PoodLL Just Got Better
Workaround for Adobe Bug Released
April 21, 2012PoodLL at iMoot 2012
May 25, 2012I’ve just uploaded a new version of PoodLL with lots of new features. Check it out!
This version contains some big changes, including:
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- Ability to intercept mediaplugins filter strings for FLV, MP3 and MP4
- Standalone MP3 recorder (no cloud server required!)
- Webcam Snapshot repository
- Auto conversion to MP3/MP4 of recordings
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Let me cover each of those in a little more detail.
Intercept Mediaplugins Filter Strings
When you choose a media file from a repository, it looks like a text link while editing, but the MediaPlugins filter replaces those links with players. Now the PoodLL filter can do that job. The benefit for doing this is that you can set the default height and width of the players. You can also choose whether the default player is a PoodLL player, a flow player or a JW player. And with the Flow Player, you can choose to show a clickable image in place of a player. If clicked the player is loaded. This is useful when you have several or lots of players on one screen and don’t want to load them all at once.
Standalone MP3 Recorder
Paul Nicholls from University of Canterbury in New Zealand agreed to let us use his fantastic standalone Flash MP3 recorder in PoodLL. For those people that had troubles with poor connections, firewalls, flash player versions and flash player bugs, this is a dream come true. It just records right there in the browser and uploads it straight to Moodle. Think Nanogong, but better. For now it is just in the PoodLL repository, but we will be adding it to the PoodLL Recording question and PoodLL Online assignment soon. Thanks Paul, this will make some people really happy.
Webcam Snapshot Repository
Do your students have webcams? Using this repository type they can simply snap their own picture and it gets uploaded automatically to Moodle. Not even a drag and drop required. Perfect for profile photos, and pretty good for other uses too. There is a video of this in action here.
Auto Conversion to MP3 and MP4.
If your PoodLL uses our tokyo.poodll.com cloud server, you can now automatically convert audio recordings to Mp3 and video recording to MP4. That means you won’t be affected by the nasty Adobe Flash Player audio playback bug, and you don’t even need flash to play back your recordings (think iPads and Android).
All that in one release, so you know we’ve been busy. Download it now and give it a whirl! (Be sure to check the PoodLL filter settings page so you can enable all this stuff.)
8 Comments
Thanks for the new version. Getting an audio recorder working is one of our hurdles with moving to Moodle 2. Once the assignment module is done it will be almost perfect.
I don’t know if this is the right place for a feature request but…
It would be great if we could record a backing track for students to record over while listening to it. This was requested by one of our language teachers.This is a feature in Moodle Language Lab (however that plugin doesn’t work for me!)
Hi Josh. The PoodLL Online assignment already handles recordings, via our cloud based Red5 server. Are you looking for an non Red5 recording assignment? We will be doing that shortly too, but there is already one available. See here -> http://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=assignment_onlineaudio
The backing track …. hmmm. Are you thinking like a conversation track and students “shadow” it / fill in the quiet spaces? Or are you thinking soothing music, ambience ?
Yeah the non-Red5 version is what I was meaning. I’ll look forward to the new version – but that other plugin looks good too.
Re the backing track – Yes I was thinking the conversation track. To quote from the Language Lab plugin page here is an example of how it could be used:
“Please say the word bonjour (leave a 5 second pause) Now, say the words bon soir (again, leave a 5 second pause)
This recording will play back when the student presses the record button. During the 5 second pauses, the student can say the words and they will be recorded. As the teacher, when you listen to the student recordings, the Master Track will be played with the students response allowing you to easliy compare.”
This is not an essential feature for us but it would be a good idea for a future release.
Hi Josh. Great, thanks for the clarification. We had something like that in PoodLL 1 but it was too complex to set up for most people. We used to mute portions of a conversation/movie track, and then record over those blanks. I usually used Harry Potter movie snippets, and that kind of thing so was not able to put the more interesting activities online for people to see.
We will definitely be bringing it back and making it simpler though. But when …?
Great, The new version sounds ideal. I will have to install it, can´t wait for the MP3 recorder to be available in the Poodll question type. Thank you.
I have a question, I have already created a question bank of PoodLL audio recorder questions using the current version, When you launch the new MP3 audio recorder question type, would I have to create all this questions again so that they work with the new MP3 recorder? or do they automatically get converted?.
Thanks
Vanessa.
Hi Vanesssa. When we put the mp3 recorder into the question type, all the old recordings will play back just fine. They will not be converted to mp3 though. The questions that you have made will still be able to use the standard PoodLL audio recorder, but you will also have the option of using the mp3 recorder.
Thank you Justin.