On Weather Cancellations and Digital Media Experiments

Lindsey Gay — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 12:20:21 +0000

Author:

Lindsey Gay

Image Credit:

Normally we have very mild minters here in Austin; however, this winter has been colder than usual. As a result, we’ve had a number of days where ice coated the roads, making the region’s many elevated highways and bridges very dangerous. For better or for worse, UT has closed the campus several times and initiated late starts several times more. Normally these delayed starts began between 10am and noon. As my Rhetoric of Death and Dying class runs from 9:30 to 11 am, any weather delays impact the course. In fact, we’ve had two classes cancelled and three others delayed by at least half an hour! For a course that meets only twice a week, every class day is very necessary; therefore, being almost two weeks behind in my curriculum before Spring Break has proven very challenging.

When my class was full-on canceled the first time, I was already on campus. UT officials made the call rather late, to the ire of many, but I decided to make the most of the situation. Since I had a quiet DWRL room, a computer with a webcam, and several hours at my disposal, I decided to record the day’s lecture and part of the lesson. I figured that not only could I reduce the amount of catch-up my students would have to do, but I would hopefully familiarize myself more strongly with the same digital media projects I’ve been asking my students to create.

I created a video in Windows Movie Maker by combining webcam footage of me lecturing with screen captures of the readings and other course material I had planned to discuss that day. Using the screen-capture tool Camtasia, I attempted to navigate through the material as if I were showing it to the students in real-time. There were several drawbacks: the lighting wasn’t optimal (thanks, fluorescent overheads!); I struggled with the audio capture (for some reason, about half of my sound files recorded but were incompatible with Camtasia, resulting in me having to record some portions of audio two or three times); overall the video ended up being VERY amateurish (to my eyes!). Nevertheless, at least my students had something to take away from an otherwise throwaway class day. After emailing them the video link and cautioning them that they’d be responsible for viewing it, doing the activities discussed, and knowing the material for the next class, I hoped they’d watch it.

Polling them the next class day, I found that only about one-third of them had watched the video. I warned them that we didn’t have enough time to go over the material (important stuff about ethical and pathetic appeals) so if they fell behind, it would be their own fault. Needless to say, I also found their scanty participation a poor repayment for my efforts. Cue hurt feelings.

The second time the university decided to cancel morning classes, it at least gave everyone plenty of notice, so I didn’t make an unnecessary trip to campus. This time, I thought I would turn my lecture on definitional arguments into a PowerPoint, and I wanted experiment by adding a voice-over. This would add important discussional elements into the presentation by making me write less and talk more.

Writing the PowerPoint took only half an hour. Then, I tried to use the audio recorder function built in to PowerPoint, because I hoped to avoid having to merge audio and PPT files in some other program. Unfortunately, once again, audio recording was my downfall. Though I made several test runs to ensure the sound was recording AND that I could advance through bullet points and slides in sync with the audio, the recording ultimately failed. I spent 40 minutes talking at my computer, only to find when I played back the whole presentation that the audio cut out about halfway through each slide. I was too frustrated to troubleshoot the problem, and I had afternoon meetings to keep, so I just rewrote the slides to be more text-heavy than I’d usually prefer. I sent it off to my students with instructions to view the PowerPoint and my apologies that I couldn’t get the sound to work. On the plus side, when I polled the class the next day asking how many of them viewed the presentation, about three-quarters of them raised their hands. It seemed they learned a lesson from the first cancelation, and the other shortened classes, AND from my lamentations about these course-shortening problems.

By the time Spring Break rolled around I was still about a week behind in my syllabus. Over the break, I reworked the rest of the term’s schedule slightly. This resulted in the next few weeks emphasizing skill development and leaving less time to luxuriate in discussing the many arguments around death and dying. The main lessons I learned—besides keeping my syllabus somewhat flexible—is that I have a long way to go before I make a really solid foray into the realm of the audiovisual. These experiences gave me a greater respect for my students’ efforts making their final projects (in various multimedia formats). My failures also gave me some ideas on how to better prepare my students for frustrations they may encounter as well.

In Defense of Winging It

Scott Nelson — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 02:55:09 +0000

Author:

Scott Nelson

Image Credit:

Scott Nelson, 2012, CC BY-SA

So far this semester, my best lesson plan wasn’t planned. In fact, it was purposely left vague and unformed just to see what would evolve. And with digital media, I would argue, these unplanned moments can be where the most instruction can occur.

This semester, I’m teaching Literature & Video Games, a literature course that compares the two media and the narrative experiences they provide. Students have already practiced close reading of both video games and literature, with individual students choosing their own analytical stances. Up until recently, I gave students a fair amount of structure for each assignment, with detailed instructions for completing close readings and analyses. Their latest assignment, however, was a straightforward, yet vague charge: create an eBook.

While writing about video games and pedagogy has seen an explosion over the past ten years or so, the field is relatively sparse when it comes to writing about the connection between literature and video games. I saw this dearth of materials as a prime opportunity to have students create a meaningful resource for others in the field. I also felt it was a great opportunity to explore a relatively new medium. Though eBooks are in many ways similar to webpages, they come with different audience expectations. For one, webpages have an implied responsibility to be updated regularly, while eBooks are more similar to their print cousins: they are updated through editions if ever at all. A resource like an eBook on literature and video games could provide a snapshot of a rapidly evolving discipline.

More importantly, though, this experiment performs a similar function to the artifacts it studies; it asks students to explore and play. Much like a video game, approaching a new medium is full of ludic moments of testing the limits and seeing how they respond. Because eBooks are relatively new, their conventions are not as firmly set as older media. Should they be thought of as more like books, with static content (like I indicate in the previous paragraph)? Should they use more dynamic interface metaphors like those of film and video games? Are they just a convenient way to experience text, or should they provide more interactive experiences?

All of these questions (and more) came out in the unplanned lesson. I merely told students that they would need to create an eBook on literature and video games, and it should be completed by the end of the semester. While some of the more structured lessons this semester have evoked lukewarm responses from students, this lesson had them engaged in a process of creativity and play. Students formed committees for producing the eBook, ranging from page layout to copyediting to copyrights to party planning (of course, they needed refreshments for their studio days). Students researched file types and programs for eBook production, venues for housing their publication, and issues surrounding copyright. Each student will be responsible for a chapter, but all will be responsible for producing a quality product.

We have an excellent resource at the Digital Writing and Research Lab for lesson plans. Innovative assistant instructors experiment with new programs or new approaches to older tools, and because of their efforts, we have amassed an invaluable resource. However, there are some aspects of pedagogy that don’t fit so easily inside a lesson plan. Maybe more significant than plans or lack thereof, teaching seems to require a flexible attitude, a willingness to deviate from the script and react to where the experience takes the class. And digital media, in particular, demands such an approach. Technology seems to delight in derailing the best-laid plans, but it also provides a responsive playground to test emergent hypotheses. The more I teach, the more I see my role as creating an environment where these emergent behaviors can evolve, and getting out of that evolution’s way.

Blogging Pedagogy - improvisation

On Weather Cancellations and Digital Media Experiments

Author:

Image Credit:

In Defense of Winging It

Author:

Image Credit: