Week 10 Reflection

March 24 - March 30

On Chapter 10, I was excited to see music addressed. Using music can be overdone (I know I have at times), but with many of today's tools (iMovie app, Pinnacle Studio, Screenflow, Camtasia...Power Point?), we can adjust the volume of the background music to actually be in the background, and not drowning out, the audio voice over, which most often needs to be the focus. This assumes they are playing at the same time...Even better than adjusting the volumes of two audio tracks playing concurrently, what I've come to prefer is the creation of short snippets of audio/video interspersed throughout the presentation itself, a technique I noticed from, of all things, Duck Dynasty. They play 5 minutes of script and content, and then for a short 5 second period, they put in some slow motion video (coupled with catchy lively audio/music) that serves as an anchor for what is to come or as review for what has already taken place. In this way, the brain breaks (thinking here of the author's 10:2 chunking recommendation) help maintain the attention of the viewers, but also reinforce the learning. Awesome!

Is Power Point capable of doing this? Perhaps. We will see! If not, there are many other options out there...just need to start with a distinction between a video presentation and a clickable, slide by slide presentation.  The latest tool I've been experimenting with for this purpose is PowToon.