What I found out about the difference between Digital Storytelling and telling stories using technology…

“Adios, theory!” wrote Charles Darwin, in the margins of a book he owned, referring to the impact which that section of text could have on his own theory of evolution. Fortunately for us, the theory survives, and so does the insight this note gives us. This is just one example from a rich pattern of annotations scribbled into the margins of practically every book which he owned. The collection is currently being digitised, and much of it is now available online, both in the form of transcriptions and images of the original (rather challenging) handwriting. This enables scholars to follow the development of Darwin’s thinking throughout his life. See

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/darwinlibrary for more information and a link to this collection. This was also covered in ‘The Material World’ on BBC Radio 4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011zzhq

While this resource is fascinating in its own right, it also set me thinking about the value of note taking in general. If Darwin did it in such a comprehensive manner, it’s probably quite a good idea, isn’t it? Donald Clark raised this question in his ‘Plan B’ blog recently. “Note taking increases learning, results in deeper learning and leads to further learning”, Donald tells us, and I agree with him. How better to make sure that you have an understanding of what is said than by taking a note – to quote, comment on, evaluate, or to disagree with the speaker. All of these show evidence of processing what is being said, which is a prerequisite to learning.

I sometimes fail to take notes, and I nearly always regret that. However, there is one thing I have learned never to say when I am giving a presentation: “Don’t worry about taking notes, it is all in The Powerpoint”. What the speaker says may perhaps be in there, but what the listener is thinking can never be…

This advice from JISC Digital Media about ways to improve your videos is so useful that we decided to post it on our blog. For more information about the advice, guidance and services that they provide please visit http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/

Improve your Videos in 4 Easy Steps

Often the difference between’ acceptable’ and ‘rather good’ is quite small. This, in my experience is certainly the case with amateur videos. I’ve seen a lot of self-made videos, particularly in the world of education, and again and again the same problems keep cropping up, problems which are actually very easy to rectify.

Here are my top 4. Pay attention to these and you will immediately see an improvement in the materials you produce on video.

1) Bad Lighting

The advent of autoexposure systems on camera and camcorders may have simplified the process of getting a properly exposed image but it hasn’t eliminated the need for user involvement. If you still believe that you can simply point your camcorder at a subject and it will produce lovely videos, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise.

The problem is simply this: the camera doesn’t know what the subject of your video is: is it the tree on the right? The picture hanging on the wall in the top of frame? Or perhaps the person standing slightly left of centre. The camcorder will use some sort of algorithm to come up with an exposure that will work in many circumstances, but it will rarely be perfect and will often be awful.

So how can you help your camcorder to calculate better exposures? Here are a few tips.

· Make sure there’s some light falling on your subject, preferably from the front (i.e. from your side of the subject) and a bit to one side. If the illumination comes from a ceiling light, it should be behind you and to one side. This applies to sunlight as well – but beware of squinting subjects.

· If you can’t get good lighting of your subject in the current location, move to a new one! Even if you can get good lighting in your location, be prepared to move both yourself and your subject around to find the best light.

· People tend to have their desks next to the window whenever possible. Unfortunately, this means that when you shoot someone at your desk it’s very likely that there’ll be a window behind them. If this is the case, do not shoot them at their desk – or at least try to find an angle where the window isn’t behind them, because otherwise you are guaranteed to have a bad image.

2) Shaky camera

This is perhaps the most common problem with amateur videos. Oddly, it is also the most easily corrected. How? Simple: get a tripod and use it religiously. It is not possible to hand-hold a camcorder of any size for a significant length of time without introducing some sort of shake or wobble into the image. This applies to pocket camcorders as well, because it is not the weight of the camcorder that’s the problem but rather the length of time you have to hold it still.

When you get a tripod, make sure it is a video tripod, not one for a stills camera. The difference is in the tripod head: a proper video head will permit smooth camera motion (panning left and right and tilting up and down), something which is not possible on a stills tripod.

There’s really no excuse for not using a tripod, not even expense. It is possible to get little desktop tripods (not the best solution but still better than hand-holding) for as little as £3.

3) Bad sound

In order to get a good picture we want to have the camera far enough away from the subject to see them. In order to get good sound we want to have the microphone very close to the subject’s mouth. So what do we do if the microphone is built into the camcorder? Simple: we get either bad sound or a bad picture – and picture unfortunately tends to trump sound.

This is unfortunate because the sound quality of the video is usually more important than picture quality, particularly when making educational resources. Is there a solution to this seemingly intractable problem?

The best solution is to use an external microphone such as a lapel mic. Even the cheapest such mic will give results significantly better than a built-in mic. We can then get excellent sound without compromising on picture quality. There are camcorders available at all price ranges which take external mics: make this a requirement when purchasing one.

Failing this, it is necessary to find a location which can at least partially make up for the shortcomings of the built-in mic. Try to shoot your video in a room which is not only quiet but also not too bright acoustically. The less noise there is on the audio part of your recording, the better the sounds you want will come out.

4) No editing

Even a tiny amount of editing can improve the look of your video immensely. There are numerous free editing systems available nowadays which can provide you the tools to perform basic editing, and even more sophisticated free systems are beginning to appear.

The most basic type of editing is called topping and tailing. Not surprisingly, this consists of removing the bits and the beginning and the end which you don’t need.

If you want to get a bit more sophisticated than that you might edit further to ’clean up’ the video: to remove mistakes, pauses and sections irrelevant to the intended purpose of the video. In addition it is possible to import slides into much simple editing software. These can then be inserted where appropriate in the video. Not only will the quality of the slides be better than if the projected slides were shot with the camcorder, they can also be used to hide edits made during the clean up.

JISC Digital Media is a JISC Advance service which provides advice about anything having to do with digital media. All of our advice including the helpdesk, our extensive library of documents and more is completely free to any FE or HE institution in the UK.

JISC RSC Wales’ Esther Barrett describes her experiences using iGoogle and how she has at last given up her paper diary! About time too…

I hadn’t appreciated what a difficult job radio presenters, with their invisible audiences, have until I tried delivering an interactive, live, online session for the first time last year.  Unlike delivering face to face sessions you can’t see your ‘audience’ … so there is no body language or instant feedback or indication that someone doesn’t understand, is bored or is even listening. Perhaps this is to do with the fact that traditional radio broadcasters are doing just that … ‘broadcasting’ or sending out a message rather than trying to engage with and encourage participation of the ‘audience’ … something that those who are offering, or thinking of offering, live online session, tutorials, meetings (instead of or as well as face to face ones) to their learners or colleagues would surely want.

So how do you engage an invisible audience of online learners or colleagues? Peter Chatterton offers some excellent (imo) advice in the JISC ‘Elluminate Good Practice Guide’ (note: you don’t need to be using Elluminate for it to be relevant). Along with attending lots of online sessions to get firsthand experience of this type of online environment, which does feel different to a face to face equivalent, I used the pointers in this guide when getting ready to start delivering our Lunchtime Bytes (live, online interactive information sessions) with my JISC RSC Wales colleagues.

I am only going to pick out a few of the key points here, so let’s start with the reason why you might choose to use a web conferencing type tool like Elluminate, Adobe Connect, DimDim, BigBlueButton (all discussed in previous posts) … to promote engagement amongst learners, who are not in the same room or even country / time zone as each other.  JISC’s  ‘Elluminate Good Practice Guide’ says,

… and I would agree with this wholeheartedly. If all you want to do is send out a message to a live audience (broadcast) then perhaps a tool like Slideshare’s new ‘Zipcast’ is the one for you as it really only allows one person to speak to many about a topic (supported in this case by a Slideshare presentation); although Zipcast also enables the audience to communicate via text chat. Web conferencing tools like Elluminate and those mentioned above allow for much wider user engagement.

In order for tools like Elluminate not to be used solely as ‘broadcast’ tools JISC ‘Elluminate Good Practice Guide’ has the following advice:

• Take time to learn and familiarise yourself with the tool you are using.  I agree with the driving a car analogy used in the JISC guide “once people have mastered the use of the controls, they become second nature, but in the early days of learning, one has to consciously think about using the controls such as the clutch pedal.” If your passengers can tell that you are not a confident driver they are more likely to get out as quickly as they can rather than staying and enjoying the ride!
  
• Prepare and plan and structure online sessions as much as you would face to face sessions (at least for the first few). Again I would agree with the comment in the JISC guide that tools like Elluminate have “a tendency to “amplify” either existing good or bad practice and poor preparation is likely to be “exposed” in the virtual environment“. It is also much more difficult to think on your feet and adapt a session when you are sat at a desk talking to your computer, rather than faced with a reactive live audience.
• Draw on existing good practice. If you are good at engaging students and staff during workshops, tutorials or meetings then draw on these face to face practices and techniques and apply them appropriately within the online environment … although knowing the features of the tool and having planned how you are going to use them to achieve your desired outcome is really important here.
• Sort out or minimise technical problems so that these things don’t get in the way of engagement.

The JISC ‘Elluminate Good Practice Guide’ is a great starting point for anyone engaging live, online with learners (or colleagues), particularly chapter 3 ‘Designing for participant engagement’ . In addition, the main piece of advice that I think all of the JISC RSC Wales team would give to anyone leading a live online session would be wherever possible have a co-presenter working with you – to welcome late arrivals, to deal with technical problems, to keep an eye on and respond to text chat, to past URLs, to change polling options, to open and close microphones … generally to enable the session leader to focus on the learners or attendees and keeping them engaged!

I have blogged several times recently about using technology to meet and communicate, present and collaborate synchronously, with ‘Whatever the weather – an illuminating few months’ and  ‘Is face to face the only answer?‘ being the most recent. As interest in using web based technologies for synchronous/live/real time communication increases, knowing more about the range of tools that are out there, especially the lower cost/free ones is becoming more important.

Today I had the opportunity to attend a demonstration of one of the open source technologies I have tried before (with mixed success) but that I seem to be hearing mentioned more and more often … Big Blue Button.  JISC Mail (another of the JISC Advance services) recently set up a Big Blue Button (BBB) installation in their JISC Mail Lab and today offered a demonstration for anyone who was interested. I went along (well sat at my desk with my headset on and joined in) with about 35 other people to see what it was all about and here is what I found out:

What BBB had:

• 1 presenter (who we could see and hear) and 1 moderator who we knew was there via text chat
• multiple webcams displaying a number of the participants
• a presentation / whiteboard area (but only for the presenter to annotate)
• text chat where messages could be posted to all or privately to any number of individuals
• a demonstration of the presenter sharing their screen.

What BBB didn’t have:

• tools for encouraging audience participation or gauging how the sessions are going … emoticons / hands up / polls …
• a file sharing option or the ability to save the presentation
• a recording feature … which would have been very handy in this case as those from the JISC RSC Wales team who couldn’t attend the session could have viewed it at their leisure and I could perhaps have even put a link to it here (like we do with our Lunchtime Bytes).

What impressed me about BBB:

• the number of webcams that we had running at one time
• that (as a participant) I could control the size and position of each of the elements (presentation board, web cams, text chat) and that I could also close most of them if I wanted to
• there was the option to translate the text chat into various other languages, using Google translate
• you could colour your text chat to more easily distinguish it from other’s text (little things …I know)!

What disappointed me about BBB:

• audio wasn’t automatically activated when you entered the session and you had to know to click on a particular icon to activate it
• I couldn’t save the whiteboard/presentation and so had to take screenshots all the way through
• apparently a built in system for setting up and sending out instructions for joining a session is not part of BBB.

Overall impression of Big Blue Button …

At the moment Big Blue Button wouldn’t be suitable for something like our online Lunchtime Byte interactive, information sessions, currently delivered via Elluminate, because these sessions use the features (missing from BBB) that allow greater feedback and participation from the audience (emoticons, polls) as well as the recording feature. However, I like the simplicity of Big Blue Button’s interface and the flexibility for the participants to decide how they have their view laid out, as well as the fact that multiple webcams seem to run very easily … not something I have seen done well by many/any tools before. I think that Big Blue Button would be a very handy tool for geographically distributed groups of people who wanted to meet live online and have the ability to see and hear each other talk, as well as the option to share a presentation or document in a central space and also to have text chat as an alternative way of communicating.

One last thing … I haven’t mentioned anything here about the technical side of Big Blue Button but the Big Blue Button website or  JISC Mail’s Lab will hopefully be able to continue to offer advice and support about all aspects of this synchronous communication tool that, after today’s demonstration (thank you JISC Mail!) does appear to have potential.

Back in November, RSC Wales launched its Toolkit for Teaching : a series of Moodle modules on technology skills  that will hopefully be useful both for staff development programmes and Initial Teacher Training.
Each module has a series of activities and associated guidance notes to facilitate online self-study, though access to some face-to-face support would probably be beneficial. The modules were originally put together by JISC RSC Scotland South and West but have been modified to give more of a Welsh focus, and have additionally been mapped to the LLUK Professional Standards, as well as the Application Guide to Using Technology, for Teachers, Tutors and Trainers in the Lifelong Learning Sector in Wales. The modules can be used directly from the RSC Wales Moodle, or can be downloaded into other Moodle instances. Unfortunately the modules are not currently available through the medium of Welsh.

Video from Module 3

The Toolkit for Teaching includes:
•        Module 1: Introduction to e-Learning
•        Module 2: e-Resources & Copyright
•        Module 3: Creating Interactive Resources (part 1)
•        Module 4: Designing an Inclusive Curriculum
•        Module 5: Creating Interactive Resources (part 2)
•        Module 6: Online Communications & e-Tutoring
•        Module 7: e-Assessment

In addition to this skills-focused toolkit, RSC Wales has also developed a Toolkit for Subjects. This RSC Wales Moodle area is not actually a collection of tools,  more a showcase of taster lesson/lecture plans: the aim was to provide a quick reference area covering a range of different topics and technologies that would provide ideas for the use of technology in subject teaching. Technologies were selected on the basis of their subject value (eg. online resources), their ability to provide interactivity (eg. voting systems), independent study (eg. interactive study packages from NGfL Cymru), collaboration (eg. online mind-maps) and communications (eg. Twitter). Reference is also made to other key aspects of teaching and learning including formative assessment and accessibility, and useful resources such as the RSC Wales Delicious links, Xpert and Merlot. The Toolkit for Subjects was not intended to look at technologies in any depth: there are many JISC publications and resources that serve this purpose.

from www.morguefile.com

We welcome feedback about these resources and how you have used them,  and value your suggestions for their further development. Please send any feedback to support@rsc-wales.ac.uk.

And just to add that by the time you read this, I will no longer be a member of the JISC RSC Wales team, though still working in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning at CELT, University of Glamorgan.

Like much of the country, we have snow again in Wales and this has brought home to me (once more) the potential of a technology that I have been using quite a lot lately – web conferencing … virtual classrooms … online, realtime, desktop communication tools … whatever you choose to call them. Elluminate, Adobe Connect, Go to Meeting, Instant Presenter, Access Grid, Evo, DimDim, vYew, Big Blue Button and Skype are just a few of the tools that are currently available. Some are free, some are paid for and some can be a mix of both. I will blog in more detail about the range of tools at a later date but for now more can be found here: www.delicious.com/helen.hodges/webconferencing.

Web conferencing technology is great for connecting (in real time) with those who are in different locations or even time zones, unable to travel because of time, cost, disability, weather or any number of other factors. These type of tools enable you, amongst other things, to hear, talk, see (if you have a webcam/video), text chat and share presentations, documents, video and webpages with colleagues, fellow online event attendees or even learners … all from the comfort of your own desk!

The recent JISC online conference, Innovating eLearning 2010 , used web conferencing technology (Elluminate) to deliver the live, real-time part of the conference. Sarah Knight, from JISC said, “For the first time, all sessions at Innovating e-Learning 2010 took place in Elluminate to provide a ‘live’ conference experience alongside asynchronous discussions. Delegates enjoyed the variety this offered“. I was one of those delegates, who contributed to the asynchronous discussion about this by saying, “Personally I am really enjoying the choice that this online conference is giving me … the choice to watch live or view later … the choice to read the chat and either join in or ignore it … although I like the fact that is it there because it makes me feel as though I am in the same ‘room’ as the others.” From JISC’s point of view the online conference was a success because of the variety of live sessions it could offer and the number of people (475 people from 11 countries)  it reached and will continue to reach, once the recordings of the live sessions are shared publicly in the new year. Would a face to face conference have been able to achieve the same thing, at the same cost, I wonder?

We, at JISC RSC Wales, like many people, are looking at different ways of delivering our face to face support, namely events based around information giving, experience sharing and discussion opportunities about technology and education. Everyone has less time and money to attend face to face events and we are all concerned about cutting our travel (due to cost and impact on the environment) too. Our solution (after much research and practice) is our new ‘Lunchtime Bytes’ series of online events, which aim to deliver (via Elluminate) bite sized chunks of information in real time to you at your desk, in an interactive way. We have learnt  many lessons about using this type of media to deliver something that in the past we would have delivered face to face, the main one being that it isn’t the same as face to face delivery BUT it can be equally as effective! Over the next few months we will be sharing what we have found out and know about using this type of technology for delivering sessions, via our blog, our next roadshow (Advance and Enhance – classroom, distance and mibile learning)  and also a  ‘Connect & participate’ Lunchtime Byte dedicated to web conferencing. For more details about our past and future Lunchtime Bytes, visit our online information area, which as well as giving details about the online sessions also stores recordings of those that have already happened … http://moodle.rsc-wales.ac.uk/lunchtimebytes

Open Educational Resources (OER) – learning materials that are freely available for use, remixing and redistribution - are currently a hot topic, particularly in Higher Education. The basic theory behind OER is to save time and effort developing new e-learning materials from scratch, you can find some that have already been tried, tested and shared by the teaching community. Often these are resources available for use online or they may be downloaded and altered as required. Clearly this could be a very useful thing and there are good reasons to spend a bit of time seeing what is out there:

1) Creating e-learning materials from scratch can be time-consuming and require a variety of new technical skills, depending on which tools you use.

2) It is not always easy to find copyright-cleared materials to use. Most OER are issued under a Creative Commons licence, allowing for re-use for non-commercial purposes (usually giving credit to the original author).

3) It can be helpful to see what others have done with a topic even if you do not end up using their materials. A learning resource could be used as revision or back-up to your own materials.

4) It can be useful to look for supporting materials on generic topics (e.g. presentation skills, information literacy) as well as subject-specific resources.

However, it is important to note some drawbacks too:

1) Finding suitable resources is not easy! A selection of good sites is given below but search results can be a mixed bag. Most sites rely on good metadata being provided to index resources and this is not always the case. User interfaces are currently not brilliant – not entirely surprising, given the complexity of the contents on the sites and the impossibility of categorizing it in a flexible enough way. Defining a subject or level for a resource can also be restrictive when its actual appeal or potential use may be much wider.

2) Resources often have localized content, for example they may reference their own institution or course materials. If they can be repurposed, this could be removed. If they are to be used online, it may be felt a little confusing to direct learners to a different institution without contextualizing the materials.

3) It can be hard to overcome the urge to present material in your own style or to adapt your teaching to use materials that are not quite what you would have done yourself.

4) It is not easy to distinguish downloadable resources from those that are hosted online (on a website) – the latter requires an internet connection and also relies on a 3rd party website retaining the content and being reliable. If you can download a resource and use it offline, the chances of technical failure are reduced.

Nonetheless, whatever your subject or level, it is definitely worth spending a little time seeing what is available. The following sites can be useful starting points for finding learning resources:

Jorum : http://www.jorum.ac.uk/searchOptions.html

The UK repository for learning materials (developed by JISC) -content has an HE bias but Jorum is open to both HE and FE. Jorum Open allows free access but Jorum UK requires an institutional login (HE & FE only)

NGfL Cymru: http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk

The Welsh repository for teaching & learning materials, including much bilingual material. Content is freely available to use apart from some resources which require registration (e.g. the NLN materials – see below). Content is aimed at schools plus some post-16 and vocational materials. NB. Content from NGfL Cymru can also be found via the TES website (http://www.tes.co.uk/resourcesHome.aspx?navcode=70 ) which also has further resources. You need to register with them but materials are then freely available. Despite the options available on the front, there is post-16 content in the site.

Xpert http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/

An aggregator of OER content from around the world. The interface is a little clunky (it’s still a very recent development) but rich in content. It casts its net very wide so content accordingly varied, but more resources at HE level.

Merlot http://www.merlot.org/

A US repository for learning materials that has been in existence for some time. Licensing and copyright for resources is not always clear so needs checking per resource. Mostly US / Canadian content with an HE bias, but still plenty of interest for other levels.

OERCommons http://www.oercommons.org/

A global site for OER materials which includes UK content such as Open University materials plus American content such as the MIT Open Courseware.

and then there’s more….

• The Excellence Gateway subsumed resources that used to be available via such sites as FERL and ACLearn. Currently quite hard to search but currently running a user needs survey (http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=301128). The interface for finding teaching and learning resources is here: http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=nav-resources&Taxonomy=134896-8251

• NLN Materials have been around for a long time now: http://www.nln.ac.uk. A login is required but follow the “New user?” link to be guided through the process. The materials were originally created for UK FE and have been extended to ACL and WBL – HE institutions are not currently authorised for use but a full range of eligible institutions can be accessed on the website.

• TeacherTV http://www.teachers.tv/ has a wide range of videos for classroom use but the future of the site may now be in doubt due to funding cuts.

Even more sources for learning and teaching resources can be found on our RSC Wales’ delicious account http://www.delicious.com/rscwales/teaching_resources