I like to have my lecture notes out by Thursday, and as I fade into tiredness I have to admit the technology has beaten me today.
I started off at 5am, missing another good morning for a run, to get them done. A bright idea – hey, I’m a morning person – was that rather than make notes on the lecture I gave you I’d bring the Powerpoint (well, Keynote – Mac equivalent) back to life by narrating it, creating a video, and sharing spoken ‘notes’ via YouTube embedded in my blog.
Apart from my spoken pitch being about a minor third lower at 5am, and the odd slurp of tea getting onto the recording, it went pretty well. I didn’t have my nice USB mic but hey, don’t be fussy. I exported it and dropped it into iMovie for cutting up and uploading to YouTube… and then discovered that somehow the timing of the slides had got out with the narration.
The choice at that point is to spend several hours editing the video (in the middle of that) or to just give up and write the notes anyway (may yet happen).
The moral of this story – no, the result of this story is that you all need to read Nick Lane’s latest blog, and ask yourselves if all this tech is worth it, or just a hoop you have to jump through in order to get your MTeach. I won’t be offended, and I’ll argue my corner – good on Nick for starting it!
James Humberstone 