It's official!

The flight is booked, and I'm going to Australia May 17th! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. And now with only one final exam to go (on Friday) all I have to do is work work work and make some money for my trip. For those of you who didn't know, my boyfriend, Bryce is down there right now, he went to travel for a little while, and asked me to join him once my schooling was done for the summer. Now that this is all decided, is, of course, when everything starts going horribly wrong, ie my car dying in the carwash and having to be repaired (hence my absense in the last ecmp class), and my camera display being all messed up.... its just one thing after another! But, I suppose, money isn't made for keeping. Life's too short... yadda yadda yadda. And I did get my plane ticket for a pretty good price, ($1000 cheaper than what Bryce paid for his in February). Anyway, just thought I'd share my awesome news. Catch ya laters.

My last Tech Task ...*sniff sniff...... My PODCAST

Special thanks to my parents for volunteering their voices for my podcast. I didn't do much editing in audacity, for I thought the raw content added to the overall presentation. I liked the idea of having a background image, so I simply put everything together in movie maker. I know, this is twice as long as the tech task instructions asked for, but sometimes three minutes is simply not enough. Enjoy.

Mentorship Reflection

Hands down, this was the coolest project I have ever done for a University class. I’m all for social learning, and the fact that I was able to connect with so many students from as far away as Fredericksburg Virginia absolutely blew me away. This project gave me the opportunity to try out Skype for the first time, and for many of the students I spoke with, it was their first time as well. We learned together and we got to discuss how cool it was that this sort of meeting was possible. I was placed in a grade 9 English classroom taught by Susan Carter-Morgan. She allowed me to join their wiki (another first for me) and also sent me links to each of her students’ blogs. On their blogs, they discussed project ideas, and their own reflections from what they had been learning about, much like our classroom blogs! She encouraged me to peruse their blogs, and I soon found myself getting right into it without realizing it. I offered suggestions as to how to go about writing and researching papers, encouraging them to try new things, and just stopping in to say Hi once in a while! They were very appreciative of my help and I thought it was so neat when they would visit my blog and ask about Saskatchewan, and University and what not. At the beginning of this project, they were studying the play “The Importance of being Earnest” which I was very excited about. I had actually studied that play in my English 110.6, so I was able to help out a bit there. Their next project was a research paper on a controversial topic of their choice. Once again, I was all over that, because that is exactly what I love to write about! I was able to offer suggestions, and show the students that there are two sides to every issue that really needs to be understood before writing about one particular side.
Looking back on it now, I really wish I would have been able to spend more time with this project, and I’m really considering keeping up with it after this semester is done. If it weren’t for my computer crashing mid-semester, I know I could have helped them out a lot more, but they helped me out a lot too. I really find it neat that all of us in these two classes were able to form relationships with teachers around the world, and that the internet isn't really a scary place all the time. I'd definitely consider doing a project like this with any future classroom I may have, sharing thoughts and ideas with other classrooms around the globe. Its a great learning experience, and allows students to benifit from each other through this awesome technology we have been offered. Thanks for the experience Dean

Social Learning. Simple. Memorable.

In ecmp 355, there was a lot of focus on social learning, and I really feel that I benifitted greatly from it. Never have I had a class where I have been this comfortable asking for help! Since I am mostly an off-campus student, I often find it difficult to ask my peers on-campus for help or advice, but this course was different. Perhaps I found it easier to seek help because I spent most of my teenage years in front of a computer, and for a very long time, it was one of my main sources for communication. I know that my generation is notorious for communication and technology, and it was awesome that that could be a way to actually learn in a university class! It was great to recieve so much great help, even when I didn't ask for it. To my classmates, and Dean.. THANK YOU-You guys were awesome!! I only wish I could have been a bigger help to my classmates, but unfortunately, I'm not really the person who knows a lot about technology. I do try, but I get really frustrated :) I really hope that through my blog posts, and comments, a few of my classmates benifitted from my attempts. (Even if they were failures)
The mentorship program I found was the best way for me to help out others through social learning, and I loved that my insights and opinions were appreciated!
As for social learning, I found the collaboration with 455 was very helpful as well. The fact that I had the opportunity to learn from even more people with simalar thoughts and lifestyles as me was amazing. If I had trouble with something, it was certainly not too difficult to find someone with a simalar problem whom I could work together with to figure it out.
I really liked that the blogging tool was used in this class. At first, I wasn't too excited.. I'm not going to lie! Upon reflection, however, How awesome is it that when times get stressful, you can rant or rave and you know SOMEONE is going to listen to you. (Maybe cuz they had to... but either way.. :) ) It was great to get sympathy and suggestions as to what to do about these problems (whether that be technical problems, or social) from people who can actually empathise.
I wana give a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig THANK YOU to Robin, Erika, Alej and of course Dean. You guys really helped me through this class, and it may be because of you that my computer is still sitting on my desk, and not in a snowbank outside of my window! Cheers.

My Final Project

Ta daaaaaaa!

For my final project, I chose to do a NextVista video with Rushton Hurley. After being inspired by the Performing Arts: French Horn video on NextVista, I decided I would take a simalar approach for a final project. Since I've played the flute for many years and enjoy it as much as I do, I figured I'd try to make a HOW TO Flute video. I taught for a number of years, so there wasn't a whole lot of research that had to go into it. Here is a breakdown of how I put it together...

Planning

First, I brainstormed ideas for my project. I was off to a very rocky start, because I'm the type of person who wants to do things that will be first and foremost useful. I had a lot of ideas, but many didn't seem like it was the right thing for me. As soon as we were introduced to the NextVista website, I immediately knew I wanted to work with Rushton, so I emailed him. I was browsing through the Lightbulbs, and came across the french horn video and I decided that that was going to be my project.He seemed to be excited about my idea, so I started the planning stage. I decided I would set it up in the same order of how I used to teach beginners. I figured that by using pictures, I could do this better, so I searched for photos on Google. I found very quickly that everything has copyright! Since the Univeristy of Regina has made me completely paranoid about copyright violations, I decided it would be for the best to just take my own photos to use.

Photography

Although I know many of my classmates are visual arts majors, I decided I'd run the risk of committing photography sins but try my best to be a little creative. All of the photos that appear in my video, I took myself. This was a little challenging at times, because I would have my camera in one hand, and my flute in the other, resting on my shoulder in all kinds of weird positions. So as you can see in my beautiful collage here, my white backdrop was my fridge, and all of my photos were taken in my kitchen. (Note,the picture of me I took in the mirror, and this is ONLY photograph of me without make-up on. I'm letting you all enjoy it :P ) To edit my photos, I mostly used paint, and picasa to try out some different effects. I used a lot of black to my photos to add some contrast.

Filming

Using my flip camera, I set up on a tripod in my basement, and I got my mom to press the one red button to start and stop it. There were a lot of deletions I had to deal with once I put the videos on my computer, but she still did an okay job :) I felt that the audio and photos were more effective and attractive than the video, so I kept this part minimal. :)

Music

Once again, being afraid of copyright, I played my own music at the beginning of the video. I wasn't sure if I played a piece of music if it was a copyright violation, so I figured a scale would be a safe bet :) I played one scale three times, and recorded it in Audacity. I then moved the parts around to create harmonies.

Audio Narration

Instead of using the narration feature in movie maker like I did with my "Mastercard Priceless" video, I composed my audio through Audacity. I found it very easy to sync the audio in mp3 format with the slides in movie maker and I played with some of the effects Audacity has to offer. Once again, thanks to Erika for her post on how to convert .aud files to mp3! SO helpful! :) Also, thanks to Robin for pointing me in her direction! :)

Editing

Once I had all of my media in place, I used movie maker to edit my project. It was very simple to do, and I'm now kicking myself for buying the $100 program software from Staples that does exactly the same thing. Free programs are awesome! :)

At first, I didn't realize exactly how time consuming this project was going to be, but I'm pretty happy with the result! Thanks to everyone who gave me a hand!

Tech Task #14!

I found these two podcasts on Itunes particularly interesting. The first, "Just Vocabulary" teaches its listeners two vocabulary words each podcast. They are very short, and helpful to those who wish to improve their vocabulary. Each word is used in several sentences, spelled, and defined, so it is something that I could see myself using while travelling! The second, "Nutrition Diva`` is a podcast which gives its listeners helpful hints when making food choices to recieve maximum health benifits. Although I`m sure its not the most popular podcast out there, I found it extremely exciting!

Google Maps Tech Task

View Christa's Map!! in a larger map