Category Archives: adult learning

Screencasts

adult learning, Screencasts

I stayed in my pajamas all day, mourning the loss of my cat. She loved my computers…they were warm and made funny noises.

I lost myself in work for a time, developing a GarageBand screencast that I want to use with my class next week. I’m using SnapZPro, from Ambrosia Software; it seems to be the accepted Mac screen capture program and has Intel capability. (I’m working on a MacBook Pro and thinking about investing in a desktop. But that’s another posting altogether.)

I spent most of the day creating just over five minutes of narrated video. I started by experimenting with screen shots, thinking I could import them into GarageBand and make a video podcast. But they were different sizes, and taking a good screen shot was harder than it looked. I ended up choosing to make a video, using a set window frame in which I worked. That way, I could just work through the program as I normally would. With just one difference…

Having done this before, I knew that it was important to leave time for speaking. You can go much faster in terms of opening a program, naming a file, etc. if you don’t have to verbally tell someone else what you are doing. So, as I recorded the actions of opening GarageBand and creating a podcast, I mentally ran through a possible script, doing things as I got to them in my narration. It actually was pretty easy. I have used iMovie a lot; last semester I created a tutorial that we used in the Media Center.

The more difficult issue has been quality of video output. The video created by SnapZPro was very clear and reasonably small. It used something called Apple Animation for compression. The pixel size was huge: 1017X696 and it was only 16 megs. I imported it into iMovie and something weird happened. It got blurry. I lost a ton of quality.

So, before I headed out to discussion boards, I decided to play with Quicktime Player. I have the pro version and I used it to edit an audio file last week, very impressed with its ease of use. I like a simple program that only tries to do a few things well for not very much money! So, I got the audio I had created in iMovie by exporting it from one of the Quicktime movies I created as I experimented with output. I added it to the file created by SnapZPro. I exported using the same size and compression: 50 plus megs. I changed the size to 640X480, thousands of colors, and got it down to 22 megs. Still good quality, I think.

I posted the first few examples on my .mac blog. The final one I uploaded to a different server and linked to it because the .mac blog limited the size of the window. Here’s the weblog: http://web.mac.com/witchyrichy/iWeb/Witchyrichy/Blog/Blog.html

So, here are the questions:

1. What have I learned today?

Today, I have learned that there are a variety of ways to export video. I also learned that there is an issue with importing video into iMovie. I want to do some investigating. Plus I’ve been in touch with Troy. His suggestion after the first ones were done was to make the pixel size bigger.

2. How did I learn it?

Experimentation, trial and error, observation, email exchange with Troy
3. Could I have learned it better/differently?

Hmm…I might have started at discussion forums as I’m sure someone somewhere has offered suggestions for appropriate formats for these things. I guess part of the problem is that I have two conflicting goals: I’m assuming that you are going to download them rather than try to watch them over the web so I am probably more concerned about quality than size. I am, however, offering them over the web so even 22 megs is pretty big. I tried doing web streaming using their settings and got a 6 meg file that has crummy quality. I suppose you offer both. Anyway, I will go out and explore the forums but I like to play around myself first sometimes to see what I can figure out.

I tried out my first screencast as part of the podcasting workshop we did last spring: http://www.ivyrun.com/screencastkwr.mov. Actually, it is pretty good quality as I re-watch it after a few months. The format is AAC, Stereo, 32.000 kHz
H.264 Decoder, 320 x 240, Millions…it’s too small…need to be at least 640X480. Wonder how that would affect its size. Right now, it’s 8 megs.

4. How could I use what I’ve learned to benefit someone else. (In other words, could I teach/coach/help someone to learn more effectively based on my experience?) Well, I could make a screencast describing the various trade offs of different formats 😉

The Big Questions

adult learning

Just a reminder of the questions that are to guide my learning log this semester:

1. What have I learned (today, this week, whenever)?
2. How did I learn it?
3. Could I have learned it better/differently?
4. How could I use what I’ve learned to benefit someone else. (In other words, could I teach/coach/help someone to learn more effectively based on my experience?)

A Different Kind of Adult Learning

adult learning

My first adult pet was a cat named Calypso, a stray found by a friend in 1989. I have had her for 17 years, longer than I’ve been married. Today, I had to make the decision to have her put down; her kidneys were failing, and keeping her alive seemed cruel. I have never had to do this before. We chose to stay with her through the end, and it was very hard. I had been protected from the deaths of the family pets, either away at college or my first job. I understand now how my parents must have felt when Kelly, the family dog, had a stroke. I can still picture myself in the kitchen of my apartment, listening to them tell the story. This dog was such a big part of our family that we created a “Kelly calendar” every year. They had mastered their emotions when they spoke to me but I wonder if they spent the kind of day we did, napping, crying, remembering.

Today, it was my turn to take on this adult role, talking to the vet, making the decision, spending time saying good-bye, then taking time to mourn together. I posted a little memorial to her online along with a picture at flickr. She was a great cat! When we get her ashes, we’re going to have a little party before we spread them near the pond that she loved.  We’ll eat tuna fish sandwiches and drink glasses of milk, both her favorites! Cheers, Calypso!

Tough’s Iceberg

adult learning

From an NALL (New Approaches to Lifelong Learning)  Working Paper entitled The Iceberg of Informal Adult Learning by Allen Tough, guru of self-directed learning:

I found his comment about people who are “content” and “don’t see any need to learn” very intriguing.  My husband and I took a different route home from the vet and “learned” all kinds of things about our growing community.  There were new homes, new hotels, new dormitories.  It’s pretty superficial learning really yet there’s an underlying theme that we are coming to understand, that of growth.  So, without trying very hard, we learned something.

I agreed with his idea that learning was often invisible because it was shown as something else: writing a report or wiring the car.  Tough writes, “They don’t think: ‘I did some learning in order to do that task,’ they just think of the task.”  There are really two questions here: What did I learn to do that task? What did I learn from doing that task.

Adult Learning

adult learning

This blog is going to take on a larger context and expand to include adult learning. While I am going to continue my independent study of media literacy throughout the fall, I am adding an adult education component as part of a course I am taking. It just makes sense, I think. I have been engaging in adult learning all summer. (BTW, I prefer “adult learning” to “adult education” to refer to this process. “Education” seems to carry institutional connotations with it.) Doing an independent study, especially an emergent one the way I have been doing, is as close to you get to self-directed learning in graduate school. (Although I should comment that I have been very satisfied with the way my profs have allowed me to customize paper topics and projects to align with my content area.)

I’ve been doing the introductory reading for the course and have also developed a competency model for my proposed documentary filmmaking project. A pdf of the inspiration is attached to this post. Just wanted to record some initial comments. I think I’ll post them as individual posts so its easier to follow threads.

Documentary Filmmaker Competency Model