want to share it and in the window you will see a thumbnail representation of your uploaded notes. You can also download the PDF rendering of the page. What is unique about the thumbnail image is that once you click on the play button you can hear the recorded notes. If you like you can also click on the arrow on the right upper corner to enlarge the paper replay file (see screenshot on the left) and turn on the animate ink feature which highlights the text that is synchronized with the recording. This is a pretty cool feature. I tested the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen out with a high school student today to see how it would work for him. One of the really nice features for the students who may use this technology is that they don't need to worry about capturing every word the teachers says-but can just record key points which later they can review. To listen to the paper replay file click here.

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