Thursday, June 5, 2008

Our Last Session is Planned

Our last class is being held in two sessions, June 6 and June 11. We had to add a session. Though we had 4 hours scheduled for the last session, several people needed more time to complete videos. We did watch the final drafts (as of the end of the session). Powerful stuff!!

We added a class because the 4 hours wasn't enough time to get people through the captioning. One problem was the need to upload the video to Google video. It can take up to a day for the video to be available we found out, so even if we did this first thing in the session, we still couldn't do captions using the on-line overstream.net.

We've asked participants to have their videos uploaded to Google and to sign up for accounts on Overstream prior to the last class. We showed a short tutorial video (with screen shots, using Camtasia) on how to upload the videos at the last class.

We do still have a barrier with Google, to get an account, people have to go through a captcha. Even with an audio alternative, this still presents problems. The audio is so garbled, it's nearly impossible to get, especially if you have any type of audio processing issue. Many people have both visual and audio processing issues. We'll need to provide assistance for now.

We passed out a release form at the last session and everyone signed it. Some with restrictions (like notifying them first). We based the form on one we downloaded from Stories for Change (check the resource section).

Both Glenn and I have met individually with some people in between. Some will not completely be done even with the last class but we anticipate most will. Can't wait to link to their videos!

I made a video tutorial (using Camtasia) but the audio was so bad. It sounds like I am in a cave on Mars with dripping water! I don't have time now to redo this. I don't know what the problem was, spent hours checking audio settings. I know I had just downloaded and installed Skype. Suspect that had something to do with this, but even after removing the program, the problem persisted. We'll try to use this anyway but I hope to redo them soon.

Stay tuned! The video stories will blow you away. I am so impressed with the talent in this group!