EDLD+5363+Course+Reflection-Lisa+Hansen

Lisa R. Hansen Final Assessment: Course Reflections

I must say that the outcomes that I had envisioned for this course where very few. I have had little experience in the world of Multimedia and Video Technology, and was extremely apprehensive about what I would be able to learn. I was very pleasantly surprised, that through hard work, I was able to accomplish a lot more than I could ever imagine. I have learned so much about the different software packages that have opened a new world into the planning, design, and development of different types of media.

The course outlines were definitely not in line with what I had envisioned for myself when I originally looked at them five weeks ago. I would have never imagined that I would be able to put together a digital story or put together a Public Service Announcement as effectively as I was able to in the end. I feel that I am leaving this course with so much more confidence in my abilities regarding Multimedia and Video Technology.

The outcomes that I achieved from this course are definitely relative to the work that I do in my school. I will take this knowledge and share with other school leaders as well as the students. My eyes have been opened to new possibilities for learning that have never been present until now. I hope to incorporate this new media knowledge into my district in many ways. I am very excited to use my new digital skills with planning and producing material to present curriculum in a new way. I also look forward to being able to share these skills with others so that they will be able to pass on this incredible medium. I would love to see students have access to these new programs so that they are able to express themselves in ways that they have never been able to in a school setting. This is what we need to make a difference with the students of today.

The only outcome that I feel that I didn’t completely master was explore more of the different multimedia resources. I found that I would pick a resource for the task that I was to complete and really didn’t have the time to explore any others. I would see something that sounded familiar to me and would go with that. I also already had experience with some of the options and didn’t even look further into what other products were out there. I must say that the web is bombarded now with these free resources and I have found it very difficult to choose one. I am very hesitant to use something unless I know from someone specific that it is reliable. I was able to print off a lot of the material, so my hope is that in the near future I will be able to read through some of the material.

I feel that I was very successful in completing the assignments for this course. I feel that the assignments were written very clearly and concisely, which made the completion very smooth. I was especially glad to see the To Do List added. That came in very handy as I was working each week to complete the assignments. The digital storytelling assignment was very enjoyable and gave me great experience using the PhotoStory 3 software. I was very proud of my story. Our Week Two assignment gave me a taste of collaborating with a partner as well as the use of Microsoft Movie Maker. Movie Maker is great editing software and felt that is was extremely user friendly. The pre-production template was a great guide for our group to get started and helped us tremendously in getting organized. We were able to copy that template to our Wiki and just plug in items such as time allotments, shot lists, as well as who is doing what. The actual shooting of the videos was one of my contributions to the production aspect of the PSA. I learned so much about how to shoot effective video. The collaborative editing process was great experience as well. We used Microsoft Movie Maker to edit our clips together with our voice over from audacity and the background music. I was very pleased with the way that we worked together as a group on this editing. Post –production was nice for me because everything went very smoothly for our group. We choose YouTube as our Web delivery vehicle because we were all familiar with it and most others are as well.

We were a bit confused about the copyright attributions in the beginning but after a trip to the Creative Commons website it all became clear. We were then able to obtain a license and that has been posted as a slide on our PSA video.

I have learned so much about myself and my abilities with technology. When we first began I have to admit that I was a bit scared because of my lack of experience in this field. It was not completely foreign to me but I had certainly not used it much myself. I was aware of its use but have never delved into multimedia myself. I learned so much about putting together the different elements of multimedia and the software that helps you achieve that.

Working in a collaborative manner with my group was the best part of this course for me. I have had many bad experiences in the past with groups and was a bit hesitant about whether this experience would be the same. I have to say that I was proud to be a part of this group. Using the Web 2.0 tools that we have been exposed to in this program made group collaboration so easy, and it was such a relief to me that I was finally a part of a functional group. The only negative would be that you still need some synchronous time together. This can be difficult, especially if the group is large. Our group tried to do one synchronous web chat but found it difficult because of scheduling and the fact that not everyone was familiar with the same web chat software. This situation could be remedied with careful planning but I felt that in this compressed course environment we did not have the time.