Informative Speech in Bongo

Hi, Everyone!

I've set up a video assignment in Bongo, using an informative speech which I already had in MyLibrary in Studio. You should see this in your Learning Path in MindTap, at the beginning. The assignment is for you to watch my video, to gather what relevant knowledge you can find from MindTap, and to record your own video, describing and critiquing my video, and upload your video into Bongo. 

I just put this together because I am eager to make full use of MindTap and it's feature Bongo. I downloaded my video which was already in my Studio and I dragged it from my Download folder into Bongo. 

I would like you to either record your video directly in Canvas Studio, or import it into Canvas Studio after you make it on your phone. I believe you can drag it into Canvas Studio using the Canvas phone app, or from QPort app, which should enable you to access Canvas within it, on your phone. The reason I want you to make the video in Studio is that I want you to use the CC generator, and to activate the Comments feature. I hope these will still function when the video is uploaded into Bongo. We'll try it out. 

What is the reason for using CC? First, there is a legal reason, that all videos need to have CC in case there are hearing-impaired students viewing them. However, there are instructional reasons as well. First, the CC is done by AI (Artificial Intelligence) and can provide you with useful feedback on the clarity of your speech. If the CC misunderstands you--which you can see from CC which does not reflect what you thought you were saying--that's a sign that you need to improve the clarity of your speech. I also wonder if the CC will provide some indirect feedback to students who speak too quickly or too slowly, but showing a higher error rate in the CC. That's something we want to pay attention to. 
  However, the CC in Studio also has a syntactic (grammar) processor, so that even if you don't say something clearly, the CC generator might compensate and still produce the intended word accurately. So, you need to consider that as well, while still making use of it for feedback on your speech clarity. 
  I have developed a cool way for students to use the CC to improve speech clarity, also. Download the CC, which will come as an srt file. Clean up/edit the srt files by eliminating the time stamps, and erasing the gaps between the lines of CC text, and make sure to eliminate the hard breaks between lines as well, so that the texts "wraps" (flows across lines without any gaps when you change the font size and move it around...).
  Then, copy and paste that "wrapped" text into the tophonetics.com website. Set the site to American English pronunciation, and click on side-by-side IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) text. Click on a speaker seleciton, and activate the automated speaker. You will hear an automated speaker speaking your own words, and you can learn to follow along with your eyes on the IPA text. This will help you focus on the pronuncition of the words. Use the website RachelsEnglish.com to improve your speech clarity and pronuncition, in particular areas where the CC has indicated you are weak, or where you yourself pick up some discrepancies between your own speech and the automated speakers. 

OK, I worked around Bongo and MindTap. I put my video right into the Canvas Discussion above. There are 2 versions. The first one I had downloaded to my computer from MyLibrary in Canvas Studio, and then uploaded into the Discussion. This version loses the CC and the Comments features which are in Canvas Studio. The other one, with my scary big head (!), does retain the CC and the Comments features. However, when he open it up in the full screen, I think both versions end up the same size, so you can check the CC to see how accurate they are. If there is an error in the CC, it might indicate that I was not enunciating clearly at the time.

It seems that the videos which can be posted in Meetings in MindTap must be recorded directly in Bongo. And it may be that I cannot post to you in Bongo videos which I've recorded elsewhere. So, it seems we can use both Canvas Studio, and Bongo in MindTap. Let's keep exploring, and I'm waiting to hear back from Cengage.

However, you can now go ahead and produce your informative speech. However, before you record your informative speech, I would like you to study up as much as you can in "The Speaker's Handbook." There should be a chapter on informative speeches, and there should be other areas where you can study up. From the videos of the students I've seen so far, I've made some comments on the quality of your speaking, especially about the pace (speed), sometimes about facial gestures, possibly intonations... I would like you to learn as much as you can from "The Speaker's Handbook" about your particular performative issues I drew your attention to. Even if I didn't note anything particular, still I would like you to research particular performative aspects, perhaps some of which you have recognized in the model speakers you viewed, or speakers you like. Please try to identify those aspects of speech which are significant to you, perhaps intonation, perhaps stress, perhaps pausing, pacing, etc., try to research them in "The Speaker's Handbook," and try to improve and incorporate them into your new speech.
I would like you to do the activities in "The Speaker's Handbook" which you find useful for yourself to improve along the lines which either I have commented on, or you yourself feel are important to you. That means, read the textbook in those areas, do the quiz, answer the survey questions, and so on... I would like you to write up a paragraph or two in which you summarize what you learned, and describe how you are trying to incorporate these changes into your new speech.
Please try to use Bongo as your first venue for recording your speech. I haven't used it before, but it promises a lot. I have used Canvas Studio, and it does provide the change of speed on playback, the CC generation, and the Comments section enabling textual comments by viewers with a popup comment in real time on the playback of the video.
I also would like you to explore the tophonetics.com Links to an external site. website. I would like to make an instructional video to show you how to use that with your own speech, but I don't know how quickly I can make that. That's also a learning path for me. Maybe one of you can help me. But I do have the written instructions for that.