Edging Ahead…

How would screencasts be used in your classroom/department?

It may seem a no-brainer that the library environment lends itself naturally to using “how-to” videos. With the range of materials, databases, information systems and production services available through the library, simple “How-to” videos featuring  narrated screen capture of everything from the library catalog to setting up an RSS feed from a research database might seem to be logical uses of the technology.

The question is, “If we build it, will they come?”

The answer, I fear, is simply, without prevarication, “No. It’s just not that easy…”

The May 2009 OCLC report on library catalog usage suggested that students today want, to paraphrase, things to be Quick, to be Easy, and to be Relevant to their needs of the moment.

What single tool best meets this requirement today? Google, of course. Want a quick answer to who directed the 1968 Hollywood Romeo and Juliet? Google it. Need to know how to insert a complex formula into an Excel spreadsheet? Google it – and perhaps add “YouTube” if you want to see an instructional video on the exact topic.

The same question serves for every Helpfile, User tutorial and TechHelp access feature already built into each of the technology offerings in our library. As librarians, we seldom (never seems almost closer to the reality) see users (student OR teacher) navigating of their own volition to  Help features. How much easier it is, in our service-oriented system, for a student to simply ask the first person at hand, “How do I make a color copy?” or a teacher to just email the query “Do you have the Brannagh Hamlet?” (or perhaps a slightly more challenging, “Can you find critlit sources for the poetry of Michael Ondaatje?”)

Sounds pretty grim for the future of independent researching – but it’s not all bad. Screencasts seem to be a natural for promoting those  things users are already engaged with. Our student “front-end”, the page that automatically opens when a student launches a browser, is a blog, which should lend itself naturally to a screencast implementation.

We’ll start where the kids aleady are, or where they might conceivably go without the extrnal stimulus of classroom assignments or teacher-directed library use. Some possibilities include:

• Book Reviews by Students
• Book Reviews by teachers or professional reviewers
• Book Trailers from the industry (Scholastic,
• Movie Reviews of books

If you can’t beat ‘em…

 How has the explosion of web-based video changed the teaching and learning landscape?

In a nutshell, the explosion of web-based video is literally ejecting the teaching and learning landscape into a whole new trajectory: and it’s like an unstoppable, solid-rocket boost rather than a jet’s vigorous thrust, a turboprob’s gentle urging, or a prop-engine’s noisycajoling its payload forward.

The new  teaching and learning environment, in which lessons, examples, experiments and speculative meanderings are all freely available, in equal measure, to both teacher and learner, puts education on a laissez-faire footing not seen since Socrates schooled his charges.

It may be that technology is finally able to help bridge the divide between the teacher and the learner. For the one billion lucky enough to have access to the tools that brought us web-based video who are truly interested in being learners, there is no limit to what they might achieve.

Frankly, though, at the real interface of teaching and learning, where 20th-century schooled and trained teachers still guide “digital-native” students, the story is a bit more mundane.

Examples?

United Streaming

Three years ago, we licensed United Streaming, just as is it was becoming Discovery Streaming.

The promise of Discovery Streaming was seductive. In 2007, The International Society for Technology in Education completed review of the Discovery Education unitedstreaming and determined that the program clearly supports the implementation of the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students.

Combined with the size of the video database (40,000 videos and clips), focussed content (short clips to full-length videos), and the ubiquity of access through the web, it seemed that streaming video would render DVD obsolete before it could ever becom a media standard.

Then, when some of its limitations, such as download issues regarding firewalls and bandwidth, began to become apparent just as YouTube was taking off, offering FREE content on almost any topic imaginable, the luster of a paid service like DS quickly waned.

When we declined to renew the license after two years to only a handful of almost wistful emails of concern, the handwriting was on the wall. Expensive subscription databases, whether for periodicals, fulltext reference services, or media, are an endangered species.

Enter YouTube

YouTube is the first, I suspect, of a whole new paradigm for personal expression. Where generations of scribblers once wrote for a tiny chosen readership, now everyone from aspiring academics and eclectic entrepreneurs to downy-eyed dreamers and silicone snake-oil salesmen can vomit out their beliefs, biases, and unpolished pitches to the cold Crystal Eye of the webcam. Every subject imaginable has been covered, with many points of view cleverly explored. There is truly something for everyone on the web, and now it’s available in full motion glory. For the truly committed, web-based video is the new Information El Dorado.

Model on display in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia

So what’s wrong with this Picture?

Sure, it’s distorted but more important is the signal-to-noise ratio. In an environment where so much is unpolished, unfinished, inaccurate, or deliberately misleading, how can a data-miner be sure he or she is following a true high-grade vein of information?

There is so much on YouTube truly not worth the time to access that it makes the paucity of  authoritative print material on the open web seem like the Mother Lode by comparison.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with more conflicting information, more contradicting scientific conclusions, and much, much more raw data all the time, who has time to troll through the endless files of dross that make up the bulk of YouTube?

By the time you locate a promising file, download it so you can play it uninterrupted (for those  still in the “third-world” of information access speed) and then play to evaluate it for authority, bias, content and currency, you can often have just created something yourself of equal value.

Undeniable, however, has been streaming video’s  impact on the market for other media formats.  Three years after purchasing our first DVDs and now having “officialy” retired our VHS collection, we are already faced with the next generation media storage. We are still buying DVD’s, but at one time we owned 5,000 VHS titles, while after three years we still have only around 1,000 DVDs. Because of the need to migrate to both new media (BlueRay?) and compatible players, it is likely that HD-DVD will remain almost unused in the near future.

The reason? FREE streaming video. Aside from the the ubiquitous YouTube, free video content is available from everything from CNN and ESPN feeds to Indie developers to professional blogs. On the Environment, for example

YouTube (What’s the Worst that Can Happen? Greg Craven, Indepent teacher & author)

Democracy Now (Fracking and the Environment. Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica)

TED Talks (What’s Wrong with What we Eat? Mark Bittman, NYTimes Food Writer)

Of course, it’s important to not  limit oneself to one’s own personal favorites, be it the Age or Ted Talks. That way lies the same one-trick ponyism that many tech afficianados fall prey to (“Read these blogs and  you’ll never go wrong”).

The answer may be in a next-generation Google that can truly and “intelligently” sift through the mountain of visual verbiage (if a picture’s worth a thousand words, what’s a minute of 30fps video worth?). But until the new Google truly rises phoenixlike from the ashes of the best of the text-dependent search algorithm web-crawlers, web-based video will still be a poor-man’s information side-show, the domain of the “truly committed” or the “obsessed”. 

The Onion (Taco Bell’s New Green Menu takes no Ingredients from Nature) 

Hmmm…

Project Title: Effective Discussion Behavior
     Project Team:
           Member 1: HS ESL Department Head
           Member 2: HS Modern Languages Mandarin Teacher
           Member 3: HS Librarian

Project Parameters: 20 minute team planning period (before lunch) and a 2 hour production period, followed by group presentations of results. With our disparate team makeup  and collaborative project topic,  our goal was also to complete the project (aside from individual reflections) in the f2f session.

Blog Assignment: Upload the completed project. Reflect on the process of creating the digital story. How could digital storytelling be used in your classroom/subject area.

During the 20-minute planning period we learned that the ESL department had handwritten notes in hand for a planned discussion of “Effective Discussion Behavior” and since each of us engage in some form of “storytelling” in our disciplines, we decided we could build a shared presentation/project using available digital tools.

We then used a FlipVideo camera to grab clips of discussions in progress. We downloaded the ensuing 21 clips and individually assessed them (MP4 files played directly in  Windows Media Player) to see which might illustrate elements of effective discussion identified in the ESL notes. 

Comparing notes, we agreed that eight of the 21 clips effectively illustrated one of the core elements of effective discussion behavior. These elements were;

1. Plan for Discussion (read: Topic of Discussion or problem to be resolved)
2. Putting plans into (immediate) action
3. Practicing Active Listening
4. Actively Participating
5. Attending Fully
6. Paraphrasing
7. Enunciating Clearly (my paraphrasing) with Appropriate Body Language
8. Offering a Solution

With the ESL plan in hand and the demonstration clips selected, the project needed only be assembled in a stand-alone presentation format. We decided to use Smart Recorder to capture screencasts of the relevant demonstration clips, interspersed with title frames of the core discussion elements done in Powerpoint, possibly backed up by an Audicity soundtrack. All three team members were quite comfortable with Powerpoint, somewhat familiar with Audacity, largely unfamiliar with Smart Recorder, and totally new to the FlipVideo Camera.

Result:
With the written plans in hand, the 8 relevant clips isolated and titling a simple task using Powerpoint, assembling the items seemed doable in the allotted time. We quickly found, however, that the tools we had chosen were limiting in several ways, at least for our novice production team:

• FlipVideo camera default appears to be 15 fps, resulting in herky-jerky pans rendering several clips unuseable. We did not have time to investigate 30 fps options and reshoot.
• Sound capture with the FlipVideo cameras included a high level of background noise on most clips. We had only our “one-take” footage to work with.
• Running Full-screen titling slides from Powerpoint hid the Smart Recorder controls, which meant that we had to capture Powerpoint titling in Slide Sorter mode, resulting in extraneous visual elements. (Windows Toolbars, Smart Recorder Controls, etc)
• Smart Recorder Controls are simple but slow. Our “quick & dirty” recording method was to play the WMP clip, then hit Record on Smart Recorder.
• Smart Recording from a playing WMP file appears to have been not very “smart”. The resulting Smart Recording of our project included the following features making it unuseable for instruction or presentation;
  o Transitions between title and subtitle frames and video are unacceptably choppy
  o Image quality of the captured WMP playout is unacceptable due to
          * Dropped video frames resulting in “Keystone-Kops”-like movement
          * Video frames have a “solarized” appearance suggesting incomplete capture
  o Audio frames are either dropped or chopped, resulting in illegible or no sound
  o Transitions between silent Powerpoint Headers and random-sound WMP playout is jarring

What did we learn (or relearn) from this exercise? We learned that;

• Digital production tools must be selected with the same care for desired outcomes that any teaching/learning tools must be chosen.
• Digital production tools, even of the “plug ‘n play” variety, demand expertise in their use in order to be used effectively.
• The time necessary to develop expertise in the use of any of the digital tools presented in this course is beyond the scope of the course.
• It is clearly not “best practice” to simply use digital tools because they are available, if a better tool is already available. In the case of this project, promoting effective discussion would probably be better done using realtime discussion on topics of interest to the target audience.

How could digital storytelling be used in my classroom/subject area?

Although this particular project would, by most standards, be judged a practical failure, as a HS librarian, I see digital storytelling as having major potential for;

• Appealing to students to get involved with the library, its programs and the selection of materials, resources and services it offers
• Creating awareness of ranges of services and materials available in the library
• Developing  awareness of alternative genres (students tend to stay within a reading “zone of comfort”) for independent reading
• Introducing new materials, systems or services in the library
• Promoting interest in and circulation of new titles (and old standards)
• Reviewing Research Skills in a novel and interesting way

Now – if we can just get our hands on a “Round Tuitt”…

Yes, I’m guilty. Of course I am. I’ve bored more people with text-heavy bulleted presentations than anybody should ever have to admit to. But I  was just doing what every kid with a new toy  does. I was trying it on to see what it could do.

I was lucky enough to have Kim Cofino mention “Presentation Zen” to me a year ago when I was working on a proposal for our regional teachers’ conference.   I wasn’t quite ready then to abandon all my work in the name of getting my message out in that dramatic, but Spartan, by my “old” standards, style.  Luckily, my presentation wasn’t selected for the conference, so no one was ever subjected to that last-gasp 20th-century blow-out.

But I’m learning. The message of that presentation was important to me, so I went back in the spring and took another look at it to see what could be salvaged. I found some heartening things through applying some of the principles of “Presentation Zen” as I now understand them.

1) I was able to improve it 100% by simply stripping out the background Theme. What a simple concept! As soon as I saw my images highlighted on that featureless black background, I was hooked. No more “wind over Paris spring” themes for me…

2) I had tried to open with a snapshot of a looming environmental train-wreck, to tie this to a personal life-story paralleling the evolution of the environmental one, and then to use the converging storylines to pitch my own speculative fiction novel, Mai Shangri-La. the result included WAY too many competing messages. Each deserved its own vehicle.

3) In spite of my legacy bulleted style, I found that each slide had a core element that I could keep. By “unpacking” the multilayered images, I could expand one slide into several much simpler ones, all of which could impart their own unique message.

4) Without some of the excess wording, individual slides took on a new vibrancy that thrilled me. So a slide which had packed in a dozen cascading images and a series of expanding bullets became a series of individual slides with one or two words each.

I tried unsuccessfully to export a sample to PDF to display here, but uploads keep failing, so I’m bailing on this and moving on. Trust me, that the new, leaner Powerpoint was a dramatic improvement over the old. Now if I could just become so facile with a blogging platform… :0(

…but leaving it at that was really not very satisfying, so I finally ate crow and went to Dennis, my Divisional TRC (Technology Resource Coordinator), and learned a valuable lesson to buttress my learning about Presentation Zen – and basic Powerpoint use ;0) And the lesson is…USE the resources available to you, including the services of people who’s job it is to support you. It will save a LOT of time and frustration.  Thanks, Dennis.

Here’s a JPEG of just ONE of the original slides from the “Pre-Zen” Presentation (47 slides, all Packed out with words, cascading images, transitions (although I had already learned to pare these down to a single image and slide transition) and sound (thankfully, no typewriter clacks or machine-gun yammer, but still an overpowering background music dominating many of the slides)

And here’s the “kicker” slide from the new presentation (the new Presentation took that SINGLE original slide and “unpacked” it to present just one of the many messages in the original.)

"Fill" for a Future Housing Development on the outskirts of Bangkok. Normal?...

Assignment: “…. find an appropriate image to use in at least one of the classes you teach.  How can visual imagery support your curricular content?”

I’m not teaching as many direct classes these days as technology and available time conspire to draw students into their own worlds and teacher into their own classrooms,  but I interact constantly with students, teachers, parents and vendors, and so these are truly “the classes I teach”.  Regardless of the topic, I often lately find myself coming around to the elephant in the room; the environment , or more succinctly, our blatant and growing disregard for the environment in our pursuit of Consumerism’s Holy Grail.  Recently, it seems like the elephant is becoming a herd, as we crowd in increasing environmental degradation (blogged about last post with a positive-spin response by Doug Johnson in the Blue Skunk Blog),  potential global warming tipping points,  growing disease vectors,  and possible environmental collapse.

Yesterday, Stuart H. Scott, in an address to HS students at International School Bangkok, added another “mother of all elephants in the room” – the spectre of actual human extinction if we continue the “BAU” course. For the first time since Al Gore raised the red flag for many of us,  I watched an adult literally choke up talking to kids about Catastrophic Failure Modes and the real possibility of a future United States unable to feed its citizens.  It’s looking increasing likely, from where I stand, that the elephants are truly about to run amok…

I wrote a book about my emerging convictions around this topic, and when I stalled out at getting a publisher, I decided to go it alone.  I was able to meet the design requirements for the Interior file of a POD book (great for the environment), but when I came to the cover image, I was stuck. I wanted an image that would convey a sense of the impending catastrophe  the book explores while hinting at the wonder that still exists in nature and the the tentative promise of redemption through a higher power, be that divine, or human-inspired.

In the end, I chose an image of my own, grabbed quickly around the helpful assistance from my 18 month-old son. For me, this image will always represent the sense of chaotic purpose driven by a growing sense of impending doom I was feeling as I tried to breath life into my initial literary “creation”. Although the meaning may be a large part of only my own internal “soul-map”, the image neatly encapsulates one of the core messages I had spent 190,000 words trying to articulate. Does it work for anyone else? I guess that’s a question that only someone who has read the book might answer…