BP7_One Minute Commercial

If you are a teacher and hate competing with Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site...look no further. Edmodo.com is your answer. If you don't believe me, watch for yourself.

PE3_iMovie

My mom would be so proud!!

I was dreading having to do homework tonight but then my brother went to the hospital for kidney stones and I figured that I didn't have it that bad.

I must say that when I was watching the tutorials on editing the video, using transitions, voiceovers, and inserting music I felt pretty good about myself. All of my playing around in the last three months has really paid off. While I was jimmy rigging a lot of my videos I really knew the basics. These last couple of tutorials really helped me fine tune what I was doing. If anything it really explained to me what and how the different tools worked together.

A cool new thing that I learned was the sound wave button. I have never used or even really noticed this button before. It makes me feel so powerful when I can adjust and see all of the sound waves in real time. It really helped when I was adding sound effects and music to my video. When I was working on my video I was able to put in some background music and lower the volumes of different audio in each clip. I was also very excited about editing to a beat. I just finished summer school today and I can't wait to put all of those pictures to a cool song. My director asked me to publish something to the website and thanks to these tutorials it is going to be great!

Unfortunately, I felt like the last chapter was very redundant. It was all about sharing through iMovie. Most of the formats looked exactly the same, especially the ones that had to do with social media sites. I feel as though that could have been condensed or explained that they were so similar.

Overall I feel like I learned a lot through this experience and I can't wait to use all that I have learned to advance my skills to the Final Cut level. If I forget anything I have 5 pages of notes to look at. Stop laughing at me...and watch the video I made. I had to just stop because I spent forever playing around with the program.

PE2_iMovie

It was 91 degrees here today. For those of you making fun of me, that is really hot to teach summer school in Ohio with no air conditioning. So afterwards, I treated myself to ice cream and a nap; it was glorious. So amazing in fact that I figured I should get some homework done when I woke up. I watched the iMovie tutorials for Chapters 4, 5, and half of 6.

In my spare time today

Again, I am blown out of the water. There are so many things that I learned today. I actually took the time to download the other exercise files and I did everything along with the narrator. In the last blog I mentioned that I couldn't wait to learn how to use the buttons in the center of the interface. You bet your bottom dollar that I learned, and I took notes on it today.

One of the best things that iMovie offers is the ability to organize your clips. I love that I can tag and mark things as my favorite. It is similar to iPhoto. This is great because then I can find exactly what I am looking for, especially when I am doing projects for homework. I also didn't realize that when I was clicking delete on a clip that it was just going to a different file instead of leaving my hard drive. Now I know how to correctly dispose and organize my materials.

 

 

All of my rejected clips

Since I had being doing a lot of things through trial and error, it was cool to learn some of the more sophisticated tools. I am so proud of myself for learning how to use the precision editor, clip trimmer, and, inspector window. These helped me take the knowledge that I had one step further. I was able to shift my clips without changing the length of them and I was able to correct small overlaps or unnecessary clips.

Mom would be so proud of my editing!!!

My favorite part that I learned today was how to incorporate pictures into my videos. This was something that I personally struggled with last month while I was making videos. A lot of my peers were very kind in giving me directions on how to utilize them, but watching the videos today made it much clearer to me. While I am still making mistakes on my practice videos, it is good to know more than I did before and with more practice I will land it just right. I feel like I am well on my way to being an expert. Watch out Hollywood, here I come!

BP4_Edmodo

Well I finally took the time to see what all of the fuss is all about. Many people have told me how great this tool is in the classroom, so I had to check it out myself. I find that I am looking for a Web 2.0 tool where I can do many things at once. I want it to be a place where students can communicate, see calendars, assignments, and be social. I want to have an online class feel that stretches farther than the 49 minutes a day that I get with my students.

Edmodo is that tool. My last post I talked about Moodle which was impressive, but this tops that for sure.  With Edmodo I will instantly have my students' attention because it is setup like Facebook. I was unsure of what exactly it had to offer, so I just spent the last hour reading the whole user guide. I know what you are thinking...get a life!!! But I had some time to kill before going to a baseball game later tonight.

Anyways, the interface is very recognizable and I love that I can do so many things in one place. Here are some of the great features. I can set up a group for each one of my classes where we can talk, post files, post links, have polls, and assignments. All of this can be done in the privacy of the page unless we want to make it public. Since each student will have their own page, they can also speak privately with each other. Another thing is that I can grade everything right on the spot and the students can see the feedback and the grade. They get notifications as in Facebook which allow them to keep up with all current events.

This is something that I would like to incorporate in my classroom because it would really represent a 21st century classroom. I think that this is something that would not only be helpful for students, but also for parents. Each parent would get their own account. This would allow me to have parental involvement and communication in a consistent manner.

So far I have connected with some communities and teachers. I set up groups for my three preps this year. I am hoping that I can inch them in little by little and maybe by second semester use it full time. For the beginning of the school year I am going to post some intro comments and perhaps some scavenger hunt activities around edmodo. 

My all time favorite aspect is that emodo also has an app for their program. I just downloaded it to my iPhone. This way students can have it on the go like all of their other social media apps. I can't wait to see where this goes. I even connected with Greg Havens as another teacher to collaborate with. You all should give it a try: www.edmodo.com

BP5_Drew's Blog

Drew is an excellent photographer and he found a great resource. Click here to see my comment on his blog.

BP6_Chris' Blog

Today I got to read Chris' blog on Eduslide. He had some good ideas. Click here to see my comment on his blog.

PE1_iMovie

So... Today I decided to start watching the Lynda tutorials on iMovie. I just want to take this moment to point out that the new tutorial is 3hours and 28 minutes as opposed to the 2 hours and 22 minutes. :)

I must say that it is really impressive to have a place to go and watch these tutorials. When I first started working with iMovie I would just toggle back and forth between my project and the help screen. Even though it has been a couple of months since I started this masters program, I am by no means an expert on iMovie. At least once a project something happens and I have no idea how I got it to do what it did. I am very excited to learn how to make my future movies look professional and high-tech so that I may engage my students with good media in the classroom.

I completed the first three chapters today in Lynda and I am already learning so much. In the beginning it is just the basic interface and setup explanations. I thought it would be boring but I learned some new shortcuts today. Also, there is a toolbar in the middle of the Project and Event area that I never really learned. Today the narrator discussed what some of them are and I am excited to learn how to use them in my editing.

Some specific things I learned include: switching the event library and project area for my room (pictured above), changing the frame time, previewing clip selections and muting audio while skimming. All of these are going to make such a huge difference when it comes to project area and minimizing distractions.

I can't wait to get to the heart of editing a new video. Stay posted to see what else I can learn. The sky is the limit!!!