The Final Reflection?

So this is the last one for the course. YEAH!

I am finished with my website, at least for now, and I feel like I have a decent product. The google sites program is simple to use and really does give everybody a chance to make a site. I hope to be able to put my site to some good use in the future.

Overall, I believe that this course has been quite useful in my studies. I really think that some of the skills taught in this course will be useful, like making and maintaining the site and blog, in my future. The info in this class seemed more practical than some of the more abstract, theoretical stuff I did in the spring time. I would not say that I am fully prepared for the next step, as I doubt anybody truly is, but I feel a bit more ready.

I am overjoyed that we do not have a final in this class. A written test seems silly and superfluous when we have all of the artifacts to present to show our progress.

To bring this nonsense and tomfoolery full circle, I will address my claim that I am a Luddite. In short, I still am. I do not trust the technology one bit. It's nice when it works, but I do not foresee it always being reliable, or even present for that matter. With that being said, I do feel a bit more comfortable toying with the technology. I did things in this course that I never really thought I would do, or even want to do.

All in all, this was not too horribly painful.

Time for Revolution

So here it is. Let the criticizing and jeering begin. I have more or less "reflected" upon this creation before, but I suppose I can squeeze out some more ideas.

I am somewhat happy with the way the show came out. I became awash with ideas for music, and I wanted to make more slide shows in order to use more music and flesh out some ideas that I have archived in my brain.

I have been building a library of songs that relate to my content area and it is nice to be able to finally use some of the entries in the aforementioned library. I'm sure the students will not care all that much, but perhaps some may be hooked by the novelty of the tracks or the connection between the media and the content.

I sure hope so, or else I will be unemployed in the near future!

The second part of MY MOVIE...

...is now much better.

After figuring out the sound clip deal the other night, I had all sorts of ideas for music, so I brought in another disc to class this evening to add some tunes.

I think my new edition is much better than the first. I added three new song clips and I believe they greatly enhance the slide show. Furthermore, they are directly related to the content and slides.

I am not looking forward to presenting the slide show. I think it is cool and I like watching it, but I will no doubt feel like a stooge when others are watching it. I know they will not dig the music, but I hope they see how it relates. We shall see.

This is mildly exciting...now I can integrate some killer metal tracks into my teaching! YEAH!

My MOVIE....

...is totally lame!

I do like it, in a bizarre sort of way. It is a tad embarrassing to watch something that I made because I am so self-conscious, but it is also mildly neat. The song clip totally slays, but I wish I could use the entire track. So much is lost by using only a 30 second clip...woe is me!

This evenings venture was tedious. Very tedious. I figured out how to put the audio track on the slide show quickly, but it took roughly 40 minutes to figure out how to split the track into clips. It took forever and I forced myself to take a break because I was frustrated.

I'd love to make more of these at some point. I quite like playing with the pictures and the music, although I do hate copyright in instances like this. Hopefully I would be able to produce a second slide show much quicker because I have some experience, otherwise I might just move on and use another presentation.

If I became really angry, I could just make a slide show and then bring in my music on my own music player and present both simultaneously. That might not be a bad idea actually...it might be a way around the 30 second music clip limitation!

GENIUS!

Get ready to laugh at me on Thursday when we present our products!

Wiki-Tiki-Tavi and The American Revolution

Hey, the social studies group did well on the wiki project! YEAHHH!

The iMovie project was quite fun last night. I was fairly prepared and had about a dozen or so pics on my flashdrive for my story about the American Revolution, so I only needed to resize them and pick my favorites and I was ready to play.

The iMovie program seemed fairly easy to operate, although I did get a little frustrated with the caption part. I could not figure out how to add captions to a slide, and I tended to be long winded anyway, so I just made a few slides with text that preceded the picture they described. Hopefully that will work.

The music track should be fun to use. I have an instrumental song called "1776" that I want to use by a band called Iced Earth, and I'm anxious to see how lame my iMovie turns out! I could also use their version of the "Star Spangled Banner", but I feel that is too obvious. Their version is also instrumental, but I think I would save it for a later project about the War of 1812 because Mr. Key wrote the poem that goes along to it in 1814.

Oddly enough, the tune to our national anthem was taken from a British drinking song...go figure. We were so angry that we rebelled against the crown but we kept the drinking song and wrote some new words for it. How American :)


I am digressing...I was a bit surprised at how much I enjoyed playing with the program and I look forward to finishing it on Tuesday. It's nice to make something with the technology that I truly feel will be useful. I was not so sold on the wiki and I certainly did not like it, but I dig this movie/slideshow/music amalgam that we are synthesizing.

The Spirit of 76!

I'm thinking of things to do for my imovie project later in the semester, and being that this weekend was the big Fourth, I think I might do something with Revolutionary America. Cliche, I know, but still cool. I have some ideas for music as well...but we will save that for later.

I hope everyone was safe over the break.

I have also been thinking about reflections...and I hate it. I don't dislike the practice of reflecting, as it seems natural to do in one's head, but to be required to publish reflections and to be critiqued is a tad ridiculous. Who can really say whether or not the reflections are of a certain quality?

I would think the only thing that really matters is what we do with our thoughts. If we realize that we did something poorly, then we should rectify the problem and learn from our mistake, or try something different next time. It's pretty simple and straightforward. I firmly believe that some of this "reflective practitioner" stuff is fluff. So...let the backfiring begin.

World War I

Here is my World War I inspiration project. I enjoyed doing this much more than I did making the PLN. It is nice to actually work with some content and mix it with the technology.

The inspiration program is fairly simple to use. I never really became frustrated or wanted to run away. I can definitely see how the inspiration program can be useful because it can make graphic organizers, which everyone seems to love so much.

I think that my inspiration project might be tweaked and used again if I have to teach World War I because these types of webs are helpful for students. It allows them to see how various, seemingly-unconnected pieces of info actually tie together. This will help them if they have to write a short essay combining different pieces of info on a final or a unit test.