How does grassroots video work and what are the implications for teaching and learning?  To answer these types of questions, we formed a Hot Team, which wrote a Grassroots Video White Paper.

An example can be found here.

Read the Social Rating Hot Team white paper as a PDF.

The white paper is now available for download as a PDF.

Get the white paper and please post any comments you may have.

Download the white paper to learn more about the Facebook Platform.

Take a look by downloading the PDF.

Essentially, Studiocode is a video editing and analysis package. As Studiocode plays live or pre-recorded video clips, you code them with terms that you define based on your area of interest. You can use these codes to retrieve video segments and build compiled movies. For instance, if you are interested in disruptions in high school classrooms, you could build a set of codes around types of disruptions, demographic information about the students, and their position in the classroom. Once the video clips are encoded in this manner, you can search through them and pull up combinations such as “male students in the back of the classroom who throw objects”. Seconds later Studiocode would produce a customized movie composed of cases where all of those conditions were met. This movie could be saved as a separate file for later analysis or inclusion in a presentation.

In addition to the ability to code and search through files, Studiocode includes video editing, compression, and transcription features. If you transcribe a movie, the transcript becomes searchable, enabling you to compile video segments where certain words or phrases were used. This kind of integrated package has a great potential to streamline video-based research. It can also be used to provide rich feedback to students or for students to compose video essays of their own performance.

Our Hot Team found that iWriter has potential to enhance the educational experience in a great number of disciplines, from foreign language instruction to science and technology. iWriter provides the opportunity for educators to quickly and intuitively create rich instructional media where utilizing a mobile platform like the iPod might be beneficial. In an age where such mobile devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the simplicity of iWriter and the iPod interface is a refreshing combination that can be applied to many situations.

I have promoted the use of small teams to investigate technologies that impact teaching and learning since I arrived at Education Technology Services close to a year ago. We have done five such investigations in that time … each one has brought teams of designers, technologists, subject matter experts, and others together to do a quick hitting review and investigation of a specific technology. The latest Hot Team investigated a very interesting little piece of software by Talking Panda called iWriter. On the surface it allows you to create interactive games for the iPod … our team discovered you could do quite a bit more with it.

Our Hot Team found that iWriter has the potential to enhance the educational experience in a great number of disciplines, from foreign language instruction to science and technology. iWriter provides the opportunity for educators to quickly and intuitively create rich instructional media where utilizing a mobile platform like the iPod might be beneficial. In an age where such mobile devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the simplicity of iWriter and the iPod interface is a refreshing combination that can be applied to many situations.

Download the PDF of the white paper and let us know what you think. I also have a sample iWriter project created by a member of the iWriter Hot Team for download — I warn you that it is a little big (13 MB).

The purpose of this guide is to be a pedagogical primer for faculty who are relatively new to using videoconferencing to teach a course. This guide contains a list of questions that have been asked by faculty along with suggestions and examples provided by experienced videoconferencing instructors. These suggestions were supported based on research in the field of distance education.

This guide does not go into technical details on operating videoconferencing equipment since each setup has a unique set of features and controls. Information Technology Services has a good technical overview of videoconferencing systems. For a list of other technical and research resources, please see the “Additional Resources” section at the end of the document.

If you are interested, the White Paper is available for download. Also, if there are things you would like to discuss please leave comments.