ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7016 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes
| Message 1 of 34 08 May 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
I continue to be very happily surprised with the relative popularity of the educational videos that I post on YouTube. Judging by the number of views, even the less watched ones are seen by far more people than the cumulative total of real life students that I have ever had before me. However, I have received more than one comment, particularly to the longer lecture ones, to the effect that while what I have to say is all very interesting, it seems that I am rambling. Now, in all the 12 years of teaching evaluations that I have received from real life students there was never a hint of anything like this. Maybe I am just getting old and garrulous, but I suspect that it is the video medium. On the one hand, I think that many netizens have chronically short attention spans and anything over a few minutes will tax their ability to remain focused. On the other hand, talking to myself in front of a camera is not like talking to a room of real people. Even in real life, although I always encourage and solicit questions and comments during the course of a lecture, I do not always get them, and so I am perfectly used to talking on for 60 or even 90 minutes at a stretch. Still, even if I do not actively interact with my students, I can look at them individually and gauge their level of interest and understanding and so forth, whereas in front of a camera, all I can do is look into space and talk and talk and talk. So maybe there is something to these critiques. Thus, I have been wondering more and more about something that has been suggested to me on more than one occasion, namely giving live video lectures. May I take it that the technology to ask and answer questions during the course of such a lecture is available? Does anyone with any experience with them have any thoughts about how they might work for the kind of thing we discuss here?
Alexander Arguelles
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J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 5790 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch
| Message 2 of 34 08 May 2009 at 2:10am | IP Logged |
Don't forget we live in a world where attentions spans are slightly lower than people's IQ levels. I'm turning 25 this month and I find myself repulsed by the pure idiocy of my generation...
I enjoy your "lectures" and find them very interesting. The one about the razor was a bit unusual because I only shave once or twice per year!
You should keep doing what you do because it is always clear and informative.
I give you heartfelt thanks for your continued input, professor.
(I will leave it to someone else to answer the questions on technology)
Yehoshua.
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delta910 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5635 days ago 267 posts - 313 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German
| Message 3 of 34 08 May 2009 at 2:33am | IP Logged |
Personally I enjoy your videos. They are always informative in some way or another. In a way I like that you give long "lectures".
Please keep up the videos that you are making.
Sorry but I don't have an answer to your tech problem
Nick
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dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6771 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto
| Message 4 of 34 08 May 2009 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
What you're searching for is a webcasting platform. WebEx is probably one of the most popular platforms out there. Dimdim is another one which appears to be free for small (<20 participants) meetings. You would give the presentation "live", the others could pose questions via text chat, which you could then answer. The WebEx could then be downloaded after the fact. However, I'm not sure if the video would then be in a format suitable for uploading to Youtube -- I'd guess not. It would require a bit of technical futzing to get that to work nicely I think.
I probably wouldn't use these platforms for broadcasting a talking head, but for streaming powerpoint slides and audio they would be more than sufficient.
Damian
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laoshu505000 Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 121 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 5 of 34 08 May 2009 at 5:20am | IP Logged |
Hello again Professor,
I actually think your videos are fine. I envy the fact that you are able to make lengthy videos. I wouldn't say that you're rambling, you're just trying to keep the video as informative as you can. I really do hope that you'll continue to make videos. You've even inspired me to put out more videos to help other people and I appreciate that.
Moses McCormick
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digitlhand Triglot Groupie United States ryanslrblog.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 77 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Swedish Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Japanese, Greek, French
| Message 6 of 34 08 May 2009 at 6:11am | IP Logged |
Hello Professor,
I thoroughly enjoy your videos on youtube, regardless of length. Thank you for your contributions in time and energy. The videos have helped me in immeasurable ways towards acquisition in foreign languages.
To answer your question on a means of having a live lecture with the possibility of questions in real time, I would ask you consider looking at ustream.com
There you should find a means of easily broadcasting live, as well as provide a forum to have questions asked in a live fashion.
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JonB Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6025 days ago 209 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Dutch, Greek
| Message 7 of 34 08 May 2009 at 11:35am | IP Logged |
laoshu505000 wrote:
Hello again Professor,
I actually think your videos are fine. I envy the fact that you are able to make lengthy videos. I wouldn't say that you're rambling, you're just trying to keep the video as informative as you can. I really do hope that you'll continue to make videos. You've even inspired me to put out more videos to help other people and I appreciate that.
Moses McCormick |
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I agree with Mr McCormick - I think your longer videos are just fine! If people think that 30 mins (or even 1 hour) is too long for a lecture, then most likely these people are not very serious students!
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Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6230 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 8 of 34 08 May 2009 at 1:39pm | IP Logged |
With Skype, you can voice- or video-chat with up to 5 people at a time, as long as your connection as a host is fast enough (all traffic between all participants must go through your computer). Then there are educational sites like Myngle or Edufire that provide you with a fully-functional virtual classroom, using text, voice, video, presentations, whiteboard and even desktop sharing (= people see what you see on your screen). On Myngle, the maximum number of participants is limited to 5 again, figuring that that is the maximum amount of students with which a high-quality highly-interactive class is possible. Edufire also allows for lecturing classes, so there the maximum number of participants is 99. If you want to test that system, I'm sure it will be easy to get a high number of forum members to join one of your classes there. Moreover, as cost can be split through all students, this would be a neat opportunity for those of us who are still at university.
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