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8 Ted Talks That Teach Public Speaking #infographic

Blackboard's announcement that it had acquired Moodle service providers Moodlerooms and NetSpot to create a new business division focused on delivering open source services to educational customers

Lecture capture has attracted a good deal of hostility recently. One article in Times Higher Education reported reservations from academics about the effect that recording lectures for online viewing could have on student participation and attendance (“University of Huddersfield gives tutorial filming plan green light”, News, 5 July). Another article aired worries that editing recorded lectures might eat into academics’ time, and that they may be used by management to assess performance, or by students to expose staff to ridicule (“Disability cuts lead to universal lecture capture policy”, 28 July). My own experience has led me to a very different view. Early this year, after more students enrolled on my ethics and society course than our school’s largest lecture theatre could hold, arrangements were made to live-stream the lectures into an overflow room. Because the capture system also recorded the lectures, we decided to post them on the course’s online learning platform and see what happened. The results were very positive.

48 per cent of respondents said that the recordings greatly enhanced their learning, with 94 per cent acknowledging some positive impact.

on average, each student viewed the library of 31 lectures 14 times, for a total duration of five hours. Lectures were watched for an average of 22 minutes, indicating selective use rather than passive reception.

5. Create your Own Videos It truly is about time you shed the camera-shyness and step into the limelight. There is nothing more powerful in an eLearning setting than a person’s voice talking to a distant student. The key is to speak clearly and provide subtitles in your videos. A great start is to create a “introductory” video for learners and other professionals that may want to learn more about you. Think of this “about me” video session as a personal narration of your updated CV. The passion and enthusiasm you bring into your video will be your selling points. With video creation and editing tools like the ones on YouTube and your smartphone, this should not be a problem at all. Screencasters like Jing, Screencastomatic and several others will help you capture complicated topics on your screen and illustrate them clearly. Also, encourage videos as a means for your learners to introduce themselves. Videos create stronger connections in an online learning environment.

t might seem unnatural—impolite, even—to begin a presentation or demonstration without introducing ourselves to the viewers and explaining why they should pay attention to us. Combing YouTube™ or Vimeo, you'll find a plethora of educational videos that begin with a lengthy preface to the content. Here comes the Skip button.

Instead, try this approach: Mention your name at the beginning of the video, or put it on a title screen. You might put the name of the sponsoring organization here instead, if the video doesn’t feature a personal host. Don't mention the issue of credibility at all; this is established by the content itself. If it gives learners what they need, they'll pay attention. Use the video's title and hosting Web page to convey what the video will cover. Don't waste valuable screen time on this stuff.

It might seem economical or helpful to show multiple ways of completing a task within one video, but that's not how people generally consume this type of media. Assume learners are accessing your video at the moment of need, almost as if they're asking their coworkers for help over the cubicle wall. They want to get something done now. Most processes can be completed a few different ways, and most concepts can be approached from different angles, but you don't have to cover all of that in one video

Classrooms have plenty to share with one another from one area to another, which this platform would allow, and I really like having the kids join me live, ask questions back and forth or collaborate on a single podcast. Accessibility is key to ensuring that every student has access to a quality education, and the live transcript feature would also be very useful for our English language learners. You can’t learn a language unless you speak it, write it and work with it. From a personal perspective, I have a hearing deficiency and appreciate that we now have this tool to amplify one’s voice so that everyone can better hear what we’re saying. I actually recorded a four- or five-minute rant on Storytellers about the challenges I face at conferences when speakers don’t use microphone because they’re uncomfortable about it, and shared it to Spotify. Too often, we're focused on the specifics of how kids are sharing information rather than what they're sharing. Kids need options. If they don’t want to write that paper or present in front of the class way to show what they’ve learned, a podcast can support the same outcome.