Filmmaking 101: Student Films

   In the Upper School, we're making a transition to the second semester. First semester classes finished up on Friday, among them a Filmmaking class which I taught.  The students had a number of different video production assignments in addition to other learning activities. 
   
   The first assignment asked each student to create a 30 second advertisement. The next assignment asked students to create a promotional video for a school club or activity. Next, students worked on montage editing. Students then worked in small groups on varying longer films and other projects.

   I've been impressed with our student filmmakers.  I though you might enjoy seeing some of their work.  In this first section, several of the 30 second ads appear.

(Top to Bottom: Ross Pollack, Trevor Kaminski, Ben Brown and Bryce Neville)

   Here are some of the promotional videos students created:

(Top to Bottom: Bryce Neville, Robert Andersen and Carter Silvey)

Finally, Wes Spear created a really fine montage-style clip featuring Hockenbury:

Data Visualization MOOC - Week I (cont.)

   Following up on yesterday's post, I'll offer just a few brief observations about being an enrolled in a MOOC.  

1. There feels like more personal attention than you might expect.  "Personal attention" might not quite be the right phrase, but there are messages from the professor that indicate he cares about student participation.  In fact, in the chats, he will occasionally post a reply to a comment. Clearly, his interest in this course is personal.

2. The course is structured intelligently.  Here are two examples.  First, an assignment in Week I was to to analyze and comment upon an infographic.  Five different infographic options were offered.  For each, five separate chat rooms were developed.  The reason for all this redundancy was so that students didn't have to slog through an unwieldy list of comments and replies that would have been the result of one single infographic with one chat list.
Additionally, the introductory video was edited into about 7 discreet files. Shorter files load easier and crash less frequently.  these sorts of attention to detail help to make a course with a great many students run smoothly.

3.  Whether it be a MOOC or a more conventional online course, chat rooms are not the same as in-classroom conversations.  Students in this MOOC are taking the chats seriously. The comments are generally well formulated and articulated.  Any many comments gave me additional perspectives on an infographic.  That's all good, but it is still not the same as sitting in a classroom with peers and discussing a topic.  In some ways, it may be better.  (Comments in the classroom cannot easily benefit from time to reflect.) And in some ways, it is isolating. (There is no ability to read the body language and other visual clues of a classmate.)

4. Is there a difference between a MOOC and an online course?  Yes, I know that MOOCs are massive and open, but I'm talking about the course from a student's perspective.  I'm not sure if there is any difference at all once the course begins.  Organizationally, from a professor's point of view, the differences may be more pronounced. (See #2 above for ways in which a MOOC course may need particular attention as the course is being set-up.)  I'm also thinking that a course with about 5000 initial enrollees, like the course I'm taking, is very different from a MOOC with over 100,000 students.  Maybe a distinction needs to be made between MOOCs and Mega-MOOCs. How about under 50,000 students = MOOC and over 50,000 students = Mega-MOOC?

Data Visualization MOOC - Week I in Review

   After a first week in my MOOC, I thought it would be worthwhile to share some observations.  But first, I'd like to recap the week's work as outlined in the course syllabus.
   To get introduced to the field of data visualization, the instructor taped a video that was required watching. There was nothing fancy about the production values of the video.  Much of the video was the instructor's voice shedding light on screen shots that offered insights into infographics. History, the evolution of design and technologies and current practices were emphasized. For convenience, the video was broken up into seven component parts; total viewing time was about 40 minutes.
   There was required reading as well. Chapters 1 and 2 from The Functional Art (authored by our professor) were well illustrated readings that picked up on the themes introduced in the video. Not surprisingly, the text readings allowed for far greater depth of understanding.
   A distinctly online part of the week's requirement was an analysis of an infographic and participation in a chat about the selected infographic.  There were five infographics to choose from.  The first dealt with comparative defense statistics, the second social media demographics, the third the state of graphic design, the fourth was about traveling like a president and the fifth on the best times to post to various social media platforms.  I chose the third - the state of graphic design -  and offered some thoughts about what i liked and did not like about this graphic representation of information.  I commented on other people's observations, and people commented on my comments. this is what a chat room is all about.
   A last requirement was to take a quiz.  Initially, I wondered about the format of the quiz. No information was provided other than we had 30 minutes to complete it. But when I clicked open the quiz and saw only multiple choice questions, it dawned on me that any MOOC that includes quiz/test assessments will always steer clear of essay style answers.  With thousands of enrollees, there is no way essays can be read and graded.
   Above are listed the basic requirements for week I. The professor supplied quite a few supplementary materials from videos to blog links to web sites to infographics. In other words, the ambitious student had plenty of directed instruction to dig deeper into the topics introduced in week I. 

A highly regarded infographic that appeared in the NY Times. It sheds light on voting patterns from our last presidential election.

   More tomorrow on being a student in this MOOC.....

Getting to Know a MOOC

   In the Technology section of the The Chronicle of Higher Education (1/9/13), there was an article entitled “What You Need to Know About MOOC’s.”  It neatly summarizes key information about an important trend occurring in online education.  I’ve extracted the key elements below; they begin with the heading “What are MOOC’s?”

   I’m currently enrolled in a MOOC called Introduction to Infographics and Data Visualization. It’s hosted by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, located at the University of Texas, Austin.  The instructor is Alberto Cairo.  Among other credentials, Dr. Cairo is the author The Functional Art, a college text on infographics.

   Infographics have been around a long time. I thought this course provided an opportunity to learn more about the field in a relatively painless way.

Positions of the Sun, Moon, and Planets Throughout the Year (Europe, 950 AD)

(taken from http://www.data-art.net/resources/history_of_vis.php)

   So how exactly does a class function when there are thousands of students?  One of my goals, as a student, is to find out.  Several emails, sent in advance of the start date, provided clear information and materials.  We were given .pdf files of two chapters of Dr. Cairo’s text as well as a couple of other brief readings.  We were provided with access to the course web site (managed by Moodle) which clearly lays out the week by week syllabus.  Expectations for the course were delineated.  They include regular readings, two quizzes, a creative project and participation in five discussions. Successful completion will result in a certificate, but no credit. The course is free.

   In looking over the course site, I explored a number of links. Each link does not open to a new tab, but simply reloaded the page to a fresh site. I found this frustrating – the constant need to toggle back and forth between site – and wondered if that setting could be changed. I noticed that Dr. Cairo had an assistant specifically to handle technical difficulties associated with the site.  The assistant got back to me within 24 hours to address my concern.  She did not change the setting, but did offer a reasonable explanation as to why. This is one way in which a professor can teach a class with thousands of students.  

 

    I’ll be talking more about my experience with this particular MOOC as the course proceeds.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education article....

What are MOOC's?

    MOOC's are classes that are taught online to large numbers of students, with minimal involvement by professors. Typically, students watch short video lectures and complete assignments that are graded either by machines or by other students. That way a lone professor can support a class with hundreds of thousands of participants.

Why all the hype?

   Advocates of MOOC's have big ambitions, and that makes some college leaders nervous. They're especially worried about having to compete with free courses from some of the world’s most exclusive universities. Of course, we still don't know how much the courses will change the education landscape, and there are plenty of skeptics.

These are like OpenCourseWare projects, right?

   Sort of. More than a decade ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology started a much-touted project called OpenCourseWare, to make all of its course materials available free online. But most of those are text-only: lecture notes and the like. Several colleges now offer a few free courses in this way, but they typically haven't offered assignments or any way for people who follow along to prove that they've mastered the concepts. MOOC's attempt to add those elements.

So if you take tests, do you get credit?

   So far there aren't any colleges that offer credit for their MOOC's. But some MOOC participants can buy or receive certificates confirming their understanding of the material.

Who are the major players?

   Several start-up companies are working with universities and professors to offer MOOC's. Meanwhile, some colleges are starting their own efforts, and some individual professors are offering their courses to the world. Right now four names are the ones to know:

edX

   A nonprofit effort run jointly by MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley.

Leaders of the group say they intend to slowly add other university partners over time. edX plans to freely give away the software platform it is building to offer the free courses, so that anyone can use it to run MOOC’s.

Coursera

   A for-profit company founded by two computer-science professors from Stanford.  The company’s model is to sign contracts with colleges that agree to use the platform to offer free courses and to get a percentage of any revenue. More than a dozen high-profile institutions, including Princeton and the U. of Virginia, have joined.

Udacity

   Another for-profit company founded by a Stanford computer-science professor. The company, which works with individual professors rather than institutions, has attracted a range of well-known scholars. Unlike other providers of MOOC’s, it has said it will focus all of its courses on computer science and related fields.

KhanAcademy

   A non-profit organization founded by MIT and Harvard graduate Salman Khan.  Khan Academy began in 2006 as an online library of short instructional videos that Mr. Khan made for his cousins. The library—which has received financial backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Google, as well as from individuals—now hosts more than 3,000 videos on YouTube. Khan Academy does not provide content from universities, but it does offer automated practice exercises, and it recently debuted a curriculum of computer science courses. Much of the content is geared toward secondary-education students.

Udemy

  A for-profit platform that lets anyone set up a course.

The company encourages its instructors to charge a small fee, with the revenue split between instructor and company. Authors themselves, more than a few of them with no academic affiliation, teach many of the courses.