Wednesday, June 12, 2013

LN01: How to Become an Expert?


Just completed my second Learning Nugget (LN) entitled: 'How to Become an Expert?'! Oops, I failed the the golden 1-minute spectrum rule (1:59 minutes or less)! This learning nugget is 2:52 minutes! But, besides that this one is certainly an improvement compared to the first one. 


LEARNING NUGGET 01



In my next learning nugget, I will explore another authoring tool. Stay tuned for that! Now, let's reflect in brief how this learning nugget was developed...


TOOLS USED?

Tools used to create this learning nugget:



HOW?

This is how this learning nugget was created (in brief):

  1. Created quickly a visual storyboard in PowerPoint (2013). No narration scripts were created this time. 
  2. Created or mashed-up all the graphics in PowerPoint (2013). 'Remove Background', 'Group' (items) and 'Save as Picture'  are really useful PowerPoint features to cook up your own graphics.
  3. Graphics created or mashed-up were grouped (if needed) and then saved using the 'Save as Picture' feature to PNG format to keep the background transparent.
  4. All the graphics were then uploaded (synched) to Google Drive.
  5. This time around, I imported the graphics from Google Drive to respective slides using the Explain Everything authoring tool on my iPad (It supports direct import from Dropbox, Evernote, iTunes and WebDAV, too).
  6. Used Explain Everything on my iPad to record audio (and video for one slide), and add the visual animations to the slides (concurrently). No headset with microphone was used. Sat in a reasonably quiet room to avoid background noise.
  7. Once completed, the content was published directly to YouTube from Explain Everything (cool feature).
  8. Mission accomplished! 


LESSONS LEARNED!

Creating learning nuggets is fun! Alright, this time around, I failed the 1-minute learning nugget spectrum (2:52 minutes). But, besides that, I have to admit that progress is being made. I still have got a long way to create WOW, but at least there is progress (Step-by-step!). Explain Everything ($2.99 USD only) is a pretty cool authoring tool for creating learning nuggets.

I really like the Explain Everything feature that empowers you to add video (head), while you present. It can be re-sized and placed anywhere on the screen. You can even run more than one video at once, while recording. Also, you can import videos, and even annotate on the video itself while playing during your recording. This is great for illustration, and when you want to highlight certain aspects in a video, while it is in motion. Thumbs up for that! Though, it should be made simpler to re-record (or edit) your video within your presentation. Otherwise, you have to always delete and create a new one, when you are not happy with the initial recording. 

My total production time was roughly 2 hours 30 minutes:
  1. Visual Storyboarding (20 min)
  2. Finding and mashing-up Graphics (30 min)
  3. Slide Creation in Explain Everything (10 min)
  4. Recording audio and animation (80 min)
  5. Publishing (10 min)
Based on this data, obviously I need to improve the 'recording audio and animation' phase, and that is mostly because I didn't prepare a narration script. As I began recording, ideas started flowing on how to improve what I was saying here and there. In other words, next time I might as well create a narration script, which should not take more than 10-30 minutes (for a 1-minute learning nugget), and then the recording phase can be done faster (say 10-20 minutes). Best case scenario, I could save between 30 - 60 minutes on that phase alone. 

My target is to create quality 1-minute multimedia learning nuggets from scratch in less than an hour.  

That's enough reflection for now! Stay tuned for Learning Nugget 02! What authoring tool should I explore next?

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