Week+5+-+Class+Reflection

Class 5363 Multimedia Reflection

This class I had to get with a group to do a public service announcement. I was nervous with doing the group assignment taking into consideration that I started getting cluster headaches at the beginning of the class, when this happens I average a migraine every other day and I don’t know what my availability will be with the groups.

The group decided to do a video on Cyber Bullying. The original collaboration was through email and by posting information on our website that was created to keep track of the collaboration and what the group did. The unofficial leaders of the group ended up being Loraine andRegina. After week 3 we decided to meet online at the same time through adobe connect to make sure we where all on the same page and so that we could get everything done in the allotted time period. During the web conference we divided up the different tasks and decided to meet the following week to make sure that we could finalize everything.

During the course I also evaluted and used open source software. Open source software is one of the best resources and gifts to budget strapped school district, but often the variety of choosing the best one can often be overwhelming and keeping track of which one is the best. I use different open source software for my classroom, but the process of getting the school district to allow the use of the open source software is often a pain and takes a while to get through the process. For this class I used the following open source software, Movie Maker, Audacity, wikispaces and google docs. I was already familiar with all of these different sources and have even taught my 5th grade daughter how to use Movie Maker, though I feel she is actually better at using the program than I am. The one program that was new to me was audacity which I felt was easy to use and straight forward.

In comparing Movie Maker to Adobe Premiere pro, I felt that it was easier to use and quicker to learn how to get a video done with it for the average user.

What I got out of this course more than anything else was the teamwork and collaboration of a group and meeting with a group without actually meeting with the group in person. I will still admit that I am not a fan of group projects because I feel that I usually end up doing most of the work of the group. During this group project I felt that Lori Lambert seemed to do most of the work and I felt like I was not doing enough for the project, but didn’t know what else I could do to help her out with the project. I did like the fact that we met two times on Adobe connect and I really see the benefit of online collaboration and also view this as part of the future of not only high school education but of college education where students will take classes on-line and have to meet with the class at different times, but will not have to actually leave their classroom.

The one part of the project that I felt I helped with was setting up our group website, the problem with the group website was the everybody started posting and putting information to different places and it started getting confusing to where the different group members where posting information. Also the group members all worked during their own times so it was hard to figure out what everybody was doing and what everybody was comfortable doing, to help alleviate this problem we meet as a group on-line using Adobe Connect. Using adobe connect allowed us to all get on the same page and make sure we where all doing what we need to finish the PSA project.

Creating the PSA video was rewarding as we all gave different ideas on what should go into the video, the hardest part of the video was taking all of these ideas incorporating them into a vide and making sure the video didn’t go over a minute long.