As I read through the materials for our next section, I’m excited by the possibilities. But I say this from a practical perspective more than anything else.
This module gives me permission to experiment, to play with software and applications that I normally wouldn’t get a chance or find the time to use. It introduces me to new tools and gives me choices for tools that I will be able to use in the future. This makes me happy. I do like playing around with new software, but this is mostly when I get an urge or decide I want to learn something to see if I can do it. I taught myself Flash one weekend, and I created some samples with the hope that I might eventually construct a series of videos for the grammar course.
But after learning it, Flash seemed limited, so I never did anything with it. Similarly, as I said, I bought Camtasia on the advice of some of our Online Ed folks. I then played with it on the edges, mostly recording elaborate PPTs. For example, I created a video from the PPTs of a presentation at SWTXPC. The problem was that it was so big that lights dimmed for two full blocks whenever it played. So I ended up rendering it in three parts before posting to YouTube:
Link to SWTXPC 2012 Part III (for some reason it’s not showing up on My YouTube list)
The original was designed as basically a live production, with the video timed to my oral presentation. If you want to watch, the first part has my tribute to Andy Kaufman (in the presentation I lip-synced the Mighty Mouse theme song), and the third part has examples of Guitar Hero mishaps. All three videos combined are about 17 minutes, and since it was designed as a talk, you’ll find numerous points where the screen stops to allow me to read the text of my talk. It was fun to do, but I was so inefficient. I built it in PPT because that’s what I was familiar with, then recorded it using Camtasia. I really discovered this past weekend how much easier a program like Camtasia really is, but I was blind and focused on completing a product and unwilling to experiment when facing a deadline. Of course, I now know that learning Camtasia and then building the video in Camtasia would have taken less time than I spent doing it through PPT. <sigh>
The point of this history is that too often my learning has been very product-centered, but focusing only on learning as much as I needed to know to get a particular project completed, and even what I learned was probably back-asswards from more effective or more efficient ways for completing the project. I’m hopeful that in listening to others’ stories and others’ reflections on the tools, I’ll gain insight for my own practices.
I am hopeful that my own stories and my own reflections on the tools will help others gain insight into their practices.
For this week, I have already uploaded my first videos to YouTube, I plan to post a 6-Word Story (later today), create a list of digital storytelling tools that I can experiment with, develop a multimedia Five Card Flickr story (and a reflection), and revise the video that I posted on Sunday (along with a reflection on my process). Ambitious, and hopeful.