In addition, I am looking forward to reading all the RILS (Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenarios).
Another great RILS was posted by Amanda Rhymer and Cynthia Madanski. Although they are not in this cohort, I still learned alot by visiting their blog. They were in my last classes cohort. I like to tie the old with the new - since I'm still attached (and miss) my former classmates.
Here's theLINK. Wonder on Blogger if we could ever have a "linkable" image?
For this part of the RILS (Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenarios), I began the process of students creating their own blogs. I created a class blog called "SKC Media&Design".
Here's the SKC blog. Students will connect with this site. . . . .
Students then created their own blogs and "added as a friend". In order to learn the process, I had students take screenshots of all the webpages they have constructed thus far in their web class. Students then uploaded all of the webpages onto their blogger.
Of course the student blogs were much more creative than mine!!! Not only did they grasp the concept faster, they showed enthusiasm to quickly share their blogs with their classmates.
Wow, what a find!! Immediately when I found this Web 2.0 tool, I grabbed it. I've been wanting my students to create online portfolio websites for years. This just makes it so much easier for all of us and we can connect and follow each other too!
Here are some of the portfolio templates we can download to use with blogger.com and wordpress.com.
Here are some great templates for students to upload their Media Arts & Design work.
I was surprised, like I always am, that the students went right ahead and created their own templates. Perhaps they feel restricted by using someone else's design. Anyways, I am so proud of them for wanting to be the best they can be and also that being individual and expressive is important to them. They are not receiving a grade for their own designs, just receiving a grade for uploading their webpage screenshots onto the blog in order that they may have a neat organized package of the complete set of work that they have created in the web class that I teach. The web class is HTML/CSS.
I love the flow and interactivity design of this blog. Check out KV Techno Snake. BTW, going to have to investigate what "Techno Snake" means. . . hmmm.
I have taught web design at
a community college for the last seven years. Needless to say, the technology
has rapidly changed since I began. Although we learn the Adobe Suite primarily,
in particular DreamWeaver for website layout, it is worth some investigation to look into other
web content management systems. Web content management systems allow the
designer/creator to utilize authoring, collaboration and administration of
dynamic websites. The following is a link to a list of TTW (Through the web)
WYSIWIGS (What you see is what you get) of free, flexible, robust website
content management platforms.
The primary programs I am
investigating are Wix, Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. Through this class, I
found a new one worth investigating. It is called Lubith.
Lubith works within WordPress to generate dynamic content with "drag and drop" intuitive interface technologies so that even the unexperienced designer can create websites. You can resize the theme elements by dragging the handlebars with the anchor points. In addition, no code is required.
The site theme generator, Lubith, is easy to navigate through and includes many video tutorials. The most interesting thing is that the videos (see below) contain no verbal narration. I am continually instructing my students about the decline in literacy. We are reading less and less. In fact, since the mid-1980's, the overall American literacy rate has gone from 80,000 words in the average vocabulary to now 10,000 words. This is due to a number of factors, but the one that I like to focus on is the fact that we are now a global community and English may not be the primary language. It is important for my students to be able to learn how to make effective instructional videos in the coursework that they are studying. VIDEO LINK.
I'm still learning Imovie. Head first apparently! As with any new software application, learning doesn't really happen until the application process. I'm continually surprised at what I will learn. When learning something new, I anticipate what will be the most time consuming and prioritize where I want to focus my creative energy. Again, one must learn the technical before the creative can be applied. For this project, I have some glitches that I need to figure out. While figuring these out, creative ideas come to me which is good. Some ideas that came to me while completing this project is that possibly, I could have the students activated in a clockwise motion. Inspired by the opening to the Brady Bunch, I thought this might be a good alternative eye catching effect.
Ok I have been diving into Imovie and utilizing the green screen. I was able to borrow a real nice green screen from the IT department on campus. After offering some lunch to some students, I was able to ask them to come into the classroom after class hours for an interview. The students were nervous at first and we had to do several takes. The takes were fun and assisted us in "loosening up." Remember that I am attempting to launch a media press release for the college I work at.
Next I went around campus and filmed some background videos. Here's some screen shots of the videos I shot on campus.
Next, following closely the Lynda.com video tutorial, I placed the green screen videos of the students over the top of the background videos. Two of the videos worked fairly well, but the last video of Vicky has some issues with cropping. My next step is to go in a brainstorm and create a flow chart of potential issues concerning the situation. Hopefully, by the time we are to complete this project for both FullSail and SKC, I will have figured out a method to more easily record.
I am excited to apply what I have learned from watching the Lynda.com Imovie training. Here's my certificate to add to my portfolio. I am super excited about this!
In order to learn about Imovie, we need some practical experience to apply learning. I've decided to launch a media campaign at the college. My colleague and I discussed today that we could create a tagline for the video series and call it "I am SKC." SKC stands for Salish Kootenai College. I got a fantastic idea while talking to my students about this. One of my students is attending classes with his three children. And he is trying to get his wife to enroll too. What a family affair! I asked him if I could start interviewing him tomorrow and it's a go.
Another advantage of learning Imovie thoroughly is that I can teach my new skills to my students. One area that I would like to develop more is the green screen technology. I didn't realize that you could just paint a wall in your office green. Any green works, as long as it is saturated. Here's some pointers I learned about the green screen.
Pointer #1. The green screen doesn't fade in, so you have to align both videos - the one of the person and the one of the background together. Here's the two videos. Move them into the working area and place the green screen on top of the trees.
Pointer #2. In order for the masking to be believable, make sure your lighting source is consistent in both videos. Additionally, make sure your camera angles are consistent. For example, if your subject is at eye level, make sure your trees or background is at eye level.
Pointer #3. Leave some green at the end of your recording. This way Imovie can make sure to capture the full green color and then you can subtract the last frame. I think this has been one of the important things that I have learned when making videos for editing later. Leave some space before and after for editing. This is important stuff!
Pointer #4. You can manually crop objects that you wish to not have in the video. In the example below, the instructor used the crop tool to crop some equipment. Just be careful that if the subject exits the stage, that he doesn't just disappear into cyberspace.
Well that's it for today. Can't wait to go shoot and edit.
In the early days of Macintosh computers, iconography was
introduced as a visual symbolic system for navigating the desktop. Icons such
as folders and trash cans allowed users to intuitively understand the function
of those icons rather than reading text. Although most of us are fluent now in
reading text as adults, there is still a decoding process when reading
information. If information is presented in a visual format, access and
understanding is quicker and more thorough.
Tag clouds envelope this philosophy of holistic understanding
based on hierarchy of importance and how many times a thought is repeated.
In this example of a
tag cloud, the population of each of the world’s countries is visually
represented by size of text. The size of the text directly corresponds with the
population of the country.
Wordle, a Web 2.0 application allows users to experiment and
create their own tag clouds. Here is a tag cloud for Web 2.0.
The experience of creating wordless is not only an engaging
experience, it has important data analysis applications too. Keywords and
metadata on websites allows google and other search engines to optimize
searching criteria. Because the search engine analyzes and prioritizes data, it
can determine relative importance and presence on the web. This process is
called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
Wordle is an application that intuitively allows virtually any age
group to create information. The application allows limited editing and
formatting for the entry basic level, but with continued use and understanding,
students can create more advanced designs and templates where tag words can be
depicted in images such as faces and portraits and various objects.
To see this explanation on how to create your Wordle, click here.
Here's the Wordle.net interface. It is very user friendly and intuitive.
My creations in Wordle.
Media Literacy Wordle.
I love this example of a tag cloud taken from Wikipedia. This image is easily understood by my students. It explains the concept of the size or hierarchy of the words and the higher the contrast is equal to the population of each country.
Using IGoogle has streamlined my existence. Ok, not quite, but it has helped organize my thoughts, tasks and connected me with important informative blogs and links that I use on a daily basis. In this conceptual age of endless amounts of information, I am eternally grateful for a tool such as this.
Let's look at the first step in setting up your homepage on IGoogle.
I chose a theme with an orange color scheme to match my blog, cause color has a powerful, memorable effect on learning and retaining. This way, I have my facebook, gmail, twitter, googledocs, all the blogs I read (via GoogleReader), smashing magazine (which I look forward to reading daily) and time, temperature, and some other techy stuff right at my command and all on one page. In addition, I set the IGoogle as my default opening page so there it is first thing in the morning!
My only issue that I need to investigate is how to make the gmail and facebook boxes longer so that I can cut down on the scrolling.
Spoiled, aren't we?
Next is my CBR Action Research tab which will cut down on a lot of rummaging around through my bookmarks looking for it.
See the additional pages - my FSO AR page, and my ETC which links to additional resources.
Conversations with Dr. Hanaway:
I learned something great also, after talking to Rena, our FullSail instructor. She organizes all of her student's blogs using this system. Since I teach several on-line classes, I am looking forward to utilizing this tool also. Lately I have just been using Moodle and Facebook, but IGoogle has a much more appropriate and useful interface. :) KAT
After using faceBook for over three years, I have discovered that social networking provides the connections I need within the professional, personal, and familial realm. However, blogging may be the need I have for further and more in depth discussions. I'm looking forward to engaging in academic discussions via my new blog with others in my field.
