Video Note in Brightspace

 

You know that short video increases student engagement, however you do not have the finances or time to purchase complex video creation software.  Getting a video production crew on a teacher’s salary is just not possible.  How can one take advantage of video in their online courses?

What if I told you that there is a tool that can easily create short video clips for your online course, embed the clips, and automatically generate closed captions?  Ensuring that the experience is accessible, the tool generates transcripts automatically.

How to use Video Note

Video Note can be accessed by using the “Insert Stuff” icon.

When selected you have to option to:

• Record live using your web camera or
• Upload a premade video.

Remember to keep the video short, or you will lose the attention of the viewers.

Remember to give the video:

• a name,
•  description,
• select the video’s language and
• select “Automatically generate captions from audio”.

Select next to review and insert (or re-record).  The video will be in embedding into the web page. Video Note will even keep your video in your course – so there is no commercial access or issues with social media!

 

There are so many uses! Video Note can be used in any editor in Brightspace and is excellent for giving feedback when grading.  Use it in the feedback section so students will then be able to easily click on the video with one click when viewing their grades – increasing their likeliness to review the feedback!

 

Other video editing tools and transcript tools can cost you thousands of dollars.  Video Note cost nothing – and can be paid in four small payments of $0.

I only want Audio

What if you do not want video, but only want audio, can you embed that with Video Note?  Yes.

Whatever your reason, be it being an international spy or that you just want to remain faceless, you can use Video Note to upload audio.  Simply select the audio only feature or upload the audio file, and Video Note can create an interactive player that proves captioning and transcripts.

UDL - Principle of Representation (version 3.0)

 

The three principles of Universal Design for Learning (version 3.0) each address specific aspects of learning and how we process information.

They are:

1. Representation: which focuses on recognition networks in the mind
2. Action and Expression: which focuses strategic network in the mind
3. Engagement: which focuses on affective networks in the mind

The first principle pertains to how we present information to learner.  Essentially, it is about what they are learning. To ensure learning is most successful, offer a choice of multiple presentations of the information.

 

People differ in the ways that they perceive and comprehend information. How we present it to them matters. Besides sensory disabilities, such as blindness or deafness, and various learning disabilities, there are several varying factors that are associated with standard accessibility that significantly affect individual learning. A few of these factors include:

• Language differences
• Cultural differences
• Economic differences

Each of these may require different strategies to presenting content to ensure student success. In this way a more inclusive approach would accommodate all of these factors to offer an equal opportunity for understanding.  

 

Disregarding all of these factors, other learners may simply acquire information faster through one means of presentation instead of another, such as excelling at visual presentations instead of textual information. For this reason having multiple representations of content improves student success at learning. This allows students to make connections between, and within, the content that improves learning and the transfer of concepts. Thus the use of multiple representations of content is vital for everyone to learn because there is not one optimal representation for learning and the use of multiple representations allows the students to better comprehend the material during the learning process.  

 

There are three guidelines to follow when focusing on the representation as of content.  They are:

1. Perception
2. Language and Symbols 
3. Building Knowledge (version 3.0)

 

Each of these guidelines, each with their own goals to meet, ensure students have the best chance to recognize what they need to learn.  Meeting the Principle of Representation also contributes to student inclusion, as it does not bar access to the content for any group. This results in overall student success and is just good practice in teaching.