Week 6: Project 2 Proposal

Concept: E-learning
Our video will be about distant education, a very common form of e-learning.

Working Hypothesis
Our podcast will reflect on a common practice today; distant education. The question we will raise in this video is: "does such way of learning really give students an advantage? Will students actually be able to learn?" We want to tell viewers that although it may seem to many students that learning on the Internet is very advantageous because they do not have to sit through boring lectures, this form of learning may become problematic in the future. First, we will act out the benefits of distant education. For example, we will show a student reading lecture notes on the computer at home and being really happy about not having to go to school. We will then go into another scene and show a disadvantage, which for example, will show the student rushing through her notes on the night before an exam because of not keeping up with her online readings. Because there are no lectures, most students will slack off and not be able to keep up with the course. Throughout the video, we will jump back and forth showing pros and cons. If possible, we may actually have interview with University professors regarding their opinion on E-learning and distant education. This way, our messages will be backed up by professionals, making our podcast much more reliable.

Research
Our research approach will be based upon information extracted from the web sites, surveys and interviews relevant to students’ personal opinions about e-learning and experts’ opinions to such advanced technological tool for educational use. These sources will be used for references and as we gather all those data and surveys, we will be able to analyze further the advantages and disadvantages that e-learning bring us.

Links to initial research work:
http://www.elearningontario.ca/eng/
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=198
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/activit/marketsoc/tools-outils/index_e.html

These web sites contain information that is helpful to our investigation. We will analyze the web sites and develop our next approach of this project.

Treatment
Our main topic for this project is E-learning. We will be focusing on different aspects that e-learning will lead us. Since E-learning relates to us as students, therefore, our opinions will also be included in the video. Also, in order to deliver a clear story about E-learning, we will include short interviews or opinions of some students who have adopted the E-learning tool within their school years. For a more entertaining purpose, we would include footages of role plays which would demonstrate the possibility of reducing the original work of the students who take online courses. Furthermore, light background music will be used when interviews are proceeding to eliminate the silence of the video. We will also include footages of professionals’ opinions about E-learning if possible. In order to emphasize our thesis or working hypothesis, we will include information about the normal educational courses, such as students attending lectures and doing exams in the classrooms (actual location, instead of web space). We will have interviews about those students’ thoughts and personal opinions that actually go to lectures. We will then compare their thoughts and personal experiences to have a better understanding of how different are those two educational methods. To further strengthen our thesis, we can use those collected information and analyze how much students can really learn through online courses compare to the normal courses they have. Our main hypothesis is that students will probably learn a lot less than those who are willing to attend lectures physically due to the limited supervisions and responsibilities they have.

Week 5: My Team

Team name: 360°

Team members:
Alexandra Kubrak (http://kubrak-alexandra-2008cct205.blogspot.com/

• script

• actress
  

Kei Ching Lau (http://lau-k-2008cct205.blogspot.com/)

• story line
  
• actress
  

King Yum Tang (http://tang-g-2008cct205.blogspot.com/)

• story line
  
• filming
  

Sze Man Wong (http://wong-s-2008cct205.blogspot.com/)

• story line
  
• actress
  

Initial concept:
At first we thought of doing a video about e-business, but at last we decided to work on e-learning instead because it relates to us as students.

Week 4: What makes a good video podcast? A Review of My Fav.

An extremely understandable tutorial of the Google Earth from youtube. Youtube is the most popular site for uploading and watching videos. This tutorial of google earth is definitely a good video podcast. Not only for you to see how it works, they also explains it to you clearly. This podcast is viewed more than a thousand times, we are able to see the usefulness of this youtube podcast of the tutorial for Google Earth.

Basically everyone who uses the internet have visited youtube. Youtube is one of the most popular and useful sites of all. Anything you watch to watch are usually up on youtube.com. What makes Google Earth tutorial such an amazing video podcast? It explains everything you need to know when trying out google earth, and explains to you as clear as possible for you to follow. The tutorial is very well taught and it gives you instructions step by step. This tutorial from youtube is very detailed and gives you a feeling that you are working together with the one teaching, because it includes narration.

Without the need of asking someone for the explanations on how google earth works, we are able to find it out ourselves, just by going to youtube.com and typing in google earth tutorial. A very easy and understandable information will be there for you. This is what makes a good video podcast.