Your suggestions

Now you have a say in how we develop a new application!

We have developed our video lesson module following our gut instincts and experience we have as teachers about what makes for a good video lesson tool. However, you probably have valuable ideas rooted in your own intuitions and experience that could make our video lesson platform even better. So we count on your ideas and would appreciate it if you could share your suggestions with us below. Feel free to add a new card to this column, and write down your suggestion.

It's okay to make ANY suggestion. This is be a very subjective thing, and we accept any way you feel about any feature. There is no right or wrong suggestion. Even rejected suggestions can spark a valuable debate about a real issue that needs to be solved and can be part of finding a solution. So please just be frank about what you think.

As always I can't promise that we are going to accept every suggestion, but if we hear convincing reasons, chances are we will. We can even have a conversation about any of the suggestions in the form of comments in the card.

Here's what we would be grateful to receive in email (to info [at] islcollective [dot] com):

1. Recommend us new features that you would like us to develop.

E.g. "I have low bandwidth in my classroom, so let me lower the resolution of the video. I think you need to put a button on the video screen for that, just like on Youtube."

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2. Recommend us improvements to existing features.

E.g. "I love the fact that there is a distinct sound for wrong and right answers, but could you please choose less 'harsh' sounds?" (Indeed, that wish has been granted, and now we have some really pleasant sounds.)

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3. Tell us if something was hard to figure out on your own when you first used it.

(We don't have a users' guide to our video lessons, and even if we had, most teachers wouldn't have time to read it, so creating and using a video lesson must be so simple that no users' manual is needed. Thus, we need to know if something was hard to figure out at first so we can make it more evident.)

E.g. "At first, I didn't know where to find my published video lessons. After a bit of searching, I figured out they are in the menu Mypage/my creations. Maybe you should give a better name to this menu to make it easier to understand." (Peter: Sure, do you have any naming ideas?)

4. Tell us if you think something is cumbersome, difficult to use.

E.g. "It's a bit annoying for me to type a title for my video lesson. I think would be best to import the titles from Youtube to spare us the tedious job of retyping it in the video lesson editor." (Peter: I hear you. Indeed, it crosse my mind too, but I rejected the idea, because Youtube videos often have long titles with lots of details unnecessary for teachers. I feel it's just best to retype a short title of the video, along with maybe mentioning the type of lesson, e.g. Xy scene from Monsters INC (comprehension exercise). However, if a lot of colleagues feel we should import the title from Youtube, we will.

YOUR SUGGESTIONS

I'd like to create video lessons in full screen. Would that be possible?

Peter: Yes, absolutely!

I'd like to make Prediction exercises, so I'd like to be able to prevent the right answer from showing right after the question pops up. First, I'd like to replay the relevant scene to check who guessed right. So either please show all the right answers at the very end, or allow me to replay the relevant bit, and only then show the right answer.

Peter: Great idea! I put it on our to-do list.

I have low bandwidth in my classroom, so let me lower the resolution of the video.

Peter: That's a good point. We will do that.