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Blog Posts - Course 5363
Week 1 – Storyboarding and Photostory Storyboarding is a very important aspect of creating a focused, meaningful, and organized video project. When using the storyboard in week one we learned about how a storyboard is a general beginning phase of a project that allows individuals to put their thoughts on paper before the creation begins. As this week progressed we created our storyboard and then put our thoughts and pictures to a timeline in Photostory. In this project, we created a personal video that explained a part of our life that was important. During the creation phase we added pictures, edited the transitions, and added narration and sound. I have really enjoyed working with storyboarding and Photostory in week one. The information I have learned has already been put to good use in my teacher training sessions. It is my belief that if I can model good behavior and organization in learning through training, the teacher s will take it and use what they have learned in their classrooms. By understanding the importance of starting at the storyboard state, teachers can help assist and teach students to brainstorm and organize their thoughts before beginning any project.

Week 2 – identifying and evaluating open source video editing software Week two was identifying and evaluating open source video editing software. As I progressed through the readings I learned that there are many different types of editing software. The programs I have become the most comfortable with are Audacity, Premiere Elements, Camtasia, and Moviemaker. The new programs I learned about were Wax, AvidFreeDV, and Zwei-Stein. The one thing I have learned by looking at the different editing software is that there are different programs for different levels of editing knowledge levels. There is also a different degree of expense that comes with different programs from the free versions that mostly consist of very basic editing tools to very expensive programs that have many beginning to advanced editing tools that will do almost anything you want. Researching and knowing what each program will offer will help you to decide what program is right for you. In week two I personally grew in knowledge concerning all the different options I had available to me. I will now take these resources and use them to help the teachers at my school become more aware of the variety of programs that will help them to accomplish their curriculum goals pertaining to video and audio editing. The experience I have had this year using editing software has been with the LOTE (Language other than English) teachers. I worked with the Spanish teachers using Audacity, PowerPoint, and Photostory to create vocabulary lists that the students will define the term or word, find a picture that represents the word, then create pictures that the student imported into Photostory. The students then recorded or narrated their voice using either the narration option in Photostory or Audacity saying each word. The students enjoyed this project because they used different programs in very different ways to accomplish their goal.

Weeks 3- 5 – PSA Pre and Post Production In weeks three through five we took what we had learned about storyboarding and the different video editing software and actually created a video project. In week three, we formed groups of three to five people that had a common cohort. This was a very frustrating part of the class due to the lack of knowledge we each had on who was in our cohort. The frustration diminished when everyone starting posting their cohorts on the discussion board so we could start contacting each other. It took about three days and we finally formed our group. In our group we had a lot of different technology levels and age ranges. These differences really brought our group together in the end. Our initial contact was through email. We established what the best method of collaboration would be the best. We all decided that Google Docs would be our best friend for the next three weeks. At first, it was a little frustrating getting everyone in Google Docs at the same time. After everyone became comfortable with it we started using the chat feature and this is where our collaboration went to a new level. We meet for the next 4 days in Google Docs to create our initial scene and narration logs. As we progressed and our ideas started flowing, we found that our group worked very well together. We finished our script, narration log and scene list. We were ready to start taping. Our video editor took our script and created the raw footage. Then our editor took the raw footage and created a raw video that was posted to YouTube for all the group members to preview. The raw footage was a hit with the group. We had very minimal changes to make. We collaborated and submitted the changes to our editor. She then made the changes and resubmitted our final project. The experience that I have gained from this experience is priceless. The knowledge I have gained will not only be used in my personal life but also in my professional life in training teachers.