Reading Rocks - Public Service Announcement

PSA Blog

I have had a great opportunity to work in a group with Melissa McDaniel's and Courtney De Leon. We have worked on a Public Service Announcement for Literacy. As the weeks went by, first we collaborated on a team wikispace and brainstormed ideas for the PSA. Melissa was decided to shoot the video since she had access to her students. During the production stage, we all helped put it all together. I edited the audio using Audacity, Courtney edited the still images and superimposed the text over the images. After all the editing was done the video was again emailed to Melissa, which did the final touch ups and adjusted the final sound level. All the work that we put into this project was done with much discussion among us three through wikispaces, emails, and phone. We used the wiki for rough draft and edits, and we used google docs to post script and shot list. Much collaboration was done during the pre-production, the production, and the post production stages of this PSA.

Despite all the work, we are aware that we must give credit to all who deserve it. We have provided the appropriate copyright necessary. We included all credit at the end of the PSA. Like everything in life, we are human and we could have worked on better ways to improve the assignment. I think that for next time we could improve the PSA by possibly meeting in person and plan accordingly to better understand and facilitate each others suggestions.

Reading

Editing Software

After reading the article about the top five free editing software programs, Microsoft Movie Maker was definitely the one for me. I chose this program for two reasons. One, it was free and the other because it was mentioned several times as being the easiest editing program to use. Yes, indeed, it was very user friendly. I created my movie with video clips, music and narration with minimal problems. I completed my assignment with collaboration from my course partner. I enjoyed creating this movie clip.
I can use this experience as a plus to teach my students how to make a movie for themselves. I can see my third grade students create a movie along with their parents. This would be a great assignment to present at our Spring Open House. I anticipate many parents looking forward to working together with their child and with computers. I always prioritize parents, teachers, and students working together to achieve much student success. This activity would be most appropriate.

Remembering Mom

What an experience I encountered, when I worked on the personal photo story for this course. I really enjoyed seeing my end product. I never get tired of watching it over and over again. I truly believe that this was an awesome opportunity to capture the memorable times I had with my beloved mother. I worked on this project for many hours gathering photos, recording narrations, re-recording, cropping, etc. I was pretty overwhelmed at some point. I was getting frustrated with some of the pictures but at the end it all was worth every minute I worked on the project.

I have learned much and have thought of using this program to develop lessons to use in the classroom. I could create a photo story to expand on the concept of characters in a story. I could create a story to introduce the students to the characters that will be in their reading book. Students will be able to understand personal traits of each character and therefore be able to make inferences, or draw conclusions about what each character will do in the story.

WebQuest Evaluation

"Webquest" is an inquiry based website. It has a wide array of useful information that is very reliable, resourceful, and user friendly. Webquest provides plenty of links to connect and learn as you experience the easy navigation moving from page to page as well as a very colorful, appealing format. It lends itself to be very audience appropriate to cater to teachers as well as to students.

This website has conutless postitive features that relate directly to helping teachers create an enviroment where students learn and become technological ready for the 21st century. It has a vaiety of web based projects in all content areas, which makes a teacher's job easier by simply taking a project and personalizing it to their students.

As powerful as this website is, one might still come across something that is not appropriate, or displaying a minimal flaw. This website has poor interacation with question capablility, which in essence means that the ability to question something or curiosity, makes it difficult to respond instantly. Perhaps with some kind of search box, this site would be closer to being perfect. Despite the tiny irregularity, this website is the ultimate source of preparedness for the year 2020.

Webquest is a jewel to any district that wants target technology. It provides ample opportunities for students to learn how to collaborate, evaluate, synthesize and solve problems. Students of today are technology savvy enough to use this tool and together implement it into their daily learning to exceed in excellence.

I strongly recommend that every teacher add this site to their favorities and implement it into their daily curriculum. It will not only help us meet our goal but it will be met effortlessly. Anyone can navigate, interact, discuss, and research with no problem. This website is an essential tool to guide both inexperiened and veteran teachers towards the new age in technology.