CED0530 week 3 - Animoto

This week we worked on Animoto.  It took me a really long time the first time around.  I uploaded pictures; then deleted a bunch of them because it stated a short video has only 12 pictures.  After all the time and work it turned out to be only "okay."  Then I decided to try and do a longer one.  I didn’t know if I would be allowed to, but to my excitement I was.  In minutes I was able to make the changes and now I really like the video.  I like it so much that my students are going to use it to describe a place (just like I did), and they’ll being doing this before the end of the year.

I REALLY like Animoto.  Now I’m thinking of all the ways I can use it.  It’s so much fun.  I’ve watched my video several times, what a geek!  My next project is going to be using some of my bald eagle pictures.  My students are fascinated with them, because I share a lot of stories with them.  I teach to underprivileged inner city students who don’t get a chance to spend time outside of the city; so I share my experiences of nature with them, through stories and pictures.  They really like the stories and will bring things up from time to time.  Animoto will only add to the stories.  

So far my favorite two assignments in this course are Animoto and Posterous.  Earlier this week I was helping a classmate edit posterous.  In doing so, I discovered quite a few features I was unaware of.  I played around with them a little, but in the interest of time I didn’t change anything.  At some point, time permitting, I want to play around and make some changes to my posterous.

Next we were introduced Pecha Kucha.  I like the idea of this, but I know it’s going to be a challenge.  The video we watched proved the point.  The presenter had a difficult time following the rules.  He was talking about slides past, talked excessively fast so he could say everything he wanted, and he ran over the time limit.  I watched a couple of other examples, I enjoyed the one on glass structures.  This will be an interesting project. 

Now I’m working on revising my presentation using the principles and elements we have learned about thus far.  Once it’s done it will be loaded into Voicethread.

CEDO530 Week 2

This week’s work took forever.  It’s now 6:30 PM on Sunday and this is all I’ve done for the past 3 days.  I can’t wait to get off the computer and put it away.  The dogs aren’t too thrilled about this computer right now either.  Maybe I put too much into it.......  Even though I'm anxious about all the time, overall I'm really enjoying this class.  I like watching all the stories in the different programs.

Voicethread was a new program for me this week.  I know we previewed it in a previous class, but this was the first time I had to actually use it.  This program allows you to add communication (text, audio, video) to a presentation.  I was really excited about the program when we discussed it in class, and I think it has a lot of potential.  In creating my voicethread, I wound up creating several copies of the same presentation.  Oops - now I have to try and figure out how to delete the extras.  I did learn, the hard way, that if you use the audio feature and try to use it for 2 pictures (meaning start on 1 and then advance to the 2^nd), when the audio is done it goes back to the 1st of the 2 pictures.  This made for a really awkward presentation – one that needs to be deleted.  Unfortunately, sometimes we learn the best from our mistakes.  Some ways I could see using this program would be with writer’s workshop.  I especially like this way of presenting for students that don’t mind reading their work aloud, but don’t want to get up in front of the room to present.  This would also be a good program for those students who are perfectionists.  By doing the work before everyone hears and sees it they will then be less anxious when doing the actual presentation.  Ooh, also good for special education students that are in inclusion classrooms for the very same reasons. 

I’m really enjoying Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.  So far, I like his principles of making Zen like presentations.  While I like them, I think it will be more difficult to implement the principles.  It’s not just so much me making the changes, but also everyone else’s expectations of a presentation.  We almost need to move towards a presentation cultural movement.  Wouldn't it be great if everyone, myself included, did presentations like they were telling a story?

I'm having a lot of fun with Posterous.  I have to try and limit myself on the amount of pictures I'm uploading.  Posterous reminds me of the movie "Julie and Julia."  In the movie, Julie is working her way through a Julia Child's cookbook and blogging about it as she goes along.  I really like Posterous, and at the same time I’m a little nervous, and excited, about what Louis has in store for us to do with it. :)  Any ideas how this can be used with students?  How about students that don’t have access to email? 

CED0530 Week 1 - Intro to Digital Story Telling and Presentation Zen

This week was an introduction to “What makes a great presentation?” and digital story telling.  I like some of the information I learned about presentations, however, I’m tired of PowerPoint getting a bad rap.  It’s like I tell my students – computers (in this case PowerPoint) are only as good as the information put into it.  Humans create computers, so not everything is always going to be correct.  I feel the same is true of presentations.  I personally like PowerPoint, just as I do some of the online presentation programs, but it’s only as good as it’s creator. With that being said, I think that as educators we need so spend time teaching students how to correctly use presentation software effectively.

Often students tell educators they know how to use a software program, but do they really know how to use it?  They may know how to put in information, but perhaps we need to teach them how to use the tool more effectively.  I know, who has the time?  As a teacher of underprivileged students with special needs, I feel I spend just as much time teaching the program as I do making sure they have the correct content. 

As we move to creating better presentations I feel we need to keep in mind the multiple intelligences.  While I hate having someone read a presentation to me, I’d hate to see presentations get so simplistic that we leave our visual learners behind.  For example, I know I personally need to look at charts when people are throwing data at me.

One of my favorite things this week was the digital storytelling.  It took quite a while to find three different digital stories, but once I did I really enjoyed the three I looked at.  I chose to look three very different genres, a historical comic book, a brief look into a person’s life, and an animated Christmas story.  I enjoyed all three and now I’m thinking about creating one myself.  Hey Louis, I’m talking about down the road, I wasn’t hinting for an additional assignment.  :)

I also liked the assignment of writing the futuristic story.  I forgot how much I enjoyed creative writing.  Creative writing was always one of my favorites things to do in school.  Something unfortunately I haven’t ever made time for since I’ve left school.