Week+4+Monday+Feb+1


 * Learning Curve

ETA: In late March, I depicted myself with a computer on my Portfolio Profile, but on Feb. 1 I was still very anxious.**

I'm experiencing a huge learning curve in this class, and it's scary. I'm at that "really scared" stage.

--I understood bits, but not all of how to make a podcast. My podcast is a draft of a podcast right now, a mashup of voice, music, and sound effect.

--when I tried to put the title in, it offset the second music track so that the two play in a disharmonious jumble

--I watched several of the videos about how to use moviemaker and photostory, and find m. maker very intimidating

--I am afraid of getting behind. What I would really need is a session on each app.

--Part of me thinks I should not have taken this course as there's too much to learn. The other part is glad that I won't be the last person on earth to learn how to make podcasts, movies, etc.


 * Old Dog, New Tricks

I think the podcast I made in class is not bad.** I will import it here. media type="file" key="audacity podcast poetry cafe.wav" width="300" height="50" --podcast stops abruptly, but it's a demo of what you could do --it's a piece of a podcast that would be longer --I'm a little bit excited now about learning these new technologies!


 * PREZI**

Another thing I want to learn to use is PREZI.

One group in our Learning Theories class did a PREZI presentation, and I absolutely loved it. I loved how minimalist the presentation was in terms of what was on the screen. For example, when they talked about various behavioural learning experiments by a theorist who worked with mice, the only thing onscreen was a cartoon of a rat holding a sign saying: "will press bar for food." The cartoon reminded the audience of the basic kind of experiment the theorist did, yet it did not distract from what the presenter was saying the way a powerpoint slide often does. In the online context, I would like to work towards saying more with fewer words.


 * Comic Life**

Watched a couple of photostory videos on comic life, and I'm already inspired by it.

Steve and I were talking about using it for our lesson plan

It could work really well for Shakespeare

Students translate one scene into a photostory. It would be very cool.

I love looking at images and choosing ones to put in the log. I'd love doing that for Comic Life or for a photostory that illustrated a poem or something like that.

ETA: Comic Life is the best thing that happened to me in this class. Thank you, Bruce! I am using it and Bitstrips for all kinds of things. I used it for the title page of my Ed. of Exceptional Students differentiated lesson plan; I differentiated the lesson Steve and I did with Comic Life, and for the title page I used the following pic of Shakespeare and put the title page information in a speech bubble that he is speaking.