Michael C. Warren

It took a few discussions for our group to decide what we would do for a public service announcement. Originally we started out doing a Ken Burns style Internet safety psa but when one of our group came up with a rap we voted to do it and target a more youthful audiance.  We communicated by various means including a wiki, e-mail, chat, second life, and telephone. While members came up with ideas on the rap, others came up with ideas on how to add additional content to the animations I was creating for the wrap. In the end the team had some additional ideas and added to the animation work I did.  The development went smooth and great.  I did run into some limitations of After effects that I had to work around, but still was able to achieve the results we wanted.  We used creative commons copyright to our work since everything else was developed by us.  We produced our work to youtube for final publication for others to use.

EDLD 5368 – Instructional Design

When educators really begin to consider online learning they may have many doubts that it is a reliable form of education. In many instances this is a case of teachers who have not experienced an online learning system.  Over time more and more teachers will at some point be involved in an online learning environment, either as a student or as an instructor.  I feel that once involved in online learning and understanding how to develop an online course they will understand many of the benefits it has to offer.  I believe they will see that once the course is created it is easy to reuse it over and over and make modifications to it as time goes on. In addition multiple teachers can add to the same course, allowing a broader educational experience for the student.  If online learning systems continue to progress, more and more information will be integrated, such as email, TEKS information, lessons from other educators from around the world, and an increased ability for parents, students, and educators to increase communication.

The online course that I developed for the Instructional Design course using the online learning system Schoology will be utilized at the beginning part of my Web Mastering course next year.  Since our school is currently in the process of moving from a large static web site to a content management based system that will also in some ways act as our learning management system, I will be looking at how I can introduce it into that system or keep it with Schoology or even integrate it into a product I use from my own server called Moodle.  In any case I will be integrating online learning in more depth in the 2010-2011 school year.

As part of my action plan I will be rewriting my curriculum for my technology application courses and will be moving much of it to one of these online systems. In the past I have found it is very useful because it can save me time on grading, provide a location for students to turn in work and even keep their work in a location that is hard to lose, unlike a flash drive or even paper.

My plan to Integrate online learning at our school is twofold,  I will start by converting my courses over to an online learning system over the summer.  This will integrate approximately a fourth of the school student population into using an online learning system.  Since my courses cover grades 9-12, it will offer a chance for students to have time to integrate with online learning by the type they graduate.

The second part of my plan is to begin integrating staff development through the online learning system. This will begin to require teachers to have to interact with the online learning system as well.  If our new web site / content management systems offers a built in course management system it will offer an additional incentive for our teachers to begin migrating to an online system in which I will be one of the staff that leads the staff development of the program.

As the course comes to an end, I take into consideration my experience with online learning in while I do not have any questions on the topic, because I feel it is going to be a growing development in our educational and professional environments, I do feel I have gained much more information to support my stance on how this is a growing part of the educations system. Will it take the place of formal education? No, but it will offer an opportunity for a better education for a broader range of the population; from those in our towns who can’t make it to the school, to those around the world that may not have the opportunity to good local education, or to help people expand their knowledge base from just a local environment and into a global learning environment.

My goal has been to “teach technology”, but as I progress in these courses I see that it is becoming where I want to “teach technology in order to advance others”.  Technology has long been a passion of mine, and after years of tech support, and then migrating to the field of education, I only see that this is the path I am to be on at this point in my life.  I plan to integrate what I can into our school district by opening up new forms of learning opportunities whether it be a tool that a teacher uses or a new piece a software that a student has never thought he would ever learn.

School Law was a very difficult class for me as I have only been teaching for 2 years. All of this information was relatively new for me. Coming from the corporate technology world, most of these laws were not relavant. Terms such as IDEA and 504 did not matter in getting technology out the door, or training a computer user on using a new software program.  In many ways the school teacher and staff have more legal boundries that they have to be aware of than individuals in other organizations.  A teacher has many rights that can protect them as well. Whether it be from administration, or students.  Educators are under a microscope to make sure they are providing the best education and well being based on what is mandated by the law, not just state law, but federal law.  We are required to give free public education to all school age children.

School Law Assignments

Week 1 Assignment

Week 2 Assignment

Week 3 Assignment

Week 4 Assignment

Week 5 Assignment

I was unable to make the week 2 conference and watched it late in the week. I am a bit frustrated that things change week to week and some information seems to be going out and some not. It seemed there was a lot of confusion as to the assignment based on changes to this weeks assignment.  While it is originally required that we attend one of these conferences, it is now becoming a requirement to attend or was what occurred soon after in order to keep up with changes in the course.  I understand there is need for change, but in a course where an assignment is a week, and takes a lot of time to make it happen making changes of the bat is not a good idea.  I felt bad for the one student who worked ahead on his assignment.  I hope that weeks 3-5 will have less changes.

Update: Week 4 conference had some confusion, but I think in the end all has worked out. I believe most of the groups are getting their projects done and from what I could see online, things are looking pretty good.

My 1 minute Video Editing Podcast is over iMovie and how to create a movie clip using the green screen effect.  I originally was going to use either Avidemux2 or t@b SR4 editing software.  Overall this was a much easier solution.  I hope you enjoy.

My video podcast was a demonstration on how you can use iMovie to create a green screen effect.  With the help of my son, I filmed him in front of a green sheet of fabric that I had made that was hanging on a PVC pipe frame.  The background was filmed on vacation at the Texas State Aquarium. Using iMovie I placed the film of my son on top of the new background and applied the green screen effect.  I then used the share option for iMovie to export directly to my youtube account in order to share with others.

When looking at free video editing software for the mac, there are few choices other than Apple’s own iMovie.  I took time to look at two, Avidemux2 and t@b ZS4 video editor.

t@b ZS4 video editor is touted as a full featured video editor, and while it offers some nice bells and whistles such as green screen or blue screen keying, and other effects. It is a very slow and cumbersome tool to use.  I had to stop several times in order to let it catch up with what I wanted to do. The opening and saving files was not in a familiar format.  Even when I went back to the website to see about machine specifications their site recognized problems with G5 systems (pre Intel) and did not specifically state actual requirements to run the software.

Avidemux2 is a simple video editor that is almost a scaled down version of what Apple’s Quicktime Pro does.  While it does not offer the extra features t@b ZS4 or even iMovie offers, it does to a great job of cutting, pasting, and appending video and audio.  It is not the cleanest interface, but it does get the job done for simple splicing clips together.

In my use of various tools that I have learned to use over the years, I find that many video editing tools can be complicated at first use and often take time experimenting to get a good feel of how they work.  My students at school use Adobe Premier elements, Windows Movie Maker and even Adobe After effects, If w were to have to use free or open source tools, I can’t say I would recommend teaching with either of these tools. Maybe Avidemux2 for a short segment in the Multimedia / Digital Interactive Media course, but really they are both very limited.  In the end I think it will be important for students to learn to use any video editing tool as we become a more multimedia oriented culture.

If I did not have iMovie or Quicktime Pro, I would use Avidemux2 for simple editing of movies.  I will show some basic editing with Avidemux2 in my video blog.

After using Avidemux2 I have decided that for my project I will stay with iMovie since it is also a free solution. The problems I had with Avidemux is that it was not very friendly to use, it did crash on me, and integrating filters and editing clips was often time consuming.

This month was very busy, with our new system coming online, a scheduled training for campus technology assistants/teachers who would be helping their campus with eChalk.  During this time, we had 3 people from our campus attend. Karen James and I are both part of the Lamar University Technology Leadership Program and have been working on the web stuff off and on together for the past year.  After talking with her, I have let her be our gatekeeper in regards to how many things are managed, while I focus on more detailed research regarding some of the tools and deeper technical issues for the school.  During in-service we co-trained our fellow teachers and staff to begin using the new eChalk system. Karen worked in a larger group setting in her training while I focused on helping those that needed one-on-one training.  Some of the more in depth research I did was to see how the student accounts worked, what they could see and what limitations they had. In addition I setup a way for parents to create their own account in the system so they could monitor their students work, and I created an online form for dress code infractions.

This new system has finally broken down some barriers and we have more people involved with keeping up the schools website than ever before. It is changing on a more regular basis and we are having fewer problems than before.

I still feel that we should be sending out letters to parents by the 3 weeks mark, but I have seen in the past that the school often puts technology into place and it will take from 6 weeks to a semester before information is sent out.  That I do not know how to fix, but I know that the kids are excited, and many parents have questions, but we are only getting a small amount of the school and parents involved at this point.

Journeys

In my life I have had numerous journeys, some were epic, and some not so much. What matters most is that my experiences on these journeys helped to make me who I am.

One journey in particular started in college when I discovered on a map a small town located in the Northwest Territories of Canada north of the Arctic Circle. It had a road going to it, and I decided that was a journey I had to make.  From that point I spent hours researching routes and ways to get there, only to write my plans down on paper.

After college my journey and dream became a thought in the back of my mind, and my books and notes of what I wanted to see became a dust collector on top of a bookshelf.  I became a hard worker and focused on my career.  I made several attempts at making the trip, but one reason or another I pushed it aside. For over ten years I did this until my wife whom I married in 2003 pushed me to complete this journey.  For the next year we saved money, and I worked on the agenda for when and where we would go.

My wife and I worked at the same place, and were able to store up 5 weeks of vacation for each of us. We left on May 27, 2005 and by our third day we were in Canada, where our driving hours were shortened.  The rush of the adventure was in full swing and our senses were beginning to be overwhelmed with the beauty that can’t be imagined.

The sight of wild animals standing on the side of the road, beautiful lush green vegetation and natural wonders that are part of the northern Rockies are not fully explained or even given full credit with pictures.  The opportunities to see wildlife in its natural habitat can be a life-changing event.

The trip to Inuvik and the return trip through Alaska were amazing; having achieved a journey north of the Arctic Circle was the end of a goal, and a start of many wonderful memories.  The journey would always be with me, but I was sad that it was over.

When one journey ends, another journey begins. I have been on many journeys and I will take many more.

Storyboard

Todays web conference provided some answers to questions I was having about our assignment. It is useful to have the instructor answer questions in a forum setting like this because many students are having the same questions.  It shows how written instruction can be limited when voice instruction is not available.  The session was short, but enough questions were answered for me to finish my assignment.