Voice memos & Videos

Voice memos

Some Universities will offer podcasts of their lectures, most of them will put up slides, but something I've found quite useful are voice memos. So you take either a dictaphone or use the voice recording option on your phone (if you have one) or on an iPod/music device/tablet etc.

Tips for getting a good Voice memo;

1. The nearer you are to the person speaking or to a speaker (a lot of lecturers will speak into microphones) the better!

2. Point your device towards the speaker

3. Don't cough, try not to talk, just have it on in the background

4. Ask permission - you should really ask permission, but if you do make sure you can give them at least 3 good reasons as to why its imperative that you take a voice recording.

5. When you save it, give it a clear title - "Voice memo 1" is not going to tell you anything, even something as simple as PHOL will do, because usually the date is saved - from there its quite easy to work out which lecture your voice memo is referring to. (A better title is PHOL -L10, Muscle contraction or something that indicates the content of the memo)

Videos
During practicals, taking a video or what you're doing or the results can be quite handy, obviously ask the person's permission (which up until this point I have been dreadful at doing) and then make sure that everyone involved that wants a copy gets a copy - its only polite. If you're dissecting a corpse or something like that, don't video it or take pictures, be respectful - this is something one of our lecturers made quite clear.

Things to remember -

1. Make sure you aren't wearing gloves whilst holding your videoing device - the last thing you want is to transfer chemicals to your phone/iPod etc, which you then may place against your ear! Also don't put the device on the side, keep it in your pocket because again, during a practical if there are chemicals involved or biohazards its dangerous for you to put these devices near them.

2. Make sure your lecturer is okay with you videoing/using your phone/iPod in class. A good argument against it is that you will be distracted, so listen to the lecturer in charge and respect their instructions - its for your own safety!

3. If you can, give it a good title.

4. When you're watching it back make sure that anything said is appropriate and cut out comments that aren't, or thats are personal to some of the people recorded. Do this before you circulate the video.

5. Store the video in a suitable folder on your computer - yes upload it to the computer! That way you have another copy of it or you can delete it from your phone/iPod which will give you more space to record more. I store mine in the quite suitable Practicals folder.

Now I would upload a photo or video for an example, but seeing as I haven't asked permission to do so, I wont!

Cloud storage

The end of memory sticks?

Unlikely, but cloud storage is really handy! Especially for backing things up and being able to access your files on pretty much any device. Currently I have Dropbox, Google drive and iCloud. All of these are accessible on my iPod, I know you can get apps on android phones as well, one would assume that apps are available for various tablets and phones too.

Okay so I'll write what I know about different cloud storage sites, how much free storage you get and what I thought about it when I used it (if I did). These aren't in order of preference or anything. The one I use the most is Google drive, simply because I can make folders and 15GB of free storage is quite a lot. It works seamlessly with my Mac and my iPod and I can access my files really easily online.

1. iCloud - Apple
- 5GB of free storage
- use on Apple devices & via www.icloud.com
- really useful for finding lost apple devices
- useful for synced calendars across Apple devices, backing up contacts and accessing keynote, numbers etc on iPads/iPods/iPhones.

2. Google drive - Google
- up to 15GB of free storage
- use on all devices, app available for use on phones/tablets, available from drive.google.com
- really useful for accessing files on the go, I use google drive for my notes so I can access previous notes in lectures (on my iPod) without lugging around my laptop or loads of paper.
- useful for organisation as different folders can be used, the content can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection and files can be accessed offline
- can be used for file sharing, you can share links to your photos/folders etc
- a folder is created on your computer



3. Dropbox - Independant
-  up to 16GB of free storage (starts at 2GB, + 500MB
per referral), I currently have 3.25GB
- use on all devices, app available for use on phones/tablets, available from dropbox.com
- useful for sharing pictures with friends, can be quite slow to upload though
- a folder is created on your computer




4. Skydrive - Microsoft
- up to 15GB of free storage
- use on all devices, app available for use on phones/tablets, available from skydrive.live.com
- will soon have a name change
- I don't really use this one so I don't have much info for you