The Quest for the Summary of Knowledge

We invite you to join us on “The Quest for the Summary of Knowledge” with Amanda Brace and Catherine Ready.

This semester in EC&I 833 – Foundations of Educational Technology: History, Theory and Practice, the impact of our class community has had a major influence on my understanding of the topics covered throughout the course.  Amanda and I have taken many Edtech classes together and are currently working in the same building.  Many conversations have taken place over the last two months exploring ideas for our final summary of learning. I am very grateful for the opportunity to bounce many silly (but awesome!) ideas off Amanda and to deepen my understanding of course concepts and tools.

I would like to highlight a few of the tools Amanda and I used to create our video, as we spent a spent a large portion of the semester learning how to incorporate these tools in our everyday practice.

• Google Docs – We created a collaborate document to share our brainstorming ideas and outline for the video.
• Google Drive – To upload the video clips that we recorded on our iPhones (11 and 12).
• Zoom/Facetime – We met virtually to discuss, plan and edit our video throughout the process.
• WeVideo – We created a shared project to work on the edits together. I want to note that although WeVideo has released a collaborative project option, it is still a beta version. Some of the tools like cropping videos are not available in the collaborative version yet.
• Snapchat – Sometimes we sent each other long Snapchat videos explaining a random idea we had for the video or to discuss what we worked on during our own time.
• Green screen – Although not a specific educational tool, we had a LOT of fun experimenting with green screen and chroma key backgrounds. WeVideo has an exceptional collection of stock videos, photos, audio and chroma key backgrounds to use.

Final scene shots

We want to acknowledge that due to COVID restrictions, we were very mindful of recording safely in person. We wore masks and if scenes included both of us, we recorded the scene separately and then edited the clips together. This is very easy to do when you are using a green screen background.

• • Tip – Instead of just using the green screen as a wall background, let the fabric drape onto the floor to make it look like you are standing in your scene!

I also want to thank my brother for making a guest appearance as our narrator. He recorded the clips as voice notes and then sent them to me via iMessage. Overall, I really enjoyed the collaborative process that we used to create our video.  The COVID restrictions forced us to think outside box and work efficiently on our own and also together through Zoom meetings and Snapchat videos. We are both experienced WeVideo users, but by sharing our screens and editing together, we left the project with new tips and tricks.

Thank you to everyone for a great semester and I look forward to continuing to connect over Twitter in the future!

Until next time,

@Catherine_Ready