Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference
Teaching, Learning, & Technology
The Connected Classroom
April 7-9, 2002
Creating and Delivering High Quality Streaming Dial Video
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By: Steve Bonham |
Proceeding
ABSTRACT
QuickTime Pro provides faculty and instructional support staff with a tool for developing high quality streaming instructional video resources. This 60 minute presentation will demonstrate the wide range of capabilities of QuickTime Pro for creating image animations and audio and video clips. You may see samples of such resources and download procedural handouts (saved as PDFs) at: http://www2.gasou.edu/cet/MovSamp
PROCEEDING
The Internet and capabilities of current web browsers (with the appropriate plug-ins) provide educators with an opportunity to enrich the learning experience of their students as never before. One method of doing so is to provide access to self-paced, media-rich instructional resources. These resources may be simple image sequences (similar to animated gifs but with the option for >256 colors), still images accompanied by audio clips, or animated images with integrated audio-- or video.
Apple Computer has distributed the software product QuickTime since 1990. The current version 5.2 is a platform independent tool that provides for playback/viewing of a variety of media. The upgrade (cost; approximately $30) to QuickTime Pro provides the user with the capabilities to create simple animations and/or audio/video clips that can stream (play while downloading) via the Internet.
This session will:
- examine pros and cons of digital video resources;
- demonstrate a few approaches to developing these resources;
- demonstrate recommended preproduction methods/strategies;
- demonstrate procedures for creating simple animations;
- demonstrate procedures for capturing and editing audio clips;
- demonstrate procedures for editing video clips; and;
- demonstrate procedures for delivery of such resources.
If a picture is worth 1000 words- how many words are movies worth? Why use Digital Video at all? Over 2500 years ago Confucius commented that "If I hear, I forget. If I see, I remember. If I do, I understand." Okay-- Confucius was a visual and a kinesthetic learner, and he was a proponent of active learning! Many of us and many of our students are too. Internet-delivered video resources provide learners with opportunities for media-rich, self-paced, user-controlled interactions. Offering such practice activities can only enrich traditional instruction. Providing such activities for on-line learners is critical to replace demonstrations performed in real classrooms.
Why QuickTime?
Yes, there are an awful lot of options out there for creating digital video. The high-end, professional video editing tools can do amazing things. However, they are so sophisticated only a full-time professional will master them... and these products are expensive! Do faculty members really NEED these tools? My short answer is no- in most cases they do not need or want them.
A little background. Our Philosophy at the Center for Excellence in Teaching is; "We teach faculty members to fish. We do not do the fishing for them." To teaching our faculty "to fish" we offer workshops, coaching, even make "housecalls" to facilitate them gaining basic skills in using new tools for developing instructional resources.
We offer training and support for site licensed software (MS Office), and for cross-platform, inexpensive, widely-adopted, easy to learn additional products-- IF they show promise for enriching teaching and learning.
QuickTime meets these criteria. IT is cross-platform (as a player and as a development tool). It is inexpensive ($30 to edit media). It is widely distributed. The editing basics can be learned a few hours. It is a "no frills" tool. If you must have slick movies with dazzling visual effects (there ARE good reasons NOT to use these) there are several other tools available.
The remainder of this session deals with the procedures for:
- identifying, organizing, and preparing video content;
- building the deliverable video resource; and,
- embedding the video resource in a web page.
Including that information here would far exceed the 1500 words allotted so for your convenience procedural job aids saved as PDF files are available at: http://www2.gasou.edu/cet/MovSamp
CONCLUSION
Simple but instructionally sound digital video content can be created with inexpensive video editing tools such as QuickTime Pro. The process can take considerable time depending on the complexity of the subject matter and on the experience of the user with image, audio, and web page editing tools. However, the fact that such modules may be shared with peers in your discipline via Merlot <http://www.merlot.org> and valued as a peer-reviewed publication may offset the time and effort required.