http://snipurl.com/1x0xn

Title:
Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

You and at least one other reader found my opening blockquotes demeaning, specifically to you and subsequently to your network’s mission. I can see how that’d be the case though that was nowhere near my intention. I’m sorry anyway.

It’s the juxtaposition of the two that confounds me and it’s possible we’ll miss each other here, operating under two entirely different sets of assumptions.

Mine, summarized brusquely is that, just because the technology is becoming easier and more accessible, not everyone should use them or, especially, use them lightly.

This isn’t elitism (which was my thesis in a later post). Amateur videography (my bona fides as a videographer are here) so often suffers from a lack of clarity, concision, and editing. So often the technology impedes clear, sophisticated thought. The same, of course, can be said of podcasting, blogging, and even every-day person-to-person speech.

I’m convinced the priority in all these things needs to be on better communication, greater clarity, more content, more art, stronger signal, and less noise.

What your introductory vodcast did was take a sentiment I could’ve read on your blog inside ten seconds and stretch it out to thirty. This is not the direction I’d like to see people (your audience, including teachers and students, for example) take an extremely capable medium.

Sorry that seems petty and picky to you. I’ve been back to VidSnacks several times since this post and it seems like a resource of great potential. I think your priorities for the medium and mine diverge, though, which is fine with me – all in the game – just as I hope you’ll tolerate my criticism.

Actually, Vidsnacks was created because video is becoming more and more a part of the everyday experience of educators. It does not take a mound of research to understand that students are now creating video content and that teachers need to be able to understand how video content is supposed to be made inorder to incorporate it into their classrooms.
(Perhaps you have heard of something called Youtube or maybe Teachertube?)

Thus I created the Vidsnacks site as a place where teachers might be able to share their techniques about video content creation. It may be successful, it may not be successful, but at least it is an effort.

As for the introductory video I made while driving, I made that on purpose to show those that might be hesitant to make video, that anyone can make video content at anytime, even, God forbid, while driving. ( I do not recommend it all of the time pf course.)

Of course it is not perfect.
Wasn’t meant to be. It has to do with context, not just content.

But if you are going to rag on me for a few “uhs’ in a 1.5 minute video, why don’t you count the “uhs” in one minute from your local professionally produced news, or your local professionally produced radio programming.

Seems pretty petty and pretty picky to me.

Tim Holt
El Paso

A colleague once said to me that offering someone your CV or resume is a ‘dead’ offer in this day and age. [Point coming]

While traditionally helpful, it offers little in terms of what the team, organization, or project may truly receive if ‘you’ join. Same is true of being a speaker and offering ‘your’ background/expertise in an opening validation moment before content/experience takes over. [Point nearly visible around the bend]

On the other, if ‘you’ were to lead with ‘your’ biases and passions, imagine how much more honest, authentic, and relevant the exchange would be for the audience (active or passive). [Point making chugga-chugga sounds as the station nears]

Your ‘low-hanging’ fruit comment is a profound [read: valuable] bias. Your ‘design’ sensibilities/vision are equally profound as passions. Combined, they offer an extraordinary filter by which to engage the question of ‘successfully’ using any particular medium.

The killer intersection, however, lies in whether or not any proponent of any given medium/technology is seeking the same end-game as ‘you’. If our collective goal is to simply maintain an expert-driven culture and educational system, then it would certainly behoove all of us to minimize the very existence of any ‘amateur’ from the discussion (unless they are waxing on and off for some conceptual Mr. Miagi behind closed bamboo gates until it’s go-time in the public dojo before a packed audience with a sparkling trophy ready to be handed out to the winner). If, on the other hand, we perceive that there is some value (you pick your scale and relative measuring tool) in the ‘process’ of discovery, then we are obligated by the sheer democratic nature of the Net to soften our need for expertise as the sole ticket to the show.

Yes, the medium does scream for talent on occasion. Especially if there is some expectation of ‘wowing’ the audience. But the end-game is never consistent,for either creator or audience, especially when the lines are becoming fuzzy math at best these days.

Cheers, Christian

P.S. BTW, I agree with you — 100% — with the idea that many of the technology-as-center-of-world professionals do seem to accept the very usage of a given medium as ‘good enough’. Or the “If they Twitter, it must be learning” theorem. Design is a ‘value-added’ component, at best, for most. Good or bad? Not for me to tell ‘you’, truth be told.

If I really thought that their individual or collective goals (with regards to being oh-gosh about the use of said medium in the learning arena) were the same as mine or ‘yours’, I’d be worried. I’m freed up, however, because I long ago realized that we’re not all looking at the same horizon line or really concerned with the same starting point.

99.9% of the ‘future of learning’ conundrum lies in the fact that we use the same word (school, teaching, learning, education, etc.)…but rarely mean the same thing. Same with the ‘need’ for 2.0 medium/tools entering the picture.

I’m more and more of a process-guy with a ridiculous amount of design envy. Beyond that, I’m just an amateur.

P.P.S. Telling comment: “Access increases but the bar lowers.” I’m sure the elite felt just as much prior to mass public education. Perhaps on the edge of Civil Rights, too.

Not suggesting — truly — that you consider yourself a social elitist, Dan, but in relative terms, experts have always worried about the bar being lowered as the masses suddenly get a ticket beyond the velvet rope of some previously rarified intellectual cocktail party.

For what it’s worth.