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Archives For Video – Wednesday Watchlist

How to Share a Compelling Idea

Dwayne Harapnuik — November 1, 2016 — Leave a comment

We are all compelled by a good story and when we wish to communicate with our friends, colleagues, or those we just want to influence the best way to do that is with a well crafted story. Nancy Duarte argues that an idea is the single most powerful idea and everything we see around us started as an idea in someone’s mind and that they communicated it in a way that became reality. She also warns us that leaders must communicate ideas in a way that compels action or the idea will die.

So how do we communicate in a way that make our ideas come alive?

Whenever I explore an idea or pursue and answer to this type of question I will watch countless youtube videos and read as many books as I can find on the topic and then try to narrow down my search to the best resources that I can use. The following are some of the best videos and books that will help you craft your message in a compelling way and make your ideas come alive:

Nancy Duarte is one of the leaders in visual communications and the following videos and books are your best starting point:

Nancy Duarte: How to Tell a Story

Nancy Duarte: How to Create Better Visual Presentations

Duarte Design’s Five Rules for Presentations by Nancy Duarte

Can creating a compelling message be as simple as following these 5 rules? YES!

Treat your audience as king
Spread your ideas and move people
Help them see what you are saying
Practice design not decoration
Cultivate healthy relationships

Nancy Duartes’s book Resonate is one of the best resources you can find to help you create compelling stories and I have a well worn copy in my library. You an also view the book online at http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page0

Nancy’s TED talk TEDxEast – Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest is another great summary of the ideas presented in the book Resonate:

Just confirm that I have looked at more then just Duarte’s work you can also find the following resources useful:

Garr Reynolds book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery is another well work book on visual communication that I have in my library.

How Presentation Zen Fixed My Bad PowerPoints

How to avoid death By PowerPoint | David JP Phillips | TEDxStockholmSalon

A list of resources on effective communication would be incomplete if it didn’t include or reference work of Edward Tufte. He has several books that are worth the read but at minimum one should explore Beautiful Evidence and The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within.

In Motivation communication, digital storytelling, ideas, presentation, story, storytelling, Video - Wednesday Watchlist

Video – Short and Simple is More Engaging

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 5, 2015 — Leave a comment

Researchers Philip J. Guo from University of Rochester, Juho Kim from MIT and Rob Rubin from edX collaborated on quantitative research project to study how video production decisions affect student engagement in online educational videos. They used data from 6.9 million video watching sessions across four courses on the edX MOOC platform to measure how long students watched each video and whether they attempted to answer post-video assessment problems.

They found that shorter videos, informal talking-head videos, and Khan-style tablet drawings are much more engaging. They also found that highly produced pre-recorded classroom lectures did not engage students.

The following table provides a summary of the researchers findings and their recommendations:

We really shouldn’t be surprised by the results. When we are looking to learn something or solve a problem an authentic simply produced and presented message wins out over the highly polished and drawn out information dump. The marketing and social media world has recognized that there is an ideal length for everything online and that every piece of content should be as long as it takes to convey the message and no longer (See Internet is a Zoo Infographic).

Now that we have the hard data to support this notion academia too can start moving in the right direction when it comes to effectively using media to engage the learner.

Read the full article…

References:

Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014, March). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of mooc videos. In Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning@ scale conference (pp. 41-50). ACM.

In 21st century learning Engagement, engaging, short, Video - Wednesday Watchlist

My Video & Media Tools

Dwayne Harapnuik — June 4, 2015 — Leave a comment

In a recent Using Video & Digital Media to Engage Students information session for the School of Health Sciences at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) I shared some of my favorite media creation tools. The following are all the tools that I have used or are still using on a regular basis. In future posts, I will go into greater detail on how to use these tools.

Digital Storytelling

The Center for Digital Storytelling is my starting point for creating powerful stories. The Digital Storytelling Cookbook PDF is worth the $20 US but in case you want to check it out first before spending the money you can always start with preview a partial version of the book at:
http://storycenter.org/s/cookbook_sample.pdf

Video

iMovie
If you are a Mac user then you should already have iMovie on your system. If you don’t your best your best starting point for iMovie https://www.apple.com/ca/support/mac-apps/imovie/
This site covers everything from where to download iMove to how to use it and connect to others who are using the software.

Not Suited for School But Suited For Learning was created using iMovie & Audacity

Camtasia
Screen Recording & Video Editing – Camtasia helps you create professional videos by enabling you to easily record your screen movements and actions, or import HD video from a camera or other source. Works on both Mac and Windows platforms. Techsmith the makers of Camtasia does offer an educational discount:
https://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html

Screenflow
Screencasting and video editing software for the Mac. With ScreenFlow you can record the contents of your entire monitor while also capturing your video camera, iOS device, microphone and your computer audio. Screenflow and Camtasia are very similar. Most hardcore Mac users will prefer Screenflow.
http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm?clickid=xuzSKLysuy6c0VXVklzzeRoOUkWT65VUEUS7XI0&iradid=36261&irpid=10073

Keynote
If you are a Mac user then you should already have Keynote on your system. If you don’t your best your best starting point for keynote is: https://www.apple.com/ca/support/mac-apps/keynote/
This site covers everything from where to download Keynote to how to use it and connect to others who are using the software.

Creating Significant Learning Environments was created with Keynote & Audacity

Audio

Audacity®
Audacity® is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.
http://web.audacityteam.org/

Audacity tutorial – http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Category:Tutorial

Free audacity tutorials – https://www.youtube.com/user/FreeAudacityTutorial/videos

Garageband
If you are a Mac user then you should already have Garageband on your system. If you don’t your best your best starting point for Garageband is https://www.apple.com/ca/support/mac-apps/garageband/
This site overs everything from where to download Garageband to how to use it and connect to others who are using the software.

Windows Video Tools

I stopped using Windows on a full-time basis back in 2006 and I only use now if I really have to. I am including this information because BCIT is still primarily a PC based institution so Windows is the default OS. Microsoft’s MovieMaker attempts to do what iMovie does and PowerPoint is a very limited version of Keynote.

MovieMaker
Microsoft calls MovieMaker your very own movie studio
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-live/movie-maker

PowerPoint
Your best starting point for learning how to fully use Powerpoint
https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/PowerPoint-2013-training-courses-videos-and-tutorials-bd93efc0-3582-49d1-b952-3871cde07d8a

Equipment Tips

Microphone
I have been using a Blue Yeti USB Microphone for the past 6 years and have no reason to look for anything better.

Lighting
The CowboyStudio Photography/Video Portrait Umbrella Continuous Triple Lighting Kit with Three Day Light CFL Bulbs, Three Stands, Two Umbrellas, and One Carrying Case For Product, Portrait, and Video Shoots sells for just under $90 and does a wonderful of providing basic 3 point lighting. The stands are not that robust and if you are planning on being mobile it would be worth while upgrading to a higher quality system. However if you just want to light your videos, screenflow or camtasia sessions this bargain priced system works just fine.
Cowboy Studio-Photography-Portrait-Continuous-Umbrellas

In Learning, Video editing, tools, Video - Wednesday Watchlist

Power of video & sound

Dwayne Harapnuik — December 17, 2014 — Leave a comment

There is no other way than video to demonstrate the power of sound.

In Video - Wednesday Watchlist cymatics, music, sound, Video - Wednesday Watchlist

Our work doesn’t have to be obtuse to be important

Dwayne Harapnuik — September 30, 2014 — 2 Comments

Source: Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

In Why Academics Stink at Writing Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and chair of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary points to Watterson’s Calvin to provide a summary for why academics stink at writing:

“…the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!”

In addition to this wonderful humour Pinker offers the following explanations for why so many academics write so poorly:

Metadiscourse — Verbiage about verbiage or the unnecessary attempt to guide your read through your writing.
Professional narcissism — The unnecessary description of their federation rather than what the audience wants to know.
Apologizing — The over explanation of ideas that are difficult, complicated and controversial.
Shudder quotes — Many academics have a nose-holding disdain for idiomatic English.
Hedging — Academics often fear criticisms and cushion their prose with wads of fluff to give them a way out from making a firm commitment to an idea.
Metaconcepts and nominalizations — Because academics spend so much time thinking about issues and ideas they write at that abstract level. This also contributes to their tendency use Zombie Nouns. They do this by turning a verb into a:

“lifeless noun by adding a suffix like –ance, –ment, or –ation. Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement.”

Pinker expands on all these ideas throughout his long article but his final reason for shoddy academic writing is:

“There are few incentives for writing well.”

Since few graduate programs teach writing, few academic journals stipulate clarity as a submission criteria and few reviewers and editor enforce it there is little professional motivation to engage in self improvement.

That is until now…

In this blog post The sophistication of truth Seth Godin argues that these common forms of complexity are the sophistication of fear.

“Long words when short ones will do. Fancy clothes to keep the riffraff out and to give us a costume to hide behind. Most of all, the sneer of, “you don’t understand” or, “you don’t know the people I know…”

“It’s complicated,” we say, even when it isn’t.

We invent these facades because they provide safety. Safety from the unknown, from being questioned, from being called out as a fraud. These facades lead to bad writing, lousy communication and a refuge from the things we fear.”

He encourages us to be fearless and reminds us that our work doesn’t have to be obtuse to be important or brave. I agree with Godin since I have spent that last 20+ years in academia I too have fallen into the traps of

“scientific sophistication, hoping to bamboozle [my] audiences with highfalutin gobbledygook.”

To be fearless Godin suggest that we need to start with:

“This is, “here it is, I made this, I know you can understand it, does it work for you?”

Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to stop writing in the conventional way and simply state what we need to state in the simplest terms. I subscribe to and read Godin’s posts on a daily basis because they are short, simple and to the point.

Or when it is appropriate we need to stop writing all together and use other forms of communication. The following video is a the best example of this sophistication in simplicity: