Tag: Teaching

Screencasting Practice & Feedback: 00004

Plan

  • Evaluate sound-dampening foam
  • Record the audio and video simultaneously in a conversational style and edit the video to fit the time-line
    • Love conversational style; curious about how to reduce it to the core content

Execution

Preparation

  • Minimal

Execution

  • Spoke more loudly

Post Production

  • Minimal
    • Added logo
    • Sped up video content to make it fit the time-line or removed some

Outcome & Feedback

  • Spent only 2 hours and I’m happy with the result
  • Conversation (audio and video) were recorded separately from the content. It is difficult not to synchronize them but rather to make them work well together. In this screencast, the content more or less makes sense. I think that I could do it better.
  • Weighing the balance between getting the content out there in an imperfect form versus planning forever and rarely publishing anything.
  • Missed light misplacement hilariously causing humongous eyebrows

Screenflow 6 User Guide Highlights

  • Recording Monitor makes monitoring easier
    • Easily add markers
  • Difference between clips and backing medias turns ScreenFlow (SF) into a Lisp-like and Git-like environment for easily trying things out and reverting them if you don’t like the results
    • Test this out by speeding up or slowing down a clip, cool
  • Where can I find standard, known-good approaches for visual and audio effects in multimedia content production?
  • Nested clips
  • Templates seem like a really great idea, too
  • You can do free-hand callouts that blur and darken areas
  • Everyone must know about snapback actions
    • Restore the state of the clip to the N-1 action

Screencasting Practice & Feedback: 00003

Plan

  • Demonstrate lessons-learned about alternate input methods and redefinition of the Emacs interpretation of modifier keys
  • Utilize a lower-third instead of text-boxes
  • Talk louder

Execution

Preparation

  • Pretend you are going to a job-interview, or on a date, that is recorded for everyone to see, forever
    • Perform all personal preparations that you normally would for example
      • Brush your teeth
  • Applied Revlon PhotoReady Prime + Anti Shine Balm Clear
  • Lights and camera and microphone
    • Set them up
    • Tested them
    • Hooked up camera and turned it on
    • Adjusted white balance
    • Set left light pointed at me; right light pointed at ceiling
    • Adjust left light to give face warmth (versus ghost appearance)
    • Microphone is on and input volume maxed out
  • Turn off HVAC
  • Mute Phone and Pushbullet
  • Close other applications
  • Verify microphone woks
  • Verify recording on correct monitor
  • Write rough script
  • Pour glass of water

Execution

  • Showed off Emacs mug and encouraged FSF support

Screencasting Practice & Feedback: 00002

Plan

  • Demonstrate how I like to quote content in Org-Mode
  • Learn how to use call-outs and text-boxes
  • Learn how to ad-lib content
  • Scripted out location of content and video-recording of presenter to make sense of what is appearing on the screen and where
  • Learn how to use content-music

Execution

  • Made video top right 100% of the top right corner
    • This means scaling it by 50%
  • Remove the dropshadow from the video
    • The video stood out enough already
  • Amplified volume by 200%
  • Added callouts interesting content
  • Added watermwark, 25% scale, 25% opacity, 10 key-presses from bottom and right edge
  • Include the word Screencast in announcement to distinguish between screencast and blog post
  • 6h of effort for 7m of content
  • Posted manually on Reddit
  • Blog published to social sites

Outcome & Feedback

  • Wrote a script; didn’t pay attention to it enough
  • After re-recording it six times, said I would never re-record it again. Instead made corrections using text-boxes positioned over my face.
  • Light was OK
  • Speaking volume was too quiet; content volume was too loud
  • Skin was shiny
  • Looping the banner and jingle at the end was a mistake
  • The 3m monologue about Braille displays was interesting to me and perhaps no one else so don’t include that. 3m is a long time.
  • Use a lower-third intead of text boxes
  • Redditers commented that a blog post would have been more concise and faster. What is the best of both worlds?

Screencasting Practice & Feedback: 00001

Plan

  • Develop a jingle and banner to introduce the videos
  • Learn how to use ScreenFlow on smallest project possible
  • Learn how to publish and monetize on YouTube
  • Learn how to define closed-caption content

Outcome & Feedback

  • YouTube
    • Easy and pleasant process
    • Signing up takes 30m or so
    • Publishing the video offers 20-30 configuration options
  • Forgot to develop a watermark for the videos
  • Closed-captioning is tedious and time-consuming
  • Screenflow project is large; be sure to keep it on a large disk
  • Glad to have worked in a simple project like this to get some practice with Screenflow. It took some trial and error to grok the power of layers in practice.
  • Volume wasn’t loud enough
  • Transitions were OK; can see some blockiness because of how I layered the background

Chez Scheme Now Open Source

The other night I was daydreaming about buying a Chez Scheme license so I checked up on their license costs.

They are now Apache Licensed OSS.

Funny timing as they opened up only days prior.

The issue board is already active.

#chez on Freenode is blessed though the channel doesn’t seem to be up yet.

This is all delightful.

Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks

This volume takes a positive spin on the field of statistics. Statistics is seen by students as difficult and boring, however, the authors of this book have eliminated that theory. Teaching Statistics: A Bag Of Tricks, brings together a complete set of examples, demonstrations and projects that not only will increase class participation but will help to eliminate any negative feelings toward the area of statistics.

How Students Learn Statistics

Research in the areas of psychology, statistical education, and mathematics education is reviewed
and the results applied to the teaching of college-level statistics courses. The argument is made that
statistics educators need to determine what it is they really want students to learn, to modify their
teaching according to suggestions from the research literature, and to use assessment to determine if
their teaching is effective and if students are developing statistical understanding and competence.

(Go Lang) The Go Developers Almanac

Go is a very enticing language. Not having taken more than a light jump into it, it has all the brevity of what I remember as a student learning C combined with the modern library support of Python today. Wanting to find the Go equivalent of The Java Developers Almanac, I ended up at socketloop.com. It has short and sweet articles, just like the language, and just like the author.