David Gray's blog

If you’re the type to post links to online information using social networks, then likely you dwell across several different networks. Personally I live in Facebook and Twitter, with the very occasional foray into Google+ and LinkedIn. Often I’ll contribute a blog post to the Academic Technology Resources Center blog, or even produce a blog post of my own shilling some idea, and my first instinct is to just post a link to that resource on all my social networks. True, this certainly drives traffic to the content (which is exactly what I wanted), but I have no idea which links were truly noticed and clicked. Fortunately, there is a relatively easy way to discover that.

Although there are many services that will allow you to accomplish this, I already use bit.ly for my URL shortening needs, so that’s the tool I reached for to determine the relative reach I have across my various social networks. Rather than just generate one shortened URL to my content, instead I generate several – one short URL for each network. Then I post my Twitter link via Twitter, Facebook link via FB, etc. Give it a while, then sign back in to bit.ly and check to see what the click-through metrics are for the various links.

Now it is true that bit.ly gives me referrer information when I view the individual information page for a URL, but that doesn’t always tell the true story of how my links are being propagated. For example if I see a link I tweeted is being linked to from Facebook, I will know that someone else posted my tweet on FB. If, instead, I had a single link I put across all networks, I’d have to assume that any FB play was in response to the link I put in Facebook, which wouldn’t necessarily be true.

Now, even though this technique can give you a feel for which of your social network platforms is giving you the most juice for any given content, do not mistake this for an actual rigorous analysis. (It’s WAY better than nothing, of course.) Your mileage will vary depending on the exact way you present a link, what content the link points to, and even such variables as the time of day or day of week of posting the link. Nothing is stopping you from following this same technique by differentiating your links not just by network but also by time, day, or exact text of the posting… but that’s more work than I am willing to put in. If you care about gauging things down to that level, maybe it’s time to actually pay someone for a professional analysis.

In less than four weeks we in Academic Technology are going to be offering another annual edition of our Tech Camp. We are, like last year, going to be using TED Talks as a model for doing academic material presentations.  Last year, during the delivery of these presentations, we ran into a bit of a problem – some faculty (you know who you are) had trouble staying within the presentation time limits.

Always ready to try out new technology to aid our faculty (and having such a full load of material that we NEED to keep presenters within the established time limits), we’ve picked up a device that should make time management fairly easy for the presenters: Time Tracker!

This device, among other uses, can be configured to display a green/yellow/red light, and audible warnings, at specific times during a presentation. So, for our fifteen-minute presentation, the green light will shine for the first thirteen minutes, yellow for the next two, and then anyone still not done will be treated to a few seconds of red light accompanied by a delightfully obnoxious buzzer sound. (I intend to crank up the simple volume slider on the side of the device, so it will not be possible to overlook the time limit warning.)

Setting up the specific time limits are actions I wanted was fairly simple; it didn’t go really quick, but if the need is for controlling times all set to the same limits over and over again, this device is going to be wonderful.  Assuming Tech Camp goes as well as I expect with these, I shall recommend that we get some available for faculty check-out, to help those faculty who have students do presentations to a time limit.

I’m producing video tutorial material for a series of faculty training workshops that will be delivered online in the Fall; this is all stuff I’ve taught to the faculty several times in person, and now it is time to make the transition to a fully online environment.  My hope is to do things the way I wish my faculty do them, so I’m trying to follow all the “best practices” I’ve heard (and said myself) over the years of conducting training.

To start, since I’m demonstrating different ways to use the Blackboard system, I’ll obviously want to produce screencasts of the different processes.  Also I’m sure I will end up with several PowerPoint presentations recorded, and I think I’ll just produce them the same way I do the screencasts, rather than going with some service like SlideShare or (shudder) upload PPTX files.

In the interest of “plan, then execute”, I need to decide on several things before recording anything:

1. What recording (and production) platform will I use?
2. When recording, shall I go widescreen or not?
3. Should I include video of myself?
   • Should this be via webcam, or should I book studio time in the PCTV department and get professional-level recording done?
   • If via webcam, should I try to “studio-ize” my workspace during the recording, or should I just leave the typical random stuff background visible?
4. Am I going to include callouts in the final video?
5. Am I going to have intro and outro clips on the final videos?
6. Am I going to try to have my PowerPoint slides match up with other visual elements of the recordings?
7. What sort of final delivery methods do I want to use?  YouTube?  Palomar’s streaming video system?  Downloadable videos for offline use?

Point 1 is a no-brainer for me; I have Camtasia Studio, which is a fantastic recording and production software package, so I’ll be using that for all the recording and production work.  I’m told that I will actually have that Mac I ordered sometime in the next few weeks, and if so I am going to deliberately do some of the recording on that system, just to try and be more system agnostic… but the bulk of my work, and likely the bulk of my recordings, are going to be on my Windows 7 workstation here in the office.

Point 2 I was really waffling on, as I don’t personally see much benefit in either aspect ratio.  I talked things over with Terry Gray though, and he strongly recommended going with a widescreen aspect ratio for the recordings.  I mentioned concerns over the fact that my webcam (if I use it) doesn’t handle widescreen video; he responded by saying I could borrow his until the department buys me one of my own.  So… widescreen it is.  (It doesn’t take much to convince me, if you’re willing to throw resources my way to do it.)

Point 3, including video, I would like to both include video and never deal with video at all.  I’ve sat through presentations where the talking head was on screen for far more time than was useful, and it often makes me wonder if that isn’t egotism making itself known.  However, as I’ve said over and over again through the years to budding online instructors, it really is important to put something of your personal touch in the material you prepare.  So, I will be including video.  The only question is what level of video production is desirable.  I’m a fairly laid-back kinda guy, so I am not inclined to go book studio time.  The background and lighting would certainly be far superior over there, but I’d like to inject as much informality into my video recording as I can, and using a studio where I won’t be comfortable would work against that.  So, webcam, in my office.  On the issue of trying to conceal (or formalize) the background in my office… I don’t clean up when a professor actually stops by for a face-to-face meeting, so it seems a bit hypocritical to try to scrub up for a video camera.  I will, of course, make sure there aren’t any active displays in the background such as other monitors or digital picture frames running, but otherwise I shall let the chips fall where they may and hope that people recognize the attempt to be genuine instead of assuming I’m too lazy to clean up my office.

Points 4, 5, and 6, the short answers are “yes”.  I want callouts (although I’ll have to review the ones available in Camtasia to see what style I like), and I want start and end caps on all the recordings, and for preference those visuals will match up with both the callout effects and the PowerPoint slide styles I use.  This will make for a lot of design monkeying, but once I’ve made those decisions I will stick with them through all the recordings.  (I promise to post later and list what decisions I make on these, in case anyone is interested. [And, if you're not interested, why on earth have you read this far down into this blog post? What's wrong with you?!?])

The delivery methods I suggest in point 7 are kind of a false division.  Going into this I was inclined to use multiple delivery methods, just to highlight what is possible for faculty to do in their own courses.  So I will certainly be distributing media across a variety of methods, certainly via both YouTube (and consumed into Blackboard via the mashup tool) and Palomar’s streaming video system (if for no other reason than to raise awareness about that system).  I’m unsure how I feel about deliberately producing video for download (although if I do it, I will go with an MP4 format as most universally accessible).  I think I’m more inclined to not produce a download-only version, but instead refer folks to a tool for downloading videos from YouTube instead…  but my mind isn’t fully settled on this issue yet.  Fortunately, as this is a post-production concern, I can ponder it during the rest of the process; I will need to make a hard and fast decision by the time I’m done with recording though, as I do NOT want to change my mind once the actual production process is underweigh.

So, that’s where I’m starting out in the planning process.  Record and produce in Camtasia, using (sparingly) video from a webcam, in a widescreen aspect ratio, using some to be determined styles of callout, slide templates and endcap screens, for consumption varying on either through YouTube or through Palomar’s streaming video system.  My next step will be deciding on actual recording screen resolution, choosing the callout, slide, and endcap designs, and then on to formally storyboarding out the material to record.  I’ll be sure and post about those as I get them done!