What do you see as the hottest tends in educational technology for next year?

– Chris Young, San Diego

The hottest trend I see right now is podcasting. In a way this is nothing new. Just putting talks on tape. But the real strength is in the sheer number of podcasts that are out there. Its like the early days of the Internet, when you could find great new sites popping up all the time. It also puts audio production back into the limelight. Student created podcasts are a great way for young people to express themselves and share their writing (in a verbal format). And now the latest trend is to video podcasts. So that gets us into video production and in turn digital storytelling. Do yourself and your students a favor and search for digital storytelling in a search engine to explore this dynamic field.

What brands of digital cameras do you recommend?

– Al Wasserman, Austin, Texas

Almost any digital camera can take amazingly good pictures. But if you want the sharpest images, start with cameras with the best optics (lenses). Most professional photographers use Nikon, Canon or Olympus cameras, so they must know something. Consumer Reports and other review services also rate those brands among the tops. Even these brands’ least expensive cameras have good optics.

Generally speaking, I favor cameras made by camera companies, over computer companies. But that said, almost any brand of camera will give you  “good” images. Also consider reliability and ease of use. Most point-and-shoot digital cameras are not cost efficient to have repaired; so if a camera breaks it’s really not worth anything. Don’t forget to keep your camera in a padded case in case it gets dropped.

I use a program called Camtasia Studio from TechSmith (www.techsmith.com) to record my screen and save them as AVI movie files. I then import them into PowerPoint as I would any other movie file. For use on the web, I save a copy as a Flash movie. I do one demo of iMovie showing Macintosh screens on a Windows computer (few observers realize the ruse).

With Camtasia you can record a window, a selected region of the screen or the entire screen. You can also capture the audio if you wish. You can trim or combine your movie clips in the editor. I use their other product SnagIt for still screen shots.

Camtasia is not available for Macintosh, so Mac users can use a program called SnapZ Pro from Ambrosia Software.  You can download trial versions of either program from their web sites.