Today will be a short post, I want to get some more sleep in than I have over the past few days.
Lessons learned
Nr. 1: Push the record button
- If you say you will make Zoom sessions available for students who can’t be there (e.g. one person who has a spotty internet connection), don’t forget to push the record button. FAIL! Well… not really: we just learn as we go. Now I know to add another line to the protocol for the Zoom sessions:
- check you gave the group the correct details of when and using which link to meet
- greet participants upon entry
- start class promptly at 11.30 (or whatever it is supposed to be)
- mute all participants
- push record
- Undoubtedly coming soon: don’t forget to stop the recording at the end, and save it somewhere where you’ll be able to find it back. To be continued.
Nr. 2: Adding and editing captions
I recorded a slightly shorter version of the main things in the session (mainly what to find where and how the new flow of the week will look). I can host my videos on our own video hosting platform (have a look, some good stuff up there!), and then ask Reach to create captions. This is machine-based, and while it does remarkably well with my non-native accented English, there are some points where it gets confused.
If I’m going to add captions to help non-native language learners (currently my main target group for this), they’d better be correct. So I spent a bit of time doing that for the video I made for the tech-tip that will go out in tomorrow’s briefing.
Nr. 3: If you want to get some writing done, close all windows with news or twitter open
The “no news before 12pm” rule works quite well, but I left a few windows open from a brief peek in the evenings, and when I needed to check something in an online database, I got sucked in for a bit. Sigh.
Nr. 4: By all means have your hippo help you with the jigsaw
He made good progress while I worked.
