Week 5 Assignment: Course Embedded Reflection

In Week 4, our discussion was to talk about how we think technology will be changing in the next few years. According to MindShift, they believe that schools that fail to integrate technology into their curriculum and lessons will be obsolete within the next few years (Blake-Plock, 2009.) As a 21st century educator it is very hard to picture any school not integrating technology into their classrooms. In networking with other districts, I found that many of them have embraced technology, however budgetary restrictions prevent them from moving forward with newer technologies.

Upon reflecting back to the second week in the course, we spent much time discussing how important self-branding is in society. We asked ourselves questions like, “When do students start branding themselves?” or “Why is it even important to brand ourselves at such an early age?” Lea Alcantara simply describes branding as, “…an idea and perceived value formed by its intended audience…” (Alcantara, 2005.) As an elementary school teacher, it is interesting how many times we find ourselves stressing to our fifth graders how reputations (aka branding) will be when they reach middle school. We constantly tell them that how they are behaving and what type of work ethic they are developing now will affect them tomorrow.

This course was designed to help utilize the potential of multimedia on various assignments. As the Technology Specialist on my campus, this course heightened my awareness of how important it is to start using multimedia in student’s coursework. Prior to reading the article on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Churches, 2008) it had hardly occurred to me that technology could fit in on all of the six levels of skills. As much as I’d hate to admit it, before this course, my assignments that I give to students at school would usually fall under the “Remembering” “Understanding” or “Applying” (if we had a good week) category. After learning the importance of using multimedia in assignments, I have learned how to let students participate in assignments that fall in the “Analyzing” “Evaluating” and “Creating” categories of the hierarchy.

As for implementing multimedia rich websites into the classroom, during the middle of this course, I was able to attend the TCEA conference in Austin, Texas. There, I was able to network with other education professionals on how they used various websites with their schools. Many of them simply created a Wiki or a blog to share their sites with teachers. From there, teachers were able to select the ones they liked and bookmark them on the student computer. However, what I decided to do was e-mail all my teachers one Web 2.0 website each day. In the e-mail I would enclose a full review of what that particular site did and even gave examples of how it could be used in the classroom. Since I have started doing this I have received much positive feedback from my teachers. My ultimate goal is to start a general Facebook Fan Page in which I can put all of the information I have learned into a timeline so that teachers can easily access from anywhere.

Alcantara, L. (n.d.). The Art of Self-Branding: Part One | Lealea Design. Web, Print, Graphic Design and Creative Solutions | Lealea Design. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://www.lealea.net/blog/comments/the-art-of-self-branding-part-one/

Blake-Plock, S. (n.d.). 21 Things That Will Be Obsolete by 2020 | MindShift . MindShift | How we will learn. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/03/21-things-that-will-be-obsolete-by-2020/

Churches, A. (n.d.). TechLearning: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally. Classroom Tech Learning, Education, PC, Mac, iPad, Bloom’s Taxonomy – Techlearning.com. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://www.techlearning.com/article/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988

PSA: Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Web Conference Confirmation Blog Link #3 (Multimedia 5363)

The third web conference that I attended, was focused on the details of the project. She went over a few things such as Creative Commons Licensing. She basically explained that we can license anything that we create. She also told us that it was very important to put our licensing and credits at the end of our PSA. She will allow approximately 10 seconds for us to put that information with out getting penalized for time.

Another subject we covered was Dropbox. Many students were very impressed about how it works and how easy it is to share files. She reminded us to send the link of where our files were being shared to her and the Instructional Associate. Our group is making good use of Dropbox, especially when it comes to collaboration. For example, each one of our group members would type in a different color so that we can know who is saying what. We can do this "on the go" and also share our thoughts about what we are doing right or where we could improve.

Web Conference Confirmation Blog Link #2 (Multimedia 5363)

I had my final Web Conference this past week. For the most part, it was an open discussion clarifying any questions the students had. One of the questions that I had brought up was about taking the GRE. I was told that the EdTech program waives the GRE. This definitely helps me out because I would definitely like to continue with the program, but the GRE seems like a big mountain that I would have to climb along with my Action Research Plan and Internship hours.

As far as our group project goes, we were reminded that everything is due on December 16th. She also reminded us to shoot more footage than we really need. She also reminded us to keep in mind the various file formats that we save our files in. From a personal experience, since I am using a Mac, I have had several "bumps in the road" when it came to viewing files that were created on a PC.

Web Conference Confirmation Blog Link #1 (Multimedia 5363)

I was a bit overwhelmed going into the first web conference. Dr. Abernathy had given us her expectations of the course. She said that she had tweaked a few of the assignments so that they would be more enjoyable. She also explained how in Week 1 and Week 2 we would be working with a partner (for interviews and peer review) and that in Weeks 3 through 5 we would need a group of 4 or 5 students so that we can collaborate on a project.

Evaluation of iMovie

This week my goal was to select a free video editor and basically "play around" with it. The software that I chose to review was iMovie. Having both a Mac and a PC at home, I am constantly using Windows Movie Maker. I decided to give iMovie a try. From the start, iMovie had a clean interface and was relatively simple to control. Keep in mind, I was looking something that was user friendly so that my campus teachers as well as students could be able to use it. Importing video from a digital camera was very simple. All I had to do was connect it and literally press "Import From Camera" and the rest took care of itself! Once my videos were imported, I was expecting it to crash just like Windows Movie Maker had done so many times. However, this was not the case! I imported quite a bit of film and my computer did not bog down once!

Editing the actual film was simple as well. All I had to do was select what I wanted, and then trim what I did not want. Once I edited what I needed, I decided to see what other features iMovie had. I did notice that everything was "just there." For example, I wanted to import some of my own pictures and music. iMovie let me select these items directly from iTunes and iPhoto. I did not have to go around looking for them; everything was there for me.

Overall I was very impressed with how easy iMovie was to use. I definitely like it better than Windows Movie Maker and would recommend this software to anyone wanting to edit video. The only drawback is that the user must be using an Apple or Mac computer in order for it to run.

Below is a link to my Podcast reviewing iMovie.

Podcast: Review of iMovie

Click on "Play" to listen to my podcast reviewing iMovie. (Please give it up to 10 seconds to load.)

Podcast: Review of iMovie by Andres Chavez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at andreschavez.podbean.com.