Technology, Methods, and ME!!!

You know that moment when you don't want to admit that you've bitten off more than you can chew? Yeah, that's my website. To clarify, the task that I set for myself is certainly long term possible, but will definitely require me putting in time on a regular basis. I had wanted to have every video on my website closed captioned for this final project, but that will be done around the time that junior up there finishes his snack. :-D

So, my website is located at: http://www.mrsbsworld.com/triangulartools.html

I had originally coded the site in ETEC 500 and have been adding to it off and on throughout the course of the school year. I added the section that the link above takes you to as part of my project for ETEC 644, but the component that I completed for my final project for this class was the closed captioning/subtitles/why do I talk so fast to my how to solve videos. The videos to which I added captioning are all 3 sine videos, tangent video 2, and the 30-60-90 special right triangle video.

Things I learned from this process:
   1) I talk TOO fast. I was trying to speak slowly in the videos. Yeah, go ahead and:

    

2) Technology saves SO MUCH time... when you know how to actually use it.

 

The videos that I captioned show a progression. If you watch the tangent video, the 30-60-90 and the second sine video, you'll see one type of captioning. I did all of this screen by screen checking the timing and putting in my own annotation text boxes. I shall confine myself to say that this took an excessive amount of time. Then, I somehow magically got the add captions selection to work in camtasia. (I had previously tried and it was shaded out so that I didn't have access.) I captioned that video MUCH more quickly and went to add captions to the last sine video and couldn't match what I had done at first. I'm pretty sure that it has something to do with selecting the recording in some particular way. I'll play with it more later but for now, stop changing the Google on me!

3) This is not the sort of process that you can complete on your own in an hour or two to make really nice, high quality videos. There are issues with phrasing in my videos. There are issues with background noises (a special "shout out" to my darling children, darling husband and Hiccup, the dog...). There are locations in my video where a letter just magically disappears, where did it go? I think it's with all the socks...

These are the real things that take time, know how, and a crazy amount of effort to erase either through re-recording or more technology know how than I have currently. Don't get me wrong, my videos aren't bad; I just can't help but watch them and find detail after detail that makes me want to cover my eyes.

4) This process of video creation is something that I want to bring into my own classroom practice. Ha ha students! Look at what I had to go through and now you do, too! No, that's not why. I just have seen the ways I could have perfected the language, planned more, been more specific, built more structure, I could go on but I think that I have made my point. In having my students create videos, I will be affording them the time to really focus their attention and refine something. I am looking forward to exploring some of the free extensions on my google chrome books with my students (we video and pic monkey to name a few) to bring their learning to the next level.

Thanks for everything this quarter Dr. Newberry!

Michelle