Final Blog

My final project is a video that is a story about being caught on both sides of the digital divide.To create this video I used Windows Live Movie Maker. I had only made a one minute video before using only photos and the old version of Windows Movie Maker, but with the help of YouTube tutorials I quickly beat the learning curve with the new Live version. The majority of my time was spent, regarding my final project, on learning how to slice/trim video clips and edit sound. My project heavily relies on the perfect time of my music to set the tone which meant a few hours to get it perfectly inline with my photos and video clips. In the end I probably spent a solid 15 to 20 hours at least on what is in my final product, but honestly most of this time was spent on deciding how best to present my photos and video then struggling with the technology. Windows Live Moive Maker is easy, simple and I will definitely use it in the future.

I also spent a few hours learning how to use audacity and the sound recorder provided on my computer. As I am not in Mani’s class I had not been introduced to audacity. I found it to be user friendly and is a great tool for creating podcasts, etc. I did add a small 20 second voice clip to my final video project, but I was not able to add music on top of my voice. I think with more time I could have worked it out and will try to do so in the future.

I had also never imported my own video clips into movie maker before and I was worried about it. The last time I attmepted anything like this files and formats were not as compatable as they are now and converting files was much more difficult. It was so easy and I am glad that I went for it.

In addition to what ended up in my final product I spent at least 5 hours struggling with Wax 2.0 in an attempt to include a green screen video in my final project. In the end I felt that the struggle I was facing was not worth it for the final product I would have created. The main problem I ran into occured when I would save my final video, it would look as though it worked perfectly in wax and then when I rendered it, it would skip and appear choppy. I have a feeling that one of my files may have been corrupt, but I am still unsure. I would like to attempt to use green screen in the future and think it would be a valuable tool for my students to use, but I think my next attempt will just be for fun so the stress of it not working is removed.

I also spent part of one class learning to use the wii-mote white board. It was easy to use once it was set up, but I do not feel that I will be using it in my class any time soon. The technology behind smart boards and white boards is not where I would like them to be as far as how I feel they can be beneficial in the science classroom. With this being said it would be useful in a mathematics class as an alternative to the white board or chalk board.

Everything else I spent time on was in class when we learned to make comic strips, stop motion animation, etc.

For the distribution of the 60% allocated to my final project I would like it to be broken down as follows:
10% Digital Camera
5% Video Camera (only 5% because final project is more based around photos)
15% Video Editing (only 15% because mainly used photos)
20% Sound Editing
10% Photo Editing or Paint (only one photo was enhance with paint, but almost every photo was edited using Picasa)
Total = 60%

Great class, learnt alot and will definitely be using many of these tools during my future teaching career.