Did anyone upload their video introduction to YouTube? Have you checked if anyone has watched it? Are you curious as to who might have watched it?

Blog (Weblog)

Blog is a commonly used abbreviation for a weblog and is defined as “an easily created, easily updateable Website that allows an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection.” (Richardson, 2006, p. 17) Most of the blogs that I looked at this semester contained a combination of text, still pictures and links to other blogs and web sites. However they may also contain audio and video content like this blog.

Blogs can be created by anyone with access to a computer with an Internet connection. Furthermore, creating a blog does not require any expensive, specialised software. There are a large number of free blogging sites such as WordPress (http://wordpress.com/), Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) and LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/) which are relatively easy to use and require minimal technical knowledge. It took me less than five minutes to create a blog using WordPress and to post my first blog entry. This simplicity has resulted in their being “literally hundreds of thousands of blogs, covering just about any topic you can think of” (Miller, 2007, p. 288).

I have enjoyed keeping a blog over the last few months and also giving and receiving comments on blog posts. I can see a lot of potential for using blogs with students and will almost certainly use them when I return to Japan. There is a good article by Steven Krause – Professor in English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University – about using blogs in higher education for anyone who is interested.

http://www.stevendkrause.com/academic/krause-blogs-che.pdf

Adobe Flash

(http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/)

Adobe Flash is a multimedia authoring tool that is widely used, among other things, to create and add animation to web sites. One of the key features of Adobe Flash is tweening so we studied about tweening for one class this semester. Tweening essentially creates frames between two images - or key frames - so as to create an appearance of motion. If I, for example, create a keyframe of a ball on the left-hand side of a pitch and another keyframe of this ball on the right-hand side of pitch, then Adobe Flash will insert the intermediate frames with this tweening feature so the ball looks as if it is moving from the left-hand side to the right-hand side of the pitch. We used this feature to create an animation of an airplane. Unfortunately I cannot upload this flash animation to Wordpress. I had not used Adobe Flash before this lesson so felt a sense of achievement at being able to create this simple animation.

Adobe Dreamweaver

(http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/)

Adobe Dreamweaver is a software package that allows you to create web pages without knowing HTML. HTML is an abbreviation for Hypertext Mark-up Language and is a markup language for creating web pages. It was first introduced in 1989 and has undergone several revisions with the most recent version called XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language) which is a stricter version of HTML that is viewable on more different types of browsers. Adobe Dreamweaver creates the HTML for the text that you enter. We spent one lesson looking at this software package. I found Adobe Dreamweaver difficult to use and could not really understand the HTML script that was being created. However, this is because I have almost no knowledge of HTML coding and and have never used this sofware package before.

We all made a very basic web page to practice inserting a photograph during this class and I was pleased to be able to achieve this.Unfortunately I cannot upload this either to Wordpress. I do not expect that I will use Adobe Dreamweaver again in my working career however it was interesting to learn a little about how web pages are developed since I do look at web wages almost every day.

Conclusion

This has been a very enjoyable and productive unit. I believe that I have learnt how to use a wide range of new software packages and learnt new skills that will be invaluable in my future teaching career. I would like to thank Ken for allowing me to use this unit to learn some practical and creative skills that I hope will improve my students’ learning experience, and my teaching, in the future. 

Miller, M. (2007). Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Computer Basics (4^th ed.).  Indianapolis: Que Publishing.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

He talks about a recent interview with Tim Werthers Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. It might be interesting to write about if anyone has not yet found six articles. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/03/talking_to_sir_tim.html

The third artefact that I created was the above short video introduction to the Japanese 1A course. I found this artefact more difficult to create successfully than the PowerPoint presentation with narration and the audio podcast for the reasons that I will explain below.

I had initially planned to record the video by myself on Friday 25th April using a video camera from Dr. Ken Newman and a tripod from the technicians in Park Building. However, I was unable to find a position for the video camera in the lecture room, and a zoom position on the video camera, that would allow both the PowerPoint slides and myself to be clearly recorded.

I thus asked one of the Japanese 1A students to record the video for me on Monday 28th April 2008. The student was able to include both the PowerPoint slides and myself in the videos however some of the slides are difficult to read. The student told me that he thought it was possibIe to add PowerPoint slides to video clips. I thus searched online for more information about this and found out that PowerPoint slides saved as jpg files can be added.

I thus took a screenshot of each slide in the PowerPoint file using the “Prnt Scrn “button and saved each screenshot as a jpg file. I then used the video editing software “Avid Media Composer” to insert a screenshot of each slide in the video.

(www.avid.com)

This software is installed on some of the university computers in Mercantile. I have varied the length that the individual slides are displayed on the screen depending on the amount of information contained in each slide. The first four slides thus appear on the screen for between five and ten seconds when I start talking about them. There is a lot of new information on the fifth and sixth slides so I have cropped these slides and kept them on the screen the whole time that I am talking about them. Inserting screenshots of the PowerPoint slides in the video using Avid Media Composer enabled me to overcome the problem of not being able to see the slides in the recorded video. 

The resultant video file was however very large so the technicians in Mercantile Building used the video encoding software “Sorenson Squeeze 4.5” to compress the file size.

(http://www.sorensonmedia.com/pages/?pageID=2)

The file is now only 23 MB which is smaller than the audio file that I used for the audio podcast.

Overall, I feel that I have been reasonably successful in creating my first video. I do not think it looks as professional as the PowerPoint presentation with narration and the audio podcast. I am happy to use the PowerPoint presentation or the audio podcast from September with the students however I am not certain that I will use the video. I have learnt a lot about creating and editing videos during this semester. However, I feel that I need further practice before I will be able to create a video that I would be happy to use with the students.

I purchased an MP3 player in early April and was talking to the students about this after a Japanese class on April 21^st 2008. I was slightly surprised to find that all the students owned MP3 players, that the majority of their friends all owned MP3 players and that most of them used MP3 players on a daily basis. I remembered a lecturer in the School of Languages and Area Studies recently talking about the widespread use of audio podcasts and MP3 players by distance learning students however wondered about their use to improve the educational experience of classroom-based students. 

Exploring the area further over the next few days, I found that higher education institutes are investing increasing amounts of money and resources into the use of multimedia technology, such as audio podcasts and MP3 players, for supporting and improving teaching and learning. Lecturers are uploading audio podcasts of lessons to the web for students to download and use to prepare for a class, to review class material and to study for assessments. Furthermore a number of higher education institutes in both the UK and the USA are providing their students with MP3 players to use as study aids. In fact, King and Gura argue that podcasting is completing changing the way that teaching and learning is taking place in the twenty-first century (2007, p. x).

I decided that I would learn how to create an individual audio podcast introducing the Japanese 1A course. I would then post this audio podcast online so that students who miss the first class would be able to download this file and listen to it on their MP3 players.

I recorded the audio on April 26th 2008 using a video camera that I borrowed from Dr. Ken Newman. I then saved the audio as an audio MP3 file using the editing software Adobe Premiere Pro. This software is installed on some of the university computers in Mercantile. I finally cut some background noise from the audio using the free audio editing software called Audacity. I had already used both these software packages to create the narration for the PowerPoint slides so felt more confidence using them for a second time.  

Unfortunately you are not able to upload any types of audio files to WordPress unless you upgrade your account. Furthermore, video sharing sites such as YouTube do not allow you to upload audio files. I searched online for a free audio hosting site however most sites require you to pay to upload audio files. I eventually found a free audio hosting site called Music Web Town to host the audio file.

http://www.musicwebtown.com/community/index.php

I am not currently sure how long I will be able to keep the audio file on this site so I may have to look for a different audio hosting site at some point in the future.

I intend to ask students for feedback about the usefulness of this audio podcast at the beginning of the next semester. If the feedback is positive, I plan to create a series of audio podcasts for the Japanese 1A course which will cover the material for each lesson.

I found the following articles and book about podcasting in education to be particularly interesting and would recommend them to anyone interested in exploring this area further.  

Campbell, G. (2005). There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education. EDUCAUSE Review 40 (6) (November/December 2005): 32–47.

Jobbings, D. (2005). Exploiting the educational potential of podcasting. Retrieved April 22^nd 2008, from:

http://www.recap.ltd.uk/articles/podguide.html

King, K & Gura, M. (2007). Podcasting for Teachers: Using a New Technology to Revolutionize Teaching and Learning. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.

This is a short series of PowerPoint slides with narration introducing the Japanese 1A course to students. I created the slides on April 19^th 2008 using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007.  You can purchase Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, which includes PowerPoint 2007, for £38.95 if you are a student when the recommended market price is £461.98. I thus recommend buying it while you are still a student if you do not already have it.

http://www.theultimatesteal.co.uk/

I first downloaded the University of Portsmouth template from the university website.

http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/services/marketing/corporatecommunications/powerpointtemplates/

I then created six slides introducing the Japanese 1A course. I next asked some of the current Japanese 1A students to look at the slides during a break in a class on April 21st 2008 and comment on their content and layout. The students recommended including some basic information about how to introduce yourself in Japanese so I created one more slide with this information.

I recorded the narration for the seven slides on April 22nd 2008 using a video camera that I borrowed from Dr. Ken Newman. I then saved the narration as a .wav file using the editing software “Adobe Premiere Pro” which is installed on the university computers.

Dr. Ken Newman then showed me how to use a free audio editing software package called “Audacity”. I downloaded this to my computer and then used it to create individual .wav files for each slide. This meant dividing the original 95 MB .wav file into seven smaller .wav files between 3 and 27 MB.  I found Audacity to be an excellent piece of free software and learnt how to use its basic functions fairly quickly.

(http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)

I next inserted these .wav files in the PowerPoint slides. The textbook PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies explains how to do this and, at first, it seemed as if it would be fairly straightforward. I selected “Insert”, “Sound” and then “Sound from File” for each slide and this added the appropriate audio file. However, this only creates linked audio files which are stored outside the PowerPoint presentation. This means that a viewer must have the PowerPoint presentation file and all the linked audio files to hear the narration and see the slides.  You cannot upload audio files to YouTube so I needed to find a way to embed the audio files in the PowerPoint presentation before uploading it to You Tube and WordPress.

I searched online for the answer for most of April 27th 2008 as it does not explain how to do this in PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies or on the Microsoft website. I found that it was possible to embed all the linked audio files in PowerPoint by selecting “Sound Tools”, “Options” , “Max Sound File Size (KB)” and then increasing the maximum sound file size to a number that is larger than the size of the largest linked audio file. I subsequently inserted all seven audio files in the appropriate PowerPoint slides one more time and this time they were embedded in the presentation.

I next had to individually set the timing for each slide so that the slides would automatically change to accompany the narration. I did this by first timing the length of the narration for each slide. I then selected “Animations” and entered the length of the narration in the “Advance Slide Automatically After” box for each slide. This means that the slides automatically change after the time that I have input.

The next stage involved converting the PowerPoint presentation into a MP4 format video file so that I could upload it to You Tube. I searched online for a method of doing this and found that it can be done using file conversion software. I downloaded a thirty day trial version of “Wondershare PPT “and used this to convert the PowerPoint presentation to MP4 format. 

(http://www.ppt-to-dvd.com/)

I have never used this kind of software package before so would appreciate any advice from anyone who does have experience of this or similar packages. Unfortunately, the trial version of “Wondershare PPT”  embeds the watermark “Evaluation copy” in the MP4 video file. I intend to purchase a proper copy of this software if I use this PowerPoint presentation from October.

I finally uploaded the newly created video to You Tube and created a link to this in my WordPress blog.

I have learnt how to use a variety of software packages as a result of creating the slides with narration. There were several problems that I encountered while creating them and I found it enjoyable working out how to solve them by myself.

The Japanese 1A courses that I have been teaching since last October are one-semester introductory courses for students who have no previous experience of studying Japanese. The majority of the students are taking undergraduate degrees in Computer Games Technology or Computer Animation. They are overwhelmingly interested in Japanese computer games and manga – Japanese comic books translated into English – however do not understand the Japanese language beyond a few slang words that they have heard or seen in the computer games or comic books.

Students are able to register for a Japanese 1A course at any time during the first two weeks of each semester. This is in order to maximise the number of students that can benefit from Japanese language instruction. However, the lessons commence on the second Monday of each semester. This means that many of the students who register during the second week of a semester miss the introductory lesson particularly if this lesson takes place on a Monday or Tuesday. Around half of the students registering for Japanese 1A are currently doing so during the second week of each semester and most of these students miss the first lesson. I thus have to spend the second lesson of each semester covering the same material as the first lesson which is unfair on the students who attended the first lesson and cuts into valuable teaching time.

I have therefore decided to create a short introduction to the Japanese 1A course for students who are unable to attend the first lesson. I will create this introduction in three different multimedia formats for this project. However, I will probably only make one or two of these formats available to the students from this October.

I will create one introduction in video format and upload it to the video sharing website You Tube and my WordPress blog. I will create another introduction as an audio PowerPoint presentation with narration which I will also upload to You Tube and my WordPress blog. I will create a third introduction as a podcast and also upload this to my WordPress blog.

Students who do not attend the first class each semester from October 2008 will be able to familiarise themselves with the material covered using the introductory lesson that I will create. I intend to create a new blog specifically for Japanese 1A during September and will make the short introduction available in one or two formats on this blog.

This project will enable me to:

(1)    Learn how to create slide-based lessons with audio narration.

(2)    Learn how to create audio podcasts.

(3)    Learn how to create video-based lessons.

(4)    Learn how to use the basic functions of a wide variety of software packages including “Adobe Premiere Pro”, “Audacity”, “Avid Media Composer” and ”Wondershare PPT”.

(5)    Learn how to upload different kinds of files to audio and video hosting websites such as You Tube and Music Web Town and to blogging sites such as WordPress.

I have never created a slide-based lesson with narration, an audio podcast or a video lesson so I hope that I will learn a lot of new skills from this project. I also hope it will enable me to familiarise myself with a wide range of a software packages that I have never used before.

Furthermore, I also hope that the skills I will develop over the next few weeks will enhance my students’ overall learning experience from this October as they will enable me to make greater use of multimedia technologies in my lessons.

I used a software package called Adobe Premiere Pro to capture and edit video that had been taken with a video camera and then to export it as a wmv video file. The editing was not quite as successful as I had hoped it might be and there is a 5 second blank section at the start of the video.

I then uploaded this wmv video file to YouTube. This is the first video that I have uploaded to YouTube and it was easier to do than I first thought it would be. I presume that one reason why YouTube is so popular is due to the relative ease with which videos can be uploaded.

This was an enjoyable first exercise and I hope to improve my video editing skills over the coming months.

We used Adobe PhotoShop and a tablet and pen to draw on a computer. I initially planned to draw a yacht thus the bottom of each picture looks like the hull of a yacht. However, I started playing around with the different tools available in PhotoShop while drawing the sails and I have created a rather unique sail as a result. I think that the finished pictures look quite arty even thought they no longer look like a yacht and have thus decided to upload them to this blog.