Girls on Film

Followers of my blog will be aware that I am a writer and a purist, so the title of this post will amuse you when you find it is related to Camtasia.  Seriously, I have spent the best part of 2 years avoiding it and yesterday I plunged in!

So, you may be asking: Why, what, how?  Why, after all this time, or why not?  What, was the presentation, or what were you wearing? and, How did you come to this momentous occasion, or how did you know how to do it?

Well…  I really wanted to do an online Peer Observation of Teaching Orientation Session and it needs to be up and functional for Semester 1 2012. So a Camtasia recording of the Powerpoint presentation that I’ve given heaps of times was the answer.  I wore my navy with pink polka dots ‘lucky’ videoing dress, checked my lipstick and pressed start.

Oops – best back up a bit here and tell you that the day before I enlisted Information Services and my office neighbour the Education Technologist to get all the right software and hardware functioning for me.

Back to the recording.  Pressed start and immediately my neighbour (as above) was doing charades in my window while he put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on my door.  All went pretty well until I could feel my bra strap creeping down my right shoulder.  Now it is a nice black bra with sparkly bits, but probably not how I want to appear on the Bond website.  After all it’s Bond, not Bond girl.  Shaken but not stirred, I thought, well that’s what editing is for and casually hitched it back into place.

All done and reasonably pleased with myself, I hit Ctrl+Shift+F10 as instructed to Stop and …

To sum up, no prompt screens appeared to edit, save or anything.  We can’t find any trace of the file I created. ... and there is some thought that my office and me continue to be recorded even now!

With no neighbour help now available,
I figured best to leave it til he was around to hit the start and stop buttons for me. J

… but now I would have to decide on something else to wear!

Postscript to this post:

I decided on a new recording outfit and came in today primed and confident.  I found yesterday's recording; 6 hours and 23 minutes of my office, but without sound!  Two more full run throughs today and still no sound.  I can now do this presentation in my sleep and probably will.  It seems there is an intermittent microphone problem. No one is quite sure how to fix it.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

The Academic in the Mirror

In one session, for the program I teach, I outline the Peer Observation of Teaching premise and process.  As part of the assessment for the subject, participants write a short paper on their experience, focussing on a question about their teaching.  I provide them with a guide to writing this paper and discuss it in class.  This is an add-on to the course material and my intention is to allay any writing or assessment anxiety.  On this evening, the participants hung on every word; a sign of their fear or confusion, not my scintillating information, I am sure.  I was surprised at the lack of confidence or experience these academics had in writing.  I felt they were making this into an onerous and much bigger task then I expected.  This discussion moved to an ‘assessment’ of teaching and learning literature and became more philosophical than factual.  My position was to defend a body of work and a process that has flaws and other agendas, but it is the one we work within.  I was intellectually exhausted.

At 8.09am the next morning I received an email from one of the participants:

... to apologise for my facilitation of the group’s ‘assessment’ of the (...) literature in last night’s meeting. I think the discussion may have commenced with some fair points, but soon snowballed to a place which was unjustly scrutinising a discipline that none of the attendees had/have any experience. (...) Specifically, my comments particularly on the ranking of the (journals) were not qualified; and I can only imagine my comments do not reflect my true interest and appreciation for education literature – otherwise I would not be enrolled in such a course. I think the (...) program has really enlightened me with regards to learning – transforming my previous perspective of student-driven excellence to my present view that the facilitator may bring excellence out of more than just those that are self-directed. I truly value the course and think you (...) make the course far more enjoyable than I anticipated. Thank you!

Lesson to self:  Don’t catastrophise.  My job here is done.