Introduction Video Re-submission

Looking back at my introduction video for ED 529 Survey of Instructional Technology Leadership, I realize that my original video lacked a lot of the presentation techniques we've learned about in class. Although I feel that my video accomplished the goal of introducing myself to classmates, my first video was very simple. In my initial planning I considered the audience and the purpose but did not fully utilize the MAPS heuristic (as I was not aware of it yet!) The MAPS heuristic helps an author determine production elements to enhance their digital writing. According to Troy Hicks, author of Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media and Genres, there are five parts to the MAPS heuristic: mode, the genre of a text; media, the form in which a text is created; audience, the reader, listener, or viewer of the text, both intended and incidental; purpose, the action the author takes, in both an academic and a personal sense; and situation, the context for the writer herself or himself, as well as the demands of the writing task (Hicks, 2013, p. 21). After reading the chapters on audio and video texts, as well as our Google collaboration, I brainstormed ways that I could improve my original video for the re-submission.

As I began the process of recreating my introduction video, I decided to toss the majority of my original video. I followed Hicks' composition process for digital video texts which involves prewriting and drafting, revising and editing and publishing and assessing (Hicks, 2013, p. 114). In the prewriting and drafting stage, I decided against using my original video and audio but instead kept the wording and objective. Luckily I had a copy of my "script" from the original video so I was able to easily choose which wording I wanted to keep and what to omit.  In the revising and editing phase, I focused on the design elements of my new video. Hicks provides several elements to consider when editing digital video and I decided to use music, transitions, text, images, and time effects (Hicks, 2013, p. 111). After looking back through the audio and video collaborations from last week, I really wanted to try using time lapse software. In her collaboration example, Dr. Ray mentioned that VideoScribe has a free seven day trial. Once I checked out VideoScribe, I felt that it would be a great option to both experience time lapse video editing and revamp my introduction video.

The program itself is user friendly and it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. Time lapse videos give the effect that they take lots of time and skill! Although the software wasn't difficult to navigate, it was pretty time consuming. I think that students would love using this program or one like it but I'm not sure that it would be feasible based on the amount of class time a project would take.

The publishing and assessing, however, wasn't quite as clear cut. It took about 30 minutes to export the video. I wanted to upload it to my YouTube channel so that I could easily embed the video here. I tried multiple times and although the option was there, it would not export to YouTube. I assumed that it had to do with the YouTube filter settings at school. At home, although I could access my account, I could not export the video because the free trial software is on my school computer. Therefore, I will have to wait until I am back and work to try to export again. *Note 11/6/14: The export to YouTube feature again would not work from my school computer (the computer that I had the trial on). Unfortunately, the export to video file is not an option for the free trial version. The only option that I could use was to export my video to a PowerPoint presentation. Then, I had to find a program that would host my PowerPoint presentation so that I could embed it here. I used Scribd. This was another new program to me and it was very user friendly! I was getting a little nervous that I failed big time and that all the time I spent on my VideoScribe was going to waste. Next time, I will make sure to read all the fine print when I am using a trial version (and start earlier)!

I hope that you enjoy my new time lapse video introduction!

Introduction Video by j2pritchett

References:

Hicks, T. (2013). Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media and Genres. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.