When I was doing my PGCert, I surveyed a cohort of postgraduate distance-learners to see what they thought of some brief instructional self-help clips that I had designed. I asked for feedback, and I got it – short videos were very welcome, it seemed, but several students particularly asked for animations. I liked this idea – apart from wondering how I would achieve this!
When I found Biteable.com, I was quite excited – there are a number of templates and audio backgrounds to choose from, and you can just edit in your own text, changing colours and adding pictures as you choose. I’ve already done a couple for this research network, and a couple of months ago I made one as a library guide, too.
This week, I made two more. One is about setting up email alerts for our library discovery layer, and the video I’ve just curated today is about fake news – basically, not leaping to conclusions about things when you haven’t enough evidence to back your suppositions up. It stemmed from Wednesday’s field trip. It would have been great to have been able to say that I’d discovered a whole story about how certain music scores got into an old library collection. But – as you’ll see – in truth, I haven’t enough evidence to back up my guesses, and my initial ideas are probably pure fantasy! The scores are there, some of them in what might be a legal deposit volume. But to infer any connection between the scores by these two particular composers would, at present, be reckless in the extreme!
Anyway, do have a look. I had fun making them, and I hope both videoclips will be useful.
- Spotting Fake News (Be a Good Scholar) – videoclip
- Spotting Fake News – Whittaker Live blogpost with the same videoclip incorporated
- Learn to Set Up Online Alerts – videoclip
- The earlier library guide – Library FAQs and Guides on our Library Portal
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 