Analysis of Digital Tools - Group #2 - Digital pictures, podcasts and video

By far the most enjoyable part of this assignment has been an extension and consolidation process of my own learning about digital pedagogical potentials.  Of the second group of technologies analyzed here, i.e digital pictures, podcasts and videos, I will be focusing on both podcasts, digital video and pictures.  Embedding pics and videos in my Week 3 wiki and my previous blog posts showed me great potential for enhancing student engagement, as well as analysis and comprehension skills in areas of visual literacy.

Podcasts, recording and considerations of intellectual property

Briefly, on podcasting technology, it jumped out to me that this is a particularly beneficial technology for music teaching, as it can transmit aural literacy experiences to students.  If you have ever been around jazz circles you might have heard musicians talking and trading 'play-a-longs': audio tracks of jazz standards performed minus the particular instrumental section of the musician practicing along.  The likes of Jamey Aebersold has pioneered and developed a globally known and used international jazz education publishing corporation Although Aebersold produces primarily Books/CDs/DVDs, the digital age is seeing  music industry covert and transmit works in download/upload-able mp3/MIDI file formats.  Increasingly, music publishers are using the web to widen their market demand and online access catalogs are becoming more readily available anyway. Online music libraries and product catalogs are already here.  Students could gain a lot of valuable experience and real-world skills by publishing demos or practical studies of their own original works. 

Music teachers and student can very well construct their own play-a-long podcasts they themselves produce (of the rest of the band playing their parts, so the practicing musician can practice they part, even perform improvised solos for a pre-recorded number of instrumental breaks) for each student to take home and practice new repertoire.  This kind of produced learning would need integrate modern digital music recording practices and technology. 

Podcasting technology shows promise to enable student exploration of more advanced music repertoire, increasingly difficult practical exercises (eg. scalar and chordal warm-ups and practice exercises), other studies in music theory, or perhaps music history.  I found an interesting podcasting resource for podcast development - Podcasting with Audacity - which effective directs users to open source (free) multi-track recording and editing software and MIDI-mp3 conversion software.  I was able to follow the instruction to download this free sound production program, now all that remains is to start using it to produce the podcast tools I may use in lessons.  This places significant power in the teachers hands to make aural literacy lessons and resources which can be reused/updated with successive year's classes.  Back-catalogs of lessons could be made in fact.  And that is just what many universities do: create podcasts for addition to their academic resources, catalogs, libraries, and many charge fees to access them.  

The problem of intellectual property, copyright and royalties, etc, cannot be ignored.  Therefore, there needs to be a conscious effort on the part of teachers and students to know they are not breaching copyright laws (committing piracy) when accessing files or creating copies of digital pictures, videos or podcasts which are the intellectual property of other authors.  Digital encryptions can either obstruct/terminate copying or they can infect a destination computer with a virus or worm, and there actually exists digital 'farms' around the world set up by copyright and intellectual property corporations for finding pirated files via P2P and Torrent platforms, infecting the pirated files and then releasing them back into cyberspace to sabotage digital pirates.

Even the use of a simple data projector can be a lesson in copyright law. as once some data projectors are connected to a laptop to display some copyright encrypted pictures or videos on a screen, a block can occur as the computer may read the projector as a potential broadcast.  Such is the capacity of the digital revolution for giving us preprogramed & automated protection mechanisms of intellectual property ownership and livelihoods.

Digital pictures

I found using digital pictures in my blog posts and my wiki very challenging and rewarding.  Challenging because sometimes there was often some little thing I was missing or mistaking when trying to embed my pictures, usually a pixel size issue or a cropping needed.  In the problem solving process, I have discovered resizing is a function of picture manipulation capabilities of certain software, e.g. Infranview (I often used this program at my current employers, EQ), or a specific resizer programs are readily available, e.g. PIXresizer.  Cropping is a function of many digital picture programs, even the often under-rated MSpaint program, which is installed on just about every Microsoft PC-OS anywhere, although I have used Infranview, Publisher, Word, Claris Works, etc to crop pictures. But there is literally an infinite number of possibilities of application for digital picture rendering programs, commercial available and in open-source.

But pictures are rewarding in that as the old saying goes...'a picture paints a thousand words'.  Pictures add new dimensions to lessons, aesthetically induced such as a digital rendition of an oil painting of Mozart or Bach, or a blueprint schematic may do for a mathematics or graphics class.  It is all in the look.  Learning to interpret visual cues and aspects are integral to modern life, and visual literacy is just as important as language literacy.  I am not advocating cheesy choices, rather the perfect choice of picture for the lesson. 

Observations and inferences that can be made at the site of a pictures subject can be complimented by the lens of photography.  That is why police  take photographs of crime scenes, as their is investigative and exploratory value in later study of pictures from the scene of criminal events.  So too historians and geographers interpret pictures as primary sources of information about the past and our world, as so too current history, geography or SOSE students might discover great things through analysis of digtal pictures.  The digital picture actually proliferates the access to powerful new ideas as pictures can transmit great volumes of text and therefore can be great agents of change (e.g. Compare & Contrast public reactions to war time photography during the World Wars, Vietnam war, Iraq and Afghanistan, now Libya).  It also informs us much of the past.  I can recall being moved by seeing grainy monochrome pictures of the jazz pioneers in New Orleans, southern USA at the time of the Great Depression.  This was during a study in the form of jazz music.  Here's an example of one I might use:

Above: The Founder Father of Jazz music - Buddy Bolden (pictured top right); perfect for an exercise in visual literacy (Note: the guitarist holding his instrument in left-hand style which is not common.)
'Cornetist Buddy Bolden was one of the first practitioners of the style that came to be known as New Orleans jazz. .... There is controversy over whether this image was originally printed backwards.' (Source picture and quote: Encyclopedia of Louisiana)

Some thoughts on future pedagogical use: consider that  students often enjoy the experience of sharing meaningful perspectives of their own.  So, for example, students may embrace the chance to choose pictures for inclusion in assignments or perhaps create an artistic design for a anti-bullying campaign that their student council is coordinating with all classes as a part of a whole school presentation about behaviour and student expectations.  Scaffolding is a vital part of any lesson where pictures are included, and a good example of one I might try out during my EPL will be a Compare & Contrast pictures of a landscape, 'Then & Now' or 'Before & After' in a SOSE/Geography class.  


Digital videos


Here is another video embed, which actually demonstrates some symbiosis between audio and video editing:

Above: A quick lesson in opening both the audio and video of a movie with industry standard digital recording software Pro Tools. (Source: You Tube)



Much of what can be said of pics, can be said of videos, yet the value of moving pictures to a lesson can be add dynamics, movement and engagement that pictures cannot.  The visual literacies of still pictures is present, but the motion picture takes the eyes and thoughts of the audience/student to another level of engagement.

The following is the first video I have ever produced from title to credits.   I hope readers don't mind me using my family as guinea pigs.  I guess choosing my family shows a little bit about myself too, so I guess this is consistent with that teachers also learn about their students, getting to know them, in part, through what they explore and express in their lessons.  Here it is:

 

Above: My first video ever! Comments are welcome! I wore many 'hats' in this video; producer, director, actor, recording musician ...and my wife reckon blokes can't do more than one thing at a time... ;-).

As you can see there are quite a few amateurish issues, mostly caused by technical issues with software (codecs, 'broken' Movie Maker etc)& hardware (CPU and graphics card not design for data intensive video work), in a nut shell!  But that is all part of the learning journey in itself...I learned a great deal more about computer video and audio editing and also that I need to keep a well-trimmed and maintained computer if I want to perform this in any significant fashion.

The actual video production summarily went through the (at times, arduous) following stages;

• captured video using a Motorola Defy (Moto-blur) phone 5megapixel video camera,
• imported my phone videos to my laptop (a processing called 'synching' using a media link software and a USB cable),
• searched (googled) for a freeware converter software and trial half a dozen different programs,
• eventually converted the 3gp video files into .avi files using 'Pazeera Free 3gp to .avi Converter',
• activated the program 'Windows Movie Maker 5.6' (which come as part of the windows service packs), & imported videos from documents folder to the Windows Movie Maker clip collections,
• edited clips to produced a rough movie,
• lost that first work because the project files corrupted and would not open,
• I googled & downloaded repair files,
• decompressed and saved the repair to my laptop's hard-drive,
• re-edited a whole heaps of video clips (in some ways better than, & in some ways not as good, as the first!)
• and created a movie draft, made some final adjustments to the credits and ...
• recorded a soundtrack using Audacity (freeware)
• created a movie (in the wrong kbps setting) and found out by failed upload to blog!
• created another movie (using same clips but 512kbps setting) & ...Voila! A movie is created!  
• discovered strange codes were watermarked into the final scene (Ethan walking into the pole) which spoilt the effect somewhat (disappointing)
• overall a pleasing result as the video has been shown to family

Impressive, no? Very labor intensive though to get to that product.  The video editing software was the right price but it took my CPU a long time to process even very basic commands.  But once I got the hang of what the computer could handle things went alot more smoothly.  I worked out a few tricks like rebooting program and pc, plus saving often and not over loading the CPU with commands!  The sense of achievement once I had finished the video was considerable, which made much of the hassles worth the energy expended on them.

During the production of the above video, there were several adaptive skills which I had to exercise. So here is a fairly raw mind dump of these skill developments:

• Reading and comprehending instructions to access and download software; Move Maker (video) and Audacity (audio)
• Analysis of problems and barriers in production and posting to blog
• Create solutions responsively to problems/barriers, develop problem solving skill and acquire some new declarative & procedural knowledge (of computing video & audio production)
• Explore procedural knowledge in visual literacies of video & audio editing/design
• Develop procedural (technical) knowledge of computers and some software
• Evaluate hardware limitations and adapted my modus operandi whilst applying high data usage software on this computer such as video.
• Networking to other users of the software (solution videos) for repairs via search engine & YouTube
• Developing literacies in area of video/audio production as well as computer structures & maintenance
• Analyze readily available tools of video/audio recording for pedagogical potentials
• Explore preliminary ideas for future lesson plans 
• Demonstrate procedural knowledge of copyright and intellectual property rights (i.e. own performance, credits given to author of song, plus it was not a commercial project, and essentially was a 'demo' of my work)

PMI of Pedagogy with Digital Videos

Plus

• Highly engaging tool to use as children (mostly) have been raised with this medium. 
• Possible strategies include student fulfilling roles as viewer/reader, writer, actor, stage manager, editor, director, producer, audio (SX), lighting (LX) etc
• Provides direct engagement to visual learners
• Production of video is an extraordinarily kinesthetic learning experience and assumes a great proportion of aural learning (as per video specific literacies) 
• Creates teamwork development opportunities which can share skills sets and collective knowledge
• Highly suitable for constructivist learning activity
• Variety of learning outcomes range from video & audio production skills (procedural knowledge) to vast meta-learning augmentation beyond core tasks
• Freeware (software) available and technical support from a vast collective of knowledge on internet 
• Availability of technology for video is widely disseminated in society and accessible to students
• Integrates visual and aural learning
• Excellent for providing demonstrations where teacher may not be a true proficient

Minus

• To viewers, videos are non-kinesthetic products and are only partially aural experiences 
• Expensive & resource intensive due to high data usage, all hardware has limitations
• Demands high level computer and ICT support from faculty
• Problems associated with software and hardware operations can be limiting
• The resolution of the picture is diminished with cheaper personal video ICTs (e.g. mobile phone cameras less high resolution than digital video) and hardware limitations of broadband video (upload video setting of 512kbps/< creates a more grainy image)  
• Equipment that is up to of industry standard may be inaccessible to students outside of affluent schools
• As with most media and performing arts, 'everyone is a critic'
• Requires assessments, focused learning tasks and scaffolding of carefully crafted degree dependent upon student's technical proficiency and point of cognitive developmental
• Demands acquisition of some degrees of  new multi-modal literacies in; computer operating systems, graphics cards and video/audio codecs (digital cypher software, for reading/writing video/audio data)
• Camera phobias and other anxieties (eg. stage fright) are real and can be debilitating, which can also be very challenging for teachers pedagogy through video production activities

Interesting

• Introduces and reinforces visual literacies of video as an art form and even freely available software promises great potentials of many (infinite?) filming genres and computerized special effects
• Integrates visual, aural and oral literacies
• Most students (like most people) are thrilled by seeing themselves on video
• Links art, media and society, so pedagogy using video encourages mastery of this variety of disciplines
• May bring students who are typically non-creative/non-artistic into a stream of creative development
• Video use and production in learning design is compatible with a vast array of scaffolding and assessment modalities, also even with several scaffolds within one lesson
• Variability of learning experience with video correlates with variability to individual human responses to all film (or art for that matter)  
• Visual journals demonstrate different learnings to that of written journals, and this influences the qualities of activity reflections  
• Internet video broadcast can lead to much more than 15 minutes of fame
• Internet video broadcast requires strict management of school-based posts and enforcement of code of conducts in striving for ethical use of digital video images
• Copyright and royalties are something to be respected, if not  to be feared as potential future liabilities