Whack a Mole ….

Place Based Learning: Instructional (PBL) Strategies was a one credit graduate course I took this past month. Thankfully, it is over!  From my past experience one credit classes seem to be over-filled with heavy assignments, placing demands on one’s time that seem incongruous with the gains received. Such was the case with this class. However, I really wanted to take it, as PBL has been how I have taught for the last 14 years!  I thought the class would give me some new ideas, connect me to new resources, and allow me to inspire others to use this method of teaching.

But, I ran into a snag! The final assignment was to video tape a micro-teaching lesson using PBL.  After much thought, planning, and a few concerns about things like consent to tape students, as well as a snow fall of six inches the morning of my lesson that necessitated a quick change in the lesson activity, I taught and the students taped me. That was well over a week ago. The lesson went well. I used a point and shoot camera and had 8 video clips ranging from 14 minutes to 38 seconds.  So, being the perfectionist that I am, I began editing the tapes and putting together a 30 minute presentation on iMovie. It turned out well but I had some frustrations uploading the video because my hard drive is close to being full.

Whack!

Finally, I got the four videos uploaded but not without first having to clean files from my computer and put them on an external hard drive.

Whack!

Once I was happy with the presentation on iMovie, I tried to export it to publish and be able to send to my professor as a file. It did not work! Whack! Then, I tried exporting to Vimeo. The files too were too large to be uploaded to a free account. Whack! Then, I tried You Tube and Facebook under private, or visible to me only links. No go!

Whack

and another hack!

Are you getting the idea? I felt like the mole in that old children’s game we had years ago, Whack a Mole, where you hit the mole when it popped its head out. Just as I was beginning to feel like I made progress, WHACK! I would be sent back down into the tunnel!

Fortunately, at 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning, I was able to upload the video from my SD card to Quick Time and from there compressed the files. The compressed files were then sent to my instructor! No fancy iMovie, no editing, no title page! Just 8 raw camera video files! I had to be done with it! So much wasted time! My one credit course cost me a lot more than it was worth!

With my files sent, finally, my head was fully out of the tunnel!

I could rest easy and get some sleep!