The Importance of Callouts

One thing I've seen students doing at times is zipping through a video without listening to it, mostly because they missed something the first time and just need to see a small section to know how to do something. In that case, having the visual clues of the callouts is very helpful. I've been doing a callout for most every important action that I show them. I believe that teaching using both verbal and visual at the same time is the best way to go.

More Techniques For Shorter Videos

Some recent things I'm doing to keep them as short as possible:

1. Title slides - I changed from the default 5 sec. to 2 sec.

2. Aggressively chopping out pauses and hesitations in my talking, breathing noises, etc. You can zoom in on the timeline and get very exact with the audio track.

Students are very sensitive to the length of the vids. Looking back at my monsterous 14 minute Destiny Tutorial, I'm amazed they even watched it. I may go back through some of the older vids and tweak them for less time.

Headset Model I'm Using

Here's a link to the headset I'm using to create the videos...and that the students are using to watch them:

Cyber Acoustics AC-851

They are working out well, I highly recommend them!

German Project Going Great!

The 7th grade German students are off to a great start with the Wiki project. The (short) videos proved to be very helpful. They got so much done in the first day - beyond my expectations. No problems or issues, kids that were behind from not doing the homework part (setting up a delicious account) were able to watch that vid and get to it without any extra instruction from me. The hard work of creating videos is paying off!

7th Grade German Project using Wikispaces

I have another project happening now, 7th grade German students are going to be making a wiki page and collaborating with another student in a different hour or day. More later, for now here's the link:

http://sites.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/oms-library/7th-grade-german-culture-project

Health Project Completed!

This is the project I'll be presenting at WEMTA this year. Darren and I will have a lot of details to share. Here's the completed page on my site with all the video links:

http://sites.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/oms-library/8th-Grade-Health---Dietary-Analysis-Report

How Big Are These Files?

I've been moving files to and from school a lot lately, and needed a bigger flash drive to hold everything.  Sometimes I need to change a video and it's great to have everything available all the time - project files, music and graphics, and finished flash-based videos.  Here's some sample sizes:

2:00 video (including folder of other "stuff" needed to post on the net) = 12 mb

Project folder of 2:00 video (all the files needed + the raw video clips) =  45 mb

The only thing you post to the server is the actual video and folder of flash files...so for this example I only need 12 mb of space for the 2:00 video.  

Delicious updated

Here's updated "chopped" version. I put it into three separate vids, and dropped the last section about logging out and back in:

Delicious:

Delicious Account Setup (2:00) - What Delicious is, and how to set up your account

Adding Toolbar Buttons (1:21) - How to add Toolbar buttons to Firefox

Adding Sites to Delicious (2:35) - How to add and manage your favorite web sites

No More Transitions

I'm dropping transitions in an effort to keep the videos shorter. Redoing the Delicious vid showed me how they add up if you use them a lot, as I did when I made that video last semester. The transitions look nice, but to me it's just not worth making the video any longer than necessary.

"Chopping Up" Existing Videos

I'm in the process of "chopping up" my Delicious tutorial to use with the 7th grade German students this semester. This was one of my first videos I made and it was almost 8 minutes long (far too long IMO).

So rather than redoing it completely, I'm using "save as" in Camtasia to break it up into shorter sections, three in this case. I'll likely do the same to the Destiny Quest tutorial if possible.

EasyBib Book video

I realized a while back that I didn't do an example on EasyBib for a book source (believe it or not students did not use any books for the 8th grade research project in Science). I made one for a book source (clocked in at just under 2 minutes!). Here are all my EasyBib tutorials so far:

EasyBib:

EasyBib Introduction (2:11) - Find the site, register your account, logging in, etc.

EasyBib Magazines and Journals (5:02) - Examples of how to create citations for Magazine and Journal articles

EasyBib Newspaper (3:44) - Example of how to create a citation for a newspaper article

EasyBib Website (3:32) - Example of how to create a citation for a website using Autocite

EasyBib Book (1:55) - Example of how to create a citation for a book

EasyBib Create Your Bibliography (1:28) - Create a Word document of your bibliography using EasyBib

Working Between Home and School

Up until recently, I've been doing all these videos at home. Doing so much work outside the school day has been stressful.

Now I've got Camtasia on my work desktop (Camtasia allows their software to be loaded on more than one computer as long as you're not using them simultaneously). So I've fallen into a pattern of creating videos as time allows during the school day, then taking the files home on my flash drive and finishing and/or producing the video at home - adding music, tweaking a few things if needed, etc.

Then I bring the finished video back to school on my flash drive, upload it to our school's web server, and link it on all the relevant pages on my library website.

Cutting Out "Dead Time"

In a constant effort to keep my videos shorter, I recently tried cutting out dead time during the editing process using the "scissor tool" in Camtasia. I might find a section of the video where I'm typing something, or waiting for a webpage to load or whatever. If I'm not saying something during that time, I cut it out. These wasted seconds add up, and I say get 'em outta there!

More MyPyramid Videos

Two more for this project pending Darren's approval.

Entering Physical Activity:

• Entering Physical Activity (3:26) - How to find your activities in the database

• Entering Activity Duration (1:37) - Entering in your minutes for each activity

MyPyramid Health Lesson

Here's a project I'm collaborating on with our Health teacher, Darren Hartberg. I'm going to be presenting this lesson at WEMTA this spring. Here's the first few videos:

8th Grade Health - Dietary Analysis Report:

Your Account, Profile, and Navigation (2:39) - Create your account and profile, and learn how to navigate the MyPyramid site

Entering Food Items (2:21) - Directions on how to enter food items including frequently used foods

Portion Size and Quantity (2:42) - Entering quantities and number of servings

What's Better - One Long Vid or Several Short Vids?

The answer has become completely obvious now that I've done it both ways and watched the students interact with the instruction.  Several short vids are the way to go, it's not even a contest.

Aside from the fact that long videos can crash the browser here at school, the shorter vids (1-3 min.) just get the job done better.

My plan of having them take a longer video and "watch, pause, do" hasn't been the best way to go (I even zapped my original video on "How To Use Video Tutorials").  They don't always remember to pause the video and go do the task.  Sometimes they just keep watching, which is bad when it comes time to do something...they forget what they just watched if they take in too much instruction.

Also, even though you can chunk a longer vid into sections with the menu - something I still do even with the shorter vids - they don't always know where to pause the video and start doing something.  In the past I've even put in sections that say "now pause the video and do it" - sometimes they get it but not always.

Anyway, shorter is better, and they can still pause anytime, use the menu, rewatch a section, etc.  I've even dropped using transistions between clips and title slides in an effort to shorten things up.

Backup Plan?

Today our school web server was down for a while and no videos could be accessed. It was fixed promptly, but the issue remains - I should have a backup plan. I need to set up another place on the web to host these videos in case this happens again.

Royalty Free Music

Here's a few sources for "royalty free" music to use as background music for your tutorials if you so desire. I've had plenty of feedback from students and teachers that they like having the background music in there. Some of these sites have free music downloads, others you have to pay for:

http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-resources.html

http://www.stockmusic.net/

http://www.musicbakery.com/

How Short Should Each Video Be?

Watching the students learning via the videos yesterday, I want to say that even a five minute video is pushing it.  While most students did a fantastic job, some forgot a few of the key points I showed at the beginning of the Student Research Center video (it was around five minutes long).

I must really try to keep them short and sweet...one to three minutes if possible.

More Advantages to Teaching Via Video

Having spent the day yesterday starting the "8O" team 8th grade students on the Science/English research project, I have some thoughts on more advantages to teaching this way.  They were learning to use BadgerLink for the first time - Student Research Center and ProQuest.

I had a nice relaxed day working with over 120 students in the lab because all my teaching was already "done" for the most part.  I gave a short intro in the classroom on the LCD projector and off to the lab they went, watching 3 short video clips and then searching for articles on their topic.

I thought of some more advantages to teaching this way:

1.  My instruction was consistant every class period - I'm sure as a teacher you know that how you present something varies a bit from hour to hour.  If you're not careful, you may miss saying something to one hour vs. another hour.  With the videos, I'm 100% sure that every class and every student gets the same instruction.

2.  My voice feels great at the end of the day!  Repeating directions for "how-to" type instructions for each class can wear you out - so much talking to do sometimes.  Instead, I was able to do "one on one" help as needed in the labs...though there wasn't much of that to do...saving my voice.

3.  Sometimes your computer lab isn't set up the best for teaching and learning via the LCD projector.  In one of our labs, the screen is a bit far away from the students, and it's hard for all of them to see the screen easily.  The videos bring the instruction right to their monitor up close.

4.  Students with headphones on - listening and watching the videos - tend to mess around less often as they have something to focus on.

EasyBib - Bibliography Making Tool

Made a suite of vids about EasyBib to finish off the 8th grade research project.  Here's a copy/paste from the page:

Make a Bibliography with EasyBib

• EasyBib - an online tool to make bibliographies

Here's some video tutorials on how to use EasyBib:

• EasyBib:

EasyBib Introduction (2:11) - Find the site, register your account, logging in, etc.

EasyBib Magazines and Journals (5:02) - Examples of how to create citations for Magazine and Journal articles

EasyBib Newspaper (3:44) - Example of how to create a citation for a newspaper article

EasyBib Website (3:32) - Example of how to create a citation for a website using Autocite

EasyBib Create Your Bibliography (1:28) - Create a Word document of your bibliography using EasyBib

Google Advanced Search and some Searching Stragegies

Here's a couple of vids about Google's advanced search. These are for the 8th grade research project. One of the teachers wanted something on Boolean Logic, so I incorporated that into the first video.


Google Advanced Search:

Google Advanced Search 1 (4:19) - Learn how to use Boolean Logic (AND, OR, & NOT) to filter your searches

Google Advanced Search 2 (2:25) - Learn about phrase searching and searching within websites or domains

Here's a couple about search strategies:

Search Strategies:

Finding New Keywords (3:15) - Find new keywords on web pages to help focus your search

Searching for People and Organizations (2:37) - Expand your search topic to include people and organizations

Arrrgh!!! Discovered a Glitch in Producing!

Wow, this was a major frustration today and yesterday.  I made a video with the same settings as normal, but when produced the video had no table of contents, and the arrangement of the video to the controls underneath was goofy.  I went round and round trying to figure out what changed since the last successful video done earlier in the day...no dice.  I called tech support and chatted a bit to no avail, looked in the help section of the techsmith website, still couldn't figure it out.

Finally I found an article in the help section that mentioned a blank screen problem when producing a flash video (the kind that I do - express show flash with table of contents).  I noticed something in there about staying away from non alphanumeric characters in the file names.  Well, my file names were all letters with occasionally a number, so that wasn't it...HOWEVER I just noticed that the title of the video (the part that appears over the table of contents) was:

Magazines & Journals

Bingo - I found the one different thing compared to all the other successful vids I produced - the use of a non alphanumeric character!

I changed it to "Magazines and Journals" and all was fine!  Whew, glad that's over with!

Google News Tutorials

Here's one that started as one vid at a little over 6 minutes, then after the fact I went in and used "save as" to split it into two separate vids in the interest of keeping things shorter.  Here's a copy/paste from my website:

Google News:

Google News Overview (2:41) - A tour of the site and it's features

Searching Google News (3:33) - Search tips on how to find recent news articles

Short and Sweet

The more I do these lessons, the more I realize I need to keep them short and to the point as much as possible. It can be difficult because sometimes there are so many things to cover to teach something completely. Plus as a teacher one can get carried away and talk too much (guilty as charged).

I guess in that case it's better to have two or three shorter vids to cover a topic rather than one longer one. I mentioned the browser crashing problem before, and that's a very compelling reason to keep the vids shorter. I don't know what the "time limit before crashing" is on our existing (due to be replaced) desktops, but I'm trying to keep them under 5 minutes each if possible.

Besides that issue, I think the students stay focused better if the video is shorter. I've also been putting the time of each video next to the link so they know how long it is before watching it.

Student Feedback to Follett Destiny Tutorial

Here's a random sampling of student feedback from the Follett Destiny Tutorial. This lesson was observed as part of my new teacher observation/goal setting process.

It was a long video (15 min), and I will certainly redo it into shorter sections for next year, not only because of the crashing problem, but because I feel it was too long to keep their attention.

They did watch it in sections via the menu, and paused to answer questions in between sections, but I still feel that's just too much content in one sitting.  I did the lesson with all 540 students, but next year I'll likely only do the 7th graders that are incoming to OMS.

Some comments are funny - this is middle school after all!

What is something you like about using video tutorials?

• it absolutely helps me because I know what I'm doing and it gets me where I want to go
• shows you exactly what to do
• shows me step by step what to do
• it really explained and helped me understand
• you can go at your own pace
• tells you what to do and how to do it
  
• you can pause and back up if you didn't get the info
• it's a lot faster and I don't have to read anything
• that you don't get bored listening to the teacher talking
• being able to stop it when you need to
• you can learn independently
  
• it gave a lot of info and I never got lost
• you can use it from home
• tells you exactly how to use it
• you can stop it if you want to go over something again
• taught me a lot of useful info
• tells you what to do in order
• it let me see it actually working so I know what to do
• easier to learn than by reading
• it's a lot easier to pay attention
• it was a different way of learning
• shows you instead of tells you
• I like how it goes into great detail and really helps me understand
• it made it easy to learn
• we can SEE what to do instead of being told
• you can pause it and the directions are clear
• I love how you can always go back so you don't miss anything
• it's better than having to ask the teacher a million times
• it's more useful than having to explain in words
• you get to have control yourself
• very easy to follow
• it's not one of those pointless lessons
  
• you don't have to sit in class and listen to the teacher
• it helped because I'm a visual person
• you can actually see someone do it
• easier to listen to and more fun than you talking
• more convenient than trying to guide everyone through it all at once
• a visual way to teach, it was very professional!
• explained things in a detailed way
• showed you exactly what you need to do, and no more
• you can pause if you need more time to write
• it's different than just watching someone demonstrate on the board
• it's a great way to learn
• teaches you more
• helps you visualize it
• I can do everything at my own speed
• better than teachers talking
• I love how you can go back, start it and stop it
  

What is something that you would suggest to improve these videos?

• better graphics
• don't play sleepy music
• make them shorter
• have students talk on the videos
  
• shorten them
  
• more enthusiasm
• go faster
• slow down a little
• put some personality in it
  
• I wouldn't change much, but the music is kind of annoying
• make them more interesting
• let you click on stuff while they are talking
• improve the sound, it was very scratchy
  
• more music, less talking
• nothing except it was a little boring but I loved it
• go slower so we don't have to keep stopping it
• better headphones
• nothing except the crashing problem
• on some things go a little slower
• have a "happy" voice
• it needs to be less boring
• talk louder
• different music :)
  
• make the headphones better
• don't zoom the screen so much
• speak clearer or get a better microphone
• don't have the music so loud, at times it's distracting
• make the music a little more "Cuban"
  
• Note: Mr. Schmitz sounds like an airline pilot when they talk to you over the intercom before and after the flight!
  

(There were lots of "I wouldn't change anything, it was great" type comments which I didn't include in the list - not sure if they were serious or just wanting to write something down quickly to "be done" as students will sometimes do)

I'm definitely incorporating some of their ideas and suggestions - making sure the sound is better, keeping the videos as short as possible, etc. All the positive comments were great to read, it feels good to know that all the work involved in making these is paying off.

8th Grade Research Project

I'm making a bunch of videos for our 8th Grade Research Project, here's the page:

8th Grade Research Project: Investigating Scientific Research

I redid the BadgerLink video and put it into three parts (an Introduction, one on Student Research Center, and one on ProQuest), added a SIRS how-to, as well as one on Google News.

FYI, these vids are also posted on my Video Tutorials page, I still want to have a page will all the videos I made in one spot.

More to come!

Workflow Steps

I'm getting into making a bunch more videos now and I want to document how I'm doing things in Camtasia...the steps to making a video.  Not a complete list, but here goes...

1. Open new file

2. Create Title Slides to map out the sections of the vid

3. Save the project in it's own folder

4. Import any media into that same folder (graphics, music, etc.)

5. FYI, music must be in WAV file format

5. Begin screen recording (make sure SmartFocus is enabled)

6. Edit each screen recording before recording the next one (callouts, delete and/or fix the zoom and pans)

7. Drag in next title slide and record the next section

8. Put in transitions if needed (I've actually been going without transitions lately)

9. Final check of all sections

10.  Lock down everything

11. Add music track

12. Reduce music volume to the appropriate level

13. Produce video as

14. Choose Flash with menu (forgot what it's called exactly)

15. Edit "Table of Contents" for Vid Title, Menu Titles, graphics

16. Edit layout size to make sure menu items are visible

17. Make sure file name is correct (no spaces!)

18. Create the vid!

19. Copy to flash drive

20. Upload at school to W drive

21. Link vid to all text in webpages (Video Tutorals page + others)

22. Test in advance before students use it!

Whew, looks like a lot...and it is.  I'll edit this in case I forgot anything.

BadgerLink Tutorial

I made a short (5 min) video to show 7th grade students the basics of searching and printing magazine and newspaper articles via BadgerLink. I split it up into two sections, one for EbscoHost's Student Research Center, and one for ProQuest's newspaper database.

The lessons went well, they used the new USB headphones and had no issues. No browser crashes either, which was a relief!

I'll likely redo this video as there were some things I missed. Eighth graders will be using BadgerLink for an upcoming research project, and I think I'll have two separate vids, one for SRC and one for ProQuest.

Note: I redid this video and chopped it up into 3 sections, see the 8th Grade Research Project post above for the links

Sound is important!

Because I did the Destiny Quest lesson with all 540 students at OMS I was able to get a lot of feedback on what they liked and didn't like about these video tutorials. I'll be posting some of their comments later in more detail, but many of them didn't like the sound quality of our lab headphones. Our computers are around 5 years old, and the sound quality leaves something to be desired. Perhaps the headphone jacks on some were scratchy from years of plugging and unplugging, the cords of the headphones damaged, etc. Instructional time was lost for some students when they had to swap out their headphones for another pair, or we had to troubleshoot other sound issues.

I went ahead and invested in a class set of USB headsets, and the sound has been much improved. They were around $20-22 per pair, but it's been worth it.

Technical difficulties...please stay tuned!

Here's a video I made to teach the new library search software interface from Follett - Destiny Quest:

Using Destiny Quest

I taught this lesson back in November 2008 as part of my new teacher evaluation and observation. I learned a lot during this process, and there were some technical problems. It is important to test your videos on your school network to make sure they will work. I tested it but didn't watch it all the way through.

Most students had problems with the browser crashing about 3/4 of the way into the video. Oddly enough, some students were fine and made it all the way through. There was no discernible pattern to which computers worked fine and which ones crashed (don't you hate when that happens?).

Long story short, and after some much needed help from our excellent IT department, it looks like the videos were just too long (too large of a file) for the browser to handle. We were using both Firefox and IE.

The students whose browser crashed (most of them) had to close the browser and go back into the videos again.

So...for now I need to make these videos shorter. I'm going to break up this one into 3 shorter vids of 5 minutes each instead of the 15 minute version it is now. Five minutes seems to be "crash proof" on our network so far.