I watched five videos total: Citizenship and Rights in the New Republic I, II, and III, “The Meeting of Two Worlds”, and The Meeting of Two Worlds: Aztec Edition. The two that I liked the most were Citizenship and Rights in the New Republic II and Meeting of Two Worlds: Aztec Edition. The two that I liked least were Citizenship and Rights in the New Republic and “The Meeting of Two Worlds”.

Part of the reason that I liked Citizenship II was because I was comparing it to its predecessor. Citizenship I was formatted in a distracting way, with long blocks of text that didn’t quite match what the narrators were saying. If I tried to pay attention to the text, it was harder to pay attention to the narration, and vice versa. There was also loud background music, as well as surprisingly audible background noises as the narrators moved things around, both of which further distracted from the information being given. On top of all that, the narrators sounded bored, making the whole video seem more boring. I watched the whole thing, trying to pay attention to what was being taught, but by the end I had retained nothing.

Citizenship II was much better by contrast. I found the narrators slightly more engaging, and the slides were designed better; the text was much shorter and was better incorporated with the narration. Without the various distractions that had bothered me about its predecessor, I was able to learn much more from the lecture.

Meeting: Aztec Edition was my favorite of the five videos that I watched. While the others felt like they had dragged on a bit, this video was much more concise. I liked that most of the video was comprised of the maker’s own animation, with pictures only occasionally used. It made the video stand out from all of the others, which had primarily used a series of pictures. The animation made it seem as if the makers had put more effort into the video, and was more interesting to watch than a series of motionless old art. The video also had the best narrators of the five groups; they sounded like they were telling a story that they were interested in. Many of the other groups were clearly just reading off of a page, and some of the narrators sounded as if they’d never read their pages before recording. Despite being the shortest video by far, it was the video that I learned the most from.

“Meeting” seemed to have the least amount of effort put into it. Much of the video was shots of the two narrators themselves as they talked, which was even less interesting than the slideshow of pictures and art that most other videos used. The narrators also didn’t seem very prepared for the video, and their lectures weren’t very engaging.