This week’s e-learning challenge is all about smartphone video training. In a world where smartphones are ever-present, it seems like a really cost-effective solution to record your own training videos to meet basic training needs. Heck. I still consult YouTube for basic procedural information – have you ever had to auger your toilet? It took 29 years for me to get there, and when I did, I swiftly consulted a video tutorial.
The Concept
This challenge encouraged participants to use their smartphones to record, edit, and publish a training video. Personally, I find video training basic for procedural demonstrations, so I chose to show you the Dos and Don’ts of something I feel most folks can relate to – inserting a duvet into a duvet cover. For YEARS I hated this chore; the Internet wasn’t around when I first started dealing with duvet covers, and I always thought I had to physically insert myself into the cover to complete the task. The end result is cranky and sweaty and no fun – maybe this was my mother’s way of paying me back for the teenage years I made her deal with? Hmmm…
In any event, there is a right and wrong way of putting a duvet inside of a duvet cover, and I show you both ways!
The Method
I set my iPhone up to record video, and had my husband record the two videos, balancing the iPhone on the baby gate to our room (anyone with a herding dog and cats will understand), for stability, while I demonstrated both approaches.
Once recorded, I sought out my iMovie app…only to realize I had removed it from my computer in favour of Camtasia. Here I had to do a little bit of challenge cheating, using Camtasia instead of my smartphone app to edit and publish the video. Now, had I not removed iMovie, I would have edited in that – but hey. It’s the thought that counts!
I added in some annotations, steps, removed the original audio, and added some background music (in retrospect, there’s a song called Duvet I used to really enjoy…maybe that would have been more appropriate? Ah well!). Once completed, I published and uploaded to Vimeo.
The Result