I’ve long been a fan of the diverse range of informative and inspiring TED Talks. Today they’ve announced a new member of their family – TED Ed – which will be officially lanching as a YouTube channel in April. The idea is simple – teachers across the educational spectrum can team up with professional animators to share their resources in a short video not exceeding 10 minutes. As always with TED, the video says it all…
The vendors of three of our core tools have recently announced product updates. We will be monitoring and testing (some of) these during the forthcoming months; and will report back on progress.
Turnitin2
Two new major updates are currently being planned for later this spring:
1) Updated Basic integration;
2) Direct Integration (currently in beta test). Main features;
Read more here: http://submit.ac.uk/en_us/support/integrations/blackboard-direct
Note: some of the features listed above (e.g. audio feedback, or upgraded instructors interface) will be implemented as standard for the web document viewer, so they will ultimately appear in both the direct and basic integrations.
In addition to the above new features on the horizon are;
Book your place on the free Turnitin webinars running spring 2012.
You can now browse all the significant teaching and promotional projects which Media and Learning Technologies (CLIPP’s media service) has produced in the past three years on our Portfolio pages on the Aston University website. There’s a brief summary of each project and what we ended up delivering, as well as links to the video content itself (where possible).
I’m really pleased that we now have this resource as a testimony to what we can achieve, but it’s really just a small part of what we do. With every new project, we’re adapting and developing our skills and knowledge further, to ensure that we continually improve the creation of high-quality learning and promotional materials which effectively reach their target audiences. Please check the Portfolio pages regularly in the future as I will be adding not only the latest completed projects as we deliver them but also some of the classic work we did between 2004 and 2008, and hopefully even earlier.
Should you need any more information – or have any comments – about any of the projects on the Portfolio pages, then please don’t hesitate to contact me on 0121 204 4232 or at n.w.birch@aston.ac.uk.
Research in Learning Technology is the journal of the Association for Learning Technology. It aims to raise the profile of research in learning technology, encouraging research that informs good practice and contributes to the development of policy. The journal publishes papers concerning the use of technology in learning and teaching in all sectors of education, as well as in industry.
On January 1 2012 this became an Open Access journal and, as a result, the last 19 Volumes are freely available at the journal’s new web site http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/.
The need for a ‘My Aston Portal’ video was first put to me during my PDR by my then line manager Kevin Brace at the end of July 2010. At that stage a brief for the production of the animation had not been developed and as I had no personal experience with MAP it was clear that several developmental meetings would be needed before we could get the ball rolling.
The first port of call would be Addam Hepburn, Systems Implementor with ISA who, due to his work on MAP, was more than happy to help out. Because of the Summer annual leave diary and other ongoing projects, it would not be until the beginning of October that Addam Hepburn, Kevin Brace and myself would be able to get together to thrash out some ideas.
What may have been the logical approach for many, the tutorial/how to/walk through video, we were able to dismiss almost immediately. Addam raised concerns that as MAP is constantly developed, new features would not be reflected in such a video therefore restricting its shelf life. Also I felt that this kind of video would be too long if it were to cover all aspects of MAP and would not be sufficiently dynamic for the audience at which it is aimed.
Of the several other ideas discussed the one that seemed to have most promise was the idea of a comic book which would feature students around campus discussing the merits of MAP. The virtues of this approach would mean it would be colourful and therefore eye catching and the narrative would have to be broken down into clear and concise chunks. We would also be able to develop a multi format approach by using the comic book pages as posters to promote MAP. Kevin also suggested the use of a QR Code on the posters to drive students to the animation and the MAP pages via mobile devices. This approach would negate the use of filming and sound recording and therefore be minimal on equipment and personnel resources.
Satisfied that we now had a style to aim for, our attentions turned to the content. Addam and Kevin felt that the key to getting students to use MAP was not just the everyday services it offers such as finance and time tabling but by focusing on how it can make them more attractive to employers through management of placements and use of the e-portfolio. Developing this thinking, Kevin came up with a tagline, “Enhancing Graduate Attributes”, around which the content would be based.
A second meeting between me, Kevin and Maureen Tibby, Head of the Careers and Employability Centre, was arranged for the end of October in order to run the “Enhancing Graduate Attributes” idea past Maureen and also ensure that we were adhering to Aston’s remit/strategy. Maureen’s suggestions and the meeting as a whole proved encouraging and satisfied that we were heading in the right direction I could finally begin work on preliminary visuals, a proof of concept for the animation and a brief for the project in order for a script to be developed by Nick Birch.
The essence of the brief was a requirement for a script that featured two protagonists involved in a conversation about the virtues of MAP (with a focus on ‘Enhancing Graduate Attributes’) presented in the form of a frame by frame comic book. As mentioned earlier the protagonists were to be students featured in various campus locations and the perceived (but unstated) tone was to be straight forward and informative. However, the first draft script that Nick returned at the end of November was quite unexpected. Not only was it humorous but also had the protagonists referencing the fact that they were part of an advertisement and breaking the ‘fourth wall’.
Initially, although the script was very good, I felt that this was not what was needed because the mock ad-sales element of it didn’t fit with the tone we were trying to set. Then it occurred to me, that with a slight re-write of the script, one of the protagonists could be turned into a super-hero which would reinforce the comic book motif. Everything had fallen into place.
The final script, storyboard and test animations were completed just in time for the Christmas break with plans in the New Year for the ‘design’ of a super hero costume, identifying people to play the parts and blue screen photography prior to assembling a first draft of the animation. However plans had to be put on hold as a couple of projects, including the Paramedics Training Videos for the NHS, would take priority for a couple of months. However, during this time we were able to present the work done so far to Maureen Tibby, Angela Davies and Lehanne Anderson of the Careers & Employability Centre and their favourable comments proved very encouraging.
Work on the animation finally reconvened at the start of May 2011. In order to plan out exactly what images of our actors would be needed for the final animation I created a version with self shot photographs of myself against a blue screen, playing the part of ‘Captain Aston’ (although not in costume) and his opposite number. To all intents and purposes, this was the final animation and would only require the replacement of the images of me with the final images of the actors.
A call went out to marketing and the entire South Wing fourth floor corridor for volunteers to play the parts of Captain Aston and his cohort and it was CLIPPs very own Paul Gorman and Zara Kendrick who answered that call. A couple of hours shopping and a bit of nifty work with a sharp knife and a bit of glue and Captain Aston was finally ready to don his cape and mask.
After a short photo shoot against the blue screen to get the required images of Paul and Zara, final compositing of the My Aston Portal animation could begin and the completed animation was delivered at the beginning of June 2011.
Comments have so far been positive. Angela Davies wrote “It’s great to see it all come together from your initial pencil drawings. I think it unambiguously emphasises MAP’s functions. Glad you decided to go with the direct approach. The poster is vague enough to want to find out more, but the comic strip is very clear, and funny; I think it will appeal to students.”
Nick Birch added “I’m really pleased with what we have achieved in making the MAP animation. Often, it’s the simplest messages that take the most effort to communicate effectively and Steve’s worked so hard on bringing this complex, yet straightforward message to the screen. I think it’s another fine example of the high quality and visual impact we can achieve in Media & Learning Technologies.”
Angela also suggested that Captain Aston could be put to further publicity use in the future, a sentiment also echoed by Steve Thompson. So there could be a sequel yet!
Many thanks to Kevin Brace, Nick Birch, Paul Gorman and Zara Kendrick for their involvement in this project. If you have any questions regarding this production feel free to enter them into the comments and I’ll try my best to answer them.
Steve McHale
Video Graphics & DVD Production
Centre for Learning Innovation & Professional Practice
This stylish video has been produced to highlight the potential of My Aston Portal (MAP) to all Aston students. MAP hosts a range of tools to support learning and personal development.
The video was crafted by our own Steve McHale from the Aston MLT department, part of The Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice (CLIPP). Credit and thanks also go to CLIPP staff; Paul Gorman (The Captain), and the Zara Kendrick (Sidekick).
For those of you not familiar with Panopto, they are a company that make a lecture capture system called “Focus”. At Aston this is also known as Aston Replay. We have used the system now for several years and generally we are very happy with it. So much so that last year we actually hosted a SCHOMS event that was centred around lecture capture, with Panopto invited to talk to the delegates about their product.
Workshop time has come around again and Panopto have organised a “Lecture Capture Workshop” at the University of Birmingham. Members of CLIPP will not only be in attendance but Paul Gorman will be giving a short presentation about some research we have been working on related to Aston’s usage of lecture capture.
Here’s what Panopto have to say about their event:
Location: University of Birmingham
Date: Wednesday 19th October
Time: 10.30am – 4.30pm
Register today! (Note that our ‘South’ user day will be held on 2nd November at University of Southampton – if you are interested in this, please contact us here too and we will be in touch)
Networking opportunity for users of Panopto
The University of Birmingham is kindly co-hosting this event with us. It will give users of Panopto an opportunity to discuss technological and pedagogical issues relating to using Panopto’s software and will provide an opportunity for you to network with other universities.
Introduction for those new to lecture capture
If you are a university that is interested in learning more about Panopto’s lecture capture, this event will provide an ideal opportunity for you to hear from other institutions and talk to Panopto about how our platform works.
The day will include talks by Birmingham and Aston universities, as well as product updates from Panopto.
Lunch will be provided and there will be plenty of time for round table discussions. Faculty members who have used Panopto or are interested in it are also encouraged to sign up.
Register your attendance today – email us, confirming the name of your institution, number of colleagues attending, along with their names and job titles.
Once you have registered, we will send you a final agenda and more details. Meanwhile, we look forward to hearing from you and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.
Just a quick note to introduce the Reusing Medical Recordings Project, which is a JISC-funded project “to encourage shared understanding between managers and practitioners across clinical and educational settings on the rationale and good practice for the creation and use of medical recordings for educational purposes”. This consultation aims to produce a set of guidance materials around ‘making and using clinical and healthcare recordings for learning and teaching’, aimed “primarily at students, teachers or doctors who wish to use a patient recording or patient data for learning and teaching. It will also be of interest and use to other clinical and healthcare workers as well as to university staff where patient recordings are being made available for learning and teaching.
The project should standardise guidance around issues of ethics, copyright, patient permission, storage and re-use in order to demonstrate good and responsible practice, and to generate trust and reassurance for the patient.
This may well have an effect on the work which we do in Media & Learning Technologies, but also across the campus. Findings and recommendations are expected in Autumn 2011.
In this short video CLIPP, Dr Stuart Wallis explains how he and his students have benefitted from the GradeMark tool, when using it to assess work and give timely feedback.
See also my notes on the presentation by Dr Cath Ellis we posted earlier in the year.
The 11th DIVERSE (Developing Innovative Visual Educational Resources for Students Everywhere) Conference, held at the Dublin City University Campus, Eire, is intended as a showcase for excellence and innovation in the field of video and videoconferencing in education: teaching, research, management and so on.
This year saw presentations around the themes of Digital Video Projects, Visual Literacy in New Media, E-health, and Social Media and saw contributions from academics, learning technologists and other interested parties from Europe, Africa, North America and Australasia.
It was to be a special conference for me because I was presenting a poster for the first time – more of that later. After being serenaded by a close harmony quartet (surely every conference starts like this, doesn’t it?) we kicked off with Professor Roy Pea of Stanford University introducing the revolutionary DIVER camera. This was an eye-opening and exciting piece of kit that had evolved out a dual need to capture panoramic video of a single event, and to be able to select areas of that video for re-editing. The camera uses a simple but high-quality panoramic lens and has advanced software that ‘undistorts’ the resulting image into a full panoramic video recording. Sections of the captured video can then be highlighted as separate ‘Dives’, which can be annotated too. The cameras are being successfully used in all manner of teaching environments, not least teacher training, and I’d certainly like to investigate their use here in the near future. There’s even an iPhone lens attachment that allows panoramic recording straight onto your phone!
While some of the sessions may not have trodden the new ground that they could have done, there were plenty of interesting presentations to be had. Mike O’Donoghue from the University of Manchester gave a very pertinent talk on creatively designing video for teaching and learning which was very interesting to practitioners like me and a wider teaching and learning technologist audience alike, referencing his 20 or so years experience in this field. He has some very interesting guidelines and educational videos which have been formulated for the MA in Digital Technologies, Communication and Education at Manchester.
Over in the e-Health arena, there was a good presentation by Aoife Ni Mhuiri from the Institute of Tralee about how screencasting can be used to provide a reusable learning object to support teaching and learning of Anatomy and Injury Management. It uses video clips of injuries to players/athletes during major championships, races or games for analysis along with interactive anatomical images/graphics to provide a short DVD or interactive web-based courseware. It was a very impressive and comprehensive teaching package that is already showing great successes in teaching and treatments alike.
The time came for me to present my poster about how Media & Learning Technologies support final year Spanish Language students in a module which requires them to write a dramatic script and make a short film. I opted to make something that was different from the traditional A0 paper poster; instead coming up with a video poster. This was a good way of incorporating both the explanatory text and plenty of video clips that documented the production process and compared materials from before and after our interventions. It went down very well and plenty of debate arose about some of the technical proficiencies and artistic abilities which we ascribe to Digital Natives, that may not actually be present in the first place.
All in all, a good conference with plenty of food for thought.
CLIPP is the Centre for Learning, Innovation and Professional Practice. We are a department of Aston University.
If you would like to know more about us please visit the CLIPP web site.
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