McLuhan Videos

Videos were due today! I was quite impressed. Last week I gave a quick presentation of IMovie, Final Cut Express and Windows Movie Maker (actually I had a PC student do the latter). My tutorials in the first section were a disaster because of technical issues, but I figured it out during the break and was able to do an ok job for the second class. Technical issues seem to be a theme with this class. Last night I received several emails from students alerting me that youtube was down because of site maitenance and they couldn't upload their videos. Then this morning when the students were supposed to premeir their videos, youtube was still down. Luckily most of the students had a copy of their movie on flash drives. This is a good lesson for preparing a presentation; always be ready to have some aspect of the technology fail.

Anyway, I saw 9 videos today, which were all great. I though the assignment (despite the technical issues and the normal kinks with group work) really worked and became an excellent teaching tool for exploring McLuhan's ideas. I will definitely give the assignnet next semester.

Here are links to the videos (a couple have not been sent to me so I will update the post when I get them).

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSIcgnQcsqc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMgnoSHD_eU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlJRQRO6yYk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo3tiAyDBSc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T_dx6G-KfM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8GKXaE9j8U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgv72SRHdUI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sxvuVu0FEM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5qsaWcc-_U

The sound of science

To put this project together I had to do a little bit of sound editing. I found a couple of large McLuhan clips available on the web, which included a couple of audio only television interviews and lectures he had given. The two best were his appearance on the Dick Cavett show and on Speaking Freely with Edwin Newman. The Edwin Newman interview was an hour long and actually provided the soundtrack for the YouTube clip mentioned in the last post. I had originally thought the audio from that clip was a single lecture from McLuhan, but I quickly discovered all of the qotes were taken from various answers during the Newman interview. Anyway, for this project I wanted to give students 3 to 5 minutes of audio, which they would then illustrate using images and clips. I have never needed to do any audio editing before but I have heard about Audacity in passing. It is a very simple (and free) audio editing tool which is so easy to use. I made six quick clips and showed the students how to get into the files and take out any gaps they wanted to, and even gave them the option of cutting up and splicing the individual audio clips together. I am really interested to see if any of the groups decide to do any major audio editing.

McLuhan Group Video Assignment

Thought it would be fun to do some blogging this semester. Last week I attended a Digital Storytelling meeting and was inspired by the work my friend Nicole was doing with Digital stories in her American Studies courses. I am teaching a theory course in Media and Communication Studies this semester and came up with the assignment (partially stolen from Nicole).  It is also based upon this youtube video I have used in my Introductory course the last couple of years.

"Groups will be assigned based upon the technology survey completed the first day of class. Each group will illustrate the same 3-minute mp3 audio clip of Marshall McLuhan discussing his argument that the medium is the message. Group members collectively will decide on how to visually support/augment/challenge McLuhan’s ideas and then navigate the technical aspects needed to create a 3-minute video. The completed video must be uploaded (at least temporarily) to YouTube and will be shown in class. Groups will then be responsible for discussing and explaining the choices they made in their video." 

So that they can master the technology quickly, I am going to suggest students just use still images.

I am working on which clip to use...might come up with three and let them choose.

Can't wait to see what they come up with.