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.