Video has the potential to be a very stimulating and engaging format for teaching and learning, but at the same time staff have to be aware of the accessibility implications. YouTube continues to be the main player when it comes to web hosting of video clips and with 20 hours of footage uploaded every minute there is a vast resource of material. Despite the introduction of manual captioning by YouTube in 2006 the majority of this material isn’t full accessible. This might all be about to change as YouTube’s owner Google have announced automatic captioning for videos.
Using Google’s existing Voice speech recognition technology YouTube will be able to automatically add captions to uploaded videos. Google point out that “the captions will not always be perfect, but even when they’re off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.”
As well as automatic captioning Google have also announced auto-timings. Auto-timing allows users to upload a text file with their video and the service will automatically work out when the words are spoken create captions for your video.
Both these developments, whilst having specific accessibility issues in mind, should also improve general accessibility making it easier to search for videos using the automatic captions and timings to allow you to jump straight to the point in a video where a search term was said. A pilot for this was started last year with Google Audio Indexing.
Below is a video demonstrating automatic captioning on YouTube:
In another post in this edition of NewsFeed we touch upon the issue of platform dependency when thinking about using mobiles in mainstream education (there are obviously other facts like ownership and control, but I’ll conveniently ignore these for now).
The glue which is potentially removing platform constraints is the Internet. A direction which is being explored by a number of institutions is to look at existing web services and social networking sites students are already using and seeing how these can be used in education.
Just as students will choose their preferred mobile device, they will also choose their preferred tools and sites. The solution is not to design for one, but to design for many. Aggregating results from multiple sources starts putting personal choice and personal preference back into the hands of the student.
An example of this model is Hotseat developed by Purdue University. This project is exploring collaborative micro-discussion in and out of the classroom by pulling response from a range of social networking sites.
Students can post messages to Hotseat using their Facebook, MySpace or Twitter accounts, or they can send text messages or simply log into the Hotseat Web site
On Monday (16 November 2009) the Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) launched ‘Vision’, a new publication about its current and future research projects. ECA has a strong history of ground-breaking research producing work of national and international standing in ‘Art & Design’ and ‘Architecture and the Built Environment’.
With the aim of progressing lively and accessible public engagement with academic research,Vision presents ground-breaking creative thinking across a vast range of art, design, architecture and landscape architecture disciplines. It also highlights the increase in cross-disciplinary and external collaboration in projects where experts in architecture, digital design, visual communications, business, anthropology, medical and computer science work with us to develop imaginative solutions to theoretical and practical issues
On the publication of Vision, Professor Ian Howard, Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, says: ‘Public engagement with academic research is something we are committed to and passionate about. We have published Vision in the hope that future participation and collaboration in research practices can be expanded and realised as more and more people recognise the quality and diversity of our research.’
Technology regularly features in the majority of reports looking at how education will evolve. Come the new year, I’m sure many students will have ‘shiny’ new gadgets in their pockets. Long gone are the days when your MP3 player just played music or your phone just made calls.
A case in point is the iPod Touch. This product can trace it routes to the dedicated portable media player, iPod Classic, launched in 2001, but now the Touch can do so much more. To see how much more, ‘U Tech Tips’ have compiled a list of 50 Educational Apps for the iPod Touch. There are a wide range of applications from Spanish tutors, to math quizzes and more, the majority of which are free.
This list is a tantalising glimpse of what’s possible on mobile devices, and potentially a great supplemental resource for students, but with so many different platforms will there ever be mainstream use of mobiles in education? The answer might be in Hotseat: Any mobile will do
Welcome to the RSC NewsFeed blog from the two Scottish Regional Support Centres. The blog is designed to keep the FE and HE community informed about the latest ICT-related news, events, resources and training. Please feel free to leave a comment.
