Video Tutorials for GIS

I've not been saying much recently about screencasting, or video tutorials, but I have been working in this area quite a lot over the past year - mainly in conjunction with SalfordGIS. I've just come back from the Planning Research UK Conference in Chelmsford where I was speaking about my work in this area. So, I thought it was about time for another GIS screencast post.

The video below is one of a series I've produced in collaboration with SalfordGIS. This one is a basic ArcMap demo but we also have lots of MapInfo videos too. For both GIS applications skills from basic to advanced are covered. The videos are all around 3 to 5 minutes long each, with one task demonstrated per video. The idea is not to replace traditional GIS training but to provide quick refreshers of key skills.

Keeping up to date with reading - my tip...

It can be very difficult keeping up to date with all the new academic literature that you may find relevant/interesting/useful. One useful tip here is to get an iGoogle account (it's very simple - see here) and then add a new tab for RSS journal feeds. After that, just go to journal home pages, copy the RSS feed address, and paste this info into the relevant RSS place in iGoogle - very simple.

This way you can keep up to date with all the journals you want to, rather than having 20 different e-mail alerts for the journals you're interested in - or however many it is. There's nothing more annoying than missing a paper that is exactly what you were looking for just because there is so much literature out there (okay, there are some things more annoying than this...). You can then check out all new articles that appear in one place and even share tabs with other iGoogle users. I've done a quick screentoaster screencast of this...

Screencasts and videos online

Screencast Tour

I've been working on a new site at the University of Manchester to host all my screencast content. The content is all locked away inside the University's virtual learning environment (VLE) which is now Blackboard rather than WebCT. Since it's locked away from public view, I did a quick screencast tour of it so that others might have a peek. The video below is a little small to get the full effect, but just sit really close to the screen. All content was produced using Camtasia (from 3.0 to 5.1) and is delivered in flash because that fits in with my Rules of Screencasting.



As you can see, I've customised Blackboard for the purposes of the site and all videos have one click access via unique thumbnails and appear in a new tab/window. This should be going live to students in the next few weeks. I've just over 50 on there so far on a variety of topics but hope to increase the number according to need in the near future. It was about time for another screencasting post, so that's it for now.

My Rules of Screencasting

Others have written about how to do screencasts most effectively. Like I said in a previous post, much of it is very useful. I just thought I'd add my own rules that I use when creating screencasts just in case anyone is interested.

1. If it's worth screencasting it's worth sounding interested in it. Try to be enthusiastic without speaking too fast. (I may be guilty from time to time here)

2. Make sure you record the screen at sensible size. I use a window size of 800x600 and I get it to this size by using a great little app called sizer (see below).

3. Always record in Flash for movies of the highest quality and easy distribution over the web.

4. Use a good microphone - I use a Logitech USB mic and the sound is crisp and crackle-free. (My earlier efforts were not so good!)

5. Go easy on the 'special effects'! Don't use the George Mallory approach. Works great for mountains but not for screen capture software.

6. Plan but don't script. Know what you're going to do but not necessarily exactly what you are going to say. (And don't worry about little mistakes - they keep it human - if you are one)

7. Work towards a standard format that your viewers recognise and trust. I find this helps comprehension and makes learning easier.

That's all for now. There's loads of other things I could have included but they are the ones that I think are most important.

Screencast Update

I've had a lot of positive feedback about my new screencasting project that I'm developing within Blackboard, the University of Manchester's virtual learning environment (VLE) of choice. A visitor from the US who is really involved in GIS education recently had the chance to see what I was doing and was particularly interested, and closer to home people also seem pretty enthusiastic. Obviously the VLE stuff is locked away from public view and it's not finished yet anyway, but here's an idea of how it will look to students:


In total so far I've completed about 30 screencasts but I aim to produce well over 100 for this project and now that I've got my production methods sorted out and streamlined I will start producing a lot more content over the summer. I'm going to continue to produce content that relates directly to different classes taught here at the University by me or by other teaching staff but I'm also going to do some stand-alone material that students can use as and when they want/need to. I don't like to script the screencasts because it can be a bit boring that way but I do have a plan that I stick to. There's a lot of advice out there but I think it's best to do what I know works after testing on students over a period time, although I do try to take on board what other more experienced developers have learned.

Finally, I think it's about time time that screencasting (or whatever you want to call it) should really be a lot bigger than it is. The technology is not new and everyone knows it can be done so why is it not ubiquitous? Before I sign off, I came across an interesting blog by a prolific screencaster last week - it's called Demo Girl and it's good reading.

GIS Screencasts

A quick post about my ongoing work with screencasting and geographical information system (GIS) software. Screencasts are video demonstrations of computer activity. Since teaching GIS is a very hands-on thing, screencasting is an excellent way to reinforce and enhance learning. I don't just use screencasting for GIS though; I also use it to demonstrate any kind of software or even for showing how to download material from the internet for different modules I teach at the University of Manchester. Here's a small animated gif showing the kind of thing I'm talking about:

Software like ArcGIS can be quite intimidating to new students with no experience of GIS so I find that the screencast approach is particularly effective. I'd like to think it will be much more widely used in higher education and in the teaching of GIS in particular within the next few years. The software is not difficult to learn (I use Camtasia Studio 5 but there are lots of other good tools out there - see this). That's all for now!

It has to start somehwere

I have just arrived in the blogosphere after much deliberation about whether or not I have anything useful/interesting to say. This should become clear over time. I aim to write on my work on screeencasting, e-learning, GIS, urban things to do with my work as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Policy Studies at the University of Manchester and anything else I want to. Perhaps other people with similar interests with their own blogs will find me and we can compare notes. So, what to write about today? For my first post I've decided to talk about my current work developing screencasts (eh?) for teaching here at the University of Manchester. A screencast is a video demo of some kind of computer activity. Read on...

Screencasting - Being in Two Places at Once
A lot has been written about screencasting. It's not new. Neither is e-learning. Yet the two are not as well acquainted as they ought to be. In any class where software is taught there is only so much time that you can spend helping individual students, so having a back-up is ideal. This is where screencasting comes in. You just record your screen activity and then save it for playback later by ultra-keen, interested students (just like the ones at the University of Manchester). Host it on a virtual learning environment (a fancy term for web pages for university classes) and let students go wild learning all about it. Here's an example (reduced in size):

Essentially, it allows you to be in two places at once demonstrating a piece of software, or in the case of the above showing how to download data from an online data store. I suppose it really allows you to be in as many places at once as there are people using it. Isn't this the whole point of e-learning? As a result of my enthusiasm for screencasting, my interest in e-learning and the fact that I teach a range of different software skills at the University of Manchester (including GIS), I have embarked on an ambitious project which aims to produce lots of screencast content for students in the School of Environment and Development here.

There's not really much more to say about it at this stage but I'll be writing more in the near future.