Post 432: Playing with Google Slides

 

Post 431: Yvonne Introduction Video Through the Years

 My Welcome Videos Through The Years

Here is my Fortis Welcome Video using Screen Catsto matic and Canva Power Point

 

 This was my Introduction Video during my American Military University Years using Screencastomatic.  

 Now here is my most recent Introduction Video using my new video software, Camtasia. Do you see the difference in how interactive Camtasia makes my Introduction videos compared to Screen casto matic and compared to Canva Power Point?

 

Post 430: My Camtasia Journey

 My Camtasia Journey

I bought Camtasia a couple of weeks ago to make my lessons more interactive. Since then, I have learned how to create call outs, annotations, edit and cut video, embed a music track, and other effects. Learning Camtasia has been great fun. Here is an example of my video at this Parts of an Essay link.

It shows the students the parts of an essay. I have enjoyed creating interactive musical videos using Camtasia. This is the first time I have created a video with a music track. Also, I have never created a video with so many animations before.

 When I make more videos using Camtasia, I will definitely post them to this blog. Camtasia does keep my students from falling asleep by watching a long dull lecture. Adding music adds variety to the lesson and keeps them awake!

It is always fun to re-watch the video many times. It does take a lot of work to make a one minute or two minute video though, but it is a labor of love.

Post 429 Reviewing Quillbot

 Reviewing Quill Bot--A New Way To Generate Alternate Sentences

What is Quill Bot?

You can find Quill Bot at this link: https://quillbot.com/summarize

Quill Bot is an app where you input text into their text box, then press the paraphrase button and Quillbot will paraphrase the sentence for you just like how you input a foreign language into the Google Translate text box, and Google Translate will translate the language into English from another foreign language except Quill Bot does not translate languages, it summarizes, paraphrases sentences you have already written in English into better or other sentences in English.

For instance, I typed in "I want to become a nurse" into their text box, and then Quillbot paraphrased it as "I enjoy becoming a nurse."  I typed in "I want to travel the world." and Quillbot paraphrased "I'd like to see the world". So, Quill Bot does not change your sentence nor does it provide sentence structure variety for your essay. Instead, it acts more like a thesaurus by giving synonyms to words you used in your original sentence. The Quill bot replaced the word 'want' with 'enjoy' in my first sentence and Quill bot placed the words " to travel the world' to "to see the world'. So, if you want minor differences in your wording for your essay, then Quill Bot is for you. Of course, I tried the free version but I don't know if the paid version (Premium) does a better job.

It is still better to learn sentence structure from your English teacher in order to learn how to vary your sentence structure or to paraphrase rather than use Quillbot which only replaces a few words.  Even though Quillbot uses AI (artificial intelligence) to find alternate words for your sentence, it is still best to just buy a Roget's Thesaurus than use Quill Bot. Just learn sentence structure for goodness sake, and you will have a better essay. So, no I do not recommend writers to rely on Quill Bot to have a better sounding essay.

Post 428: Book Review: The Teacher's Grammar of English by Ron Cowan

 Post 428: Book Review: The Teacher's Grammar of English by Ron Cowan

 

 

The Teacher's Grammar of English by Ron Cowan is an excellent ESL/English Grammar resource. I loved this book because it was simple to read, had the latest research on teaching English grammar, and has excellent teaching suggestions for teaching any grammar topic. The format of the book is easy to follow. In the introduction, Cowan lays out syllabus plans for a 6-week class, 10-week class and a 16-week class. Cowan tells the teacher what chapters the class should read for a 6-week, 10-week or a 16-week class making this an ideal textbook for teaching teachers how to teach English grammar. If you are a writing teacher, Cowan tells you which chapters to focus on too.

Each chapter has a section with Teaching Suggestions for Teachers, which is the favorite part of the book for me because it gives tired teachers fresh and innovative fun ideas on how to teach an otherwise boring grammar point. For instance, in Chapter 4, Cowan talks about how to teach ESL learners how to ask questions in English. Fun ways to teach students how to ask questions in English is for students to play games like Jeopardy, Twenty Questions, and What's My Line.  Cowan offers even more suggestions and resources for busy teachers such as extra reading and research at the end of each grammar chapter so that teachers can read up on the latest trends in teaching English Grammar.

In Chapter 3, Cowan gives an excellent literature review and synopsis of all the ways you can teach grammar and he goes over the history of how English Grammar has been taught from the beginning of the 20th century until now. As Cowan sums up his Chapter 3, "In this chapter (3), we consider evidence that supports the usefulness of teaching grammar to learners of English, and the debate over how this should be done. We summarize some current methods and techniques of teaching grammar and also examine issues related to the treatment of learner errors." (Cowan, 2021, 28). I highly recommend that the reader read Chapter 3 first, because it gives a broad overview of how teachers have taught English Grammar in the past and how teachers will be teaching English grammar in the future. 

Therefore, I highly recommend that the Teacher's Grammar of English book by Ron Cowan should be on every English teacher's bookshelf. I also recommend you buy the hard cover version of the book because the paperback version of this book fell apart the moment I opened the book. So, take the plunge and spend the money on that hard cover version! As for me, I will keep scotch taping my paperback version since I don't have the money for the hardcover version :)

Cowan, Ron. (2008) "The Teacher's Grammar of English" Cambridge University Press.

Post 427: Happy Martin Luther King Birthday Everyone 2021!

 Happy Martin Luther King Day

My first memory of a current event is sadly to watch the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr on television. I was so shocked by what I saw as I was just a small child. I asked my mother, " Why are people so mean to each other that they kill each other, Mom." And my late mom said at the time, "You are too young to understand. Now go out and play." I think she wanted me to enjoy my innocence and childhood while I still could.  Today, I have a day off from work to commemorate Martin Luther King's birthday.  For though, he lived a short life, he accomplished great things. He had a dream of equality of all Men and all races that has yet to be fulfilled today. Here on this day, January 18, 2021, we celebrate his birthday. As we remember MLK Jr., let's always remember that Love trumps hate all the way!

Post 426: Camtasia Learning Progress Report

 Post 426: Camtasia Learning Progress Report

I am having a lot of fun learning Camtasia.  I have created a more interactive Power Point lesson for my students which includes music, lots of transitions, lots of behaviors, annotation cut outs, and it goes fast

The Three Parts Of An Essay

It was not very hard to learn Camtasia. I imported my existing Powerpoint presentation on The Parts Of An Essay into the Camtasia program. I had written this PowerPoint many years ago back when Powerpoint was considered 'cutting edge' media technology.  Then, Camtasia placed the slides in the media bin and also on a video editing timeline.

This PowerPoint did not have any sound. So, I only had one video track to keep track of--the video track containing the PowerPoint slides. Then, from slide to slide, I added the cutouts from the Annotation tab. I simply dropped and dragged basic annotation shapes onto the slide and then typed whatever text I needed to type into the cutout box. 

Even though the video lasts less than 2 minutes, it took 2 hours for me to put together because I had to synchronize everything so that one slide did not overlap into another.  For the transitions and behaviors to make the print move, I just dropped and dragged the transitions and behaviors onto the slide.

I then lined up all the video assets onto the timeline to make sure they did not overlap with each other. It was fun playing the video back to see the fun effects I added to it to make it more interactive. A lot of the transitions and the behaviors are similar to what you would find in PowerPoint, but what makes the Camtasia video different than simply creating a PowerPoint video from PowerPoint is the addition of the music track.

If you go to the Library, then Camtasia comes with a variety of music tracks you can choose from. Just add a new track and then drop and drag the audio track into the new track to create an audio track for the video. 

The ability to drop and drag assets onto slides makes this program not hard to learn and user-friendly for me, since I am not trained in video editing. I remember fifteen years ago, first narrated PowerPoints were cutting edge, then about 9 years ago, Screencastomatic was cutting edge, and now Camtasia comes close to being cutting edge. I do believe the top of the video editing heap is Adobe Premier, which is way too expensive for me on a teacher's salary.

I will continue to use Camtasia to make my boring PowerPoint lectures more interactive. Therefore, I highly recommend buying Camtasia if you are too poor to subscribe to the Adobe Cloud Suite for your video editing purposes.

Post 425: Is Camtasia Video Editing System worth the money?

 Is Camtasia worth the money?

As I have been looking for jobs, I noticed on one job description that they wanted the applicant to know how to use Camtasia, a video editing tool to make recorded lectures and Power Points.

I first heard about Camtasia when Andrew Feldman and I were working on creating Online French classes with Rosetta Stone for American Military University. Andrew used Camtasia for all his recorded lectures and his welcome video. At the time, I was too busy learning Screen Cast o matic for my screen casting needs.

Now fast forward ten years later, now I want to learn how to do more video editing beyond Screen Cast o Matic which only allows a short 15 minute lecture.  Now, that I have gotten used to doing one hour Zoom recorded lectures, I wanted to learn more in depth about how to make videos to make my recorded lectures more interactive, and less boring for the students.

At first, I looked for free software, but that just got me back to good ole Screencastomatic. I tried looking at the Adobe products, but they all required a monthly paid subscription with money I do not have.

Enter Camtasia. It cost a one time $269. Then, you get a stand-alone program that you can learn with easy short free tutorials on the Tech Smith website. So far, I am pleased with my purchase and am learning a lot about the basics of video editing.  I am learning video editing beyond Screen cast o matic which was cutting edge ten years ago but not so much anymore.

I am currently working on my first Power Point recorded lecture on Camtasia for my students' 1st week English Grammar Quiz next week. I am enjoying the experience of learning how to add animations, cutouts etc..into the lecture, and the sound quality on Camtasia is much better than the sound quality on my Zoom lecture recordings so far.  I will write another blog article detailing my progress as I learn how to make Camtasia recorded lectures to go with my Zoom recorded lectures in a future blog post.

But in conclusion, Camtasia is worth the money to buy and learn :)