PSA Reflection

The experience of creating a Public Service Announcement has been rewarding and exciting. This is the first time I get involved in a project of this magnitude, although some people might not find it that important. The assignment process from pre-production to post-production has been just fascinating. As a team, we consulted, analyze and visualize each shot and created the perfect vision for our project. This planning process set the foundation for the whole assignment, and ends it up giving us more material and footage that we actually needed. This was an excellent thing when it came to the editing and publication process. The collaboration and interaction of the team was excellent, and the integration of technology tools, like Google site, e-mails, and web cams assist us in reaching our goals. Some of the improvements our announcement needs are better quality in sound, and images, but I believe that with our experience and the time available, we did a great job.

My second Web Conference

Last Friday, September 17, 2010, I had the opportunity to participate in a web conference with my classmates for the Multimedia and Video Technology class. These conferences have been interesting, because you have the chance to interact with others and clarify your understanding of the class process and assignments. The assignment for the week was to start the production of our PSA project. I have enjoyed this work; it is exciting to learn about the production process of a video project. I did not imagine the amount of work and time a project like this consumes, and we are only creating a 60 seconds video, now I understand why a two hour movie take so many months to do. The most motivating aspect of this course has been the different guidelines we have discovered to improve and learn new approaches to the video recording process.

Web Conference

Today I had the opportunity to participate on a very interesting web conference for the course EDLD 5363. It was a good experience and I clarify most of my questions regarding the course and assignments. The integration of web conferences in this course, or any other online course, helps the students and professors to come closer and get to know each other, no matter where they really are. The significance of this resource in today’s classroom is very powerful; we can teach, learn or communicate anywhere in the world at anytime, breaking the restrictions of place and time. These types of experiences enrich our teaching styles and open our world to flexibility in learning never known before. As educators of the future, we need to continue to expands our horizons and integrate everything we learn and experience in our courses.

Open Source Editing Software

This week I had the opportunity to read about the different editing software programs available as open source. The editing process is very interesting, and I had always thought it was only pertinent to big productions, and not necessary for home-created videos. How lost I was with this assumption. It is completely true that big and important productions relay on advanced and sophisticated editing processes, but it is beneficial for us, regular people to create nice and enjoyable memories out of our homemade videos. I believe that as teachers, we should get familiarize with these technologies, as a way to engage our students and make their education pertinent to them. Most of today’s learners have already experiences with these technologies and enjoy their integration in the classroom, however to be successful the students need to be active participant. This means that we need to give them the opportunity to develop their technology skills through active projects and not passive presentations. In order to really take advantage of these resources the students become the active creators, while teachers become passive guides, and in some cases even the learners. There is no shame in us, educators, to learn from our students, about technology, after all it is their natural environment.
Today we have the advantage to search through the Internet, for open source editing software that fulfills our needs, for those homemade projects. I explored two of these open sources editing software, Wax and Windows Movie Maker. Through my investigations of the different software, I found that Windows Movie Maker is more user friendly, especially for beginners like me than Wax, and it is available for any PC, and is already install in new computers running on Windows operating system (Desktop-Video-Guide, 2009). Windows Movie Maker offers a wide variety of features that makes your editing process one enjoyable. It also includes different file extensions to save your project, like .asf, .wma, .wav, .mp3, .wmv, .mpeg, .mpg, and .wm, among others. One of the most important user friendly features I found in Windows Movie Maker is that has drag and drop features to make creating and editing your movie easier (Desktop-Video-Guide, 2009). The Wax editing software is not as user friendly as the Windows Movie Maker, and it does not have the same variety of file extensions, the ones available are .avi, .wav, .mpeg. While exploring the Wax software I found necessary to have some technical knowledge, and editing experience. Now, one good thing about Wax is that can work as an add on with Windows Movie Maker. Now as a totally beginner in the editing world I have decided to use Windows Movie Maker as my editing tool.


Reference:
Desktop-Video-Guide. (n.d.). Top 5 free video editing software programs. Retrieved on April 12, 2009, from http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/top-5-free-video-editing-software-review.html