I would also love to know if you'll be sharing a recording.  Thanks, Lucy

Thanks for sharing, Andrew!  I'm curious - is there a summary list of actions which seem promising but for which too little evidence exists?

Hi Christopher, I'll be releasing the sign-up page for the beginners' course later this month.  In the meantime, you can register your interest on the form at the bottom of this page: https://verdantlearn-gis-refreshers-may2021.webflow.io/, to guarantee you'll be notified as soon as applications open.  All the best, Lucy

Update: the two most popular choices for taster topics are:

1. Finding and using free environmental data
2. Combining data from GPSs and field records

I will be running these taster topics in the middle two weeks in May (one week each, part-time over several days).  I will advertise them in a separate post on WildHub, but you can express interest in a comment here too.

Thanks to all for your participation!

Thanks for your interest, Cath.  The full beginner course will be free of charge, and a larger cohort than I usually teach, depending on demand (my normal class sizes are 15-25).  The course will be part-time online, and most activities will be asynchronous so the time commitment will be flexible to suit your schedule.  Any live sessions will be offered at multiple times to allow people to join from around the world.  I'll post more details in a separate WildHub post in due course.

I'll add your name to the list, Ryan - I've had some responses by email also.  I'm hosting a virtual conference this weekend so a bit busy this week!  I'll review all the emails next week and comment again here then.  Thanks.

If you're curious about Gather and the WildHub space there, see my new post on using Gather for networking: https://wildhub.community/videos/introducing-gather-for-networking

Great advice, Beth, and very user-friendly - thanks for sharing!

For beginners, I recommend recording yourself giving a live presentation if you can - there's no substitute for having a real audience to fire up your energy and enthusiasm!  You can extract sections later, and it doesn't matter if you mix up your words or hesitate - that just makes you more approachable to your viewers  :)

I've been trialling ffmpeg https://ffmpeg.org/ to record video - you can record multiple inputs (webcam + slides) and then overlay them into a single video.  It's one for coders as it's command-line, but free, flexible and good at reducing video size for easy download/streaming on mobile.

I also discovered a software last week called Open Broadcaster (OBS) https://obsproject.com/ which helps you to switch the layout during a video recording, or a live-streamed event, so that you can display a screenshare with/without headshot, for example.  I've not tried it, but my colleagues at Oxford Uni use it and it looks promising.

You can include interactivity in your video by using a tool like H5P https://h5p.org/, adding quizzes, branching scenarios, opportunities for reflection, 360 tours etc.  This is free if you're happy for your content to be public.  I'm dreaming about someone creating a command-line version of H5P...

If your video is hosted on YouTube, you can edit the auto-created subtitles or upload your own, and then viewers can choose whether to switch them on.  Providing transcripts is wise regardless, as it's much easier to search them for words/phrases than a video.

Free online teleprompter software exists, e.g. Zacue https://zacue.com/ for tablets/smartphones, or CuePrompter https://cueprompter.com for laptop/desktop.