Screencasts: A New Old Visual Asset

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Way back in 2014, when the make up of this team was a little different, it was suggested that we have screencasts to accompany each of the lesson plans. This was recently suggested again and it raised a lot of questions for us. Here are the big few that I saw/have been asking myself:

What is the Purpose of the Screencasts?

It would give us the chance to have a first pass at a lesson for accuracy and flow internally before it gets to testing. It will also be a good way for teachers to get an idea of the intended pacing of the lesson as they prep.

What Would This Screencast Look Like?

It would be a very rough run-through of any one lesson. From start to finish, a screencast would be the script and user-driven demo (that’s you, clicking through the actions described in the lesson) with no need for intro or exit language. So it would be your screen that we can see and your voice that we can hear.

Would It Replace the Need for Screenshots?

No, it wouldn’t. We could use the screencasts to get screenshots (possibly), but the screenshots will still be needed.

And my biggest question:

How Does This Fit in to Our Priority List?

There are a few ways this works in my mind:

Given that the words are Must Have content, we could prioritize that over anything else and call screencasts a Nice to Have (as in, we can add it later).
If we think we can use stills from the screencasts as screenshots, thus consolidating a little of our effort, we could call them a Should Have (as in, we can get through copyediting without them, but must have them before they are tested).
If we think they are essential to the lessons, or we have scads of people waiting for something to do, then we can put together a little mini-task force just for making the screencasts.

I’m happy and willing to help us work through any of these options. Let’s discuss what we think is the best fit for our plans moving forward.

Group Pings: Beth, Chrissie, Christina, Courtney, Josepha, Julie, Kathy, Kim, Meaghan, Melinda, Michele, Mike, Scott, Tonia

Please also pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” anyone I missed in the comments!

Mike Mueller 8:06 pm on January 28, 2016

I’ve been with the group since WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. SF last year. The idea was new to me.

I do a few screencasts almost every day. For me it’s a better way to communicate answers with my clients. When it comes to one of our lesson plans though…

I typically see our plans as being used by a person in front of a room with a bunch of students following along with laptops. Having led these in the past, the speed is always dictated by the slowest person in the room. That’s problematic when it comes to a video. Stopping and starting, over and over again. I don’t see them as a priority right now.

Instead, I see them as a way to get quality instruction out to those that do not have the luxury of attending a meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area.. For them, our videos could be incredible help.

As far as I know, that’s not the focus of Training (or at least right now it is not) but I do see the value in it.
- Josepha 3:16 pm on January 29, 2016
  
  Thanks for the feedback, Mike. It sounds like you would put screencasts as a Nice to Have or even Won’t Have/Don’t Need?
Courtney Engle Robertson 1:38 am on February 1, 2016

I also had never heard of previous mention, and at one point had read back through old IRC logs and SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. logs when organizing.

I will be screencasting my instructions in a high school classroom setting. I will be following the lesson plan topics within the training team site, but modifying them to fit our classroom needs. (For instance, using Desktop Server vs Mamp/Wamp for local installs). I don’t foresee those minor tweaks to be very common. I am happy to share the screencast of my screen along with audio. I will likely use Google Hangouts to record the screen.

This class will not be reading the lesson plans from the training team site as a script, but rather more demonstration. I can also provide the teacher style lesson plans that I submit to the curriculum coordinator. These are much more of an outline but in a style that is moderately standardized for the education system, along with educational standards that the lesson addresses.

At this time, this is what I can offer, though it is not specifically what was suggested.
bethsoderberg 3:34 pm on February 2, 2016

I too hadn’t heard of the screencasts before and checked in with Courtney O about it – she recalls the conversation on these happening at WCSF 2013, which is why so many of us aren’t remembering.

It seems to me that screencasts are in the same categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. as slides in terms of priority level because they would definitely be nice to have, but are not required for a lesson plan to exist.

I also agree with something Mike alluded to in his earlier comment, which is that even though we would be thinking of the screencasts as a tool to teach instructors how to present the lesson plan, we need to remember that simply by posting these screencasts on the internet the majority of people that watch them will end up being random people who are looking for answers to questions they have. We’ve discussed many times that the purpose of the training team is to create materials for in-person trainings and though everything we make is driven toward that primary purpose, our materials are also used by whomever finds them while they are looking for resources to help with their own questions/problems.

In terms of level of effort, I’m not sure that we have the people power right now to add screencasts to the docket. We have made major strides in the last two months in terms of completing drafts of lesson plans and getting more and more plans ready to test and I worry that adding a new major piece to each plan at this point would distract from the very real progress we’re making in terms of finishing drafts of plans.

Sometimes we have made some pretty big adjustments to lesson plans based on feedback received from the tests, so I wonder how much churn we’d have in terms of contributor effort if we ended up adjusting not only the lesson plan itself, but also the screencast multiple times throughout the testing phase.

If we do in fact have a group of people that have time to contribute, but are not comfortable with any of the current tasks around lesson plans, then I think this is potentially a viable task for them to contribute, but am worried about the potential churn that could happen throughout testing.

In the spirit of keeping our eye on the prize of completing sets of plans my general reaction to adding screencasts to our set of materials right now is that I’m not sure. I can see it helping to guide testers, but I can also see it distracting from the more immediate larger goal of completing sets of lesson plans.