EuroCALL: EFL & Online Video

Online video and EFL(An online slideshow of a)

Poster Presentation by

Bob Gettings

bgettings.com

at the EuroCALL Conference September 4 - 8, 2007

Online Video: Changing Everyday• With the development

of web technology the possibilities for easily creating and using online video are getting better day by day. In this presentation I’d like to look at three aspects.

Three aspects:

• Changing Paradigms New Ways and Tools

• What you can do -- how you can use these new opportunities.

• What new resources are available for developing video online.

Changing Paradigms: New Tools, New Ways

• Teachers have new tools for creating, publishing and consuming online video and are beginning to look are looking at video in entirely new ways.

Changing Paradigms:

Movies in the 1940s

• Expensive cameras• Studios • Big budgets• Actresses• Editors• Professional

developing• Advertising• Movie theaters

Changing Paradigms:

Movies in the 1990s

• Mid-budget cameras• Computers• Software: e.g. iMovie• Just plain folks• Some editing & html

experience• Streaming server• Or buy an complete

video EFL package

Changing Paradigms:

Movies in 2008

• Cheap cameras

• Just plain folks as actors and editors

• Internet access

Changing Paradigms:

Movies in 2008: Three Easy Steps?

Gather materials

Edit online

Link or download

1

2

3

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools, New Ways• Searching for and

linking to video has become easier.

• Teachers & students are changing from being passive consumers of expensive video projects to creators, editors and mashers.

• Simple editing online is becoming popular.

Web site owners can add online video editing capabilities to their won sites using open source tools such as masher, by Adobe.

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools: Cheap Cameras

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools & Short Video• Longer movies can be

streamed to viewers but recently

• Short video, in Flash format, has increased. – Quicker to upload and

download.

– Saves server space on web services like YouTube.

– Teachers can customize activities to suit short movies easily.

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools & Short Video

•Short, simple movies can either be edited using bundled software like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker or edited online.•Professional editing software such as Premiere or Final Cut allows users to add complexity to short video. •For example the online and

bundled software usually only has one track for video and one for sound. Pro software has multiple tracks

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools:　 Online Editing

• More people, however, are editing online. It’s fairly simple and saves the need for software. This graph shows the rise in users from 0 in March 2006 to 120K for jumpcut.com and motionbox.com in 2007.

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools:　 Online Editing• Editing online is easy

though sometimes slow..• The basic idea is to

upload parts of the movie and assemble them online.

• Users upload video, graphic and sound files to a site.

• They can also import movies from other sites.

• All of these can be synchronized to a soundtrack.

Online editing interface from jumpcut.com (now part of Yahoo!)

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools: File Format Flash

• Online editors will accept almost any file format for upload.

• They output the created movie in Flash.

• Adobe Flash produces good quality video at small file sizes.

• The ubiquitous Flash player allows playback on almost any computer.

• Flash can also be programmed to be interactive!

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools: Editing Plugin

• See www.moviemasher.com

Changing Paradigms:

New Ways: People as Creators

Changing Paradigms:

New Ways: People as Users

Changing Paradigms:

New Ways: People Communicating

• There is a move from only experiencing video as a product to using video as a communication tool.

• Skype, video blogs, uploading presentations and responses to BBSs for sharing or evaluation.

• Google is testing a videoconferencing system called Open Meetingcode.google.com/p/openmeetings/

Changing Paradigms:

New Ways: People

Changing Paradigms:

New Ways: Web 2.0• Sites like YouTube or G

oogle Video create communities around the viewing, sharing and creating of video.

• Free blog services such as Facebook or open-source web applications such as Moodle or php-nuke make linking to and distribution of video easy and interesting.

Changing Paradigms:

New Ways: People

Changing Paradigms:

New Ways: People Responding

Changing Paradigms:

New Tools:

?

What can you do?:

What can you do:

Consume

• Online video resources: evovideo07.wikispaces.com/geofftaylor-wk2

• Australia Network: Living English or The Business of English australianetwork.com/livingenglish/

• The Daily English Show - Sarah Lilburn www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=thedailyenglishshow

• Content-based: Witness: www.witness.org/

Consume: Good stuff, cheap? Search for other people’s stuff

• US Library of Congress ＆ US Government in general• British Government • BBC Learning English http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/• BBC Creative Archive http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/• Prelinger Archives – ephemeral films http://www.prelinger.com/• Texas Center for Educational Technology

http://www.tcet.unt.edu/weblibrary2/• Ourmedia http://www.ourmedia.org/• Open Educational Resources Commons http://oercommons.org/• Videoblogs and podcasts• YouTube, Google Video, etc.• http://www.english-trailers.com/

In general, more and more copyright free material is becoming available on the internet. One source is governmental. Other archives of graphics or video materials share movies that have become public domain or are meant to be shared (YouTube, etc.)

What can you do:

Consume

At the simplest level all a teacher needs to do to include online video in a class is to give students the URL of a video to look at on the web and ask them to do exercises related to it on a worksheet. Or have the students find the videos and share them with each other!

What can you do:

Consume: Download

video from another page and a Firefox plugin for downloading.

• MediaConverter – online service www.mediaconverter.org/

• VideoDownloader Firefox Extension javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

You can download video from many sites if the creator of the video allows it. There are also homepages that will copy and download a

What can you do:

Create

• Use popular tools like Apple’s iMovie or Windows’ MovieMaker to make a movie on your computer and upload it.

• More complex movies can be made with FinalCut or Adobe Premiere

What can you do:

Create Slidecasts• One very simple form of

online presentation is not a movie per se but a PowerPoint presentation that runs automatically with a voiceover. Upload a slideshow and an mpg3 file with voice and synchronize them online.

• www.slideshare.net/slidecasts

What can you do:

Create Screencasts • Similar to a slidecast --

using video screen capture or screencast to explain a computer task.

• Software like SnapzPro, iShowU, Camtasia, or Captivate allows you to combine still shots of the screen with moving screenshots.

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast

• See Screencasts Online for a sample www.screencastsonline.com/

There are also free (open source) screencast software packages such as CamStudio for Windows or xvidcap for Linux.

What can you do:

Create Interactive

• toufee is a site that allows you to make interactive Flash multimedia movies online. www.toufee.com

• You can combine text, graphics, movies or online movies, animation together with buttons that let the user interact with

the toufee movie. The user can click on buttons to answer questions or to branch to another section of the movie.

What can you do:

Communicate• One of the most basic

ways to communicate using online video is by making a short video with a message or theme.

• Students choose a theme, assemble resources, upload and create the video online.

• Other students can be asked to view and respond to the video.

One particular form of thematic video is viral video, which is particular to the online video world.A viral video starts off a process where many people respond by creating videos with the same theme.

What can you do:

Communicate Viral Video• “One World” is a viral video on

YouTube by MadV that set of a stream of more than 2,250 video responses. youtube.com/watch?v=UxqNsUbWlHc

• The character in the video simply shows one message written on the palm of his hand and invites viewers to make a response. In ten months the video had more than 1,300,000 views.

• Responders made their own videos showing personal messages -- usually about

world peace or ending conflict.

What can you do:

Communicate Viral Video

• One of the responses was from an ESL class at Southwestern College in San Diego. The teacher, Patricia Kelly, used the video to teach the imperative.

• Students wrote commands related to ending conflict and planned how to present them.

• The video was made by taking short shots with an

ordinary digital camera, edited with iMovie and uploaded to YouTube.http://youtube.com/watch?v=sJbWW2kbRhM

What can you do:

Communicate Viral Video

• Another is “What reminds you of your country?” which is simply a monologue about England. youtube.com/watch?v=8cgt9gNYnK0

• In two months it received 185,000 views and 57 responses but is the typical kind of exercise that ESL teachers often use in their classrooms.

What can you do:

Communicate• Another, very traditional wa

y of using video for communication is to record student presentations.

• Presentations can be recorded using hand held digital movie cameras or web cams and a laptop.

• Sites often have functions where the video can be directly uploaded from the web cam, such as YouTube’s QuickCam option.

•If students feel uncomfortable about publishing their presentations, the class could have it’s own account and the settings kept to private. •This is a simple way to share presentations for peer or self evaluation.

What can you do:

Communicate

• Cell phone cameras can also be used to upload short movies with students attaching commentary to a blog or class homepage.

What can you do:

Link & Teach

• Send your students the link to the video in an email message.

• Make a link to the video from a class homepage or blog.

• Embed the movie in a class CMS such as Moodle

• There’s even karaoke!

Changing Paradigms:

Video Sharing and Linking

• Video sharing simply means uploading, publishing for the world to see and linking or downloading . Sharing’s big three are YouTube, Google Video and Yahoo!video.

• Linking involves copying the URL of the video to your blog or CMS

What can you do:

Link & Teach

What can you do:

Link & Teach

YouTube, and most other sites, offer two linking approaches1. Link to the YouTube movie page and when the user

clicks the link YouTube opens.2. Embed the video in your CMS or blog (e.g. Moodle).

When the user opens the Moodle page only the video and Moodle can be seen. The YouTube site doesn't open.

Resources: Editing onlineVideo editing online allows the user

to upload your clips, graphics and sound files and edit them using an online timeline.

In particular, movie masher allows site owners to embed editing capabilities on their site.

Some of these “editors” only allow the import and editing of clips already uploaded to other services

• See an article comparing serviceswww.readwriteweb.com/archives/

video_editing_20_8_ways_to_remix_videos.php

Resources: Sharing, Editing & Downloading

• There are so many sites for online hosting of video. Wikipedia compares them in this article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_services

• Three of the largest are YouTube, Yahoo! and Google.

Resources: Video Search Engines

blinx claims to have indexed 14 million hours of online video.

www.blinkx.com/

Resources: Direct Video Recording

These services allow you to record directly from a web camera to the internet. This is particularly useful when the school might have restrictions on student hard disk use. The students can embed their production in a class BBS by copying the link from the recording site. See an online article comparing them at http://www.webtvwire.com/online-video-recorders-how-to-record-upload-webcam-videos-to-the-internet/

• YouTube http://www.youtube.com• twango www.twango.com/webcam• vlip www.vlip.com/• bubbleguru www.bubbleguru.com/• flixn www.flixn.com/• Openvlog www.openvlog.com• SightSpeed www.sightspeed.com• Wwigo, from software developer Motvik, is a free applicati

on which turns your mobile phone camera into a wireless Bluetooth webcam.

Resources:

Multimedia

• There are not so many sites that allow the editing of interactive multimedia. www.toufee.com

• toufee has good introductory tutorials but sometimes the site is slow because of bandwith usage.

Resources:

Video Chats and Conferencing… are an area of online video t

hat offers much to EFL education. Businesses are already starting up using Skype as a medium for online speaking training.

• Skype www.skype.com• FlashMeetingflashmeeting

.open.ac.uk/is a conferencing web-browser -based system developed by The Open University in the U.K. (see graphic)

Resources: File Conversion & Encoding

• Do you have software to convert movies to Flash?– Easy = YouTube www.youtube.co

m/– Mac - FFMPEGX www.ffmpegx.co

m/– Super www.erightsoft.com/SUPE

R.html– MediaConverter – online service

www.mediaconverter.org/– Media Convert

/media-convert.com/

Opportunities for EFL

• Change from high quality, high budget, time consuming production to short, low budget, community based, highly customizable projects.

• Change from copyright to creative commons

• Change from product to personal expression.

The future?• So much of the development of

online services seems to be fueled by the web 2.0 phenomenon, public sector investment and the open source movement. For profit companies develop new sites that offer functions that become popular enough to sell the site to a larger web service.

• Government and university funding, especially in the E.U. but even smaller countries like New Zealand have led to many more projects for web-based learning.

Open source software, creative commons sharing of knowledge and resources are also factors in it’s development. It seems inevitable that the services available to students and teachers will only increase in number and variety.