We created ‘Do Institions have a Future?’ for the Jisc Online Conference 2009 ‘Thriving Not Surviving’. Filming, acting and editing was done by Graham Attwell and myself, with help from Helge Staedler our on-the-spot cameraman. Making this video and getting it to work efficiently took around 3 days with pretty much constant work as we stretched iMovie to its very limits using green screen, video within a video and keynote graphics. You can access the video through the link below and then I have written a bit about how we made it for those who are interested.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2009/11/the-future-of-institutions/

We filmed our green screen using a chromakey green screen on a curtain rail and two garage lights and masking tape to pull it vaguely taut, trying to keep costs as low as possible. As it is possible to see, our green screen isn’t perfect due to shadow and some creases in the screen. We struggled with the shadow problem as we only had 2 lights which we placed either side and really we needed an extra one in the centre. The creases problem could have been solved with an iron as we found that in general our problems were not related with the screen not being pulled fully taut but rather creases in the screen itself. Another point I would recommend when using green screen is having a shot without the people in at the end of your movie. We were unable to do this successfully; however, at the end iMovie does allow you to improve your green screen as long as this shot is contained within the video.

To edit the video we used the advanced iMovie tools which can be turned on in iMovie preferences. When editing, green screen and video within a video are very easy to use as all that needs to be done is for the main video to be dragged over the desired background and iMovie will present you with a menu including green screen and video within a video. To create Graham’s intro which involves both actions which iMovie doesn’t allow, we first played with the green screen and gave Grahams head a proper background and then exported the project and reimported it as part of an event making it one video in itself. This meant we could then use this to drag over the slides to use video within a video to have both effects running simultaneously.

The news intro and many of the backgrounds within the news clips were made using Keynote slideshows, which can be exported as a photos or a video. This meant I could change the size or position of  photos within plain slides so they would be more easily seen, or create video clips, such as the economic downturn clip, animated using the inspector. I also found it was effective for making logos as this was where I made the Research Rights Management logo in a matter of minutes. When exporting Keynote files as a video its important to remember is to ensure that they are set to fixed timing as Keynote always resets to manual timing which then can’t be imported into iMovie, a mistake I made at the beginning.

iMovie was not happy through much of the editing and we had huge issues with one of projects which we still don’t know the reasons for. It refused to open properly and eventually we had to export in its intermediate stage reimport it and edit it from that point. Also because of these problems much of the video was made in separate projects and over two computers as both seemed to have problems with our data. It was only put into one video at the end by exporting and importing, though as long as green screen is not split which ours was, it is also possible to copy the whole projects and paste them into one another. However, we managed to find work arounds to the majority of our problems and the import export process was a method which we found to our surprise worked well despite thoughts that it may effect quality.

The video still has much room for improvement and I could have easily spent much longer editing and playing with the timing, probably some of the problems being only apparent to me, but any comments at all on how we could have improved the video and our use of green screen would be most appreciated.

The main aim of the TACCLE project was to help teachers improve their use of technology for e-learning, and to do this they created a handbook. In addition they provided courses to guide teachers in technological programmes that although simple once understood can be very difficult initially. The launch for the handbook was held in Ghent, Belgium along with a day of workshops, which around 200 teachers and trainee teachers attended. Here is some feedback from the day.

Video and blog post by Jo Turner-Attwell.

Lots of fun at yesterdays debate on the future of the VLE at the Alt-C Conference in Manchester, UK.

James Clay, Nick Sharratt, Steve Wheeler and myself all were allowed to argue our position for five minutes and then we handed over to the audience.

Great fun and lots of interesting contributions. It is surprising how attached to their VLEs these ed techies are :).

I greatly enjoyed myself at the Plymouth e-learning conference a couple of weeks ago. Firstly because it was organised by Steve Wheeler who I greatly respect. And Steve had kindly let me off the leash and said I could be as controversial as I wished. Also because I had a few new ideas to explore – in trying to talk about open education and informal learning to an audience of skilled and dedicated professionals including teachers and student teachers. The issue of institutional change is high on the agenda at the moment – not so much driven by the institutions, but more by the impact of the use of new technologies both by young people but increasingly by teachers in the class room. But all too often I am asked by frustrated teachers how they can persuade their managers to allow them more creative approaches to teaching and learning. I am not sure I have any good answers (one thing I wonder is if Web 2.0 changes the dynamic of institutional change, form a top down process to a bottom up one?). All these issues came up – not just in my talk but in the very lively discussion which follows.

I am afraid it is quite a long video (about an hour) . But if you can keep going the last 20 minutes of dicussion is probably the best part.

NB Video quality is a bit fuzzy – but the sound is not too bad.

In this video Jisc Emerge Project co-ordinator, George Roberts, explains the ideas behind the Emerge project and discusses how to facilitate online communities of practice.

As a member of the project team I have greatly enjoyed being involved with Emerge. However,there is an English language saying: “All good things come to an end.” And sadly the JISC Emerge project has come to the end of its funding period.

In the abstract of a forthcoming publication we explain “The Emerge project aimed to support the development of a sustainable community of practice (CoP) in the area of emerging technologies for education. This comprised individuals, groups and funded projects whose focus was around the use of social tools and services for enhancing learning and teaching. The Emerge project team developed a range of existing social software tools and practices to facilitate the needs of the emerging CoP. Seven critical phases of activity were identified during the life-cycle of the Emerge project and the CoP that grew around the JISC Users and Innovation programme. Each of these phases, from initial engagement to building for sustainability, required different support mechanisms and approaches. In response, the Emerge team adopted an agile approach to community support – adapting the tools, services and activities that were offered over time to meet emerging community needs. Our conclusions suggest that it is possible to identify a range of benefits and likely outcomes to deploying social networking and social media tools to scaffold community emergence. However, the form and patterns of interaction that develop across a community over time cannot be approached prescriptively. There is a need to be sensitive to the dynamic and changing needs of the community and its’ processes and meet the changing demands for meaningful social and collaborative spaces. This impacts on the type and form of the tools and services that need to be made available to the community. Deploying an iterative and agile model to scaffold the community is a key factor to active participation by its membership and the successful development of community identities. In this way it is possible to define and support a community centre which anchors distributed practice in a manageable and accessible way.”

For now, the Emerge project web site has been suspended, although public posts may still be searched and accessed. A new Emerge Reports site also provides access to the products of the project. As George Roberts says in an email to Emerge site members “One key message from our analysis is that a community has many modes of participation. It would be a mistake to assume that the presence of a website indicates either the presence or absence of a community. There is a network of people who have been very active in creating the Users and Innovation Programme and the Emerge community. This network of people persists. Discussions are ongoing concerning how this network might make its presence visible on the Internet or if a site similar to this one might be required.”

My personal view is that there is a space for such a network or community presence, based on the exchange of practice in Technology Enhanced Learning. How such a presence can be facilitated, governed and resourced is another issue.

In the meantime, my thanks to George and all the other members of the team what have made working on the Emerge project so interesting and enjoyable.

Also many thanks to Dirk for a magic editing job on this video.

Great video by Michal Wesch

This video has been produced by Pontydysgu and friends as our entry for the Alt-C2008 Digital Slam competition. We discussed the idea over skype and then each recorded our own part of the soundtrack. The text is from Wikipedia entries about the Digital Divide. We wanted to bring music and pictures togather to explore the multi faceted and often contradictory phenonomon of the digital divide. And we wanted to bring voices and pictures together from different countries and cultures. We had orginally intended to include Greek language in the mash but found that there is no Digital Divide entry in the Greek version of Wikipedia. We will write one.

Anyway hope you enjoy it.

Words – Graham Attwell, Cristina Costa, Dirk Stieglitz and Maria Perifanou.
Music – Break Rise Blowing by Countdown.
Text – Wikipedia
Pictures – Abrilon, Lisachaos, Maebmij, ninnet, AnantaB (all Creative Commons, Flickr)
Production – Dirk Stieglitz

This was recorded live at the EduMedia conference in Salzburg. Many thanks to Andreas Auwarter who recorded the audio and did the post processing.

I have always fun “wandering around” in YouTube and find interesting things. In some cases its new or like here older stuff but still very funny and not only funny I really enjoyed the argument in this small vid.
It makes me remembering talking and discussing with different people is always important: I learn something new or get new views into a problem or it helps me “finishing” a thought or getting the arguments into proper order by explaining and defending my position and work with the critique.
So have fun with this a bit off-topic debate. 🙂

My Avatar Me – a great animation created by Steven Warburton. Soundtrack: Winds of Change by Jap Jap.