The Making of "Making Videos that Teach"

I really enjoyed this process, this made me realize how many different ways there are to convey what it is that you really want to say. I clearly wanted to use humor as my main educational tool, I am still not too sure how well I accomplished this, when comparing it some of the other movies. I was truly amazed at the quality of all of our videos, there was not I saw that i thought was anything less than great, if we all combined our skills we would be like one giant Quenten Tarantino

The creation process of "Making Videos that Teach" was a bit haphazard. I had a hard time visualizing what I wanted to do to convey my point. I ended up making the actual storyboard as I was making the film, this is just how my brain seems to work, I was never one to outline a paper before writing it. This clearly could of had some negative impacts, but what I did that corrected this possible mistake was write the script before hand so I could visualize the scene and know exactly what the point was I was trying to get across. I was lucky enough to have some help from my girlfriend Paige and roommate Tim when it came to camera angles and how to word the content. There are obviously some things I could have done better, the audio levels being the main thing, I though the visuals all came out well and helped get my points across in somewhat entertaining way. I was overwhelmed to say the least throughout this class to say the least but to know that I could make a movie that came out as good as it did in a couple of days makes me feel that I will only continue to improve my technological skills tenfold. No matter how disappointed and unhappy I was with this class at times I still got some much useful knowledge out of it and all of that knowledge will be easily passed on to my students.

If I knew by the end of this class I would have created my first blog, podcast, website, and movie I would of thought that you were absolutely insane. The amount of programs that I know consider myself fairly knowledgeable about is staggering, considering I did not know some of them even existed before this class. The movie making process was the culmination of it all I know feel as though I could mashup a bunch of historical film and make my own movie for a class lesson. I also feel like I know enough to pass on this movie making knowledge to my students so that they will be able to make their own movies both inside and outside the classroom. Making this film was the most fun I have had with a class in a long time.

Google Apps (Whoaaa)

Google is a wild thing, eventually I think they my start there own from of government and gain power through a virtual overthrow spurred by surveys created in Googleforms. It is amazing a multibillion dollar company will offer all of these tools for free, the possibilities are endless for their uses in the classroom. Googlemaps is a great tool for history lessons, this way you can tangibly show students where certain events actually occurred, then media can be embedded so that your makes can actually be a teaching tool its self. Googleforms can help you evaluate your own teaching techniques through surveys. Students can also create surveys to easily gather information for projects and presentations. Googledocs allow students to collaborate while being in different areas, this is especially important in a rural state like Maine, students that attend the same school may live and hour away from each other. Googledocs allows them to work together on a project in real time through the Internet. Google has some of the most important tools on the Internet that are truly breaking down the barrier of distance. Our band has used Googledocs for over a year as a way to collaborate and work on music together while being in different places.

Video in education

Video has the potential to be a wonderful tool in education. It will no longer be what students look forward to for a break from being lectured at but as a way to be creative while being assessed. Creativity is sometimes lost in the classroom these days, teachers are to often concerned with meeting learning standards and having tangible data to prove they are being met. Students can still learn course material and display it in a different fashion than just an A on a test. Students should be allowed to be creative with their assessment, movies and podcasts should be encouraged as a way to display what you have learned during a unit, in place of tests. This allows students creative juices to flow and create materials that the teacher may reuse down the road. I know that while I wasin school I felt as if my creativity was being stiffled, i turned to music on my own to get out what I needed too, but their was never any way for me to be creative inside the schools walls. I can wait to get into the classroom and encourge the creative process, not hinder it.

Websites and Wiki's in the classroom

The ability to have a classroom websites allows you to have a direct contact link to parents and students at home. This will allow you to have greater contact with children at home and make sure that they are all prepared for the next school day. This could also reduce some cost to the school by reducing paper usage because you can post pdf versions of syllabus's, field trip permission slips, etc. A forum could be created for students and parents in a place the school district can view and prevents students directly contacting you through private means. Classroom websites are all around a useful resource for a place where parents and students can find classroom materials, rules, and guidelines. It also can serve as a space where your students can post their completed projects so their parents can view.

Creative Commons

Its trully amazing that there are still selfless people out there in our world today, with all the money that is changing hands on the internet today. It is trully inspiring to see people being that involved in making sure that there is material out there that is safe for us to use and keeps us free from unwanted lawsuits.

Podcast reflection.

I am in process of revising my podcast, I had a great experience getting the content for my podcast. I got to meet several musicians that I have been listening too for years. I included Amelia from Mountain Man (you can check their music out here: http://www.myspace.com/mountainmansquint) and John Stirratt from the band Wilco (wilcoworld.net) and The Autumn Defense (theautumndefense.com). I talked to a few other musicians but was not able to include all of them in the podcast due to the time constraints. I have experience with garageband so the editing side was not a problem for me. The only issue I had was the lack of guidance on the content from Professor Sutter and then the fact that she graded upon these nonexistent standards, so needless to say I will be revising my podcast to tie it into what Sarah was looking for. I will post my revision later today so stay tuned.

-Mike

Podcast!

http://solidsoundeducation.podomatic.com//

Horizon Report!

I chose to read the Technologies to Watch chapter of the Horizon Report. It gave a brief description of several forms of technology, how they are currently being utilized, and what the future holds for them. The two most interesting points brought up are the ways that electronic books will be able to reduce costs while reducing the campuses carbon footprint and the potential for lowering the cost of education, both through electronic books and open content. Electronic books allow the cost of production to be greatly decreased and input materials almost eliminated, however it has yet to be told if major textbook producers will allow this transition to occur. Textbook manufacturers have a lot to lose, as soon as their books are in the digital format they are easily duplicated creating the same issue the record industry now faces. The textbook industry has a prime corner on its market and its hard to see them willingly given any of that market control up.

Open content is really amazing; it goes against every capitalistic structure our society has created. Here you have some of the world’s finest Universities sharing course content online for free. Yale hosts videotaped lectures on its website with free access for anyone with an Internet connection. This eliminates the cost of education especially for those only looking to casually take courses or learn material for their own benefit. However, Yale knows that no matter how much you know you can’t do anything in our country unless you have a degree that says you know the material. This fact alone undermines the value of open content but it is still extremely useful and beneficial to society as a whole.

All of these technologies allow us to have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but we must be sure to allow ourselves to actually learn material before moving on to the next thing, something I find myself struggling with constantly. Too often we welcome this inundation of media without considering the consequences of being continuously surrounded by information.

Industrial application to almost everything.

Ok, so Sir Ken Robinson said that we need to change this industrial model to that of an agricultural model. This is easier said than done, the industrial model has infected almost every facet of our lives and society including the most organic, agriculture. So what he is asking for isn't just an overhaul of school systems, its the complete overthrow of how our society approaches everything. Daniel Pink, then displayed how we are not motivated by money when it comes to higher learning activities (unless we are engineers, greedy bastards) this is antithetical to the entire system upon which our society is based, throw money at a problem and it will be fixed. Creativity is not something that can be bought, as much as our capitalistic culture trys to quantify and montify art, music, and culture it will never be sucessful. Creators are self motivated, when I write a song I clearly am not thinking I am going to make a million dollars from it, I do it cause it is my passion, no amount of money will make me produce a better song. We have to learn to leave business models to businesses and operate our schools and creative expression independantly and free from our corporate greed or you'll end up will thousands of Hannah Montana's, and dear god who wants that.

Hello

This is very interesting what we are learning in our class today, it seems that we need to change the way our schools are run. Who knew! The most interesting part was when Sir Ken Robinson related changing the industrial model of education model to an agricultural model, but what do we do now after or society has applied an industrial model to agriculture. Both these videos were very interesting, I am very tired today, I had to work till two last night, I want some sympathy! 

Whats going onnnnnnnn

I am a student in the MAT program at The University of Maine, I created this blog for a class, we will see how this goes.

-Mike