Posts filed under 'Basic Entry'
Have you ever put your Netflix account on hold while on vacation or for some other reason? Did you realize that under Netflix’s current business practices and policies could actually end up paying for your account anyway, even though it’s on hold?
I put my Netflix account on hold on December 2, 2008, because I was getting tons of videos to watch for the SAG awards nominating committee. Unfortunately, what I didn’t notice was that my credit card had just paid for November 28 – December 27, 2008. So I figured – I bet Netflix is sophisticated enough to catch that and give me credit, or roll the credit forward into the next month of service…. Oops.
Then, on January 15, 2009, I was notified that my hold had ended, and I decided to lengthen it, so I changed it to March 1, 2009. Meanwhile, my credit card had already been charged again, on January 15, 2009. Double whammo!
So then March 1, 2009 rolls around (today) and yet again, I am charged for the next full month. There are still no credits in my billing page, no acknowledgment of the fact that I had paid for nearly 2 full months of “on hold” service. So I call up Netflix, and lo and behold, I am able to be given credit for the January charge, but NOT the December charge, because it was too long ago. Yeah. Uh… Huh?
So Netflix is sophisticated enough to manage putting your account on hold or off hold, but not to connect that with its billing system, apparently. The morals of the story is:
- If you put your account on hold, best to either do this on the last day of your current paid for cycle, or monitor what you have paid for and when, and call Netflix right away if you deserve credit – their systems are currently set up to screw you if you don’t call or wait too long.
March 1st, 2009
This presentation was given in slightly different forms as a featured presentation for both the New Media Consortium’s “Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video” and the Capitol District’s Ed Tech Group (CDETG) Spring 07 meeting on podcasting. Below is the presentation, and further down are the videos that I played to go along with it.
February 6th, 2008
From SUNY TLT Conference, November 15-16, 2007, Poughkeepsie, NY:
February 6th, 2008
Here are some of the latest cool tools I’ve stumbled across – they could easily be used for cool uses in the classroom:
Turn your images and music into cool videos – cool for art history or any topic for which you have digital images and music/narration.
30 second videos are free, others are $3 per video or $30 for a year or something.
www.animoto.com
Add voice narration to images – you can imagine the possibilities for education.
www.voicethread.com
Add text subtitles to videos: – could potentially be used to assist with ADA compliance of your videos?
mojiti.com
Convert files online – doesn’t do DOCX or XLSX yet though…
zamzar.com
Add foreign language subtitles to videos – in multiple languages. Also cool for ADA/section 508 compliance?
dotsub.com
While I’m at it, I’ve become a total Moodle fanatic – after dealing with just about every enterprise LMS out there, it has been like a dream come true – finally I can get full access to code, community, and the ability to help shape the way I’d really like the LMS to work. I mean what other LMS gives you access to free downloads, documentation site, community forums, latest version test site, bug tracker and feature request site, and a fully functioning demonstration site??
So for the uninitiated, go ahead, open source is NOT that scary! And if it does scare you, there are serious hosted solutions such as Moodlerooms.com.
www.moodle.org
Keep on truckin!
September 29th, 2007
A story recollection from the first time I was at a New Media Consortium event in Second Life and could not stop dancing…
May 31st, 2007
It’s true. I’ve been neglecting this blog… New job, new baby, move to the country. Whew. So I thought I’d post a little something about the current interesting things to me: Moodle, Second Life, Sloodle, vRoom, and of course, Rishi.
April 25th, 2007
As you can tell, Campus Technology is my new favorite magazine of the moment, so I’ll keep bringing up more articles I think are interesting enough to pass on…
This recent article delves into the move away from textbooks as kings of content toward a more constructivistic idea of “guided learning materials” created by a faculty member, or student-generated performance content such as “spontaneous performance content,” which occurs in discussion forums, reflections, analyses, and in student-created content.
Fascinating!
May 15th, 2006
Why is it that creating PDFs is built into the Mac OSX and not on PCs?
Ever wondered how to make a PDF from a Word DOC or PowerPoint or Publisher or etc. on a PC? On the Mac it’s easy in the print window. But now I’ve found something similar for PC:
http://primopdf.com
This tiny program, Primopdf creates a virtual printer on your computer. If you download and install, then go to print, and then pull down the menu to the PDF printer, it will prompt you to save the file on your computer and output a PDF for you. Free. Sweet.
May 10th, 2006
A nice article in Campus Technology about capturing lectures in video or audio with Tegrity to enable students to have remote access to lectures and notes on their iPods, for example…
http://www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=18187&p=3
Followed by a nice little piece on using cellphones to enhance classes:
http://www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=18187&p=4
A nice twist from NOT wanting students to use phones in class, to using them in ways that enhance communication between students and instructor…
April 25th, 2006
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