Some 30-40 new (and used) faculty members endured my three hour video workshop here at Belmont University yesterday. We had a great time even when presentation technology offered up a speed bump or two during the video capture phase. We looked at what our students are already doing on youtube.com and chatted about the ways our previous day's presenter, Dr. Ron Berk, encouraged the use of multimedia (and humor particularly) to engage today's net savvy students (Note!: some FireFox users will have to view Dr. Berk's site in a different browser...'sorry)
The project you see on the above-left was produced during yesterday's video workshop sessions. Faculty members were 'volunteered' to be talent, models, cheering section, and technical crew for the shoot. The basic premise for the workshop was to explore possibilities for personal video editing on campus PC's, using only the software for audio editing (Sound Recorder) and video editing (Windows Movie Maker) that is already installed in computers across the university. A large percentage of the people in the workshop had 'zero' video editing experience and many were not aware that the sound/video editing applications were on their computers. I commend them all for being attentive (and patient).
If nothing else, conversations have begun on expanding the role of multimedia in our classrooms. Several issues from the workshop warrant additional exploration: copyright questions, multi-media support staff, lab options, additional training, PC and/or MAC solutions, budget challenges, and how all of those issues mesh with the priorities of the university. I look forward to hearing more of those discussions.
Full disclosure: An additional 30 minutes of post production work was added this morning to tweak some of the more glaring issues (sound levels, funky credit roll, extra sound effects, missing still shot, and 10 minutes of etc.)...there are still a few several rough edges...I am over it! *grin* A hat tip to Dr. Berk for his influences in this video piece...if you ever have an opportunity to attend one of his presentations, don't you dare miss it. I have not read any of his books, but I assure you that they will show up on my Amazon.com wishlist very soon (did you hear that Santa?)