Animoto: digital narrative made easy

A great audiovisual piece of freeware called animoto and I spent most of this wet bleak day fooling around.
Courtesy of Ewan MacIntosh i found animoto, its a bit of an instant digital narrative type of thing.
I found it easiest using photos and pictures uploaded onto flikr first and then onto their upload board.
(Expand the use of pics if needed by doing the Flikr advanced search for creative commons photos, attribution required).
The site then provides an option of music they provide (some free, some on payment) or advice re creative commons music or authors own mp3 file... to accompany.

The 30 sec short clip that can be produced is free, downloadable to youtube and then to one's own blog...
I'm thinking I could use these as a week by week intro to a lecture, or as a reminder of what was covered in the previous lecture...

There are some annoying aspects such as the random actions on slides, but i guess this is made up for with the 'creativity for dummies' ease of use.

Here Ive used graphics from the early part of the course I teach on communication skills (content included getting out of one's comfort zone, developing self awareness, invoking a moral curiosity, the need for communications in a health team to be by design, non-verbal communications, empathy and the work of John Heron, which included a look at unskilled, degenerative and misguided counselling). I suspect this little snippet tries to do too much and i still have to work on the headless one but still...it is my first ever youtube upload :)
The stand alone video wouldnt make sense if you hadn't attended the lecture, but the potential is for grounding aspects of the learning invoked by the visuals ...

Next step, injecting some creativity in the course;
maybe extra course credit for submitting work that exemplifies empathy....

Absolute power(point) corrupts absolutely

I was in a lecture theatre about 4 years ago when informed that powerpoints as a basis for teaching were the death of teaching, and i disagreed. I believed it was how they were used. I had a similar experience defending the use of online teaching when notes online were believed to lead to widespread non attendance and maybe the death of education. But things are never that simple are they? As Latour points out, the world is messier than that, there are simple expositions and there is complexity. I know I can use ppt to be evocative, to capture attention, to provoke. Admittedly this does not tend to happen when using bulletpoints.
Seth Godin explains this well. demonstrates how ppt need not be bulleted, and instead provokes by using imagery, he might also have considered the invocation possible with music which he talks of but doesn't embed.
Nonetheless, I note he finishes with a list despite his admonishment that bullets are for the NRA.... And these too can be critiqued, for example
"Never use more than 6 words on a slide"
Doesn't it depend? If I want to show prose or poetry or even have students critique the value or limitations of lengthy verbage there is method in my madness.
The 'point' he makes though is that teaching and learning needs engagement. Parker Palmer (using text) described the image of a teacher with a cartoon balloon filling the space between teacher and student as if it were a airbag distancing the connection, total predetermination of words can create barriers.
The transfer of a medium designed for one setting into another comes with possibilities, in this instance the medium was designed for the boardroom and condensing of info was a priority, the transfer to the educational sector needs to be a thoughtful process (surprized?). There are first and second level effects (Sproull and Keisler), where first level are anticipated and known in advance, or at least anticipated in advance.... But it is the second level of effects that may be doing damage, changes unexpected and sometimes unwanted.
The full possibilities of a new technology may be hard to see, are likely to emphasize planned uses and underestimate the 2nd level effects.
They argue that unanticipated consequences usually have less to do with efficiency effects and more to do with changing interpersonal interactions. Such changes alter how each of us works and even the work we do. These 2nd level effects emerge somewhat more slowly as people renegotiate changed patterns of behaviour and thinking and can cause insidious changes.
But these 2nd level effects are not caused by technology on its own trajectory or operating autonomously on passive people or organisations, they are constructed as technology shapes, and is shaped by interactions.
For example, does teaching by bullet point lead to an inability to construct arguments, sustain this argument across an essay....Is this why lecturers lament that students can't write an essay, perhaps insidious alterations to teaching styles creates this?
There is always push and pull, as much as we think we shape, the medium too has agency and is shaping us.