A long time ago I wrote about BubblePly and the things that it can do for videos, but I realized that I had never really gone back to it, and I’d never really explored some of its features. Since I am spending time teaching a class again I decided that I’d revisit and update one of my lessons on China. I like to use this as an example for both political and economic systems that we discuss in our course. Obviously with China having changed so much, even within the lifetimes of many of my students, it can be hard for them to grasp exactly how great those changes have been without going through a full hour long documentary on China. Last year I remembered something from my youth, which while it might be musically suspect helps to make the point a little clearer. In and around 1984 the Chinese government invited several foreign Pop Music groups into the country and one of them was WHAM! and they made a turned it into a music video for their song Freedom. So with BubblePly I took the video which was posted on YouTube and then proceeded to add in some important information and details that I would want the students to take from it. It was simple and easy and I could adjust the length of the bubble. It’s not quite as cool as making a ‘Pop-up Video’ but I did enjoy it, and despite the need to rehash 80s music I think it will engage students. I showed the same video last year and stopped it a bunch of times to make my points, this just seems much smoother.
I suspect that BubblePly has many uses that I have even thought of, but here is another one I thought of. Students can create and post their own videos and add subtitles (which is another function) and other details as needed. The menu is simple it doesn’t allow for a lot of cool effects, but it’s easy to use.
Strictly speaking you don’t need a YouTube video to make this happen, according to the links listed it will even let you use a CNN video as long as you get the embed code.
Here is the link to my creation, do not proceed if you have a low tolerance for 80s pop music.
As a side note you get embedding code as well, and I’ve tried embedding it using the HTML editor and for some reason it hasn’t worked (on both this and my Google Sites website). I’m not exactly sure why, any ideas, I’d love to hear.
Education Forethoughts and Afterthoughts 