5363 Week 5 blog w/ PSA&CompletedProposal

Our team met on Skype to informally debrief about our project. We all concurred that we enjoyed getting to know each other. I told everyone that "I'm still a bit awe-struck at the relative ease of doing this project with wikis, skype and you tube!!" LOL if only all of this had been around when I was in college the first time! Julia let us know that she's SO happy to be in a group with us that she was doing the happy dance right now! "I can't imagine trying to do what we've done using email...the wiki was a great way to go, " said Russell. "I think our setup was perfect! Thanks Shannon for getting it started!"exclaimed Lynne. We all agreed that communication was not a problem for us at all." We had many positive comments and lots of praise for each other.

In the pre-production phase, I began formulating the idea to use a wiki because I had seen the project template while helping a science teacher at my school create one for her class. I believe Lynne contacted everyone to be in our group. Boy, am I glad she invited me. The group was a creative bunch. Russell volunteered to video, Janet, Lynne and Julia did the research and wrote the script. I volunteered to edit the video and audio and to create the movie in Adobe Premiere and to be responsible for the shot list which Julia promptly helped me with since I wasn't shooting any of the video. Everyone was professional and delivered their assignments in timely manner. We began uploading research documents, still photos, and video clips to our wiki immediately. I was able to begin work on the audio right away. I asked that the video be in the .wmv format and everyone converted their video before uploading it the wiki.

I believe our PSA could be improved by using additional video in place of the 'TAX RATES" still. I feel like it drug on too long, but there isn't really anything I could think of when picturing tax rates and debt so I used the stills.

Julia obtained the copyright for our PSA and I placed it in the last frames of our video.
School Bonds Q & A is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

As far as collaboration and interactions go, our team did great. Everyone was gracious and helpful and offered to do someone else's job if they couldn't do it for some reason. Everytime I needed help finding the web conference recordings or the updated syllabus or anything, someone offered immediately to email it to me. We worked as a team and I would and hope to work with this team again.




Julia Wilson, Shannon Copeland, Russell Dixon, Janet Kelly and Lynne Bullock

**All collaborative Skype meetings are saved here: https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/file-cabinet
**Each members' project assignments: https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/home/to-dos
**Completions for the week: PSA Final video and Premiere screenshots are here:
https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/home/video-files

**Link to our wiki where the proposal resides. https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/project-definition

Week 5
PSA Video

5363 Week 4 Web Conference Blog 9/19/2010

Week 4 – Web conference
September 19, 2010
5pm
I attended the September 19, 2010 web conference. I have already reviewed the conference that took place on Friday, September 17. Friday night’s meeting answered a lot of questions that our team had about narrators and how assignments were to be submitted. 3 of my team members attended Friday, so I wanted to attend Sunday night’s conference in case any new questions arose that we had not considered. I find it interesting that a lot of people have the same questions in every conference. Expectations may not be entirely clear when so many people have the same questions… although, it could just be the group who’s not reading the overviews! ;-) I really like seeing what everyone else is using to collaborate. There have been a number of resources listed in the meeting that I want to check out at a later date. People are using all kinds of different collaboration tools I’ve never heard of. I’m typing this blog while attending the meeting and I am also copy/pasting all the text for research later. I do get exasperated at people who don’t read back in the conversation and keep asking the same questions over and over. I also get put out with people who keep suggesting things that aren’t in the rubric or syllabus until Dr. A says, “Yes, you have to do it.” We’re having to redo our video to reflect things that people brought up in tonight’s meeting. Oh, well, all it takes is time.

5363 Week 4 PSA blog

We have continued to upload stills, video clips and research documents. All members have been updating their sections of our proposal and script. Everyone has provided their pieces of the assignments in a timely manner. I was able to begin work on the video during Week 3 due to the excellent efforts of the script writing and media collection of my team. We had multiple "takes" of each portion of audio and video. I had more than enough material to choose from to create our video. We had more than one narrator for the voice-over parts and several video clips of people asking our bond election questions. I created several PhotoShop text .jpg images that we needed when words, not images were needed to "explain" sections of our narration. When I had a "working" video completed, I uploaded it for evaluation and suggestions for my team. They noticed a few things that I hadn't even considered when shooting the video and offered welcome suggestions for improvement. I can't say enough about the timeliness and professionalism of my team during this project.

Julia Wilson, Shannon Copeland, Russell Dixon, Janet Kelly and Lynne Bullock

**All collaborative Skype meetings are saved here: https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/file-cabinet
**Each members' project assignments: https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/home/to-dos
**Completions for the week: PSA3 is working initial video and Premiere screenshots are here:
https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/home/video-files

**Link to our wiki where the proposal resides. https://sites.google.com/site/edld5363psavideoproject/project-definition

5363 Week 3 PSA Blog

Our team got together a little before Week 3 began. We talked about the logistics of creating our PSA and decided that we would use a wiki and Skype to communicate. I created the initial wiki and invited Lynne Bullock, Julia Wilson, Russell Dixon and Janet Kelly to be co-owners. From there, everyone jumped in and began editing the wiki project template into something we could use. The different pages and features were added, deleted and molded into a working project wiki. I am so proud of the work everyone did just to get the site ready for use. We immediately began uploading school bond information and photos. We all volunteered for assignments to get our part of the process going. I am in awe of how we were able to pull all of this together with relative ease. We all went our separate ways to gather our research, audio, video, stills, and script and have been uploading our "pieces" to the web for all to see and evaluate. During week 4, we will begin the actual video editing.

5363 Week 2 WebConference Blog

I wouldn't have been able to do the Week 2 project without the web conference. I was very confused about doing away with the first project since I already had it done. The questions asked and answered in the conference helped me get organized and to understand exactly what was needed. The fact that I had already done the first assignment helped me with the updated one. I didn't have any trouble at all writing my script due to the extensive evaluations done on the three software programs previously.

Many of my questions were answered. For example, one person asked if there was a typo in the Week 2 updated assignment stating "video" instead of "audio" and Dr. Abernathy confirmed that it should only say 'audio". That cleared up a big question that I had.

Everyone asked good questions about specifics, such as file extensions and what to do if a file wouldn't upload to a site. I enjoy the way everyone is quick with a link to whatever is being asked about. I felt so much better having viewed the conference.

Please continue to record and email the conferences for everyone. I can't be at very many of them, so I really need to be able to access them after the fact to have my questions answered.

EDLD 5363 Week 2 Video Editing software blog

I wish I hadn't started Week 2 early due to the change in assignments, but at least I had the background to import a video clip and do some editing on it in a couple of programs for the tutorial podcast.

The three video editing software packages that I evaluated are MPEG Streamclip, Cinefx, and Windows Movie Maker. My evaluation of Streamclip won't be long. After downloading it for free, it left a .zip file on my desktop with a "Read Me First" file in it. This file promptly explained that there was small piece of software that needed to be purchased to make this "free" software work. I drug it all to the trash.
Second, I evaluated Cinefx. It loaded quickly and easily, but after loading video clips into it, I couldn't do anything with it. The tools were not intuitive at all. I've been teaching video editing for 5 years using Adobe Premiere and have a pretty good "feel" for how video editing tools work. In addition to not being easy to figure out, Cinefx had a black screen which was hard to focus on and annoying to try to read. I won't be using this editing software either.
The third program I looked at was Windows Movie Maker. Movie Maker led me through importing video, image and audio clips easily. I imported a video clip of my daugher riding her bike, a photo of my son and an audio clip of a song. I was then able to quickly place special effects and transitions with the video clip and photo and crop the song down to the needed length.

Although, I still prefer Premiere, I will use Movie Maker at home and school.

Here is the embed code for my audio. I will also include the link.
http://www.teachertube.com/music.php?music_id=3625&title=5363EDLDWEEK2PODCAST&ref=Sdcopeland



Here is the license I obtained for the work :

EDLD5363Week2Podcast by Shannon Copeland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.