Course Reflections EDLD 5363

My expectations for this course were very open. I have worked in video technology and multimedia for quite a while so my hopes were to learn some new techniques or get some new ideas to use with my students and with my own work. I had not considered the idea of a group project for this course becasue of the nature of the course format. As it turned out this type of project worked very well for this class. Having to work together to overcome some of the limitations of working at a distance from other team members put an interesting challenge in front of us. I feel like that my group was successful in adapting to the challenges and in overcoming them.

At first I was not sure how I could take the lessons learned in this class and apply them to my school experience, then I realized that I could take the same basic concept and develop a collaboration with some of the other schools in my district. Several of the other campuses are developing video programs like the one on my campus and this would be an excellent opportunity to apply the lessons learned in this class to help our students learn. I have already contacted two of the other elementary campus IT Specialist to see if they would be interested in moving forward with a cooperative project of some type.

I feel like our team was very successful in achieving the outcomes set forth in the class. I feel like my individual projects met the criteria established and hopefully provided some information or entertainment as well.

I often underestimate my own creativity when it comes to completing project like the ones required in this class. I especially enjoyed the challenges that the assignments presented each of them required a different take on dealing with multimedia and video issues and problems. All in all I feel like I gained from this class because of the need to meet each of the challenges presented in the assignments.

Reflection on Our PSA Assignment

In the beginning I was concerned about working with a group of people that I did not know on a project that was a major portion of our grade for this course. As it turned out we worked very well together and each of us fell into our natural roles in the process. The selection of our topic came easily and once the reaseach was completed a production plan came together easily. Once the video was shot and edited the process of adding the voice over dictated the lenght of each sequence. We had a choice of final formats but chose to use the .wmv because of it relatively small size and the fact that all of us could view it without difficulty.

As the one responsible for the editing, I would improve some of the transitions and the visual overlays at the time I thought they were good but in retrospect some of them could have been a bit smoother. I felt the contributions and input from the team members was very good. The biggest problem we experienced was that of having to rely on email to exchange ideas and contribute our pieces to the whole project. If there had been some central location that could have been used as a drop box it might have worked better.

All in all I think that this was an excellent example of cooperation and exchange of ideas among people who did not know each other at all in the beginning.

I have used Pinnicle Studio 9 for several years and I have found it to be a very complete editing suite. The versatality of the program allows me to do the type of video editing that I need to do at my school as well as editing home video of my family and my new granddaughter. Several months ago I updated to version 12 of the Studio suite and the improvements are amazing. This new package allows me to do an even greater variety of edits to any video. In addition I can save to a much wider variety of formats including flash video.

This video was a lot of fun to put together. We has a student this year who has inoperable brain cancer and because of this she has missed all but the first few weeks of school. Her 1st grade classmates decided that they wanted to organize a fundraiser for her and her family. The class worked with the teachers and our student council to organize the selling of pink bandanas, pink being her favorite color. The students raised over $3000 to help out the family.

Snow -- Reflections on a project

Using PhotoStory3 to create video projects is something I enjoy teaching to my students. It is perhaps one of the easiest and best digital video editing pieces I have come across for working with still photos and assembling them into a format that people enjoy viewing and using.

This project came about when I was casting around looking for an idea to complete an assignment for my class at Lamar University. When I came across the pictures of the snow that fell in 2008 I knew I had a topic. The script writing and editing is easy when you understand where you are going.

I have to say that I had fun creating this little project.

The Search for a Professional Development Model Goes On

The Professional Development page at the Technology Applications Center for Educator Development (TACED) [http://www.tcet.unt.edu/START/profdev/models.htm] leaves a great deal to be desired in terms of being a user friendly and usable site. The site itself is a single page of nearly all text with a small two colored banner at the top of the page. At first look the page appears to be a typed listing of articles followed by a brief description of the information to be found at each site listed. The information on the page is divided into three main groups each delineated by a heading that identified the focus of the links provided below them. Near the bottom of the page is a banner containing 7 icons that serve as links to other parts of the website or as external links.

Unfortunately the entire site is extremely sterile in its appearance. The entries on the site are in list format with the name of the site listed followed by a short synopsis of the information to be found on the site. Once more of the 14 sites listed on the page 12 are broken links and another 2 are password protected. This fact alone places severe limits upon the usefulness of the site for any real research. The links at the bottom of the page are little better. One site contains a disclaimer that it is no longer maintained by the Texas Center for Educational Technology and does not appear to have been updated since 2001. The other links are to sites that are as plain as the original site. All of these links are part of the University of North Texas TACED site. This site might contain excellent information but the appearance of the site and the fact that some of the links are broken would lead me to believe that this site would not be a good source of reliable information on the topic of Professional Development.