Video is the most prominent new media distributed on the internet. Its emergence has been facilitated by the development of faster internet connections, cheaper simpler ways to create video, and cloud resources (particularly Youtube) for hosting and distributing user created video. For the purposes of this section we will consider video to be moving images accompanied by sound and presented in a way that is generally intended to be experienced in a linear fashion. This excludes animations that typically don’t include sound, audio-enhanced slideshows where the images are all still or interactive environments where users choose their own sequence through the content. In a previous week you looked at digital story telling. This can include both still images and video segments.
There are three general skills you should develop as an educator who produces video for learning. The first is creating video using a video camera or webcam, including audio. The second is creating video using a screencasting program that records the action on your computer screen with computer audio and/or your own recorded audio. Lastly the third skill is taking video you have created and/or video you have found and editing it to create something effective for the learning you want to present.
Many of the ideas you may have had around combined images and audio will have been explored in the digital storytelling unit. That is as it should be – most learning objectives can be effectively met with still graphics. Video adds greater depth to your imagery and helps to display specific sequences and complex coordination better than static graphics. But on the flip-side, video can be more complex to create and distribute. The research done into the educational effectiveness of video has been based on the same principles and theories of mind as the research done for still graphics. In short segments you can plan the visuals of your produced video with the same principles for educational graphics set out in Mayer (found on the Blackboard Learn site).
There are also resources provided in this unit for synchronous video in primarily two-way (Skype) and primarily one-way (uStream) mode. We won’t explore the pedagogical design implications of synchronous video in this lesson. Suffice it to say that the principles that impact the effectiveness of video (which are the same as those that impact static graphics) are also in play with synchronous video, you just don’t have the opportunity to correct your errors.