my first video

Here is the video I made using Windows Movie Maker. I'd heard lots of bad things about WMM - like how it is not as good as iMovie. But I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong - it wasn't easy and took many hours of trial and error - but overall I would say that it's a tool I would use again.

I had to open an account at Blog TV in order to have somewhere to upload my video - click here to view the video.

The video is about our visit to Capilano Suspension Bridge - just after we arrived in Vancouver. The audio is a little faint - so you might find you have to bump up the sound level to hear my dulcet tones ...

Instructional Video

This weekend, I'm thinking about educational video.

Video, like all instructional media, should be appropriate to the context in terms of both the audience and the content. There are certain contexts which require video content to be simple and other times when creativity is appropriate. Enriching video content is unlikely to make it more 'educational' - but retaining learners' interest and motivation may lead to more engagement with the content and therefore might increase learning.

I appreciate the videos made by Lee LeFever at Commoncraft - Wikis in Plain English, for example. This is an example of a video that is both plain and simple but is also very creative and entertaining. Having said that, I used this example in a workshop in Botswana and people found it a little too fast. But that's the beauty of video - you can replay for yourself as many times as you want.

Creative Commons Licences

Today, I am attending an internal workshop at COL where we are trying to learn more about the intricacies of producing materials under Creative Commons licences. Copyright is a difficult issue - especially for COL where we contract a lot of different writers to develop course materials.

An interesting feature of the workshop is that we are also using Twitter to make comments and ask questions on the presentation. Twitter is increasingly used in international conferences to provide a way for audiences to comment or seek clarification during a presentation.

Interesting process.