KSC Instructional Technology: January 2007

Well, spring semester at least.

Welcome back for 2007. We've got more tech tips planned for you, more help sessions, more workshops, and we're ready for more of your questions.

Anything you can throw at us, the Instructional Technology Liaisons are here to help you through your technology quandries.

We'd like to start this semester with some inspiration from Journalism Lecturer , how he learned to stop worrying and love video editing.


Dirty feed to digital content
Mass media is a course that requires visual elements, according to Journalism lecturer Marc Ryan.

Whether it’s an old radio, a coaxial cable, or video clips of news segments, students seem to understand more if there a visual element.
“Someone standing at a blackboard talking about a coaxial cable just doesn’t do it,” he said.
Keeping the visual elements interesting got easier for Ryan when he started creating his own digital content.

His first foray into creating digital content for class was video taping his interviews with ESPN news professionals. He needed to turn the unedited tapes – known as dirty feed – into something he could use with his class.
Ryan started his media career in television, but the most he did with feed was make copies.

The technology he needed to turn his interviews into finished clips and transfer the content from a tape to a CD was available at Keene State College (KSC); he just needed guidance on how to use the technology.
A few work sessions with Instructional Technology Liaison Sandy Grimstad and he was well on his way. Ryan joked that it was a few weeks before he could use the equipment without adult supervision, but it didn’t take him long to understand the concepts behind the technology.

“After a day or two I was, ‘Oh, ok. Now I’ve got it.’”, he said.

When Ryan started using the editing equipment on campus it was located in the Faculty Resource Center in Rhodes Hall. Now, Grimstad’s office is in Morrison Hall, and a corner of her office is often piled high with video tapes that Ryan has used or is going to use.
Video isn’t the only medium that can be burned on to a CD or DVD.

Photos or other static media can be scanned into the computers and burned onto a disc. There is also a digital video recorder available for KSC faculty who are up to the challenge of creating their own classroom content.
Though Ryan has plenty of fun creating the content for his class, he is mostly trying to give students something they may not get in another class.

“Anything to make it (the subject) more relevant,” he said.
Ryan also posts the content online for his students through the Web service Blackboard, so if students need another look at the content they can access it on their own time.