When I was in college, I was very fortunate to have Rob Kapilow as a choral conductor and music history professor. Rob has an uncanny knack for boiling down the brilliance of a piece of music so that anyone could hear it in just a short snippet. “Anyone else would have written this,” he’d say, playing four or five bars of familiar but uninspiring music, “but Mozart wrote this.” He’d play the same four or five bars, changing one note, or one chord, or one rhythm, and suddenly you would understand. It was a revelation every time. Rob has gone on to become a star on NPR and PBS, with a series called What Makes It Great. (I highly recommend the podcast.) I have never forgotten my experiences in his classroom and his choir.
Which brings me to the present. I’m toying with the idea of doing a “What Makes It Great?” series with educational technology, starting with LMSs but not necessarily ending there. It would work something like this:
- I would work with a product vendor or open source community representative.Â
- I would solicit from that person and from my readers the one or two features that really make that platform stand out as a teaching tool.
- I would then do a 10-minute screencast and interview with the person demonstrating those features.
That’s the basic idea, but I have a few questions. First of all, are you interested in something like this? If you are a user of a platform, would you be willing to suggest ideas? If you are a vendor or open source community member, would you be willing to partner with me on an episode? Do you have any suggestions to fine-tune the idea?
My other concern is technical. I have had absolutely lousy luck in the past when I have tried to record interviews. It is hideously embarassing to have to tell your guest, “Well, that was a terrific conversation, but I’m afraid that it’s been lost forever.” Does anybody have good suggestions for idiot-proof system by which I can capture both a screencast and a phone interview (since I expect to do these remotely)? I need something that can make a 10-minute recording, so that rules out Jing.
Michael,
I would certainly be interested in something like this. On the blog that I am a part of we are wanting to do a future of the LMS segment so this would dovetail nicely into that.
As far as recording go’s we use skype and then some physical routing through sound cards to record. However there are software options that can save you on hardware costs if you don’t have the hardware. One such piece of software is CallGraph. They have a free add supported version that will record your audio.
For the screen capture side, I would recommend having a collaboration software such a acrobat connect now https://acrobat.com/#/connectnow/ConnectNowBegin running on both sides so that you can both see the screen and then have the presenter run something like http://camstudio.org/ (haven’t ever used that one) or camtesia (use that one all the time) on their local machine to actually do the screen capture.
Then, once the interview is over you can grab your captured audio and have you presenter send you their screen capture for editing down.
Of course you could use something like DimDim or and Adobe Connect room if you have access to one but your overall quality is going to be less.
Please let me know if you would like to partner on this too.
Michael, this is a “great” idea and I’d be happy to help you. As Matt suggests, a topic of interest would be Beyond the LMS. Other ideas include informal learning, topical technologies and their educational applications, (e.g., twitter in the classroom, or value of netbooks to educational/training systems.)
Matt’s recording suggestions are good. Consider also the free software, Audacity, http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/.
I would be happy to test any system you decide to go with before your interviews to help you prepare.
-Bill
Sorry about that, My name was not associated with my comment by accident.
Our Academic Technology group at Tufts would be very interested in this as well. I can’t speak for others in the group, but I’d also be willing to help and would second Bill’s suggestions for topics.