Breaking News: Stories go Digital!

Our week 1 assignment was to create a digital story. I was very excited about this assignment but felt dread when I had so many topics I wanted to cover. Because I could not decide between my grandmother or father as topics, I created a story about myself. I borrowed a storyboard template from my mentor and got started. It seemed easier to pre-edit because I put my thoughts down on paper. I usually do not do that and will do so in the future. I then went through the many pictures I have of myself and scanned each that I chose. Since I had used Photo Story in the past and wanted to try a different program, I used Movie Maker to create my video. I had no idea this was already on my computer and found it very easy to use. I really like that the instructions are already on the left side of the screen. After importing my pictures and typing a sentence about each picture, it was time for me to decide if the order would keep the interest of my audience. I must have changed the order of my pictures a half dozen times before I was satisfied. I then needed to find a way to upload it to Youtube.com. Unfortunately, I was not aware that Youtube.com did not accept the .mmv file extension so I went back into Movie Maker and read the directions for saving a project. After saving my project to my computer, I was able to upload it to Youtube.com. My husband and sons agreed that it was definitely a video that described me but felt I left out "child".

21st Century Teaching for a 21st Century World PSA

I was a little wary upon finding out our assignment for weeks 3-5 consisted of working in a group to create a public service announcement. I feel I work better on my own since I sometimes work backwards. My group consisted of Megan Perello, Sharon Liles and Katrina Gonzales. We had actually looked ahead during week 1, discovered we had to work in a group and created our group at that time. Our first interactions occurred through email and that seemed to work for a while. We then moved to Skype. My group members were familiar with it but it took me a few minutes to become comfortable using it. This avenue allowed us to collaborate with more efficiency. We also continued to use email and a wiki page set up specifically for our PSA. Our pre-production seemed to go by quickly. We threw out ideas but eventually we all decided upon encouraging the use of 21st century technology in the classroom. It did not take us long to each arrive at the shots and pictures we wanted to use. We planned to have them to our editor by the end of the week. We also decided to upload it to Youtube.com since we all had found it the easiest web delivery site. It seems all of us had trouble uploading to Teachertube.com at some point. It was not easy for me to arrive at obtaining my videos. I wanted to make sure I used other angles rather than from directly head-on so I discussed various angles with my mentor (who is also our campus instructional technologist). I must have shot at least 30 minutes of video and then had to edit it down to maybe 10 to 15 seconds. Whew! That was tough. Then we came to the difficult part-sending it to our editor. After many emails, Sharon found a video converter that was free and easy to use. Megan was ready to roll! Well, after she took her math certification test. Once she was done, we viewed the video and made comments and suggestions. We then decided to add music. I had already gone through various songs on freeplaymusic.com so by sending emails we chose one of my suggestions. Our PSA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States.

To Web Conference or Not to Web Conference-That is the Question

I loved the idea of web conferencing to share ideas. However, my thoughts changed during this class. I was thoroughly disappointed with the three web conferences I tried to attend. The first conference had too many people in it so there was no sound. That was not so bad because I feel I do better at typing. I eventually became frustrated in trying to keep up with all of the typing to see if my questions were answered so I exited the conference. The second web conference I attended was not much better. It was also pretty full and I attempted to concentrate on the typing. My frustration mounted when everyone began chatting about the weather and were not asking or answering questions about the assignments. One classmate attempted to get her question answered at least three times and I do not think it was ever answered. The last conference I tried to attend was on Sunday the 19th. I attempted to enter the conference only to see a message that the meeting was over. Upon checking the Lamar M.Ed. page on Facebook, I discovered that another student tried to get in at 5:45 p.m. and was told the meeting had actually started at 5:00 p.m. and not 6:00 p.m. as stated in the overview. I would like to see the web conference times posted correctly, conferences broken into smaller groups and some kind of order during the conference. In the two conferences I could get in, no one was raising their hand and there was too much "outside chatting" that was not related to the course or assignments. I hope our future web conferences will be easier to attend.

Ready, Set, Edit! Video Editing Comparisons - EDLD 5363

I wanted to test other video editing programs that were different than what most of my classmates would test. Unfortunately that led to some frustration. I began with jahPlayer. The first problem I discovered was that the video of my son’s first football game was in .wmv and jahPlayer did not support it. I discovered it accepted .avi, .mpeg and Quicktime. I then converted my video to .avi and was able to begin working with it. I did not like the overall look of the screen and found it hard to figure out where to go when I wanted to do something. I would get thrown out of the entire program without any explanation when I tried certain things. I should have done my homework and researched it more because I quickly became frustrated using it. That is when I started to read more about it on their main website and found that it was suited more for editors with more experience. I grudgingly gave in and tried Movie Maker. I was able to easily upload my video and work with it. I really liked how easy it was to use. The steps were on the left side of the screen and help was easy to access if needed. It also supported just about any format so I would not have to worry about converting my videos. It was very easy to add titles, credits, transitions and music. Students from 3rd grade through high school would be able to easily use this video editing software.