I had a great albeit frustrating time learning about technology. I think that just the nature of technology makes it difficult for anyone to continue to know everything about technology, since it changes every second. The course content taught me a variety of software and internet tools to use in my classroom. Instead of entering into teaching wondering how I'm going to create a cute web site for my classes listing all the homework, I know how to do this. I also know how to do this quite professionally.
The instructor gave us very thorough instructions which I tried to follow carefully. In team projects this was more difficult to do, but I tried my best to find a way to follow the directions. I think with the video project there were some direction issues. 1) Students should be strongly encouraged to buy computer sticks with 1+Gigabytes to make their movies portable. 2) The reflection document submission instruction is incorrect. It says to use WebCT mail when the instructor wants it submitted through the assignments submission area.
In regards to the Blogs, the instruction to "respond to 2 classmates blogs" is unclear. This statement does not state "respond to 2 current classmates blogs." I got docked a few times for responding to older blogs, since few classmates had done their blog for the week when I was responding to blogs. If all the classmates do their blogs at 11pm on Tuesday, how is it possible to respond to "current" blogs which actually is never stated, accept verbally. I think that this response requirement needs to be restated more clearly and rethought about the feasibility of it.
With all things considered, the instructor did a marvelous job of teaching. She generally had excellent and specific instructions to follow. The above are just areas that could be improved upon. I was also amazed at how responsive the instructor is to our questions via WebCT e-mail. I'm impressed. She really puts her heart and hard work into her teaching. Cheers to a great technology class!
Monday, May 7, 2007
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Blog #14: I-Movies & Articles
Although the filming of the I-Movie was fun, the editing of it was not. Interfacing my Cannon digital camera was a bear and Cannon's website did not support the camera with software, so we couldn't work on it on Wednesday night. Once I downloaded the film clips at home and brought it to the computer lab, we finally got it downloaded to the desktop and started editing it. Our sound attachment broke, so we rescheduled a team meeting on Saturday. Some thoughtless instructor scheduled an all day seminar in our computer lab on Saturday without putting it on the lab schedule!!! We waited and waited for a break in his class, but the maverick instructor never stopped talking!!! So we did our blogs while we waited for a lunch break and downloaded the i-movie on a stick with a lot of memory that Ian brought in. I think as a team we created a magnificent i-Movie.
It just was hard as heck to do with all the comedy of errors. I-Movie is an easy movie editing software. I've used another movie editing software that Cannon supplies which is not easy to use. I really liked the different layers for sound. That was awesome! Each sound clip could have the volume adjusted to blend well with the rest of the sound. I also liked how the clipping of clips was soooo easy. It was easy to pull the clips around to position them properly. I liked the transition and clip effects on the software as well. These effects were quite easy to use once we could get to the computer that we had created our movie on. Oh, the special effects were fabulous. I loved how the rain could be blown around by wind! To cool!!!
I think that there has GOT to be more instructions on what students need to download their i-Movies onto, so that the movies are portable from the beginning. Saving to the desktop in the lab is definitely NOT the way to save. I can't repeat enough how frustrating waiting to get the movie off the desktop was. The windbag just kept going on and on. We did get other 422 assignments completed while we waited.
The Article, Splicing Video into the Writing Process by Tammy Pandina and Diane Harding was interesting. I felt that they had "too many cooks in the kitchen." They should have had different groups in the class do different educational content standards for their state. That way the students would have to wear more hats when creating these i-Movies and learned more about storyboards, scripting, editing, filming, acting, etc. By doing several different content standards the films could educate all the groups during the final film viewings. This not only would teach the students how to create i-Movies, but teach them the curriculum for the course. This is parallel scheduling, a typical project management technique---"killing two birds with one stone" as they say.
I enjoyed the enthusiasm that the teachers displayed, but I felt that there was too much effort on the students' part to learn a very narrow section of creating an i-Movie. Their final project also only met one content standard. I don't know how these teachers could sell to their administration so much time to this class project. How were these students ever going to meet all their content standards and prepare for national testing that would rate their school? If these teachers had been more creative with their planning multiple film projects that covered multiple content standards, it would be an easier sell to the administration and benefit the students and school even more.
I realize that this is a callous viewpoint to such a wonderful start to using technology in the classroom, but I've experienced and seen a lot of great ideas that were badly implemented and failed miserably. Better initial planning per project management techniques is more successful than maverick approaches. Education is not a place where maverick approaches should be used. I know personally about that. I was part of the experimental generation of California students that never learned how to diagram sentences, because someone decided that we would be better served just writing and learning while we wrote. We became the laughing stock of the nation for being stupid at English. We were more creative in our approaches to writing and turned out better pieces. We just had weak sentence construction.
As far as viewing other classmates' i-movies, I've been waiting for these movies to be published, but my WebCT does not show any available for viewing. I have no comments about this topic, since I have no information.
It just was hard as heck to do with all the comedy of errors. I-Movie is an easy movie editing software. I've used another movie editing software that Cannon supplies which is not easy to use. I really liked the different layers for sound. That was awesome! Each sound clip could have the volume adjusted to blend well with the rest of the sound. I also liked how the clipping of clips was soooo easy. It was easy to pull the clips around to position them properly. I liked the transition and clip effects on the software as well. These effects were quite easy to use once we could get to the computer that we had created our movie on. Oh, the special effects were fabulous. I loved how the rain could be blown around by wind! To cool!!!
I think that there has GOT to be more instructions on what students need to download their i-Movies onto, so that the movies are portable from the beginning. Saving to the desktop in the lab is definitely NOT the way to save. I can't repeat enough how frustrating waiting to get the movie off the desktop was. The windbag just kept going on and on. We did get other 422 assignments completed while we waited.
The Article, Splicing Video into the Writing Process by Tammy Pandina and Diane Harding was interesting. I felt that they had "too many cooks in the kitchen." They should have had different groups in the class do different educational content standards for their state. That way the students would have to wear more hats when creating these i-Movies and learned more about storyboards, scripting, editing, filming, acting, etc. By doing several different content standards the films could educate all the groups during the final film viewings. This not only would teach the students how to create i-Movies, but teach them the curriculum for the course. This is parallel scheduling, a typical project management technique---"killing two birds with one stone" as they say.
I enjoyed the enthusiasm that the teachers displayed, but I felt that there was too much effort on the students' part to learn a very narrow section of creating an i-Movie. Their final project also only met one content standard. I don't know how these teachers could sell to their administration so much time to this class project. How were these students ever going to meet all their content standards and prepare for national testing that would rate their school? If these teachers had been more creative with their planning multiple film projects that covered multiple content standards, it would be an easier sell to the administration and benefit the students and school even more.
I realize that this is a callous viewpoint to such a wonderful start to using technology in the classroom, but I've experienced and seen a lot of great ideas that were badly implemented and failed miserably. Better initial planning per project management techniques is more successful than maverick approaches. Education is not a place where maverick approaches should be used. I know personally about that. I was part of the experimental generation of California students that never learned how to diagram sentences, because someone decided that we would be better served just writing and learning while we wrote. We became the laughing stock of the nation for being stupid at English. We were more creative in our approaches to writing and turned out better pieces. We just had weak sentence construction.
As far as viewing other classmates' i-movies, I've been waiting for these movies to be published, but my WebCT does not show any available for viewing. I have no comments about this topic, since I have no information.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)