Saturday, September 12, 2015

Week 1

Watching last year's group video projects was a good was to get a taste of the topics that we will be learning in the course.

My top two videos were Week 10: Power to the People, and Week 11: The Terror. What I enjoyed in both of these presentations were the fact that I wasn't bored throughout the length of the video. The insert of video clips or pictures made me alert, and it helped me understand the information quicker. Both of these videos focused on one subtopic and explained them in detail (Week 10 focused on Argentina's politics, while Week 11 concentrated in Peru's Sendero Luminoso).
In further detail, despite Week 10's awkward introduction (referring to the music being randomly cut off), the overall video was informative yet easy to follow. As for Week 11, the muted down music in the background made me more involved in the presentation.

On the other side of things, my bottom two videos were Week 5: Caudillos versus the Nation State, and Week 12: Speaking Truth to Power. Both of these videos were dull and didn't keep my visual focus active. Sometimes the students would fall into a monotone and I would immediately forget what I was watching. It was also hard to understand because, again, in both videos, the students would not enunciate. Unfortunately, it was a struggle to some of the material discussed in both videos.

1 comment:

  1. Yup, it's a good point that looking at the videos is also giving you a sense of what's up ahead in the course as a whole!

    And yes, one of the things with using video is keeping the viewer interested. But you do need to be careful that the images are not too distracting!

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