Pedagogy First!

Thoughts on video and podcasts

YouTube

YouTube has been a boon for historians. Not only are there clips from films and documentaries, but quite a bit of primary footage has been put online.

I created some playlists (the one for history seems to have this url), and then made a channel, but didn't really understand what that means. There are so many sites where there's a difference between what you see when you're logged in and what you see when you just get to the page. Youtube is especially strange in this regard.

I haven't used YouTube much for my own stuff. The only one I have posted is this screencast about grading essays in Moodle:

Blip.tv

Some people recommended blip.tv, so I posted my Guide to Historical Thinking there just to try it. It's kind of cool because it has a choice of players for embedding:

I posted one of our Getting Started Teaching Online videos there, but then switched to Vimeo.

Podcasts

I listen to a number of podcasts on educational technology:

http://edtechposse.ca/ -- The EdTech Posse out of western Canada made up of leading educational technology profs and researchers

http://edtechtalk.com/WomenofWeb2.0 -- Women of Web 3.0 is a group of educators who host a podcast with great guests about using educational technology in class

This last is part of EdTech Talk which has many other podcasts and conversations also.

I haven't gotten into making podcasts, though I know some history profs do. They essentially create a little radio show for students to get through iTunes. Perhaps I could do this someday, but I think I'd rather head toward video.

My current thoughts on instructor-created video I love the idea of talking head video embedded into a screen that shows a slideshow. I just saw a good lecture on facilitation that was "webcas" using something called MediaSite that shows the speaker and the slides at the same time. I think if we are going to do presentation, we should use something like this, or at least something like Adobe Connect that embeds our talking head.

A request from Michelle Pacansky-Brock

Robert mentioned her in his post, and she's written to me asking for our help:

We haven't met but I have enjoyed watching many of the terrific videos and other resources you share about your fabulous online teaching program at Mira Costa. I am currently doing some independent contractor work for @One and am redesigning our existing Introduction to Online Teaching course. I very much want to make this course a high quality learning experience for our new online instructors and I need some help to make this a reality.

You have done a great job of having instructors on your campus share some of their approaches and strategies for course design and ideas for learning activities through recording brief screencasts.  This is exactly what I'd like to integrate into the learning units where participants will be learning about effective course design strategies and introduced to a variety of learning activities.  I realize these topics will be much more relevant and dynamic if we can showcase actual samples from actual community college instructors.  Could you help me out by recruiting a few of your best and brightest instructors to record screencasts of no more than 5-minutes (preferably shorter) to cover the following topics?  As you know, this timeframe makes Jing a great tool to use!

> > Topic One:  Organizing your Course Content Designing a Clear Course Navigation
View video samples from online classes that demonstrate demonstrate examples of effective course navigation.
(Please begin the video by identifying yourself by name, the institution you teach at, the title of your online course, and the LMS you are using.)

> > Topic Two:  Exploring Ideas, Tools and Strategies for Student-Centered Learning Activities
View video samples from online instructors that demonstrate a variety of ways to facilitate student-centered learning activities (discussion board, blogs, wikis, groups, and more).
(Please begin the video by identifying yourself by name, the institution you teach at, the title of your online course, and the LMS you are using.)

If you'd like to do a Jing navigating through your course or showing a tool or strategy, do so by mid-May and send it to Michelle at brocansky@gmail.com .  I'd love a link too for the POT site! :-)

Lisa

Recorded Session Available! "Creating Connections in Online Classes"

Hello, everyone!  I wanted to let you know that if you did not get a chance to view the workshop I did on Friday, but want to check it out, the link is now available for the recorded session.  This is what was posted at the http://mccpot.org/wp/ site.

April 9, 2:30-3:30 pm — (please note new time!)
online session Connections in Online Classes
Session leader Laura Paciorek writes: Since I started teaching online, I have been exploring the idea of how to connect with students in an online environment.  There are six types of connections that I strive to facilitate in my classes.  This workshop will highlight those six types of connections and some strategies that may work in fostering those connections.  A brief literature review about connections in online courses will be shared as a part of this presentation. Elluminate Recording is here and PowerPoint slides are here. Help us out! If you watch this recording, please do the survey!
POT certificate designation OT100: Online Pedagogy

Jing-le all the waaaaaay! How do I post in Bb?

I made this jing video for my class that starts on Monday, but I can't figure out how to get it into an announcement on Blackboard. Help!!!

Thanks! Louisa

Third try to respond to Robert Kelly's Post

Camtasia...speed versus control

Hello All.

I love the control that Camtasia gives me over Jing. I Love that when I use Camtasia I can edit my videos, have Picture-in-picture, and add transitions. However, I find that making videos with Camtasia can take me a long time and it seems to never be quick. My movies need to be compressed and exported to video. I think that as I make more of these videos I am getting quicker so maybe my speed with Camtasia will improve with time. I believe that Jing is quicker but I feel that if I make mistakes with Jing I would have to re-record my Jing video several times. In the end I feel that if I work with Jing I may end up spending almost the same amount of time as I do working with Camtasia. In my opinion Jing and Camtasia are both great programs and they are both the "2.0" of video editing :-)

Here is my draft video with a few mistakes (caught post production! :-)  )

David's PPT

Oh boy... as I Jing I make mistakes...

Wow - I never realized how many mistakes I could possible make while typing in a basic web page. Or how funny my dogs sound in the background, one growling, one wanting to be petted. I think I made this Jing over 10 times and finally gave up. I was glad to read the blog about not expecting it to be perfect - because it sure isn't.

I do think this tool will be really useful for my online classes this summer. Particularly in the beginning weeks. I will explain the basic html tags using it. BUT I will have a script sitting right next to my laptop and the dogs can go back outside for a romp on their own.

If you care to check it out, here is the url:

My First Jing 

I am a bit late posting this week - I have been out of town for a few days - but I wanted to make sure and try this program. Frustrating? Yes! Potential? Absolutely! It did make me laugh though.

I have been learning about powerpoint in the last few weeks as well. Now there is another frustrating program that is full of potential. I am going to save this and come back with my powerpoint shortly.

I have made a quick powerpoint of some pictures I took on my travels this week to Sonoma. What a beautiful place that is.

Download SonomaSlides

I am going home now... goodnight for now. See you all again soon.

~ Claudia

jing and slideshare

This week was very frustrating. It took me a while to figure out exactly what jing was and how it worked. However, I did finally figured out how it works and decided to do a short part of one of my lectures from last week on the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. I started the presentation and recording my voice and I realized i couldn't move through the powerpoint with my arrow button, so I had to use the mouse and click forward on the screen, but the little recording thing covered that on the screen, but when I tried to move it everything stopped and I had to restart the entire project. It took a few tries before I was able to finally complete something. Then I realized that the program didn't store the presentation or provide a link so hat I could post the presentation. So I uploaded it to my own storage and here it is - <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/ca/bpress/1848_jing.swf">1848 jing</a>. Not the best quality lecture, and I don't have a mike, but at this point I just wanted to get it done.

With slideshare, it was very easy to upload the same powerpoint, but when I went to add the audio, I realized I had to upload a different mp3 file with my voice. I have never recorded my voice on my computer, and I don't even no if I have a program to do that, so i just didn't do it. Here is the slideshare powerpoint - <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/johnniebbaker/1848">1848 powerpoint</a>.

If I were to post powerpoints online without audio, slideshare would be very helpful. For making presentations with audio, jing may be better for me, however the lack of storage or link definitely is a drawback. Nevertheless, with more practice I can see how jing could be a useful tool.

Week 6: Jing

I kind of like Jing, but am really not good enough to use it without practicing whatever I am going to say over and over. I was in a bit of a rush today, trying to get this blog entry posted, and was able to do it with just one take. In this video, I am showing students (speaking avatar) which they will later embed in our Ning.

Week 6: Me gusta Voicethread, WIMBA & Jing.

Hola,

As an online Spanish instructor, I had to familiarize myself with presentation tools. I do enjoy the convenience of jing for responding quickly to student questions with a narrated screencast, but for course content, I prefer presentation tools that allow students to interact with each other and me by adding audio or video comments.

Online language students have to:

• hear the language and the structures and vocabulary they are practicing repeated MUCHO 
• get talking immediately and be given opportunities to practice speaking and listening with each other
• see me and their classmates so that they can feel like they are part of a community of language learners

My two favorites right now are WIMBA and VOICETHREAD primarily because of ease of use for students and for me (creating and grading), and because they allow students to create content, interact with each other, and practice speaking & listening.

To mimic those icebreaker activities many of us do the first week of classes on site, I created this voicethread for my online Spanish 101 class. I created simple to read PP slides, uploaded them to Voicethread, added my video and audio comments, got the embed code and embedded it in my class on Blackboard! 

I know the students enjoyed voicethread because I also had a ning site for my students where many of them posted very positive comments about their experience using it. I had no questions or problems from students and the only instructions they had were the ones you see on the first slide.

Wimba is extremely simple to use, conveniently located inside of Bb and Moodle, and students have no problem using it. It is convenient for grading especially when used for discussions because you can enter a grade that goes directly to your gradebook. Only drawbacks: it does not have video capability, students cannot upload a photo of themselves, and it is not as easy to create slides using "Wimba presentation" as it is on Voicethread. Still, the convenience of having it inside the course management system is attractive especially to beginning online instructors.