6 Tips for Recording Video

Today, I've been experimenting with Piktochart, a super tool for creating infographics (for free).  Here is my first creation and the context for its creation.

I work with college faculty who are just getting started with teaching online or are looking for ways to revitalize their existing online class.  Video has changed dramatically in recent years, providing simple tools that enable video creation from webcams and mobile devices.  Locating a tool that aligns with your instructional goals is important.  However, there is a handful of "tips" I find myself sharing over and over again.  I attempted to capture them using Piktochart so I can share them in a more visual and engaging way.  Of course, I hope you will find them useful and share them as well! It is shared with a CC-BY graphic so feel free to re-use as you'd like.

Here is the direct link to the graphic: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/4669055-5tipsandtoolsforrecordingvideo

Archive! Humanizing Online Grading with Voice & Video

View this video on YouTube.

Yesterday, I spent an hour in dialogue with +Dan Barnett and +Tracy Schaelen about one of my favorite topics ... humanizing the online learning environment for students. Despite a major fail on the part of Google+ Hangouts on Air (grumble) to stream half of our live conversation, we persevered and, fortunately, the archive of the Hangout turned out fabulous.  I am sharing it below and hope you will find time to view, reflect, share a takeaway about the conversation, and pass the link on to your own networks too. 

 

Reinforcing Research Findings

I intended to end the Hangout with a reference to the findings from online teaching research, which, more or less, reinforce all the insights and findings shared by Dan and Tracy in the Hangout conversation. Unfortunately, I forgot.  So, here is the graphic I intended to share in the Hangout.

 

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Today! Humanize Online Grading with Voice & Video!

Join me today, Thurs, 2/20 at 4pm Pacific, for a Center Hangout on Air with +Tracy Schaelen and +Dan Barnett. We'll be discussing how Tracy and Dan use voice and video to humanize the their instructor feedback and consider the impact this has the student experience. Tracy will be sharing feedback she has collected from her students. The Hangout will incorporate the Google+ "Q&A" feature, which allows anyone with a Google+ account to click the video and ask us a question during our live conversation. Questions will also be taken via Twitter using #CCCLEARN.

Humanizing Online Grading with Voice and Video

To view the LIVE Hangout, go directly to this link today, 

Thursday, February 20th, from 4-5pm Pacific. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiqrJU6fBRQ&feature=share

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Using Movenote to explain "A Simple Way to Start a Hangout"

I continue to be in awe about the options educators have today for simple, free tools that allow us to create video content in minutes -- with no video editing or recording skills whatsoever.

Seriously...it's amazing!

Not too long ago, I had heard about Movenote, an emerging tool that enables a user to upload PDFs and images and record video from her webcam at the same time. The video is sync'd with the slides, providing an incredibly simple method of creating a straightforward recording of a presentation.

Yesterday, I received a pleasant Speakpipe voice message from one of Movenote's representatives who had seen me Tweet about their product. They told me about cool new feature they had just released that integrates Movenote with Gmail. I was intrigued. Here's the deal - if you use Chrome and Gmail, you can install the free Movenote Chrome app for Gmail and it will install a button directly in your Gmail interface that, when clicked on, will launch Movenote. From there, you can upload your content, record your video, and paste the URL directly into an email and send it. BAM! Integrated workflow. Nice.  Click here to see a video of the new Gmail to Movenote workflow.

As for me, I still needed to experiment with Movenote. So I created a tutorial -- hhmmmm, what to share? What to share? I know! Yesterday, I was excited to see how simple it had become to launch and share either a Hangout on Air or a good ol' plain Hangout (which is basically a group video call) in Google+. To me, this process has been confusing for awhile and it especially took me quite a bit to understand how to invite people to my Hangouts if they were not in my Circles. So, I created a tutorial about "A Simple Way to Start a Hangout." This tutorial does not cover Hangouts on Air, only Hangouts (there is no recorded or public element in Hangouts).  I hope this is useful in understanding what Movenote looks like, as well as learning how to start a Hangout!

Rule of thumb: When created any video, aim for 5 minutes in length. If you go over by one or two minutes, you're ok. If you are closer to 10, you should probably cut that content into two videos.

In short, I found Movenote incredibly easy to use. The thing that took me the longest was creating my slides (simple annotated screenshots I made with the help of my friendly essential, FREE tool companion, Jing).  After I recorded with Movenote, the video processed quickly, I had the ability to copy the link, I was provided with embed code in different size options, simple social sharing buttons, analytics to see the number of views through each share method, and there is also an option to download my Movenote video to a non-watermarked .mp4 file. So I could use Movenote to create my video content and upload the videos into YouTube ... which, honestly, is more my workflow.  Once videos are in YouTube they can be captioned using YouTube's online captioning tool (listen, pause, type, repeat).

I don't see any negatives here, folks.  Are you using Movenote? What are your experiences?

I think this would be a great tool to have students generate simple, videos too.

Creating a Humanized Syllabus - with Populr!

Any teacher that has taught a face-to-face class understands the preciousness of that first class meeting. So much rides on those first impressions.  As educators, we too can reflect on our own experiences as students and recall how a first class meeting formed impressions about what a class would be like -- I can remember thinking all of these thoughts in college on day one:

• "This instructor is so disorganized!" 
• "I can tell this class is going to be really interesting!" 
• "That was the most boring 50 minutes of my life."
• "This instructor totally inspires me."

When you teach online, there is no "first session" in which all students are together at the first same moment with you.  Students come to the online course at different times and interact with the content you have prepared for them.  What is important to consider about that content? How do you ensure it is effectively communicating what you want them to take away?

While there are many elements that influence an online students first encounters in an online class (ease of navigation, overall color choice and design aesthetics), their target is "The Syllabus."  College students want to get to the meat and bones of a class, understand what it consists of, and how it stacks up against other classes.  For this reason, I put a lot of time and energy into my syllabi. 

 

Populr - a simple micropublishing tool (free for educators) with some nifty features!

I have been wanting to find a way to develop a living, breathing syllabus that is mobile friendly and conveys more about who I am -- my personality, my style of teaching, as well as communicate how my class is different from other online classes.  This month I learned about a tool called Populr. Populr is a startup company based in Nashville that launched last January 2013. Their product is a which is a micropublishing tool, similar to Smore.  Micropublishing enables the creation and publication of single page websites, which is perfectly suited for creating a course syllabus!  If you've found yourself creating Google Sites or Google Docs to share with presentation or webinar audiences (I often use BagTheWeb), that is a perfect example of a purpose that a micropublishing tool could fill for you. Micropublishing is an upcoming industry and what's great about these new tools are the slick analytics and beautiful layouts and design features that enable a person with little to no design sense to create a really beautiful product. 

While Populr is like Smore, it does not yet feature the ability to print to a PDF (although that feature is supposed to be available very soon) and embedding of "Pops" is not yet available yet (both features that are available through Smore).  What I like about Populr, however, are these very cool features that make it stand out from Smore:

• A free, robust account for educators. Click here to generate the Education Coupon. Read more about Populr's support for education here.
• The ability to password protect sites.
• The option to make sites collaborative or allow others to make a copy of them.
• A rich collection of beautiful designs and layouts to start with! 
• The ability to record video directly into a page using your webcam.
• The option to add up to three custom domains to an account.
• Deep analytics that allow you to track how many times each link inside each of your "Pops" has been clicked.

So, here is a link to my humanized syllabus created with Populr -- what do you think?
http://page.teachingwithoutwalls.com/SyllabusHOSP

 

Accessibility

While I really like Populr and plan to use it, there are some areas that need to be improved. First, like most startups Populr does not have its arms around the essentials of web accessibility.  For example, there is no way to add alt-tags to the images, recording a video from my webcam was super easy but there was no way to add captions (so I chose to record into YouTube, caption there, and embed it in Populr instead). This is a typical gap between the standards of higher education and business.  While it's not ideal, I opted to post a text version of my syllabus at the bottom of the Populr version to provide a screenreader accessible version for any learner who may need it.

I reached out to Nicholas Holland, CEO of Populr, to share some of my concerns about the accessibility gaps and he responded with appreciation and interest.  I believe if educators partner with startups to communicate our interests and needs, the existing gaps in our technological infrastructure will, over time, begin to decrease.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about how you might use Populr -- for a syllabus or any other instructional content or learning activity! It's a great way to promote events on campus, develop newsletters, create rich media book or media reports, or an ePortfolio as a capstone for a course even!

Humanizing Your Online Class -- wow, what a webinar!

I have presented many webinars in my life ... but yesterday's Inside Higher Ed webinar, Humanizing Your Online Class, was pretty special. I saw the attendance number tick past 600 at one point! The question stream was dynamic and the Twitter chat was fabulous too -- thanks to Whitney Kilgore for Storifying the Twitter chat here and to Academic Partnerships for sponsoring the webinar, as a kick off for their free Human Element (#humanmooc) micro mooc (learn more here).

If you missed the webinar and would like to view it, the video archive is embedded below and may also be viewed here.

Some of my takeaways from the conversation were the concerns expressed by faculty about the amount of time it takes to "humanize" an online class in accordance with the examples I showcased in the webinar. My examples exemplify the use of free to low cost and easy-to-use tools which, to me empower faculty who have little to no technology experience.  For example, creating a warm, friendly welcome video with a tool like Animoto is really something that can be done by anyone (really ... try it! and I bet you'll even have so much fun doing it that you'll make another one...maybe for someone you care about).

As I reflect more deeply on the conversation in the webinar, I continue to ask myself one thing. Should the question at hand be, "How to humanize an online class?" or is the question we should be reflecting more deeply on, "Why aren't online classes more human?" Are the real issues lack of technological ability or lack of time? Or are these issues deeply entangled with more sensitive topics that are generally undiscussable? For example, how vulnerable professors feel when revealing our personal stories, "real" expressions, and relating to and with our students on a more equal level in asynchronous voice or video exchanges (all important to community building)? I don't have the answer to this question but it's one that I'm thinking a lot about right now. And it has me replaying Brene Brown's fabulous Ted Talk over and over in my mind, as I think all members of higher education (including students) need to embrace her research driven finding that vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation and creativity.

• Get the Goody Bag of web resources here.
• View the slides (with built-in videos) on Slideshare here. 
• The link to the video is here.

Can We Talk? Our Amazing Video Revolution & Accessibility

The video revolution is bringing about the need for sweeping changes in higher education -- from the way we teach to the way we support the needs of our diverse student population.  As video creation tools become less expensive and easier to use, educators continue to realize their potential to enrich learning.  The popular flipped classroom model involves the use of online video to transform passive face-to-face classroom experiences into active, critical thinking sessions.  Smartphone ownership continues to rise year over year; at 56% of U.S. adults in 2013.  This number is staggering when we consider the first smartphone hit the market just six years ago. And while Facebook users are accessing the social network less on desktop computers, mobile access is soaring and YouTube is seeing similar mobile growth.  Each month, 1.5 billion hours of video are watched from mobile devices. The rise of mobile has created an intensified demand for swifter, smaller, more manageable video technology.  We can now record them and share them straight from a smartphone. No multimedia lab is necessary any longer. And the newest video sensation? Glide -- video text messaging. 

Inside the walls of colleges and universities, the increasing pace of video creation and easy access to online videos that can be linked to or embedded in an online class have created accessibility concerns.  To be compliant with section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, videos must be captioned.  The federal law requires that electronic content provided by all entities that receive federal funding must be accessible to all users.  If you listen, you will hear that accessibility is a critical priority in higher education.  Yet, as emerging solutions for captioning videos have surfaced, few have been systemically integrated. 

Many colleges and universities caption their content internally and others send the content out to external captioning resources.  Others provide poor to severely inadequate support and can set up unspoken or spoken expectations for faculty to caption their own instructional content.  In other words, the fear of lawsuits in instilled within an instructor who may clearly see the learning value that video brings to his students' experiences.  Yet, when there is not support to caption those videos, what must he do?  As one who has captioned many of my own videos, I can attest that manually captioning videos is incredibly time consuming task and not the most effective use of an instructor's time.  I would much rather be interacting with my students or making pedagogical or content related improvements to my course. 

This latter approach generally collapses attempts to create innovative cultures of teaching and learning, as faculty find themselves immersed in a culture of fear -- wanting to teach with video; yet knowing they cannot find the time to caption the videos and understanding there is no support to help them.  Frustration sets in. One may feel undervalued. I have spoken with faculty in workshops who have shared, "I want to use videos in my classes but I know it's illegal for me to do so unless they're captioned. And I have no support."

This is a serious issue in higher education and one that we need to learn from.  Talking about how to provide streamlined support for the captioning of videos seems to have become one of the unspoken issues, which Chris Argyris (1990), an organizational learning expert, indicates is a symptom of a defensive routine that surfaces when organizations find themselves amidst a significant change.  The change could be anything that requires members of the organization to become aware of the latent mental models that govern their everyday routines.  Looking at ourselves through a fresh lens and becoming aware of the traditions that drive our actions places us in a vulnerable state -- and this state of awareness is the first step in initiating change.

That's why defensive routines are so common.  They keep us comfortable. Making something non-discussable is easier than tackling a tough problem, taking it apart, understanding how and why it challenges us.  Defensive routines can present themselves in different ways -- you may observe someone quickly changing the topic when the issue arises, shaking their head and nodding the issue off as if it's not accurate or important, or simply making the topic non-discussable.  All of these routines create a social environment for members of an organization who begin to understand that "this is just the way it is." But, really, these issues are precisely the issues that must be addressed if change is to occur.

I believe accessibility is one of the most important topics that needs to be discussed in higher education today.  It is one of the most misunderstood issues and too many educators (a term I use to refer to all members of colleges and universities, not just faculty) turn away from valuable tools out of the assumption that they are "not accessible" or that they cannot find a solution to making the content accessible to all learners. 

There are sustainable options for captioning instructional videos.  

YouTubeCaptions.com is a new a partnership between YouTube and 3PlayMedia.  It is an easy-to-use tool that integrates directly with a user's YouTube account.  The captions are not cheap at $2.50 a minute (perhaps some leverage for undersupported faculty?). A 9-minute 23-second video of mine was quoted at $25 to caption (not sure how that breaks down to $2.50/minute?). Captions are produced in about 8 hours, according to the site. I just place my first order (the freebie noted below).

• The site is offering 10-minutes of FREE YouTube video captions now through 9/21/13. Enter PROMO Code 10FREE at check out.
• Note: YouTubeCaptions only provides captions for videos in your own YouTube account -- you cannot caption videos created by other users.

Amara: Add subtitles and captions yourself, request them to be added through Amara's crowd-sourced community approach (a brilliant idea -- has anyone tried this?), or order them through their retail service.

• Amara is an "overlay" captioning service, which means you can add captions to online videos you did not create.  Essentially, Amara produces a secondary video url for the captioned video.  The video embedded at the top of this page is from Amara.

CastingWords.com is an option for those who only need transcripts. Prices start as low as $1.00.  CastingWords will not provide transcripts of videos "on screen." In other words, you must supply the file you want transcribed. Therefore, if your goal is to caption a video you did not create, this option isn't for you.  If you are a regular YouTube user, you can use the transcripts from CastingWords and upload them into YouTube's captioning tool to convert the transcript into closed captions in a matter of minutes!

I envision a dream world where faculty members are granted a gift card each year to one of the sites above and encouraged to use the credit on the card to demonstrate their commitment to teaching with video in an accessible manner. To get a new card the next year, the original card would need to be used completely the first year. 

I would love to learn how your institution supports the captioning of instructional videos.  Or if you have feedback about any of the services listed above or other ideas to share, please share a comment.

VideoNot.es: Improving How We Learn with Online Video

Do you have your students watch online videos in support of your classes? Are you using or thinking of using the flipped classroom model? You're going to love this!

I think what I love most about Videonot.es is that it is a tool designed to improve how we learn with online video, which is truly one of the biggest needs in education today. The recent video revolution has dramatically increased the amount of online video used to support formal and informal learning but, often, it's just tough to track what we learn with videos. Even when we deliberately take notes while watching a video and include the link to the video in the notes, the desire to view that very moment in the video again at which a concept was discussed or explained is experienced. And I imagine this is even more true for second language learners, dyslexics, and other "non-traditional" learners. If you use online videos in your classes, take 4-minutes to watch the video I created below. It will show you the benefit of using Videonot.es and demonstrate how it integrates directly with Google Drive, creating a simple, cloud-based access pathway to your notes (which you can even share with others).


I'd love to hear from some of you who have been using Videonot.es awhile and might have some student feedback to share.  My only hiccup I experienced was an inability to get the video to pause by using the combination key command specified on the screen.  This may be user error. :-/

Archive: Animoto for Creating Engaging Videos!

Last week's free "Learn with Michelle" webinar, Animoto for Creating Engaging Videos, was fun and energetic! Thanks to all who participated. A special thanks to +Michael Kieley for the great ideas he contributed during the webinar and the fabulous course promotion video he added to the "bag" and to +Ludmila Smirnova for also sharing a link to her course promo video in the webinar resource "bag." 

The full archive (video, "bag" of resources, and slides) is now available here:

Animoto for Creating Engaging Videos
http://facultyecommons.org/learn-with-michelle-webinar-animoto-for-creating-engaging-videos/
Share your great teaching ideas in the Google+ Learn with Michelle Community.  
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101282894995851206911

Roll Out an Online Teaching Welcome Mat with Animoto

I recently joined the contributing editorial staff at edCetera and will be writing brief posts that offer strategies for fostering community-oriented learning in online classes through the use of emerging technologies.

My new post, The Online Teaching Welcome Mat: Energzing Learners with Animoto, showcases a simple (and fun) way instructors can utilize Animoto, an easy-to-use web-based tool, to create a warm, inviting welcome video for their online class.  Why is this a good idea? Read the post and find out!  It will also share how to get your own free Animoto educator account!

If you are using Animoto in other creative ways, please share your ideas!

Online Learning: The Future of Faculty Development?

"When we think of where people turn for information, we usually think of databases, the Internet, intranets and portals, or more traditional repositories such as file cabinets or manuals. What we may not think of is one of the most crucial sources of all: other people."

-Ageless Learner.com

Rob Cross, Andrew Parker, 

Laurence Prusak, Stephen Borgatti

It's time that all higher ed stakeholders value technology as a vehicle to connect people, share ideas, foster relationships, break down the silos, reduce the redundancy in our work processes, and collaboratively solve the problems that so many institutions and individual faculty are grappling with across our nation.  This is a new way of framing technology which is still viewed as a barrier in the eyes of many individuals, particularly those who resist the notion that online learning can be relevant, inspirational, empowering, and life changing which, I have learned, it can when an instructor is trained and supported effectively.

How Google Hangouts Are Rocking My World

I've been reflecting recently on how Google+ Hangouts have affected my learning and thinking about how free, easy-to-use, social, synchronous video-based learning environments will reshape organizational faculty development programs in the future.  The future is looking much more faculty-centered to me, provided that faculty participate, build their personal learning networks, and engage in online informal learning.

So many people have asked me, "What makes Hangouts so different, really?"  Well, in some ways nothing but in other ways, everything.  Really, they deliver many of the same technological features that Skype delivers -- synchronous voice, text, and video communications -- but Hangouts support video conversations in groups up to 10 for free.  Further, the simple fact that a Hangout is "baked into" a social network that I use to cultivate my own personal collection of humans from who'd I'd like learn and with whom I'd like to share sets it apart.  Simultaneously, this is still the greatest drawback to most faculty, as well, as relatively few are using Google+. 

Hangouts come in two flavors: the standard "Hangout" and "Hangout On Air." The "On Air" feature allows you to simultaneously stream your video conversation to the web (not always appropriate, no, but it can be quite valuable for certain applications).  The stream appears automatically on your YouTube Channel (which you manually connect to Hangouts one time) and on your Google+ Profile page.  When you launch the Hangout On Air, you also are provided with embed code that you may copy and paste into any html web page (like your course management system, a blog, a wiki, etc.) and point your audience there ahead of time. When the Hangout On Air is over, the stream is archived in video on your YouTube Channel (which you can adjust to either public, unlisted, or private). 

For the past year, I have been holding a monthly office hour session for VoiceThread in my role as their Higher Ed Learning Consultant.  This is an opportunity for any educator using VoiceThread to ask me questions, share ideas about how they're using VoiceThread, and work through questions or problems they have.  Before August I was holding the sessions in a web conferencing system that required advanced registration.  There were several months when nobody showed up.  In August, my first Hangout On Air month, I had a dynamic group of between 4-7 people join me and last month Amanda, my colleague from VoiceThread, and I were joined by three educators.  The experience is just more fluid, more natural.  And so is the conversation -- at least after I have gotten over my initial stage fright! Anyone who says presenting in front of a webcam is NOT nerve racking like public speaking has never done it.

Learning from Other Faculty: Without Walls

But the really compelling idea that I'm left with is probably the most simple. It's about how faculty are learning today on college campuses.  As I reflect on my experiences with teaching, the greatest "Ah ha" moments I've had are those that have come about through the informal learning moments I've had interacting with other faculty members.  I have not worked on a physical campus since 2009; yet, my "Ah ha" moments have not dwindled.  They continue to flourish -- through the faculty development classes I teach (our VoiceThread discussions), the webinars I present and attend; the interactions I have on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and my blog with my PLN; and now my Google Hangouts.  

Over the past decade, as state budgets have dwindled higher ed faculty have become increasingly more part-time and more frequently work for multiple institutions. Earlier this month, I Skyped with a colleague of mine who is now teaching for FOUR colleges.  The point here is that web-based social technologies allow faculty to engage in formal learning while immersed in personalized video conversations at a distance.  The boundaries of our campuses are no longer obstacles that keep us from learning from faculty at other campuses.  We really are one big learning community ... if we just participate.

On college campuses, faculty development programs continue to be cut along with the budget, leaving the minimally staffed departments (if there is even one!) to be managing responsibilities that reach far outside of their original domain and leaving no time to stay current on emerging technologies.  Exploring, questioning, examining and experimenting with how to teach effectively with social technologies is perhaps the factor that will keep college learning moving forward.  These are the questions that will empower us to recraft a college learning experience that prepares our students for life in a digital, mobile, interconnected, global society -- one in which employers expect new employees to demonstrate their ability to have fostered relationships at a distance (through Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.) and be able to effectively present and converse asynchronous and synchronously through a webcam (for starters).

There are a mess of issues that faculty deal with on a daily basis.  How do we navigate the overwhelming world of new technologies? Where do we start? How do we teach with new tools and manage accessibility regulations?  How do I navigate my students' privacy effectively in the open web? How do we balance life and work?  How do we foster active learning with large class sizes?  What LMS should my insitution change to? What conferences are worth attending? We all have the same questions!  Let's ask them together! 

From my experiences, technology is so often viewed as a barrier in higher education. It is seen as as an obstacle that comes between humans and undermines our genuine ability to interact and engage with each other.  I've never viewed technology that way. To me, it's technology's dazzling capability to bring humans together regardless of their physical location that excite me. 

Faculty Development Hangouts?

I would like to start arranging Google Hangouts for faculty to discuss hot topics, share ideas, and just converse with one another.  Do you think this is a good idea? Would you attend or be interested in watching an archive of a Hangout On Air?  If so, add me to your Circles and leave a comment here on my blog with your thoughts or ideas for Hangout topics.  If you have questions that you'd like answered, please leave them here in the form of a blog comment and I'd be happy to answer them.

Video: Our Most Misunderstood Teaching and Learning Asset

This month, in my featured GETInsight blog post, I reflect on the ways in which video has been transformed as a medium and has transformed many aspects of our lives and I lay these significant shifts on top of the minimal changes in how video is applied in higher education today as a teaching and learning tool.  I invite you to read the post and view the related video, Online Learning in the Social Era: Human, Connected, and Inclusive, and leave a comment here or on the GETInsight blog in response to how you feel about whether or not video is engaged as effectively as it could or should be in online teaching and and learning today.  Be sure to consider video as a tool for both instructor *and* student use.  I would love to hear your thoughts!  Enjoy the post and the video and please share!

Click here to go straight to the GETInsight post, "Video: Our Most Misunderstood Teaching and Learning Asset"

*Each month, I write a sponsored blog post for Cisco's GETinsight blog, which is part of the GETideas.org network, a global community of educators with a shared interest in discovering ways to change and innovate education through technology.

Teaching with YouTube: Customizing the Start Time of a Video

When you integrate YouTube videos (that aren't yours) into your online course content, you may sometimes want to show your students just a particular part of the video, rather than the whole thing.  If you were teaching in a classroom, you could easily skip to the essential point and play from there but teaching online makes that tricky.  Today I learned that YouTube has created a very simple method for customizing the start time of a video you share with others.

This 2-minute video illustrates how it works.  Unfortunately, it only works when sharing a link and not with embedding.

Motivating College Students with Social Media & Web 2.0

Each month, I write a sponsored blog post for Cisco's GETInsight blog, which is part of the GETideas.org network, a global community of educators with a shared interest in change and innovation through technology.

This month's post explores the dual topic of the role a professor plays (or should play?) in motivating students and the opportunities social media and web 2.0 tools hold for boosting motivation in the online environment.  Included in the post are my perspectives on this topic and a specific sample of an Animoto video I created and shared in my online class to announce winners of student-nominated blogging awards (also embedded above -- shared with permission from my students).

Click here to read the post.  Enjoy!

Webinar Reflections: Reframing Visual Arts Instruction with VoiceThread

Wow!  That's all I could think after last week's exhilarating webinar, Reframing Visual Arts Instruction with VoiceThread.  This was the second "Innovator" webinar I have hosted for VoiceThread (I present one sponsored webinar each month for VT).  I spent the months of October through February showcasing many of my own VoiceThread teaching practices in the webinar series and each month we received the same question, "I'd like to see more examples of how professors in [insert any discipline here] are using VoiceThread."  So, I ventured out in search of some innovators who were doing cool things with VoiceThread and who would be willing to share their practices with the educational community to inspire their peers and contribute to innovation in higher education.

This month, I was joined by two fabulous educators, Heidi Upton and Tammy Lockett.  Check out the full archive of the webinar when you have 50-minutes of uninterrupted time to dedicate and are ready to be wowed! Watch it with a colleague or two for an added zing factor!  Oh, and don't miss the Goody Bag which is filled with loads of fabulous resources.

Here's what is so fabulous about pairing Heidi and Tammy's use of VoiceThread in this webinar.  Each of them uses VoiceThread in an extremely different way yet each uses it to invent new pathways to teach students and create unique spaces for students to reflect and learn together.

Heidi Upton
St. John's University
Heidi Upton is an Assistant Professor at St. John's University in Jamaica, New York where she teaches Discover New York, a core-curriculum freshman transition course.  Heidi is also affiliated with the Fine Arts department where she teaches other core curriculum courses including The Creative Process and Intro to Music.  Her talents in the area of performance shine through in the methodology she uses to teach Discover New York.  The class engages students in a process of inquiry to explore, understand, analyze, and interpret their city -- through walking tours that involve the fostering of critical visual analysis observations.  Heidi uses VoiceThread as a multisensory, online fabric in which students upload/share the photographs they've taken on their walks and, through voice comments, reflect and analyze their discoveries.  In the webinar, Heidi reflected with us about the details that emerge when the students are offered the opportunity to reflect in their own voice, which is so different from writing.  She also demonstrated how she thoughtfully scaffolds VoiceThread into her class through a process that involves modeling -- she takes her students on a walk, uploads her own photographs, leaves her own voice comments about her photographs, and invites students to give it a try.  This low-risk entry point demonstrates the instructional value of VoiceThread to students, allows them to naturally see why the technology is valuable to them in the class (no, it's not just busy work), and it also gives them an opportunity to try it and learn how to leave a comment without worrying about leaving the wrong answer -- bravo, Heidi!  Those are outstanding tips for any educator using emerging technologies to teach.

Here is an example of an art walk created by three of Heidi's Discover New York students with VoiceThread.

 

Tammy Lockett
Art Institute of Pittsburgh's Online Division
Tammy Lockett is one of the Lead Faculty members for the Foundations Department at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh's Online Division.  A self-proclaimed, former skeptic about the teaching studio art online, Tammy taught me a thing or two!  In the webinar, Tammy demonstrated for us how she uses VoiceThread to deliver a multimedia lecture to her drawing students to support each new module for the course.  She embeds the VoiceThread at the top of the unit each time.  Her students view the lecture and complete a specific oriented activity (for example, complete a still life drawing that demonstrates one's attempt to apply the skill learned in the lecture).  After the drawings are due, students scan them and submit the digital file to Tammy through eCollege, the course management system  used by her institution.  She then proceeds to the MyVoice area of her VoiceThread account and edits the VoiceThread lecture.  Then she uploads the submitted activities into the "lecture VoiceThread," dragging slides representing the student work to the front of the VoiceThread.  Then she records her feedback on each slide.  When students log in, the exact same VoiceThread is embedded in the unit but the first slide is now a student's work, signalling to them that the critique is available for them to access, listen to, and learn from.  Students may listen to the critiques Tammy has shared on any of the students work, just as they would in a group critique in a classroom. View a demonstration of how Tammy uses VoiceThread to records critiques of her students' work.

And what you see embedded here is a recording of a brief lecture Tammy created using a Go Pro video camera (the type of action camera used in extreme sports that attaches to your head!) and VoiceThread.  This is fabulous! I received my undergraduate degree in studio art and when I watched this video, I found myself thinking back to my traditional drawing classes.  At first, I didn't know what Tammy's intent was when I saw the video -- honestly, I kept thinking to myself, "Why didn't she use a tripod?  The jerky movements of the camera are making me nauseous."  Then, about half way through, it dawned upon me that this was her instructional genius!  Tammy elected to use the Go Pro camera because it's affixed to her head and it tracks her eyes as they continuously and fluidly move between subject and paper.  This may not seem like a huge deal to someone who has never taken a drawing class -- but, trust me, it's an essential element to master.  And, honestly, I don't think the importance of this skill or the clarity of how it functions in the process of creating a drawing has ever been communicated to me so clearly by a teacher as it has through this video.  But wait!  There's more.  Watch the VoiceThread and notice that this is more than a video.  Tammy uses VoiceThread's unique ability to let a user play the video while recording a voice comment, pause the video while still recording, and annotate on the video while still recording.  This technique enables her to engage the moving image and interact with it -- like a ball of clay -- sculpting it into the perfect instructional message needed to teach her students.  In case you can't tell, I'm pretty impressed with this one! 

Explore the full VoiceThread webinar library here!

Register for the next webinar here!

Two Teaching Ideas for Using Screencasting with VoiceThread

One of the most powerful but least used features of VoiceThread is its ability to play video, uploaded as central media (compared to a video comment recorded with a webcam).  I'd love to see a collection of "teaching ideas" that explore the variety of ways videos can be used to support student learning with VoiceThread.  I find that most instructors immediately want to link to YouTube videos (not created by them) but this isn't an option, as the videos in a VoiceThread must be either uploaded from your computer or you must identify a url that points directly to the hosted video file (this means the url must end in the video file extension type and YouTube videos are not direct links to the hosted files).

I like to encourage faculty to think about ways to use screencasting to create their own instructional videos and upload them into a VoiceThread.  Below, you will see two examples of how this approach could be applied (of course, there are many more!).

Idea #1: Instructional Activity
Share link: http://voicethread.com/share/2915637/

Students complete this VoiceThread activity after reading a chapter in their book and viewing a small collection of YouTube videos that augment the topics from the textbook.  Within this VoiceThread, there are three types of slides:

1. Directions: how to, grading information, criteria, etc.
2. Video: A 7-minute instructional video (Slide 5) which I recorded using Screenflow (a Mac-only   screencasting software).
3. Interactive Slides:  these slides contain prompts to which students respond.

Idea #2: Asynchronous Office Hours or Group Tutor Spaces
Share link: http://voicethread.com/share/2953545/


This VoiceThread was made using three web-based tools (all of which can be used for free, by the way).  First, the online whiteboard demo'd in the video is Scribblar.com and the video that I recorded and uploaded into the VoiceThread was made using Screencast-o-matic.  As I explain in the video, I preset the screen recording size in Screencast-o-matic to 600x450, as that is the precise aspect ratio of the VoiceThread player.  While it condenses my whiteboard space, the end result is a small file size which allows me to create a longer video!  (Keep in mind, if you have a free VoiceThread account, each individual file you upload into your VoiceThread will be limited to 25 MB.  If you have a PRO account (which is provided with most premium accounts including site wide and department licenses), that file size increases to 100 MB.)

Take a peek and feel free to leave a comment in the VoiceThread.  I encourage you to leave a voice or video comment and play the video as you're commenting.  Few people realize that you can actually capture your playback of the video as you record a comment in a VoiceThread --- and that includes using the Doodle tool!  Give it a try!



Do you have another idea for how you could use screencasting in a VoiceThread to support teaching and learning? Let's hear it ... or better yet, please share a link to an example!

Resource Sites for CUE Presentations

Tomorrow I will be arriving in Palm Springs for the Annual CUE Conference. This will be my third year attending and this year I am honored to be an invited showcase presenter.  I find such amazing energy at CUE and am thrilled to be included in this fabulous group of dedicated educators who are committed to using technology to improve student learning!

I will be presenting three sessions and I've created a Google Site that I will share with the participants.  I'm including the links below in case you find them useful.

How and Why I Flipped my Classroom:  All kinds of goodies related to my 2009 art history community college flipped classroom experiment.

Creating Participatory Learning Activities with VoiceThread:  A general support resource for anyone interested in learning more about VoiceThread's potential for supporting student learning.

The Human Touch:  Increasing Your Online Presence with Video:  It's an old story that online success rates trail their face-to-face counterparts.  But when are we going to realize the connection between social presence and success!? Wake up folks --  you are the missing link. 

I hope you find this useful.  If you'll be at CUE, please say hello!

"I'm Not Stupid!": How Open Ed Video Resources Will Change Education

For the past month, I have been a lurker in the Khan Academy Google Group.  I've been reflecting on the constant flow of comments submitted by "users" of the Khan videos who include a wide mix of people but often are teachers and students.  I am inspired but also saddened by the comments from students who share empowering stories of how the videos have enabled them to experience their capabilities to learn.  And this experience is the catalyst that sparked my most recent GETInsight blog* post.  I hope you enjoy it and feel inspired to leave a comment on the post or in the VoiceThread.

“I’m Not Stupid”: How Open Educational Video Resources Will Change the Future of Education

*The GetInsight blog is an integrated resource of GETideas.org, a community for education leaders.  I am a paid consultant for GETideas and write a monthly post about a related topic.  Everyone is welcome to participate in the conversation and I hope you'll join us!

YouTube Playlists: Tips for Teaching Effectively with Video

Evidence has shown that many college professors use YouTube for teaching.  I'm really not sure what that means, as there are a plethora of ways to "use YouTube" as a professor.  I think most professors today are linking YouTube videos into their classes but what else can we be doing?  Or how else can we use YouTube as a learning resource for our students?

I regularly encourage college professors to have a free YouTube account included in their essential teaching toolkit. First, having an account will at the very least open the door for you to start to think about creating and sharing your own videos (with a Creative Commons license, please, so we all can benefit from your greatness).  But even if you don't upload your own videos, an account allows you to begin curating your own video content into playlists which can kick up the volume of effective use of YouTube videos as content in your classes -- and then you can get more creative about how to use them to foster student-centered learning environments too.


What are YouTube playlists?
For example, in my YouTube account, I have set up a few different playlists and as I upload my own videos and search for existing videos, I can add related content to each playlist.  You can think of a playlist as a "collection" or a "folder" or a "group" if that helps.  Here are my existing playlists:
  1) Teaching with Emerging Technologies: Tips, tricks, and samples of effective practices for teaching with emerging technologies.
  2) History of Photography:  Videos that, well, are about the history of photography.
  3) Daguerreotype and Calotype:  Videos that demonstrate the two early photographic processes.  Now the videos in this playlist are also in my "History of Photography" playlist.

How can playlists be used effectively to support learning?
Let's say you are teaching a focused unit that covers a specific topic and you have three videos (keep them brief and focused) you want to share with your students.
Your options are:

1. Link out from your course management system to each of the three videos.  Booo! Why oh why would you want to send your students out to YouTube even once, let alone three times!  There's always something more tantalizing than your course content on YouTube. Be real.
2. Embed each of the three videos in your course management sytem.  Restrained applause. A better option, as your students' focus and flow stays within your course.  But embedding three videos takes up a lot of real estate in a course.
3. Embed your playlist!  Standing ovation!  Now we're talking.  With playlists, you can embed a small player in your course management system that plays each video in your playlist in a sequence, one right after the other.  
4. And how about taking this one step further?  Jaw drops to ground. If you use a collaborative environment (like Ning -- my favorite) to facilitate your students' learning, you can have your students collaboratively curate their own relevant playlists or groups of videos.  You give them the topic and criteria, they find they video and contribute it to the group.  Then this collaboratively constructed content can be engaged by the rest of the class in a range of activities -- like blog posts!

• Tip!  Be sure to clearly indicate how long the entire playlist is so your students can plan accordingly.  And keep it as brief as possible.   

Want to see this tip in action?  Watch this 3-minute video:

VoiceThread Example: Instructional Video + Formative Assessment

I am sharing an example of a VoiceThread I created for my online History of Photography students.  The VoiceThread is part instructional content (via a 7-minute video included within the VoiceThread) and part formative assessment.  The formative assessment is demonstrated through the slides following the video that incorporate objective and subjective/discussion oriented questions, assessing lower and higher order levels of learning.  The introductory slides are provided to anchor the activity with clear groundrules and expectations.

I should also note that VoiceThread is not the only assessment method I use in the class.  Traditional assessments and regular blog posts are also integrated.

I'm sharing this because I know how helpful it can be to teachers to have an opportunity to see examples of how tools are being used.  I hope this will encourage you to share examples from your own classes that demonstrate how you're integrating web 2.0 and social media tools into your students' learning.  I'm also sharing this example because as I interact with faculty, I am finding that many are aware of VoiceThread to some degree but few understand that a single VoiceThread has the potential to be a learning mashup, incorporating presentation slides, video, images and assessment rather than a container for a Powerpoint presentation.

I'm also experimenting with VoiceThread Groups for the first time this term.  I'll share more about that later.  

Feel free to add a comment in the VoiceThread if you'd like to experiment!  Just click "Sign in or Register"and if you don't yet  have a free VoiceThread account, create one with your name and email.




And in case you're wondering, here are the steps I took to create this example.  It took me about 8-hours to produce (which, YES, to me is the greatest obstacle for creating high quality online content):

Create Video

1. Create Keynote or Powerpoint presentation for the "video" portion.
2. Write transcript for the "video" portion.
3. Use a screencast tool (I used Screenflow) to record the Keynote and produce the raw video file.  I read the transcript as I record.
4. Export the raw screencast into a .mov file.

 Create Presentation

1. Use Keynote or Powerpoint to create the Introductory and Assessment slides.
2. Export the presentation to a PDF file(PDFs hold up much better than PPTs in VoiceThread and VT does not support Keynote files).

Create Online Transcript of Video

1. This can be done in a multitude of ways. I simply pasted my transcript into a Google doc.

Create a VoiceThread

1. Log into my VoiceThread Account
2. Click on the Create Tab
3. Click "Upload"
4. Upload the .mov file
5. Upload the PDF file
6. Drag and drop slides until they area arranged in correct order.
7. Click on the single slide that contains the .mov file.  It will appear in the 'placeholder' to the right.  Add title: "Click here to read the transcript."  In the URL area, paste the link to the Google doc.

Click "Comment"

1. Leave voice comments on each slide, replicating the text so the content is equivalent in both text and audio formats (for hearing impaired students).

Click "Share"

1. Adjust the Playback and Publishing Options.
2. Copy the link, html embed code or share with appropriate group.