Finding Educational Videos

May 25, 2012 at 11:11 am | Posted in useful links | Leave a comment
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Week 4 of the Bonk MOOC is all about the use of free online video, and presents some ideas about structuring that use. It’s no use simply having a bunch of links to ‘maybe useful’ videos from Blackboard; they really need to be integrated into the learning design. Prof. Bonk published a paper in 2009 that discusses these structures; some are instructor-centred while others are learner-centred. For example:

Anchor with Discussion: The instructor(s) finds videos and shows them in class and students discuss them in small groups with certain assigned tasks.

Collaborative Anchoring: A pair of students as well as the course instructor each find a few relevant videos for the week and then share what they have found with each other and decide which ones to use in class.

It should go without saying that any videos used need to be fully previewed beforehand and their links checked a few days before use; don’t assume that what you used last year will still be available online. If they contain some information or opinions that do not align with your teaching, that is not necessarily a reason to reject them – conflicting voices present a great opportunity for discussion in class. By highlighting any bias, omissions, contradictions or misinformation you can help students become more self-critical of the online resources they find themselves.

Contributors to the discussion forum in the MOOC provided a couple of great links to help you find video resources in places other than YouTube or iTunes U:

I’d also thoroughly recommend looking at the JISC Digital Media advice on Finding Videos for Academic Purposes Using Web-based Video Hosting Sites which highlights the time taken to find and review suitable material as well as the importance of choosing effective search terms and filters.

Bonk, C. J. (2008, March). YouTube anchors and enders: The use of shared online video content as a macrocontext for learning. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2008 Annual Meeting, New York, NY. Accessed online (May 2012) http://www.acecjournal.org/2009/Journal_Data/Vol7No1/201103.pdf

Subtitles for videos

February 11, 2011 at 3:24 pm | Posted in hands-on | Leave a comment
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I’ve just used the new subtitling feature in Camtasia v7 and it really makes it easy to synchronise the script with the video – you just click on a word in the script when you hear it to divide the script into two or three line chunks. So ideally the process takes only a little longer than the video itself.

The test video in question is A guide to making your thesis available online. This 10-minute presentation introduces e-theses, outlines their benefits and the issues they raise and describes the process requird to create and submit them. It is also available as an Adobe Presenter slideshow.

I uploaded the resultant MP4 to EdShare and was disappointed to find that the captions are not supported (I think). A quick dig around Google indicated that FlowPlayer (used by EdShare) can support captions, so I’ll ask if its possible to get that extension installed.

I then uploaded the same file to YouTube, plus the captions in SubRip format (essentially text plus timecodes). Camtasia can export your captions as a SubRip file, so it only took a couple of minutes to create a fully accesible video. Just click CC in the control bar to view the captions.

How to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint

March 4, 2010 at 2:20 pm | Posted in hands-on | Leave a comment
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This is nothing new but I keep getting asked this so thought I would provide this brief summary:

The following technique embeds the video – i.e. it streams it direct from YouTube to the rectangular area you define on a slide, so an internet connection is needed during the presentation.

Just watch this YouTube video to find out how – its a bit fiddly and technical, but not difficult.

It is of course also possible to download and save videos from YouTube and then add those to a slide – but although this may seem simpler it raises all kinds of awkward copyright issues for tutors (i.e. it is illegal). If you want to do this, you’ll have to Google the answer yourself!

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