Hi everyone,
Well here it is what I’ve been waiting for! My video has been uploaded!
Here it is!
Today I’m just going to reflect on this journey as a whole and what I’ve learned from it. I’ll go on to write about what I think went well through this process and what I would do differently in the future. And then I’ll finish up with my 5 main learning points that I’ve gained from this experience.
Positives
OK so I’ll start with what I think went well during my production process. Throughout this process I’ve been keeping this blog and I’ve tried to update it each time I completed something I had down as a target. I’ve also used my Twitter as a way of interacting with others who have read my blog and to gain almost instant feedback.
The first thing I would like to mention is how beneficial I have found my storyboard to be. To quote from earlier in my blog when I created the storyboard “I feel if I had gone straight into shooting photos I would have been all over the place with nothing to look back on.” I’ve never done anything like this project before but I’m sure I will be creating and using storyboards in the future. I surprised myself by how well I stuck to my initial storyboard as I think I only changed one frame. But it looks better now so that’s fine.
Other things I think went well during this project are how well I’ve stuck to the time scale. I had always said from the start that I wanted this to be finished before I went home for summer and I am with the exception of the quiz which I’ll discuss in a minute.
I’m also really happy with the diagrams I created for the video. I know they’re not 100% anatomically correct but I just wanted to keep it as simple as possible.
I think my voice-over is as clear as I could possibly make it and I think I have explained the medical jargon appropriately.
Overall one of the biggest positives of the experience has been all the new skills I’ve learned but I’ll discuss them in a minute!
Negatives
So I’ll move on to speak about some of the slight negatives of my project and things I would change if were to do something like this again.
I think I should have started properly working on my project a bit sooner. I didn’t really do too much until I had my script approved but I could have made a start on the storyboard. It took me a whole day to draw and cut out the diagrams for the video when I could have done this little by little each day…
Taking the photographs was really easy but I wish I had known that the dimensions would be different to that of movie maker so I could have devoted some time to photoshop or whatever I would have needed to make sure there wasn’t the big black borders at the edge of the photos. I don’t think they look too bad but it does make the whole video seem a bit dull.
I’ve already mentioned the quiz. So I’ve basically created a mini quiz of 5 questions on the MBChB WordPress H5P site but I have no idea how to embed this at the end of the video. I’ve tried to find a tutorial but nothing made any sense to me. I’m honestly not that bothered about not having a quiz there as I don’t think it adds too much to the video but I just wanted to try it to show that I could. If I was wanting to add a quiz in future I would make sure I asked for help sooner.
5 main learning points
I’ve gained a whole wealth of new skills from this experience that I wouldn’t otherwise have gained. Learning about copyright has most definitely been worthwhile for future projects and promotion of events. Learning all the different aspects to putting a video together has been great and it’s been wonderful to finally see my video come together! DECCS have actually asked me to produce a promotional video for an event next year so I feel capable but maybe not willing to help with it! (Of course I’ll help with it!)
These past 4 weeks I have been introduced to a myriad of websites and tools and just being aware of these has been a learning highlight for me. I feel we’ve never really been told where to get things or what is best for what so this has been a good learning opportunity and a chance to try them all out. These are some of the websites and software I’ve tried and will most likely use in the future.
My other key learning points include:
- Creating your own presentation design from scratch is hard.
- Script learning is much easier than writing one.
- Patience is key when recording.
- Creating a video is easy
So to summarise then I started not wanting to do this SSC but the system had messed up my choices and I had no other choice. I didn’t know what to expect or what would be expected from me, but I’ve learned so much and been exposed to a whole new digital medical education world that I hardly knew existed. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the blogging aspect to this project as it’s given me a space to reflect and let others know about what I’ve been doing. I’ve especially loved the “stats” part of WordPress that has shown me my blog has been viewed around the world! Including USA, UK, Canada, The Netherlands, Kenya, and Ireland. It’s been refreshing to engage with people all over the world who are interested and enthusiastic about digital medical education.
As well as this blog I’ve been tweeting about this experience and have created a couple of Storify stories to document what’s been going on on Twitter! Have a look!
I’m glad and grateful for this experience as it’s given me the skills to create better digital medical resources and taught me to appreciate them. I’m sure I will use what I have learned in the future.
I hope you guys have learned something from this process and thank you for coming on this journey with me.
Much love,
Laura