Final Digital Story and Blog #8

Creating my final digital story project has been a lot of work! Making the storyboard and all of the other related parts last week took me forever, but I thought that making the final video would be a little bit easier. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. A few people had already posted their final videos and watching them just ended up confusing me even more about what was expected and what we were supposed to be making. Although many of us have corresponded quite a bit through facebook trying to make sure we were clear on the expectations, watching the posted videos just made me question if I was even doing the right thing. Because it was really too late to check with others, I decided to just do what I thought was right, and hope for the best. But really, it reinforced the fact that explaining the directions and expectations beforehand was so important. When I do end up using DST with my own students, I know that I will have to be explicitly clear with that fact.

Regarding the actual putting together piece of my video, I found that trying to make a story out of my culminating experience proposal was not easy at all. I think I mentioned this last week, but it seems like the proposal would work for an informational kind of video, but not necessarily one where we are trying to utilize digital storytelling strategies from Ohler’s book. Trying to make my proposal into a story took a lot of effort and rethinking. Although my final story makes sense to me, I’m not entirely sure if it will make sense to others. But I do know that I did my best, and that’s really all we can ask of ourselves at this point.

As for the actual pieces of the video, getting the video clips to work with the still images, music files, and narration pieces took a lot of work. I wasn’t really sure how to add music and keep the audio levels constant. I’m not sure if it is possible with windows live movie maker, but I wanted to be able to increase the sound at certain points, and then decrease it at others. But I couldn’t find a way to make that work, so I had to just make do with keeping the music quiet. I did get a lot better with my transitions and effects, and felt they were easier to get right, now that I have used this version of movie maker for awhile now.

If I had had more time, I think I would have really double and triple checked the requirements and expectations for this video. With the examples provided and the change of instructions from one week to the next, I never really felt like I understood what was needed. Because of that, my video ideas were really wishy-washy. I would have liked to get some more and better clips of students in my class, but at this time of the school year, that is really difficult...so I just had to make do with what I could get. Also, the music was really difficult for me to figure out. I am not good at just finding the right song, and I spent way too long just coming up with something to even use in my video. Then...I forgot to add the songs to my final credits, and actually had to go back and re-save it with the songs added. 


Other than that though, I feel like this was a great learning process, and that I really did learn a lot throughout the course of this class. I wish that I could start working with some of my students on some DST projects right away, but will probably have to wait until next school year. After all the work I’ve done this semester, I am very excited to see what my students will be able to do! 

Video #4, Rough Draft of Final Digital Story

My culminating experience proposal is about the effect that using iPods in the classroom can have on overall math achievement and motivation in children. When defining my story core, I would have to focus on where education is today and what is expected of students in current classrooms. With the expectations of NCLB, all of our emphasis has gone to testing and what can be shown on a test. Students are focusing on learning basic skills that are not necessarily developmentally appropriate and are doing so in a very drill and kill manner. In the past, these methods might have worked with the way education used to be, with the way the world used to be. But the world has changed. We are in the 21^st century and need to be preparing our students to succeed in the world of today, and even more importantly, the world of tomorrow. Using the old methods of teaching just are not effective anymore, and as educators, we need to adapt.

The use of iPods in the classroom has been shown to be very effective in creating enthusiasm for learning and interest in the subjects being taught. Because kids are using these kinds of technologies in their everyday lives, what might be difficult for adults who are not from their generation, is just second nature to today’s children. If we can use the materials that speak to kids in the way they learn best, we most likely have a better chance of helping them actually learn. This challenge between the ways of the past and the ways of the future is the essence of my story.

I hope to focus on the evolution of children who have the opportunity to use the iPods in their classrooms, how they not only show increased learning, but also increased motivation for learning in general. Children want to use these kinds of technologies, and even though they are doing work that is educational, they feel that it is fun, so they are more inclined to actually participate and learn from what they are doing. As teachers accept the challenges of working with new kinds of technologies, they themselves will reap the rewards from their students’ scores, their students will benefit by increased learning and fun in the classroom, and society will benefit by gaining people who are prepared to work and live in the 21^st century.

For my story map, I chose to use Campbell’s Adventure Diagram again as it worked for me the last time. I had a tough time trying to think of the parts of a story in relation to my CE proposal, as that just didn’t seem like any kind of “story” to me. But, for the purpose of the assignment, I tried to fit the ideas from my proposal into the parts of the story map. The Call to Adventure was basically the fact that current educational methods are not working for today’s students. Moving into the problems and challenges section, I talked about how teachers need to teach in ways that work for current students, and how multiplication is such an essential skill in mathematics, which is the focus of my proposal concept. I mentioned some of the barriers that we face including money for the technology, lack of technology skills for teachers, not enough actual evidence/research, wariness from administration, and the fact that using iPods would not be using the core curriculum.

Going into the resolution part of my plan, I talked about how the iPods just need to be given a chance, the teachers can gain new skills levels utilizing technology, which will result in students learning in more exciting ways. Finally, for the closure section, I mentioned the hopeful evidence that iPods can actually increase learning and motivation for children, that teachers truly could learn the new skills, and how children really would enjoy learning more. Honestly, it was a stretch for me to pull a “story” from my proposal, but this was my best effort!

Video #3

Wow, this was a week filled with learning for me! While I have made videos before using music and pictures, I have never before made any using actual video clips, and I learned this week why. It was a huge struggle! My first issue was coming up with a topic, and I honestly had NO clue what to do. I was searching online looking for ideas trying to figure out what I could teach. Every time I thought I had something that would work, I realized that it would work much better with still photos, and wouldn’t look so great using actual video. So, I kept thinking, asking my friends and family, and turning to colleagues for their ideas as well. In the end, time just got the best of me, and I had to resort to making a video on something that wasn’t very exciting at all, and actually seemed totally boring. But it was something I could do, as I had my niece and nephew willing to be videotaped for the project. So I just decided that for this week, I would have to stick with teaching about how to do the laundry.

The actual taping process was tricky as I had no idea what I would need, want to use, or end up using in the final product. I tried to come up with a basic script before hand, with the concepts I wanted to include in the text overlays, sort of like my own storyboard. Although it didn’t help my confusion during the video-taping part, I do think it gave me ideas of what I needed, so I would definitely do that again for any videos I’m making.

Update…I had this all ready to post, but then ended up running into even more issues just trying to get my video to upload! Although the last two videos I posted were uploaded with no problems at all, when I tried to do the same thing with this video, I kept getting an error message saying there was a problem uploading my video. It wouldn’t work! I went back and re-saved my movie, thinking maybe I had done something wrong and saved it as a wrong file type or something. Nope, that didn’t work either. So I tried using a different browser, as I know I’ve had to switch back and forth amongst three different browsers all semester long. But nope, that wasn’t working either. Finally, I just did the same thing, trying to add the video, using Firefox, and it seemed to be working. At least it didn’t give me the error message right away. So…I waited…and waited…just hoping that it would actually upload and I could post this video already! After ten minutes, I got the same error message.

Sooo…I was back to square one. I see now why some people shy away from technology. It’s usually in those last couple steps that things seem to fall apart, and you can’t finalize the project. So, I went back to my movie maker file, and decided to try saving it under a different choice. I tried using the Windows Phone, Small choice, hoping that my video would just upload to my blog!!! After ten more minutes of waiting while trying to post…I finally got the message saying that the video was processing! Yes, the video might be tiny, and very hard to see, but if it will show up on my blog, then at this point, I am just going to accept it and be happy!!! And success…finally! I will add this reflection to the video post, and hope that it will post correctly. Wow, this really was a LONG week!!!