I signed up for Designing a New Learning Environment, a 10-week online course taught by Stanford School of Education Professor Paul Kim. Using the platform Venture Lab, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in the lectures, forums, and assignments for this free MOOC (Massively Open Online Course). I’ve participated in a few other courses on Coursera and Venture Lab’s platform before, but this is the first course that directly relates to my passion and career in online learning, and so far I’m enjoying the brevity of the course content and the frankness and practicality of the assignments. As a course that is more about analysis and pedagogy and less about rote memorization and applied theory, I’m enjoying it so far and look forward to the rest. 

Assignment #1: Find 3 interesting learning environments or education technologies, and explain 3 positive aspects and 3 negative aspects for each (500-800 words total for the entire Assignment).

When evaluating an educational technology, consider some or all of the following:

• Academic content: Is it aligned to standards or learning frameworks? Is it credible, accurate, and appropriate?
• Materials development/usage: Is it based on scientific research? Is there evidence of a positive impact on student learning outcomes? Does it facilitate learning more effectively or in ways that couldn’t be achieved otherwise?
• Instructional Design / Features: Is it easily understandable and usable for teachers and students? What skills do schools and teachers need to implement the technology? Do they have these skills? If not, are training and supplementary materials available? Is the technology accessible for students with special needs, disabilities, or different learning styles? Does it incorporate learning theory and effective educational practices? Is it developmentally-appropriate? Is it culturally-appropriate?
• Product specifications, qualities, and costs: For what school and environmental conditions is it appropriate (what technological capabilities will a school and classroom need for implementation?). What does it cost to teachers, schools, or students? What will a school, teacher, or educational provider need to do or have in place to manage or maintain the technology? What are the points of risk for implementation problems or failure?

I wanted to share my first assignment write- up. The prompt for the assignment is below, and my essay response is below that.

So I entered into a Good Maker competition last month to raise a little money for my dream learning plan to formalize my skills in Final Cut Pro X and share the knowledge with others. Unfortunately I came in second place and didn’t earn the money. But I’m inspired by all of the people who voted for me, my friends and family and colleagues, and I’m still eager to formally learn Final Cut Pro X and get Apple certified, so I’m going to study the new software this summer and share my notes on my Tumblr. Yay for summer!

First Lesson in Final Cut Pro X: Looking at the new tools

Final Cut Pro X is a professional video editing software. You can edit video from tape, cards, DSLR cameras, and still images. It also allows you to tage clips to find shots you like and skim through footage, just like iMovie. (In the past, Final Cut Pro didn’t have instant playback, and you would have to render every shot to get it to play back at all. It was time consuming). 

Your Event Library in the top-left corner is where you store and organize all media files you need for a video. To have the media files (audio, video, stills, etc) show up in the Event Library, they need to be saved in your “Movies” folder on a Mac.

In the middle of the top bar is your Event Library film strip view of the media you are using so you can click and select a segment from there and pull it onto your Timeline.

To the far right if “The Viewer” - a combination of a viewer and canvas in one screen. If you move your cursor over a clip in the Event Library film strip view, it will play back in real time in the Viewer window.

The Timeline: the graphical interface of your video story from beginning to end is along the bottom of the screen. If you move your mouse across the Timeline it will play back in the Viewer window. If you hit space bar it will start to play your clip in instant replay as well.

FCP X allows you to work on multiple projects at one time. Or to go back to earlier ones you may have worked on. To get to them, click on the button in the bottom left of the screen that looks like a small film canister and says ” Show the Project Library”. You can also get to your Project Library by clicking Command+0.

Toolbar: the center bar separating the Event Library from the Timeline. This is where you can input footage from a camera, rate clips, choose tools and enhancements, generate titles and add text.

That’s the basic screen layout. 

Hidden tool features in FCP X you need to know about:

“Timeline Index” - in the bottom left corner next to the film canister button, this is the button for the Timeline Index, which gives you a list iTunes style of all of the film clips you have pulled into your Timeline. You can scroll through your clips this way to find a specific one you need (if you select it in the Index, your cursor will jump to it in the Timeline). You can also pick just to select keyword, titles, or audio clips.

“Inspector button” - On the toolbar on the right hand side there is an i in a circle. This takes you to the Inspector. You can also get there by clicking Command + 4. This is how you can find details about your media: it’s video and audio information. 

“Camera button” - far right side, this gives you all the images in iPhoto

“Music notes button” - gives you iTunes music

“Time dropdown menu” - lets you speed up and slow down a clip, also on the right side of the Toolbar

“Magic Wand” = Enhancements menu, lets you work on color correction and audio correction

—

How to set your Preferences

Click on Final Cut Pro > Preferences in the top-left corenr

Most of the defaults are okay, but here are a few that were recommended:

Playback settings: If you have a lot of hard drive space, you will want to keep background render on but set it to something like 60-120 seconds so it’s backing up your material, but not too often. If you are on a laptop and have finite space, you will want to uncheck this and only manually render when necessary, because background rendering eats up your hard drive.

“Use Proxy media” - this is key. It allows you to pull low resolution files into your Timeline from your Event Library so the computer is more responsive. Ultimately when you export, FCP X will still use the highest quality media, either optimized or original media, but follow the directions and edits you did in the Timeline. 

Turn off “Warn when dropping frames during playback”

Leave “Warn when frames are dropped due to hard disk performance” because when this happens, it might be a problem that your hard drive isn’t fast enough.

That’s it for lesson 1! I’m looking forward to watching some more videos and more lessons on lynda.com, and I’ll post all my notes here. 

“I want to point to an article that was just published by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker of Khan Academy, who produced videos and the Education page for the latest Google Art Project installment. The article covers many interesting points about what the impact of the Google Art Project could be. One particular section has resonance for me, about the Google Art Project not just being a curatorial tool, but a conversation tool between institutions:

” The question of conversation is key and it’s been central to Smarthistory.khanacademy.org’s pedagogy. In many ways, scholarship at its best is conversation. But up until now, museums have conversed very little with one another—either on or offline. Here are two examples of how the Google Art Project opens the conversation. In 1889, Vincent van Gogh painted three canvases depicting his bedroom in Arles; these now reside in three different museums. Only the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam illustrates another version on its website and remarkably, none of the three museums link to the paintings at the other institutions.” Full article here.  It seems so simple, just a link from one website to another. Conversations between related works of art at separate institutions should have a linkage, whether a museum or institution, because it only makes the conversation stronger and enriches everyone’s understanding. One could apply that same idea to universities, and that’s what makes HASTAC effective.”

- The HASTAC forum on the Future of Museums is still going strong — this is an excerpt from a comment I left yesterday. Join the conversation here! 

I’ve been invited by the lovely Fiona Barnett of the HASTAC Scholars to join in the forum on the future of museums. I wrote about what skills are needed to prepare for a job at a museum, and if museum studies programs getting the job done. Here’s an excerpt from my post — read the rest and join in here:

“I wanted to turn back to the question listed above: “What are the needs of museums in the digital age regarding human resources? Are museum studies programs preparing students for the changing needs of museums?” Such a good question. I was talking with some colleagues over lunch yesterday about the recent controversial news that the Getty laid off 19 of their education department staff to have more money for acquisitions. With hard budget cuts and tough decisions being made from institutions tightening their belts, and the already difficult job market for recent grads, it reminded me of the questions posed here of what skills museum’s need from their staff members, and are programs preparing students for that need?

I think the most effective museum staff need to have a combination of institutional mission-driven creativity, business savvy, and incredible communication and presentation skills. No matter what department you’re in, whether digital media, education, development, marketing, etc, you need to be prepared to convince other staff why your programs are relevant and providing value to the institution. That’s especially relevant to digital: some institutions are more convinced than others, but in a museum tech field where many outcomes are still undetermined, you need to be able to quantitatively and qualitatively argue for why digital initiatives are going to bring core mission value and potentially revenue to the institution. This is a great thing to integrate into a museum studies thesis, project, or paper: don’t just talk about the art historical or educational criticism. Try to do some of your own surveys and user testing, no matter how small, to analyze some hard data about museum visitor experience, and learn how to bring value.” 

I am passionate about video and innovative learning, and want to formalize my video skills with this plan: learn Final Cut Pro X, earn Apple FCP X Certification, and create a training plan with videos and quizzes for anyone to get Apple FCP X certified in 30 days for less than $100. 

“People with disabilities have the right to take part on an equal basis in cultural life…”

United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities art. 30

Adapting and Enhancing multimedia for audiences with print disabilities

Rebecca McGinnis from the Met

Why Accessibility Matters

-       Americans with Disabilities Act and other legislation

-       54 million Americans with disabilities and many others benefit from accessibility features

-       Everyone has the right to participate in cultural life of their community

-       It makes good business sense

-       Museums are here for a quality experience for everyone

http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm

Court Case: National Federation for the Blind vs. Target: target needed to make their website accessible because people were unable to make purchases. 

21st century communications and video accessibility act (2010) – all multimedia content should be accessible, including capturing video programming and user design.

http://www.nad.org/issues/civil-rights/communications-act/21st-century-act

Having a fantastic time in Atlanta, Georgia thanks to the very generous Beth Harris, who approved me using her MoMA Digital Learning budget to go to the Museum Computer Network 2011 conference. So far we had a keynote by Kevin Slavin (@slavin_fpo) who gave an incredibly inspiring TedTalk on algorithms. He kicked off the conference with a presentation connecting Lascaux caves, QR Codes, Walter Benjamin, startups, and more. A few key questions that are resonating with me and I want to keep thinking about throughout the conference:

1. The value is not the screen, it is the informatics and the network behind it. And the network is people. The messy, inaccurate, inappropriate quality is the originality of the 21^st century. Every object has a story – but the story isn’t about what to look at, it’s how to see. how do we build that story?

2. Does the museum only provide us with the original and the authentic within the walls? Can the magic start before and extend after?

Magritte. The Halloween costume.