By Anne Garcia, Behavioral Sciences Department
Last Thursday, as I was thinking through how I would present the lecture on Monday morning to my face to face class, I felt a pang of guilt. I did not remember to include this “mini-lecture” when I prepared my lectures for the DL version of the class! How could I now, just a couple days before launching the big assignment, give my DL students access to the same information that I could easily present to my face to face students? I decided to go BOLD and ask for help!
Inquiring among my colleagues led me to our friends in Media Services Department. Many, many times I have sought their help—DVDs that would not play, wiring that was not connected, speakers that refused to emit sound, you name it, I go to see Rick Coco and his crew on such a regular basis that I can almost hear their internal (albeit silent) groan as I walk into their working space. Needless to say, I was more than happy to go to GM223 on Thursday and ask the first Media Services staff member I saw, how I could tape a 10-minute mini-lecture on the following Monday morning…that’s right, four days later! (Did you know the Jewish term for “nerve” is chutzpah?)
The first fellow I found in Media Services was Goitom Behre or “G." He shows me the magic camera….the “Vixia” with a shotgun lens! Does that sound cool or what? And lo and behold, it can do “lecture capture” which sounds good to me. So within 5 more minutes, I have reserved said camera to be in my classroom Monday morning. It gets better! At 10:55 Monday morning I walk into my classroom in the LA building and who is there, but the media guru himself, Rick Coco, setting up the camera. Within 3 minutes, we have agreed on the right “angle width,” he shows a friendly “volunteer “ student how to start and stop it and I am off to the races!
At the end of the class period, reliable Rick returns to take the camera away and lets me know the video will be ready for mounting on Blackboard later that day. Never shy, I show up in his work area at 3:30 and unbelievably the video clip is ready to go. We watch it together—me admiring my brilliant teaching technique, him admiring his brilliant camera—and we both come away pleased as punch! But wait—I still need to get it on my Blackboard DL course site.
That’s no problem—I walk over to our friendly distance learning department and make my request. I soon meet Nate Berens, the person responsible for videos, and almost undoubtedly much more. Yes, he knows how to get the video ready for student consumption on Blackboard—better than that, he is happy to do it for me. I kid you not, by 5:30 that video was up and running on my Blackboard course and I was doing a jig in my office!
Crisis averted, thanks to the lovely, friendly, competent staff at WCC! In case you can’t tell, I really appreciate all of their help!
P.S. A little birdie told me that "G" runs the coffee shop over at the WCC fitness center—if his shop is half as good as his tech support technique, I need to go get myself some joe!
Contact Media Services to schedule your own Lecture Capture experience!