“Anju is a dietician in Port Alberni, B.C. She works part-time at both a nearby senior’s home and a community centre. All of Anju’s clients are fluent in spoken English, but struggle with materials written in English. Anju thought she might videotape her next workshop and then create a DVD.” As Anju’s neighbour, I am a teacher and she is seeking my advice as to whether a DVD is a good idea.
Anju has carefully thought about the language challenges of her clients with written English. Knowing that these same clients are much more comfortable interpreting English when spoken, she is wise to create a presentation(s) in video format that she can disseminate to the participants of her live presentations. As such I would give her the following advice.
1. Since a camera will likely be placed at some distance from her, as the speaker, the audio quality may be poor and difficult for her clients to hear. She should be able to purchase a wireless lavalier microphone to clip onto her clothing so that the audio is loud and clear.
2. Alternatively, she might consider creating short screencasts from her home computer. With a product like Jing (free) or Snagit (inexpensive) she could create narrated PowerPoint or Keynote presentations for each of the key topics. These are low tech tools that she would be able to learn easily with a little assistance (from me, the neighbour) and the audio quality is likely to be much better since she would be recording the presentation using a headset and mic. In addition, these tools would enable her to create short videos which may be less tedious for her clients to view and would allow them to view only those topics with which they need help. (sample screencast created using Jing and PowerPoint)
3. Anju might also want to consider uploading the videos to YouTube or Vimeo as it’s very conceivable not all of her clients will have access to a DVD player. She can also keep the videos unlisted and share the links exclusively to her clients if she doesn’t want a wider audience. As a follow up, as her teacher friend, I would advise her to conduct a formative assessment when she meets with her clients after they’ve had time to view the videos. This would give her some insight as to the effectiveness of the videos.