EDLD 5363: Week 2: Web conference

Week 2 web conference went a little better than week 1. Week 1 there were a lot of participants and it was difficult to keep up with all the conversations and questions. There were fewer participants this time so it was easier for me to keep up.  There still seems to be a bandwidth problem either on Dr. Abernathy’s end or mine. For at least half of the web conference, the audio was stuttering and breaking up. This makes it very difficult to understand and follow what is being said when I am only getting half of the information. Some others commented on the stuttering also, so I wonder if the problem is really with my Internet connection and bandwidth.

Dr. Abernathy clarified several questions concerning Week 1 and 2 assignments. I’m glad I am not the only one that didn’t understand all the instructions given in the homework assignment. Sometimes there is so much information given in the assignments that it becomes overwhelming. Also, I think the assignments sometimes assume that we already know how to use some of this technology when we really don’t know how. I am not the kind of person that can be given something and told, “Here go play with this and learn.” I am the kind of person that needs instructions to know what to do.

I am enjoying the web conferences more and I participate in them. I still can’t get my lighting right, so most of the time I do not use my cam. I also find that if I try to use my microphone, everything has a tendency to freeze. I guess I need to fork out the money and buy some better equipment.

EDLD 5363: Digital Story: A Girl and Her Daddy

I am now in EDLD 5363: Multimedia and Video Technology, which is my fifth class at Lamar University. For our week 1 assignment we had to create a digital story. This is another first for something I have never done. Basically after reading the weekly assignments, I figured out we were suppose to create a digital story using still photos to tell a story. How appropriately named: a digital story. Anyway, I began thinking about what kind of story I wanted to tell. Would it be funny, sad, romantic, or devastating? I thought about telling a story about old houses. If they could talk, what stories would they tell? I thought about my dad who passed away very unexpectedly a little over a year ago. Maybe I should tell a story in his honor for my family to remember him by. I knew that I would have to use pictures that I already possessed since I didn’t have time to go around taking pictures or searching for them on the Internet. I began looking through my files of pictures and realized I really began starting pictures about five years ago when my daughter was born. So from that point, I knew the story would be about my daughter. I quickly began uploading funny pictures to a file since my daughter has turned out to be quite the little comedian. When I was finished uploading, I realized my story was over ten minutes long. Whew!! I love my daughter. Since my story could only be two minutes, I realized I needed to cut out a lot, but deciding what to remove was harder than I imagined. When I began looking at the pictures, I started seeing something a lot of the photos had in common. There were pictures of my daughter and my husband. I thought about the special bond I had with my dad and soon realized there’s no greater relationship than the one that exists between a girl and her daddy. So all of a sudden I have a title for my story, “A Girl and Her Daddy.”

I used Photo Story 3, which was another first, to create my video. I worked for several hours deciding on photos and getting them in the right order. Then I decided instead of me narrating the story I would have my daughter do it. I think it adds a little extra sincerity. We went through the script one picture at a time and she loved it. She kept asking if we could do them over even though the narration sounded great. I think she liked having the headset with microphone on. In completing my story, I decided to add music. Once the project was complete, I had to upload it to a public free video hosting site. I have a little bit of a problem with this since it has private photos of my family, so I plan to either make it private or delete it once I am finished with my degree. I decided to use Teacher Tube. I set up my account but when I uploaded the video I kept receiving a message that said, “generic failure.” For 45 minutes I tried to upload my video and couldn’t get it to work. I got frustrated with Teacher Tube and decided to move on over to You Tube. I created an account on there and uploaded the digital story. This one work, but when I went back to search on the title and key words, I couldn’t find it. I included the URL on my homework assignment and when you click on the URL the video comes up. I don’t understand that one either.

Anyway, all in all I am pleased with the video. Even though it was more time consuming than I thought it would be I am proud of it. It might not be perfect, but my husband likes it and my daughter had a blast helping me make it. I have included the URL to YouTube for your enjoyment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh2lWKGJ2l4&feature=youtu.be