Cloze Captioning is the Key!

My "Parts of Speech" song has had over 20 thousand hits since I posted it last year. I've received plenty of positive comments encouraging me to create more. I really want to, but there are two things I need to make sure I figure out how to do before I move on to "bigger and better things:"

- First of all, I need to discover how to manage the copyright issues. Timbaland's "Give It to Me" is the original song through which I deliver "Parts of Speech" and I'd like to eliminate the copyright infringement that I am technically committing right now. When I first posted the video and saw that it had limited viewing capabilities because of the copyright problem, I began trying to figure out how to go about resolving the conflict, but that eventually fell to the wayside as life inevitably took over. I'd like to rectify that as soon as possible though.

- Secondly, I'd like to figure out how to make a profit from what I do. It was a great deal of hard work to create that song. Putting time into changing the lyrics as well as creating the video was no simple feat and I'm quite proud of the results given my resources. I'd like to continue to make more of these types of videos because I see the value in their production. I see how useful they can be to others. So the question becomes, "How can I allow myself to keep creating these educational song videos and, perhaps, make it worth my while monetarily?"

I am finally starting to see an answer to my second concern slowly emerge. Some of the comments left on my page were requests asking for the song's lyrics to be posted, perhaps even set up as a caption to the video. I began to do that, but it wasn't working very well. I then thought I would be able to set it up to work karaoke style and I also took it a step further.

I'm thinking of making at least two more versions of the same video with lyrics support. One version will have the complete set of lyrics pop up on the screen as the song plays while yet another will have what I like to refer to as "cloze captions."

In a cloze activity, learners are to fill in the blanks of already established portions of a given text. The kids aren't just making up words, the omitted words are key words that encourage critical thinking and help assess a student's knowledge of the subject matter.

I think that it is through the production of these two videos that I will be able to make a profit (once the copyright issues are resolved). After posting the original video, I need to make available the sale of the karaoke and cloze captioned versions of the videos and I see a great deal of value in the learning process.

I've got to make this happen!