I am finally feeling more comfortable with using Weebly now that it is functioning properly for me. Now that I have the technical aspects more under control, I am starting to dive into the content. I have my home page, About the Author and Inspiration pages pretty close to done, but I am struggling with how to organize my Learn More pages. The checklist was very useful on the other pages, but my current feeling is that there is way too much content on the first Learn More page. My overall struggle is visually how to keep each page appealing/clean/easy to read while at the same time including all of the many required content pieces. My actual project has evolved into touching on 3 main areas (Growth Mindset, creating visual data charts and providing effective feedback). I am wondering if I can ask Marie to make me 3 separate pages or if that is just creating more work for myself which I definitely don’t need at this point? I am at a bit of a stand still right now so I just need to dive in and get going. Maybe once I start adding some content to those pages, I will see a solution. I used to be a definite planner, but one thing this Master’s journey has taught me is that sometimes the only way to figure something out is just jump into the deep end and have the confidence in myself that I won’t drown!
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OK folks. It’s official. My video is out there for the world to see (or not see which is probably more likely!) . My son helped me to upload it to YouTube which would have been a bit confusing without his help. I didn’t know that YouTube had it’s own video editing section so I was able to do some final video and audio touches. There was a button called “Quick Fixes” or something like that so I didn’t really have to manually change too much. I was frustrated that it only had 3 thumbnails for me to choose from and 2 of them were photos of me in frozen bizarre facial expressions. There was only a custom thumbnail option if you become verified, but I’m OK with how it is now. It’s just a relief to finally have this finished- it was definitely a time consuming project! I am not 100% proud of my final product, but it’s another milestone that I am proud that I accomplished.
Give us an honest appraisal (venting?) of your next journey steps around trying to produce your Capstone Project video. What problems did you encounter? How did you solve them? I decided to just run with using iMovie since it seemed the most intuitive and time efficient. Overall, I am pleased with the look of my video although keeping it to 90 seconds was definitely a challenge! The video aspect was relatively straightforward, but I had to enlist my teenagers to help me with the audio portion. The background music often overlapped and I wasn’t able to readjust the size of the audio bar. I looked at the help features on iMovie which helped, but it was still was a bit tricky. I don’t have an iCloud account so that also presented challenges because then my audio choices were very limited. I decided to just play around with the speed of the preloaded audio. It’s not exactly what I wanted, but it’s good enough I hope. Once I uploaded it to my Drive, I realized that the opening shot isn’t my beginning photo, but instead it’s me frozen in a weird facial expression. Awesome- hope I can get some help fixing that... I haven’t tried to upload it to a YouTube channel and since I've never tried it, I’m not sure how that will go. I figure all those millions of YouTubers did it so I can too! What does being a good critical friend mean to you? What do you expect or would you like from others?
A Critical Friend is someone who: • first and foremost, you trust and respect their viewpoint • provides honest and critical feedback • is a skilled observer and listener • asks provocative and stretch questions • understands your background and context of your project • provides a different perspective through fresh eyes My expectations from others:
Give us an honest appraisal (venting?) of your journey around trying to produce your Capstone Project video. How did you decide what editor you might use? What problems did you encounter? How did you solve them? While I am just beginning my journey of attempting to produce my video, I can already see that this 90 second video is going to take more time to create than I originally thought. My only experience with my own students is creating an iMovie trailer when we wrote our own class play. While that was relatively painless and intuitive, I guess I assumed making this video would be as well. Wrong! I watched the tutorials for WeVideo and Moovly and they both seemed very complicated to me. I plan on trying iMovie, but since I am still in the storyboard phase, I don’t know what challenges and struggles await. YouTube Editor might be a possibility as well. I know the tone of my video is going to be slower paced and so far I haven’t really seen any examples of capstone project videos that have inspired me. I don’t want a lot of flashy special effects so I really want the images I choose to be powerful and I want my message to be clear. I am hoping to create an emotional story that really communicates the challenges that my struggling readers encounter everyday. Jane advised me to have about 30 seconds showcasing the bleak future that non-readers face and transition the final 60 seconds into a more hopeful/inspiration tone when my project idea comes in and saves the world! My current struggle is just in getting started with the script. Trying to pull the viewers in and encourage them to find out more about my project is going to be tricky, but I am just going to jump into it |
Dana HandI teach Read 180 at Northwood Elementary School and I am passionate about reading (obviously!) In my "free time" I love hanging out with my 2 teenagers and taking our two dogs for long walks. Archives
March 2017
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