And the Winner Is....

As many of you know, I do a lot of my work remotely from our 1983 vintage Bluebird bus.  There are advantages to that like having the view from my office change from the ocean in San Diego one week to the Arizona desert in the following week.

However one of the downfalls is that you miss out on  some of the energy that face to face interactions bring to an event.  Whether I’m teaching an online class or working on a committee remotely,   I’m constantly looking for ways to  bridge the miles, keep learning personal, and bring the human energy found in face to face interactions to my work.

Recently I was sitting alone in my office getting ready to make good on a promise to give out some  prizes for a contest where students and teachers shared  links to videos and other multimedia projects that might inspire others to create videos in their teaching and learning  environments. 

I was so excited by the outcome -  we collected 100 videos and made them available in a screening room  (popcorn and all) in the Innovation Lounge of  Vermont’s  spring educational technology conference - Dynamic Learning.  And the best part is that this collection could now be shared anytime - anywhere  to inspire others.  Why not grab some popcorn and watch a few flicks yourself.

How I wish everyone who submitted could be in the room with me as I expressed my gratitude to them for their hard work completing the projects, but also taking the time to share it!  The face to face thank you followed by a high energy random drawing of the prizes would have been ideal.  And suddenly I had an idea!  What if we could use video  to capture some of the excitement of a face to face random drawing!

Within minutes I had found a fun random name picker  from Class Tools  and was using WeVideo’s screenrecording  tool to record the selection of 3 winners.

It might not be quite the same as being there face to face, but it was definitely more fun for me to select the winners and hopefully more fun for teachers and students to watch the spinningwheel than to get a quick 20 second email that list 3 winners.  At least for a few minutes..they could feel the excitement  of not knowing if “THEY”  would be the winner.

Instead of a text based thank you note with a list of 3 winners, 

 here is what our participants received.

Yes there are lots of screen recording tools that can be used,  but the multitrack timeline mode of WeVideo allowed me to add some fun transitions,  some text based graphics, and  some suspenseful music from the WeVideo library.  Here’s a screencast of my process that might be helpful for those of you who are new to WeVideo.

(Disclosure:  This Screencast was not created with WeVideo since I had to
capture WeVideo screen capture features to create the tutorial) 

I love thinking of new ways to leverage today’s technology to support teaching and learning. I would consider this application to the at the AUGMENTATION level on the SAMR model. Hope this little tip might be helpful to those of you in a blended learning environment.