Please record a more detailed introduction to class than what you posted in Lesson 0. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you’re studying, what your goals are for class, anything you would like to share. You are welcome to use props to illustrate ideas. You could also pretend you’re making a video about who you are professionally for a potential job. This would be a great to pre-prepare for searching for a job after graduation and something that more competitive job seekers are doing. Any way you would like to make your introduction video more interesting is fine for this class. You can use a video recorder, your phone, your laptop.
There are only 7 basic rules to follow:
- do not use a cluttered background (no dirty dishes)
- use good lighting with a good camera angle (if you record from your laptop, for example make sure it is level with your face not up your nose)
- record good audio — it doesn’t have to be studio quality but we must be able to understand what you are saying clearly without too many background distractions (no music, dishwashing, TV, etc).
- good eye contact
- steady the camera — no hand-held selfies! if you use your phone, place it where it will be steady
- no vertical video — make sure your camera is recording horizontally not vertically because it doesn’t fit into the right shape for playing on YouTube.
- keep it short — try to keep it under 2 minutes!
Step 1. Write a script and or storyboard for your introduction. Feel free to make it fun (holding your pet?) as long as you follow the rules above.
Step 2. Practice to make sure the lighting, camera angle, audio, and background all look good. Practice a few times to get comfortable.
Step 3. Record your video.
Step 4. Upload your video to YouTube:
- Go to YouTube.com and log in with your @alaska.edu account. The first time you do this, you will be walked through some steps to set up your account. Contact your instructor if you run into trouble. Click on the upload button at the top of the YouTube account
. You can set the privacy level to either Unlisted or Public. - Once your video is uploaded to YouTube, copy the URL
Step 5. Paste the URL into a new post on this course website and give it the category of ‘Oral Presentation 1’. Don’t link the URL, just paste the plain text, you should see that it magically appears to be embedded. That’s because WordPress uses a protocol called oEmbed that whitelists YouTube video (and others).
Step 6. View the Oral Presentation 1 Category section of the site and make sure that your post shows up.
Here are a few examples:
- great eye contact, lighting, and recording angle (although a bit long)
- great audio quality and background and we get to see her dog wander through.
- interesting background that doesn’t detract
- creative and super inspiring — this is a fantastic example of a creative person looking for work and making a video to introduce themselves to prospective employers. It includes a lot of video technique that is beyond the scope of this course but is still a very inspiring example.