We started our class this evening, literally with a web conference! I have come to enjoy the web conferences over the last few months as they give me a chance to ask questions and get answers in a hurry. There were around 30 students in our web conference and one thing that is different about the layout of our conferences vs. the other two Lamar courses that I have taken is that this professor will be hosting conferences several times this week, but only requires us to attend 3 over the course of 5 weeks. What is great about this is that these conferences are almost like office hours where I can come in and get help on something if I get stuck. There are four times that I can attend this week and I may drop in tomorrow, or maybe Friday morning to share how my personal digital story is coming along.
This course is centered on multimedia and technology and while I consider myself a fan of technology and gadgets, I have very little experience on the production end of multimedia production, editing, presentation, etc. This class opens the world of multimedia up to me by offering me useful websites I can go to in order to view what is out there for multimedia production, without having to spend hours hunting online.
I also read an absolutely fascinating article by Patti Shank entitled "Think Tank" which talks about the psychology and learning process required to do good multimedia. I almost feel like an entire course on the design of a learning website could be taught from this article alone! It also has me thinking about my own website and how much I need to change it. Right now, my Spanish class website is mostly used for curriculum instruction but I would like to construct a new one that not only delivers instruction of the class work but also interacts and creates an environment my students can use to truly learn.
I plan to post the link to my digital story as soon as I get it up on teachertube.com. I love youtube but it can be a very cruel place to post just about anything so at least on teachertube I can expect some professionalism and I might even open up my video posting for comments.
As for my actual personal digital story, I'm going to use imovie for the first time in my career. I know, I know, it is sad considering it has been on every Mac I have owned since about 1999! But I have been a consumer of its videos and not a producer...until now.
Hang tight and I'll get that video URL posted by the end of this week!
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