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Within several of our online discussions in our course, you will have the option to participate
in video format. Let's take a quick look in this screencast at the process to record and
upload a video into a discussion board post.
Here you can see, we are within our course, we're within the Discussion Board area. And
you can see our Unit 6 Discussion is a video discussion. You have the option to post your
response in video format. Again, this is your option. You can stick with a text response,
but you do have the option in this particular discussion to respond in video format.
To do so, you would click on the name of the forum to enter that forum just like you are
accustomed to doing, and clicking the "Create Thread" button to post your discussion.
You'll notice that within the Forum Description I've included the questions that you can choose
from, in this particular discussion I have 4 discussion questions you can choose from
for your initial response, and I've noted that this is a video format discussion. You
have the option to respond in video format.
There is a link provided for you to learn more about recording and posting a video if
you'd like step-by-step assistance in a text guide that is available on the Blackboard
On Demand Learning Center for you.
To post this video response we go down to the message area and we would give it a subject.
As always, I recommend that you begin your response, if you're responding to Question
2, you might being with "Q2:" and then some type of descriptive subject line for your
response. I'm just going to use "Sample Video Response" for mine.
Now, to post your video, you would click in the text box area here, the Message box, and
look for this icon that looks like a small webcam. When you mouse over it you should
see the tooltip to Record from Webcam. This is the Video Anywhere tool that you can evoke
here within Blackboard. Clicking on that button, you will see a box open that will walk you
through recording or embedding a video directly within your post.
You'll notice that this is powered by YouTube. This feature uses YouTube's built-in video
hosting and embed features to post your video directly within Blackboard. You'll see here
that this webcam, it says "Web video" and I'm signed in as "Jason Rhode". You will need
to sign in to a Google Account in order to use this feature. It's going to save the video
to your YouTube page, but it will be Unlisted. You'll notice that my Privacy here is listed
as "Unlisted." This is important. This means that, while your video will be stored on your
YouTube channel, it will be unlisted - it won't be visible to anyone in the public,
it won't be searchable - it essence, it's invisible to anyone but those of us here in
the class. This way, we can view it without having to use a separate login to access your
video. We can just view it within our discussion in Blackboard.
As long as we are signed in, we should be good to go. If you don't see this "Signed
in as" and your name, you'll be prompted to sign-in to your Google Account initially.
To record from your webcam, you click the "Record from webcam" button. You do have some
options here. In terms of your Adobe Flash Player, you will want to select the microphone,
you can see the microphone that you'll be using and you can adjust your recording level
right here. You can also select a video input source, if you have more than one webcam connected
to your computer, you can select the specific source. I only have my built-in webcam and
so that's what I would use here to access this.
To start recording, I would simply click this "Allow" button and then my recording would
begin. Because I am recording this screencast, if I were to allow recording at this point
it would kill my recording. So, what I'm going to do instead of Allow, which is what you
would want to click, you would want to click allow, and then go through the process of
recording. What I'm going to do is go up instead to this Browse tab and what this will do is
pull up any previous videos that you have. Where this is helpful is, let's say you want
to record your video response using your mobile device, the YouTube app on your mobile device
and save it to your YouTube channel as unlisted. If you do that, you can then sign-in through
Blackboard and later embed it in your post. That's actually what I'm going to do. I'm
going to pick a previous video that I've recorded. If fact, I'm just going to use for the sake
of this example here, I'm going to use this introduction to our Unit 6 as my video.
I can preview it, I can actually go ahead and insert it. That's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to click the insert and then I'm going to have it play in place and click this
Insert button.
Now you see that it looks like there's something placed here within our discussion. If I go
ahead now and click the Submit button, now I see my new discussion post. If I click on
this here it opens and here is my video and it can be played directly within the box.
What will happen for you is you will go through, click that Accept button, you can record,
and then when you've finished recording, follow the prompts to post your video directly here
within Blackboard.
You can follow these same steps to respond to other classmates. Instead of responding
in text, if you'd like to respond in video format, you are certainly welcome to do so
in this discussion. Just Reply to the video and in the reply again you have the video
option and you could follow the same steps to record your video there.
These features work in any text editor within Blackboard. Any place where you see this text
editor with this Record from Webcam button, you have these capabilities of recording a
video and then having it embedded directly within the post.
I hope you try out the Video Anywhere feature. I look forward to our video conversations
in Blackboard. Again, if you have any questions, be sure to post those to the "Questions and
Answers" forum here in Blackboard.