Kelm, Orlando R.

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Global Business LanguagesVolume 2 Cultures and Cross-Cultural Awareness inthe Professions Article 17May 2010Using Available Technology to Create PedagogicalMaterials for Foreign LanguageOrlando R. KelmUniversity of Texas at AustinFollow this and additional works at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/gblCopyright © 2010 by Purdue Research Foundation. Global Business Languages is produced by Purdue CIBER. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/gblThis is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freelyread, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Recommended CitationKelm, Orlando R. (2010) "Using Available Technology to Create Pedagogical Materials for Foreign Language," Global BusinessLanguages: Vol. 2 , Article 17.Available at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/gbl/vol2/iss1/17Global Business Languages (1997)Orlando R. KelmUniversity of Texas, AustinUSING AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGYTO CREATE PEDAGOGICAL MATERIALS FORFOREIGN LANGUAGEThere exists an increasing desire to use technology to create peda-gogical materials in foreign language education. The object of this briefreview is to examine the steps that are taken to complete a task that re-quires the use of technology. That is to say, rather than simply review aspecific software product, I would like to review a task and what it takesto complete a given task when technology is part of the development.The task that I have chosen to review is the creation of a QuickTime®video clip on a WEB page. In the process, we will discuss the followingsoftware applications: Avid VideoShop®, MoviePlayer®, Internet MovieTool®, and Adobe® PageMill™. As one can see by the names of theseprograms, the discussion will be platform specific, focusing on Macin-tosh computers. Fortunately, other platforms follow a nearly identicalprocess.STEP #1: MAKE THE VIDEOBegin with any video from a video player or camcorder. This can beeither an existing video or an original one that you have filmed yourself.For original video clips, I use a Sony Hi8 Handycam and have beenpleased with the results. When making original video clips there are twolow-tech items that I might suggest. First, use a tripod whenever possible.Even if the camcorder has a “steady-shot” function, the video clips lookmore polished when filmed on a tripod. Second, as related to languageinstruction, the quality of the audio portion of the clip is usually moreimportant than the video. To improve the audio of a video clip try usingan external clip-on microphone whenever possible. Of course this de-pends on the nature of the video clip, but the built-in microphones areomni-directional and pick up too many external sounds. A directionalclip-on microphone can be purchased for less than $40.00 and will re-duce background noises and result in clearer audio of the parts that youdo want to hear.200 KELMSTEP #2: DIGITIZE THE VIDEO CLIPCamcorders and video players generally have audio and video outports (or s-video ports on newer models). These can be directly pluggedinto a computer if the computer also has audio and video (or s-video)ports. I happen to use a Power Macintosh 8500 that has these ports builtin. If your computer does not have the built-in port, then you need to pur-chase an item called a video card.In order to digitize a video clip, one needs to use a software program.Here I will describe a program called Avid VideoShop® because it is alittle easier to use than some others and, although many do not know it, itis frequently found in the “Apple Extras” folder that comes free of chargewith many Macintosh computers.When one opens up Avid VideoShop®, the first decision is to deter-mine how big your movie screen will be. The standard size is 160 x 120pixels and it is better to avoid the temptation to make the movie clipslarger. The most important constraint in making a movie clip is theamount of memory that is required. If the movie screen is larger, thememory requirements will be much higher. Even at 160 x 120, theamount of memory that is required to make a movie is shocking. For ex-ample, a movie clip of just 60 seconds, can eat up over 70MB of mem-ory! With a few controls, that same video clip can get down to maybe12MB of memory. As such, it is important to know a little bit about howto minimize the memory load. Besides reducing the size of the moviewindow, there are other items that also control the amount of memoryneeded.Memory Constraints: Audio.  There are three factors related to audiothat change that amount of memory required: stereo versus mono, 8-bitversus 16-bit sound, and low versus high frequency sounds. As to thefirst one, stereo sound requires more memory than mono. For movie clipsthat are to be played over the internet, I always choose mono and the dif-ference in quality does not seem to be relevant. Second, there is a bigdifference in quality between 8-bit sound and 16-bit sound. Conse-quently, I am not willing to make the sacrifice in quality for the savingsin memory. It is better to stay with 16-bit sound. The concept between 8-bit and 16-bit sound is related to how often sound measurements aretaken. It is similar, for example, to the idea of measuring the averagespeed of a car. If we check the speedometer once every minute, our aver-age speed will be more accurate that if we had only check theUSING AVAILABLE TECHNOGOLY 201speedometer once every ten minutes. The same with 16-bit sound, meas-urements are made twice as often as with 8-bit sound. Third, it takesmore memory to record high frequency sounds. When one talks of CDquality sound, high frequency sounds of up to 44,100kHz are included inthe recording. I record movies at 22,050kHz. There is no need to recordat CD quality, but the next setting down, 11,025kHz produces poor qual-ity and is not worth the savings in memory. There is still one more deci-sion to make and that is whether to compress the audio or not. As relatedto materials for language teaching, users want to be able to hear the audioclearly. It is not generally worth losing audio quality via compression.The exception is when the movie has a lot of music. I have found thatIMA 4:1 compression still sounds pretty good with movie clips that havea lot of music. To summarize, the audio portion of recordings on the in-ternet are just fine when set at mono, 16-bit, 22,050kHz, and no com-pression.Memory Constraints: Video. As compared to audio, most of thememory strain is related to the video portion of the movie. Again thereare three major factors that determine the amount of memory required forvideo: size, frames per second (FPS), and compression. We have alreadymentioned size, which is best left at 160 x 120. The number of frames persecond determines how smooth or jerky the movie is. When the framesper second are reduced, the picture jumps from one frame to the next.The normal setting is to record at 15 or 30 frames per second. If yourmovie does not contain a lot of quick movements, then 15 frames persecond will be sufficient.When making a movie there are two distinct times when we have tomake a decision about compression and frames per second. First is whenwe initially record the video clip on to the computer and second is whenwe save the final digitized video clip as a movie. It is the second timethat is more important. For example, if your initial recording is digitizedwith a lot of compression but your final version of the movie has nocompression, it will still be an extremely large file. It is better to initiallyrecord your clip without compression (highest quality) and then save thefinished version with compression. Set the initial compression to “none,”colors to “thousands” and frames per second to “15.” After editing theclip, try setting the final compression to “video.” There is another com-mon compression that is called “cinepak” that actually compresses themovies more than “video” but the “cinepak” seems to look more grainy.202 KELMBased on how long the movie clip is, try “video” first and if it is still toobig, try “cinepak.” It is worth noting that files that are saved with cinepakcompression take an extremely long time to save on the computer.If the movies are still too large, it is also possible to take a “snapshotphotograph” from the video recording. It takes much less memory tochange the snapshop every four or five seconds than it is to maintainmotion video. The snapshots make the movie look like a slide presenta-tion, but depending on the nature of the video, this may not be a problem.The readers who would like more information about Avid VideoShop®may look at their WEB site: http:www.avid.com.STEP #3: MAKE THE VIDEO PLAY ON NON-APPLE COMPUTERSOnce the video is made, it still will not play on non-Apple computers.Before the movie can be placed on the internet and accessed by non-ap-ple users, the movie needs to be flattened. One way to flatten a movie isto open it up using a shareware program called MoviePlayer®. Movie-Player® accompanies QuickTime® allowing the user to play the movies.Within MoviePlayer®, when choosing “Save As” under the “FILE” op-tion, there is a box entitled “Make movie self-contained.” When this op-tion is chosen, a second box entitled “Playable on non-Apple computers”becomes active and should also be selected. Movie files should be namedwith the extension filename.mov. This way, later when the file is ac-cessed on the internet, the browser will recognize the file as a movie.MoviePlayer® is automatically downloaded with QuickTime®, andmore information is available from the QuickTime® WEB site:http:apple.quicktime.com. The WEB site is also the location where onecan download the QuickTime® plug-in that is required if the user wantsto play movie clips while using the browser Netscape®.STEP #4: SUBMIT THE FLATTENED QUICKTIME MOVIETO “INTERNET MOVIE TOOL”Anyone who has tried to watch a movie clip on the internet knowsthat it takes some time to fully download the movie. It is possible for aninternet user to start listening to the beginning portion of a QuickTime®movie even before the file has downloaded completely. In order to dothis, the movie must be submitted to a shareware program called InternetMovie Tool®. Without Internet Movie Tool®, the user would have towait for the whole file to download before listening to any part of theUSING AVAILABLE TECHNOGOLY 203movie clip. Internet Movie Tool® is also downloadable from the Quick-Time® WEB site. To use this application, simply launch Internet MovieTools®, highlight the file that you want to submit and click on “OPEN.”STEP #5: SAVE THE MOVIE ON A SERVERThe finished QuickTime® movie should be saved on your server withthe extension filename.mov.STEP: #6: PREPARE AN HTML DOCUMENTTHAT REFERENCES THE MOVIE CLIPIn order to see the movie on the internet, there has to be a text file thatcontains HTML code which makes reference to the movie. Within thedocument write a line with the following information:<EMBED SRC="http://www.servername/filename.mov"PLUGINSPACE="http://quicktime.apple.com"WIDTH="160" HEIGHT="140"ALIGN="BOTTOM">This portion of the document will embed the movie within the WEBpage. If the user does not have the QuickTime® plug-in, the user is sentto that location to download the plugin. The width and height is a littlelarger than the size of the movie because there needs to be room for thecontrol bar that is located at the bottom of the screen. There are severaleditors on the market that help in writing HTML documents. Most arefairly similar. One of the features that I like about Adobe® PageMill™ isthat it allows the user to toggle from the PageMill screen to a straightHTML code screen. There are several items where it is easier to usePageMill features (e.g., making tables). However, there are other itemswhere it is still easier to write in straight HTML. In the case of the em-bedded movie, one needs to write the HTML directly. Finally, when Isave this document, I usually give it the same filename as the movie, us-ing the extension filename.html. For those who would like moreinformation about Adobe products, their URL is as follows: http:www.adobe.com.As we see in this brief review, there are a lot of steps involved in thecreation of movie clips on the WEB. However, none of the procedures isextremely technical and the software is either low cost or free of charge.It is well within our ability to provide students of foreign language withauthentic video clips that are accessible over the internet.

Using Available Technology to Create Pedagogical Materials for Foreign Language

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Using Available Technology to Create Pedagogical Materials for Foreign Language

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