Weeks 3-5 Reflections and Web Conferences Reflections for 12/5/11 and 12/10/11

Week 3 in our Lamar Mulitmedia course began a group project for a Public Service Announcement, or PSA. My group consisted of Larry Wetjen, Oregon; Meredith Bell, Texas; Brian Conner, Texas. Although three of us live in Texas, Texas is a big state. We were never able to meet face to face, and so we began our collaboration. We started with a google document that we could all collaborate on using different colors. We also set up chat times with an online source called Rondee. Along with email, texting, and these other tools, we were able to collaborate and begin our journey together.
Week 3 consisted mostly of Larry and I getting things organized and getting a script created. We did a lot of research and collaborating during this time. We were able to come up with a script, a storyboard, and copyrights and works cited.
During Week 4, Meredith and Brian began their challenging parts. Meredith was able to get her Honor Society students together after she received written consent from their parents. She spent several days editing the script and storyboard to fit in our 60 seconds. Her students did a wonderful job at portraying what we had envisioned for our project. Brian spent countless hours editing the video that was sent and adding voice over and background music. He also had to add in the citation shot, the creative commons shot and the title shot.
We used dropbox which became a very valuable tool for use. I have enjoyed dropbox so much, that a colleague of mine, who is a few classes ahead of me in the program (although we happen to be in this course together), have asked our principal for a staff development day that we lead and teach our fellow teachers how to utilize dropbox.
I attended several web conferences during this course. On December 5th, the web conference focused on the PSA project and answereing questions for those that had any. We discussed intellectual property rights and talked about teaching our students to work on creative commons. We also discussed the importance of using web 2.0 tools for collaborating. The lack of integration of technology for progress across the state was discussed and the importance of teachers helping with this implementation of technology was stressed.
TK20 was mentioned and what was needed to put in to TK20 by the end of this course was discussed. Those including the collaboration document and the Final Project.
I also attended the web conference on December 10th at 10:00 A.M. Pamela Comer was available for questions regarding TK20 and we were told how to upload artifacts into this portfolio. We are to upload our pre-production documentation, our updated documentation, and our team video to TK20. We were also told to put our Blog Link into our Week 5 document when we submit.There was much discussion again over what our eportfolio was, with that being our wiki site.

5353 Week 3 Reflections

Week 3 in Multimedia was a great learning experience. The readings were helpful in beginning our pre-production tasks. Working with a group is very helpful and allows for many ideas instead of just your own. I like to not think I am narrow minded, but I am a creature of habit. Having others give their insight and ideas helps me to see outside of the box. I created the script for our PSA project and it did happen to be quite a challenge, although writing and reflecting is one of my very favorite past times.
I worried that I was doing a good job as to not let my fellow group members down. Working with the group is exciting and I am looking forward to the next few weeks. Our group lives so far away from each other, we will never meet face to face, but we collaborate online and on call conferences so that we can assist each other. We also text, email and talk on the phone at non-scheduled times as needed.