Why Blog?

I recommend watching this video with the subtitles (CC) turned on since the resolution is terrible! My how technology evolves!



So yeah, the video above was recorded with a Sony Handycam DCR-H38. The operating manual is copyright 2007. We bought that camera for our wedding instead of hiring a videographer. Then, on the day of the wedding, nobody could find the tripod so the footage of our ceremony has mumbled voices of my sister-in-law saying that her arm is about to fall off. Luckily, it was a 20 minute deal.

Anyhoo-- the Sony Handycam DCR-H38 had 340K "actual" Pixels for video, which if you're savvy at the metric system is 0.34 Megapixels. It was one of the last cameras to use cassettes. The DVM60 cassette was so-called because it holds 60 minutes of footage. The battery only works for 95 minutes of continuous recording, so that was enough to record the "Chemistry TA Workshop" mini-lessons when I taught the course in FA14.

It was pretty tedious using my super-old Gateway laptop (which I got in 2002 as a graduation gift after my bachelor's degree) with IEEE firewire to transfer the students' minilessons from the camera to the computer to post them to YouTube. I had to remove everything else from that computer to make room for the 3 or 4 video files and then transfer those to another computer on a flash drive so that they could be put online for students to view and critique.

By the time we arrived at FA15, I was the proud owner of a GoPro Hero4 Silver. The videos are considered HD and the max resolution is 3840 x 2160 = 8294400 or 8.3 Megapixels. Thanks to a tech-savvy student, I record my lectures using the 1080s / 60 / Wide setting when I teach in a classroom with a larger whiteboard than the one shown below. So that's 1920 x 1080 = 2073600 or 2.1 Megapixels.



I started recording every single lecture in CHEM 100, 101 and 102 (intro and gen chem) and posting them to YouTube. This was tedious and I never found any evidence that it was useful for students. Also, creating captions for the videos was nearly impossible, with the exception of one semester where I had a hearing-impaired student who requested a transcriptionist and that generous lady cc'd me a copy of the transcript. These playlists are unlisted but I can always share one video at a time for students who miss class and say "What did I miss?" It was also useful for me to reflect on my teaching style and the extent to which I was delivering "another boring lecture" most days.

The GoPro Hero4 saves to a microSD card, which I have 32GB. The memory and the battery are good for about 2 hours, which is plenty long enough to record a 75 minute class session. Initially, I left the camera inside a plastic case which made it easier to mount stably on a tripod, but I found that that dulled the audio quality. One side-benefit of recording your lectures is that students tended to make fewer interruptions such as taking text messages or arriving late or leaving early. Perhaps a side drawback was that students were more shy with asking questions. I don't know this for sure, I didn't ask them, but I suspect it was the case. Our biology colleagues have several "smart" classrooms that enable lecture-capture, so many of our students are used to this luxury. I don't know any other chemistry professors in our department that have tried this.

With the GoPro Hero4 I had to spend quite a lot of time downloading the video, processing the video from AVI to MP4 so that the file could be uploaded to YouTube. The whole process took a minimum of 8 hours for 4 x 12-minute minilessons.

I wrote this post about smartphones and tablets in my classroom exactly one year before I got my first smartphone, yes I was a late-adopter. I had a blackberry-like device from 2011 until 04/23/16.



The Samsung Galaxy S7 which I used to record the video above in FA16 has the capability to record UHD (3840 x 2160 = 8294400 or 8.3 Megapixels), but the default setting is FHD (1920 x 1080 = 2073600 or 2.1 Megapixels). The memory available is only 32GB so there's no sense in increasing the filesize. The nice thing about capturing video on a smartphone is that it automatically goes to the cloud, eliminating the need for cables and such.

I had a great time using Pearson LearningCatalytics in Spring and Summer 2017, but I didn't teach the Chemistry TA Workshop (CHEM 500) in FA17 since I was busy at that time teaching Physical Chemistry lab, which runs concurrently. I'm preparing to teach CHEM 500 again this FA18 and I'm considering my options for recording the students. In FA16, I recorded about half their lessons with the GoPro and half their lessons with the Samsung Galaxy S7. I meant to ask them which they preferred since I split them randomly. Some of them had their first lesson with the GoPro and some of them had their first lesson with the Samsung Galaxy, then I switched it, but I forgot to ask them at the end if they had a preference. To be honest, I used my phone when the GoPro was dead and vice versa.

When the video was recorded on my phone, I backed it up to my Google Photos and then shared the link directly from there. So I think that's my answer. Unless my Google Photos gets completely full of MiniLessons. Another thing I do is use my smartphone to digitize students' lab notebooks. Then I grade them on the photos, which I can zoom in. Some students' handwriting is soooo tiny. Also if the printouts of the data are low quality, I can enhance the contrast digitally. But those photos are also taking up room in my cloud. When does one have time to clean all that out? Oh yeah, summer!

I want to tell my students about blogging. That blogging is "WRITING TO LEARN" and sometimes you discover things about yourself like I just did. I just convinced myself that the resolution of the GoPro and the Samsung are equal but the workload after acquiring the video is more streamlined on a smartphone. Although-- I just learned on the Amtrak from a train friend that you can pair your GoPro with your smartphone and automatically videos can go from the GoPro to the smartphone to the cloud, which I have yet to figure out. Maybe it's not worth it. But I do need to get some kind of tripod that holds my phone. That would be handy.

I want to tell my students that sometimes when you sit down and you think you're going to write about blogging and then you end up writing about what camera you plan to use next semester, that's a good thing. It takes the stuff you're worrying about and puts it out there. It gets the ideas out of your head and into the cloud. I firmly believe that the internet is now an extension of my brain. I mean, my brain is amazing, but it's also nice to dump some thoughts into the blogosphere and clear my head.

Here is a nice step-by-step tutorial for those interested in starting a blog.
http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763791/blogger
And this takes us full circle to the first video embedded in this post, Why Blog?

Topics for a future post: Camtasia, Snagit and HP5. See follow up lesson plan here.