Second experiment in video podcasting

As explained in an earlier post, I'm taking part in a trial of video capturing of lectures and other material using Panopto software. In another blog entry I posted a link to my first experiment, an extract from a lecture. The link takes students to the Panopto viewer, in which they can view my Powerpoint slides and a video of me. 

In my second experiment I wanted to create some learning material at home, for my students to review between live sessions. All I wanted was Powerpoint slides with a voiceover - I felt that a head and shoulders of me from my webcam wouldn't convey much extra meaning, if any. In contrast the first experiment was a recording of an "event", a live talk with audience interaction, and in that case I felt there was some value to me being visible.

So I had decided on Powerpoint plus voice. To do this I recorded the presentations on Panopto in the same way as for lectures. Panopto offers the following output formats:

• Panopto web viewer
• Video podcast (view, download, embed, subscribe to folder via iTunes or RSS)
• Audio podcast (play, download, subscribe to folder via iTunes or RSS)

I selected video podcast (secondary video only - that's the Powerpoint). I tried the embed code but wasn't very happy with the results in Blackboard, so I just copied the address as a hyperlink. However here is one of my podcasts as an embedded video:



This is the second of two video podcasts. The first one revised some a range of basic system modelling tools that students had covered last year - Rich Picture, Stakeholder Analysis etc. In this second podcast I talked about a voluntary organisation and applied these modelling tools to the case study. 

I'll be interested to see what use the students make of these podcasts, and what use they make of the modelling techniques - I should get some idea from a formative assignment that is due to be handed in next week.

Apple "giveaways" may gain major advantage over Microsoft

Apple's free productivity software and free operating system upgrades could be a game-changer, undermining a key part of Microsoft's revenue model.

Diana Hwang's article on Techtarget talks about Apple's decision to offer productivity tools iWorks and iLife free, as well as allowing owners of Mac computers from 2007 onwards to upgrade to the Maverick OS without any payment.

Compare this to Microsoft's high prices for MS Office and Windows 8, and this starts to close the gap between typical Microsoft and Apple high street prices for equipment.

This shows up a fundamental difference between the two companies' revenue models. Apple makes much of its money from selling a range of hardware with similar user experiences, an upmarket image and excellent service. Microsoft's key revenues depend on selling (or with Office 365, leasing) software.

Apple can afford to give away free software as a "bonus" - Microsoft can't. Yes, Word for example has many, many features, but only a small subset of them is used by most people. How long can it go on becoming more and more bloated? Could Apple's "free offer" even remind Windows PC users that there are good, open-source products out there?

This is a good example of a company trying to gain competitive advantage by adopting a radically different revenue model  from others in the same market.

Managing scarce resources - diktat versus doctrine

The Tragedy of the Commons is a well-established notion, described by Garrett Hardin in 1968:

Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers
of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

[Hardin, G, 1968: Science, 162(1968):1243-1248]

In other words, a limited resource will eventually be overtaken by growing demand.

The traditional management answer is to control scarce resources from on high. This directive approach means that decisions are taken more slowly and often more conservatively, risk avoidance being a key factor.

It runs entirely counter to more modern notions of subsidiarity, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as "the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level" Subsidiarity is a key enabler of the "responsive organisation" (see discussions at http://www.theresponsiveorg.com/)

In a well-argued blog post "How to balance autonomy and heteronomy: Doctrine"
http://pro.gigaom.com/blog/how-to-balance-autonomy-and-heteronomy-doctrine/ Stowe Boyd suggests that the military concept of "doctrine" - a shared understanding of how to best use key resources - could allow individuals and teams close to the "action" to take appropriate decisions, while higher levels of management remain responsible for defining organisational doctrine as a framework within which lower levels can take those decisions.

This set me thinking:

• Of course doctrine not only has to be defined, it also has to be changed and refined in the light of changing circumstances. 
• Are senior managers prepared for this challenge? 
• Are they qualified to balance the strategic demands of the organisation with the tactical and operational requirements and restrictions?
• Can senior managers realistically disseminate ("teach"?) their doctrinal vision in the commercial world, which is arguably more a socially complex environment than the military world?
• Are lower level staff willing and able to commit to organisational doctrine?
• How could an organisational culture of mutual trust be engendered? (Upper management trusting the lower levels to apply the doctrine, and lower levels being prepared to implement organisational doctrine produced by senior management, even though that doctrine may be sub-optimal or even negative from a rank and file standpoint)

In other words, can organisational doctrine really act as a bridge between between the Tragedy of the Commons and subsidiarity?

 I think the jury is still out on that one.

It's about the people, not the tech!

I couldn't agree more with this item by Euan Semple.

"Too often, as has been the way since the dawn of IT implementations, organisations will go out and spend a fortune on a new platform and neither put enough effort into preparing people for what it is expected to achieve, nor prepare them to respond to the organisational challenges that the change will bring about"

A balanced SOCIO-technical approach is what's needed, and all too often that's what doesn't happen.

Video podcasting - results of first experiment

In a previous post "Video podcasts: Real learning or virtual learning?" I explained that I'm taking part in a trial of video capturing of lectures and other material. The software we are using is Panopto. 

I thought I would post the result of one of my early experiments with the setup. You can view the (short) talk direct in the Panopto viewer (no plugin needed) at
http://uwe.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer/Default.aspx?id=c7fcc062-d579-4c1d-9644-76a6eaf634db

In case you just want a general impression, this is what the viewer window looks like:

Two video streams are captured in this example, a camera feed (with a not very flattering camera angle!) and a feed of the presentation or other material which is being projected from the PC to the screen.

The event can also be exported as a video, either as "picture in picture" or one stream only.

No evaluation yet - I'm still getting accustomed to the setup. Please watch this space.

Mix Powerpoint and Movie Maker, add a bit of sound...

As I explained in my blog post "Playing tricks with Powerpoint" there's a simple technique for exporting individual Powerpoint slides as GIF, JPG or PNG image files. This post explains how I combined this with a little sound recording to make a video of some tutorial exercies about Supply Chain Management (SCM). The result is certainly not sophisticated, but it is a reasonable representation of what happend in the classroom (see previous blog post "Capturing the moment")

"First catch your hare"

The "ingredients" for this mix were as follows:

(a) A two-slide Powerpoint presentation on SCM terminology, used for a taught preamble to the tutorial session.

Slide 1 - a straightforward Powerpoint slide, with ClipArt graphics.

Slide 2 - a Powerpoint slide incorporating a camera shot of an A5 sized hand sketch.
The flash lighting is a little uneven, but it's fit for purpose.

(b) A larger (A4) hand sketch, prepared before the session, which was my guide for building up a diagram on the whiteboard. This discussion-based activity was the main part of the tutorial. 

We're lucky enough to have multi-function printers at work that can scan and email the results to you as a PDF (otherwise I would have used my home scanner and scanned direct to PNG or similar). 

I opened the emailed PDF, captured the image using PrtScreen, then used Paint.Net to trim it and convert it to an image. It was virtually the same aspect ratio (height to width) as the Powerpoint images, so I didn't have to do any resizing - if it had been an odd aspect ratio I could have got it to exactly the same size if needed by importing the image into a Powerpoint slide and exporting the slide as PNG.

Image 3 - draft sketch for work on whiteboard

(c) During the session I did a voice recording using a digital recorder and a clip-on microphone. The results are fairly clear even though the session was noisy at times. I then imported the sound file into the Audacity sound editor, trimmed out the parts I didn't need, and split the recording into three MP3 files, each corresponding to one of my images. (There will be a future blog post on sound recording hardware and software)

Putting it all together

Movie Maker tends not to come on new PCs nowadays, but it's a a free download. You can use any video editor of your choice - Movie Maker is one of the simplest around.

In principle the steps are:

• Import the images and get them in the right order
• Import the corresponding sound files and get them in the right order
• Increase the duration of each image to match the length of its sound file
• Export the movie to an appropriate format for your video hosting service such as Vimeo or YouTube (Movie Maker's export format choice is rather restricted, but good enough for most video hosting services)
• Upload the movie to your chosen video hosting service
• Copy the "embed code" from your video host
• Put suitable pointer announcements and links on Blackboard (virtual learning environment) so that the students know it's available

And here is the result - again, rough and ready, but fit for purpose:

A Supply Chain Tutorial for eBusiness level 2 at the University of the West of England from Paul Hulbert on Vimeo.

Playing tricks with Powerpoint

Powerpoint isn't just slide presentation and authoring software. It has many more potential uses:

A flexible diagramming tool

You want a nice neat diagram, but you haven't got a package like Visio? No problem, just draw it in Powerpoint instead. No, it hasn't got some of the clever tools like linking objects together with arrows or lines. But it's quite a good tool, with an interface you're already familiar with.

I want to put that diagram in another program, Word or Blogger for example

Powerpoint has a hidden surprise. Draw a diagram or two in a Powerpoint presentation. Drop in the odd photo, a few shapes and so on. Then save the presentation.

But wait - have you really LOOKED at the choice of "save" formats? There are more than twenty, depending what version of Powerpoint you're using. The really interesting ones are graphics formats - GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF and BMP.

Click Save As and select your favourite graphic format, then Powerpoint asks "Do you want to export every slide in the presentation or only the current slide". If you select "Every slide" Powerpoint produces one graphic per slide, inside a folder. Otherwise you just get one graphic file.

Then you can import the graphic file into Word (Insert - Picture...) or into another application, maybe Movie Maker. But I'll tell you about that another day.

So how do you control the size (resolution) of the exported graphic? Simple - change the page size of the Powerpoint presentation, using Design - Page Setup.

I only wanted to convert a Clip Art image into a GIF

Easy if you know how, and if you've got a graphics editor like Paint.Net (free download)

Insert - Clip Art to get the image into Powerpoint (or Word). Select the image, and Copy.

Paste it into Paint.Net (Edit - Paste into New Image) and save it to your desired format. Very handy for using in blog posts!

(And yes, this blog post was illustrated using the techniques I've described above)

Visualising a lesson

A few weeks ago (10 September 2013) I attended one of our regular SALT (Shared Approaches to Teaching and Learning) sessions on "Enriching the student experience in and outside the classroom" - link here for UWE users only.

My colleague Basil Norbury gave an entertaining presentation on using gapped worksheets and recording what he was doing via the visualiser.

A visualiser, in case you don't know, is a document camera connected to the lectern PC. It allows you to project a document onto the classroom scren. It accomodates documents up to a little larger than A4 size (in either dimension) but you can zoom in on anything smaller. In some larger classrooms with dual screens you can project the PC image onto one screen and the visualiser image onto the other.

Basil's demonstration encouraged me to experiment a bit more with the visualiser. This week I was teaching Technical Writing and Editing in a single-screen room, so I could only show one image at a time. The task in hand was to edit (by hand) a passage of writing in one of my paper handouts, while compiling a "document style sheet" on a grid showing decisions I had taken, e.g. "spell numbers one to nine", so that I could maintain consistency through the document.

So I was working on two documents - the passage of writing and the style sheet grid. I put the text on paper under the visualiser and projected it on the screen, and drew the style sheet grid on the whiteboard. Then as I amended the text passage by hand in black ink, I wrote the corresponding stylistic decisions up on the whiteboard grid.

I often like to "mix and match", working interactively with the students, but usually I've drawn something on the whiteboard while something else is being projected as a Powerpoint slide. Editing and compiling two documents live simultaneously was a new departure for me, and it seemed to work very well. I may well do it again.

Recently I have also used the visualiser to project small solid objects, such as book covers or selected pages. On one occasion the network PC failed me completely but I still had access to the visualiser, and I projected a paper copy of my Powerpoint slides that I happened to have with me.

Another "solid object" is a dice - I always carry dice with various numbers of sides in case I want to make a random selection, e.g. the next student team to present. As a novelty, to show that the presentation order was truly random, I've rolled dice under the visualiser so that students can see the results.

Conclusions

• I think I'll seek imaginative ways to use the visualiser in some of my future lessons, e.g. drawing diagrams - will this be better than using the whiteboard for some situations? It could get round the problem of taking photos from the reflective glass whiteboard, as mentioned in my earlier post "Capturing the Moment"
• I'll experiment with recording video (and voice) from the visualiser onto a memory stick.
• I'll try taking still photos of documents using the visualiser and compare them with my camera photos (bearing in mind that I would usually have only a couple of minutes to do this at the end of the lesson)

Historical footnote

Visual display technology has of course been around for ages. When I started teaching the most common aid was an overhead projector or OHP. That only projected translucent foils, printed or hand-drawn. Nevertheless you could do quite sophisticated things with it to build up diagrams by using multiple foils on top of each other.

There was also a less common device called an epidiascope, which would illuminate and project a solid object (dimly!). Epidiascopes have been around since the late 1800s and were the precursor of both the overhead projector and the document camera / visualiser.

More "conventional" display technology included film and slide projectors, VHS players and so forth. I also recall a special device that converted computer presentations into 35 mm slides using a type of instant film.

My early teaching days, running training sessions in industry, involved carting around a "portable" PC (well, luggable - it was the size of a small suitcase). I also carried a "slate", an A5-sized translucent LCD black and white display that sat on top of an overhead projector and connected to the PC. I used to switch between foils and the live image of the computer system that I was running training about.

When I came to UWE, decent PC-driven projectors were available in the larger classroom, with OHPs in the smaller rooms, I was glad when large screen projectors became the norm because it allowed much more flexibility in preparing materials, and a much richer range of presentation materials, incorporating video and audio.

Visualisers started in the larger rooms but have now become more widespread. But handwritten diagrams etc, built up "live" during dialogue with the students, have always been part of my classroom practice, and I can't see that going away any time soon. Visualisers are just another tool in my toolkit to provide a visual dimension to complement live interaction with the students.

Video podcasts: Real learning or virtual learning?

I've recently volunteered to take part in a trial of video capture of lectures. However some background reading has suggested that although video podcasts have improved students' perception of modules, there has been little improvement in academic outcomes.

Hill and White (2012) reported on investigations aiming to provide empirical evidence of the learning utility of video podcasts. They reported "no significant difference in exam performance prior to and post-adoption of podcasts" and found that their work supported Heilesen (2010), in that there was little evidence for podcasting producing consistent beneficial effect on student exam performance.

Heilesen surveyed a body of literature on the subject dating from between 2004 and 2009, and concluded that there was nevertheless "a general positive impact on the academic environment" and that "students experience podcasts as a genuine improvement to the study environment".

Interestingly Heilsen remarked that one effect of video podcasting was "opening up for experimentation with known forms of teaching".

So if there is no great evidence of improvement in student performance, why am I still interested in video capture, or video use in general? Is this just a solution looking for a problem?

In answer, I would say that it's about doing something differently. Here are some possibilities:

• Flipped classroom - Experimenting with a partially "flipped classroom" by producing a few short concentrated videos - "learning objects" - for students to view in their own time, as preparation for classroom activity.
• Blended learning - Combining online materials with conventional teaching.
• Guest lectures - Recording guest lectures in a "richer", more integrated format. Previously I had made audio recordings and published these alongside the guests' Powerpoint slides, but I made no attempt to integrate the sound and visuals because of the time involved.

You may notice that none of these involve videoing myself delivering conventional lectures in the classroom, which is the basic presumption of the trial.

Another idea I have is using video to bring the outside world into the classroom. Jenny Hill showed some excellent examples of this in her presentation. However the question is how to do this in a way that is economic of my limited time. Food for thought...

References:

Hill, J and White, C (2012) Employing audio-visual technology inside and outside the classroom: Lessons for effective integration. FET Learning and Teaching Fellows Seminar Series, University of the West of England, Bristol

Heilesen, S.B. (2010) What is the academic efficacy of podcasting? Computers & Education Volume 55, Issue 3, November 2010, Pages 1063–1068.  Elsevier.

Big Data crossover

There was an excellent programme on BBC Radio 4's Bottom Line this week about Big Data. It covered everything from what a datacentre looks like (and why the speed of light benefits Manchester rather than London) to how these massive amounts of data are gathered, and what they are used for (including privacy issues)

All in half an hour!

Required listening if you're into Big Data, the Internet in general, eBusiness, or eAdvertising:
Follow this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bottomline and look for the 3 October 2013 programme.