Below I’ve included the basic outline for the video above – feel free to share this with you students so they can see one approach to organizing a video.  Or for the printer-friendly version, see Video Podcasting for Students: Your Quick How-To Guide!

Yes, these are just the notes I used for making the video podcast.  But they offer a quick reminder of what you’ve seen.  Plus, you can let your students see that video-making doesn’t need to take forever.

Part 1: Equipment Check-Out – STV 133

1. Considering a video project for your Fall Syllabus?  We have the tools for you!

2. Video of one of the cameras.

3. Show how to turn on, turn off, and open USB.

4. Show an example of shooting a video and then plugging in USB.

Part 2: Downloading Your Video

1. Using Camstudio to record this.

2. Recommend that students save all their work to a thumb drive.  Video files tend to be large, so students should use thumb drives with at least a gigabyte.  The Student Temp Drive may also work, but only as a temporary solution.

3. Create a single folder on the drive for your Windows Live Movie Maker file.  This folder should also contain your video files.  If you move these files to different folders, your Movie Maker file will lose access to the video files, so keep them all together.

4. Reminder: All movie files MUST be on the thumb drive BEFORE you start using Movie Maker.

Part 3: Editing Your Video

1. Open Movie Maker

2. Simply drag-and-drop video clips into Movie Maker

3. Hit “Save Project” to save your Movie Maker file (you should still do this often…)

4. Hit “Save Movie” to export your edited film.  (“Recommended for this project” works well, but watch your file size).

http://www.practiceofthepractice.com/pop005/

• “This website doesn’t work on my computer.” This issue is usually an easy fix: close Internet Explorer, open Firefox, and try again. If you can convince your students to never use Internet Explorer, you will solve about half your technology problems right there.

• “I don’t feel comfortable with the technology myself.” The best solution for this is to simply spend some time playing with the technology. YouTube videos can help, too, but practice is the only truly effective way to truly understand resources like GoogleDocs.

• “My students find it too complicated.” This is the biggest problem I face in my own classroom – sure, I love blogging, but my students think it’s a pain to learn. For students, learning a technology is very much like learning a genre – to be successful participants in our post-Web-2.0 world (yes, we’re now post-2.0…), they’ll need to be able to independently learn and utilize online technologies. And you can tell them this. Let them know that you also struggle with the constant pace of change, and show they your own strategies for learning. And take it slow. There’s no need to rush a new technology into your classroom. For example, I usually spent the first four weeks of class having students do simple tasks on GoogleDocs. With a new task each week, students become proficient by the time they need to use GoogleDocs for collaboration.

• “Some of my students just can’t do it.” Yes, some students will feel this way. But trust me – they can use these technologies. If you can read a website, click on a link, and type on a screen, you can use virtually all of the Web-2.0 and Post-2.0 technologies now available – technologies such as Facebook, GoogleDocs, ReggieNet, Blogger, and WordPress. But it takes time, and learning a new technology can be frustrating for students who don’t see themselves as “tech savvy.” As a teacher, your role is to help your students develop the confidence to learn these technologies in the same way that you help them develop the confidence to learn writing. It helps to set aside some class time for extra one-on-one help. Better still, ask your students to work together during the learning process. Provide your students with a simple task (e.g. “Create a GoogleDoc and then rename it”) and then have them help each other until everyone has mastered the task.

• “I have a student who refuses to learn this technology.” I know, I know, you’re thinking “I’m a writing teacher, not a website guru.” And you’re right – it really isn’t your job to teach technology any more than it’s your job to teach handwriting. But technology is a fact of life – a student who can’t type an e-mail would be unable to communicate in today’s professional environment. And you know that students are required to type their essays for other courses. By introducing a technology, you’re specifying a genre for student assignments – refusal to learn the genre of that technology is not an acceptable excuse for failing to do an assignment.

• “We tried this technology…and it didn’t work the way I expected.” This happens all the time. Definitely expect the unexpected. And when all else fails, contact me – if I don’t have an answer, I can usually help you find someone who does.

If you have additional questions or suggestions, please fill out our Town Hall Assessment Questions form via GoogleDocs.

We hope to see you there!