Helen and Lil,
I’ve got to call it a day. It’s 2:14 in the morning. I’ve been trying to learn to make more enticing videos instead of using the drag old slides of PowerPoint, and the point is, I’m so slow in learning these days...more fittingly, these years...
I’ve been communicating with the support staff of Camtasia. They’ve been helpful. But it seems even these support professionals aren’t prepared for how ridiculously dumb a novice can be in learning the most basic things. They seem to assume that you’d have known something already. But I don’t! The fault is on me, I know. I’m so dumb! Damn dumb! Fucking dumb! It’s depressingly slow in the process. Actually, I’m quite happy these past couple of days, as I’ve thought of a new way of doing my videos, until I’ve fallen back to trying to solve these technical problems once again, and then I’m fuckingly depressed again!
The new idea is that I will do short videos of 10 English sentences. Each video is about a story, and I will tell the story in 10 sentences. The first video I plan to do is the story of McDonald’s. I will relate in 10 sentences how many hamburgers McDonald’s sell in a day now, how many stores they have worldwide, why they use the golden arch as their logo, who founded McDonald’s, when it was founded, etc. I will read out each sentence three times, the second time very slowly, word-for-word, so even people with limited English can listen clearly.
I’m going to tell viewers that they can learn English without having to make a particular effort in memorizing the words and grammar rules. Just read out aloud a few times the sentences, and in time, their subconscious will help them learn. As the fun facts revealed in these sentences would likely be little known to most people, even those whose English is reasonably good may find the videos useful. Plus the new approach would not be so time-consuming for me. It takes me two to three days to make a video with the present approach. I guess I can make a video a day with the 10-sentence videos.
And I will be learning new things myself doing research for the stories. A win-win case. So I’ve been elated these past couple of days thinking about my new plan. But I have to finish these two videos before I embark on the new project. And I need to learn the techniques to make the videos better, more fluid, more current, more watchable. I thought I could finish the second last video before the new project tonight, but obviously, I cannot. My brain is stuffed now.
Hey, are you on a trip, Lil? Where are you guys now? The pictures are nice!
And Helen, have you given it some thoughts on doing the exercise video to help my back pain? My back pain seems to be getting a bit better these days, perhaps from my daily walks and exercises in the park. I typically leave for the park at around 4:30 or 5, take a quick walk around the park for half an hour, then do another 30 minutes of stretching, then head to the park bench to drink a can of coke, read some news from the New York Times on the cell phone, or write something, then go to do several minutes of muscle exercise on an exercise bench, before heading back home. Exercising is having a positive effect, but I still feel the pain when I get up from sitting for a while with a certain posture. Would love to follow your exercise and see if I can kick the pain once and for all.
Love you,
Dad
Hey Dad! I watched the last video about on, in, and by transportation vehicles. It was interesting and I’ve learned how you use them too. Normally I would just say the prepositions based on what I’ve heard.
I like the way you sound, friendly and relaxed. The color differentiation is a good idea too to highlight the differences between the verbs and the nouns. However, after learning about using the prepositions based on the size of the transportation, I got a little lost when you were explaining the “by” preposition with the verbs -- I wasn’t sure what you were trying to explain. Maybe it’s because in the first part, there was a distinction in how (in vs on) one was to use the 2 different prepositions, but when you explained “by,” there was nothing to compare it to. So I wasn’t sure what you were explaining. If it was just how to apply ‘by’, then perhaps explaining the difference from the earlier examples might be helpful (eg: “on/in” when using with a noun, and “by” when adding a verb -- if that’s even right!) Also, I find you are basically reading the slides, so a little variation in your verbal content would be good. I think for an ESL student it may help having words similar to the slides, but they could also be reading it rather than listening and watching how it is used. Otherwise I thought it was a pretty good start to these videos!
Did you look at Prezi as an option for the videos? I haven’t used it, but in some of the recruitment work I’ve done we’ve had people submit projects and I think I saw some use Prezi, which I think has voice recording as well.
I also find googling what you don’t understand from a step you’re learning helps too. For example, if the Camtasia instructions are telling you something you don’t understand, google how to xxx and see what pops up. That’s how I’ve done a lot of my work in compensation! I either look up a file to copy something or google how to... and see what I could find online to help walk me through how to do something. I also prefer a shorter vs a longer video, but that also depends on the content.
Life is busy. Vacation was great but busy, and then we planned Amaya’s birthday party the weekend we got back. We went to Osoyoos, BC, which is near the border. It’s another 1.5 hours south of Kelowna, and there are a lake and wineries and orchards. It was really fun! I wish we had stayed there longer! We also went back to the ice cream place in Sicamous, the same place we stopped at when we went to Kelowna. The second pic is her ice cream face! Made me think of you.
Now it’s back to work.
Love you, Lily
Hey Lil,
You’re right on the preposition “by”. I should have stated clearly that I’m leaving “on vs in” to “by,” before going into more details of the use of “by”. That’s probably what causes the confusion. I’ll add that in the Cantonese version. I’m not going to do the Mandarin version for this video, as it has taken me too long to practise and prepare. I’ll do them when I start the new project with the story in 10 sentences.
I’ve gone to the Prezi website and browsed around a bit. I think it’s too sophisticated for my videos. Plus it’ll take me another year to learn to use it. Lil, you can’t imagine how slow and dumb a person is getting into when he ages. It’s depressing!
Sounds like you’re busy busy these days. You’re busy even in your vacation! Well, chill up some bit. Tickle Amaya for me, or does she allow you to do this these days?
Love you,
Dad
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