Before week 1

Before the first session of Group 1, I checked the equipment, verifying that the camera was available for recording day, I borrowed a tripod, a lapel microphone, two mini DV tapes, two spare batteries for the camera, and a set of headphones. I got the permissions to host video in the streaming sever of the university; and I designed a questionnaire that aimed to gather information about the users. Since the development of the Video Rich Learning Environment is a user-centred spiral process, the application of questionnaires takes place every time there is an improvement in the prototype. Reason why I decided to implement online questionnaires as a means of gathering data and keeping communication with the users. The best available option was the browser-based version of Questionmark Perception, an assessment management system that facilitates authoring, delivery and report of online sets of questions.

Technology Enhanced Learning Environment

I am about to start one important stage of my research project. which is the development of a learning enviornment for a Statistics lecture for undergraduates. Next week I am going film the lecturer giving some explanations of the course and I am going to carry out a survey about likes and dislikes of the target group. The aim is to develop a user based prototype and to go on the development of the environment and features according to the users’ needs. I will be reporting the weekly progress of this phase.

To Edutec 2006

The abstract I submitted for the Edutec 2006 conference was accepted so I sent the full version of the paper that I will be presenting on 19-22 September. The paper is about the development of a video summary able to redirect the viewer to the full version of a videoed lecture.

DIVERSE 2006

The DIVERSE 2006 conference in Glasgow was a great experience, I met many people with interests similar to mine, I presented my work for the first time in an international conference and I gather loads of ideas.

Developing Innovative Video Resources for Students Everywhere

The paper I submitted to the DIVERSE conference, was accepted and therefore I am presenting on the 6th July 2006 at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Video Blog

In the task of developing a vlog for delivering video summaries for one of my case studies, I went over two different methodologies to achieve my goal.
First of all, I recorded a talking head, and I created a PowerPoint presentation, then I used Camtasia Studio to integrate and synchronize the slides with the video. At that point everything was pretty straightforward.

After all, why video streaming?

I was skimming some of the articles in the click and go video project website, and I found particularly interesting two called Developing a streaming Video Methodology and Click and Go Video, both by Jim Strom, Clive Young and Mireia Asensio.

Video

To insert a video from Youtube.com in WordPress just type the following line:

[ youtube=http://youtube.com/?v=ZZZZZZZZ ]

Plugins for using video in a wordpress blog´

HTML: 

[FLASH]http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/ramirezm/virtubes2/video_horse.swf[\FLASH]
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Video

Videoconference – first attempt

After 7 weeks of setting everything up for a videoconference that I arranged with the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, in Mexico, today it took place.

Videoconferencing essay

I am writing an essay of videoconferencing in networked learning, and I have been looking for papers and other sources to document what I say. I found in the Bibliography of one of Mike O’Donoghue’s papers an interesting source called Videoconferencing: active reflection on new technologies when lecturing. I look it up in Google and I found it in a reliable resource database, where I also found another paper called Videoconferencing: a collaborative experiment.

In the first paper, I found very interesting, how the videoconferences were operatively managed by means of an etiquette, and how logistic and budget defined the use of videoconferences in these Scottish HE sites.