French Virtual Workshop
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Homepage of the French virtual workshop, showing photos taken during one of the face to face workshops held at Vidéoscop-Université Nancy 2 |
Consult the French Virtual Workshop
Rationale and approach
The French virtual workshop has been designed to reflect the structure, the content and the spirit of the face to face workshops, covering both the pedagogical applications of digital media and the production techniques required to design, film, edit and deliver digital media online.
The rich media approach - combining video material, photographs, synchronised slides and downloadable supporting documents - gives participants a feel of what it is like to design and produce digital media for teaching and learning and provides them with the opportunity to complete their own practical work. The virtual workshop can be consulted and followed as autonomous study material, or can be integrated into a tutored online course.
Structure of the virtual workshop.
The virtual workshop reflects the linear structure of the face to face workshop, enabling participants to work through each stage in the process or to access individual modules according to their area of interest and in the order they wish.
The different modules cover:
1) an introduction to the VideoAktiv project and the workshops in general
2) a panorama of examples of how digital media and video in particular can be used for teaching an learning
3) an in-depth study of the various pedagogical concepts behind the use of digital media
4) useful tips for filming, from preparing a storyboard to handling a camera
5) the basics of editing digital media
6) publishing your video online
7) practical exercises: supporting documents to help participants define and realise their project, illustrated with extracts from the face to face workshop showing participants working in groups on their own projects.
The workshop language is French.
Technology used
The virtual workshop has been produced using SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) to synchronise content with the video presentations.
The advantage of using SMIL is that it is compliant with W3C Web Accessibility standards. (See also www.w3.org/AudioVideo/ and www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html)
SMIL will enable a fully accessible version of this workshop to be developed should this be required, synchronising a textual transcription with the audio track. A further advantage of SMIL is that each media, while combined in a single environment, remains independent, thus offering a high level of flexibility both in terms of form and temporal organisation.
This virtual workshop can thus be considered on anther level and be seen in itself as an example of the pedagogical application of rich media.