6_30_2009+Debreif

6/30/2009 - Group Debreifing Courtney De Leon: Final reflections When I first started this course I had no idea what to expect. Upon taking the pre-evaluation for the course, I thought I was in for a long hard time. I scored very low and did not know many of the things that were on there and had not even heard of some of them. Recently, I switched from using a PC to a Mac. Big change! I had never even opened iMovie before this course. Other than shooting a few amateur videos on my digital camera, I was a novice. My expectations for this course changed right after the first assignments. I went to the tutorials page for Apple and in about 10 minutes learned just about everything that I needed to make my first movie. It was AWESOME! My mind was racing with thoughts of all the things that I could do with this product. Podcasting lectures, making youTube videos for lessons, etc. The limits seemed endless. The only thing that even seemed difficult was editing the sound. I could not use the Audacity product or make it work very well. I called in support from Apple Care. The Audacity program doesn't have a Leopard OS X format and doesn't run on the new iMac. That helped tremendously. On to: Garage Band. They showed me in a few easy steps how to do the same thing with Garage Band and it was as easy as clicking and dragging to merge the two projects seamlessly. I knew I had to find a group who also used Mac's. When I posted my group listing, one out of the two members of our group was a PC user. We decided for formatting and ease of use to create a team wiki and use Google docs to edit our production page. Our team wiki:http://psa4literacy.wikispaces.com became our new home. Very quickly we started and ran into trouble just as fast. The wiki page widgets imbedded our video as a QuickTime 7 widget. The only problem was that if you didn't have QuickTime Pro 7 you couldn't download from the wiki page and then edit to repost. We solved this issue with a three-way phone conference and decided that one team member would keep the video and do the editing and post the final version on our wiki page. From there we would comment and email additional shots or footage to one team member to splice into the video. This worked really well, until the end. The file became too large to email and the server timed-out before it could be uploaded. I used a website called keepvid.com to download the video from youTube which worked great. However, you couldn't edit the downloaded version, only view it. I ended up purchasing an upgrade to Quick Time Pro 7 on my Mac because it was too difficult to try and download, edit, upload, re-download, etc. Each time took really long and the video eventually became "grainyish" in the end. If this were a project for the real world each member of the group needs to use the same hardware and software to prevent these problems. Needless to say, I learned a lot from this project. I learned about compatibility, software platforms, text editing, video editing, iMovie, Garage Band, Audacity, keepvid.com, Quick Time Pro 7, audio editing, downloading, uploading, embedding code, wiki management, blog management, communicating on Google docs, communicating using a wiki, how to subscribe and monitor RSS feeds, and communication skills galore! I can't think of one thing that didn't involve troubleshooting, going to tutorials, embracing new software, collaborating and troubleshooting as a group, or entertaining an open learner-centered attitude. I really had to learn to lose control, trouble shoot problems, learn to use new software, learn new ways of learning to use new software, allow others with more experience to lead, and how to collaborate and cooperate long distance. I will be a better learner, leader, and educator because of this course! Courtney De Leon