FV - The AR Pitch

I've created a short video to discuss the ideas of the AR.

PE6_Behind The Digital Curtain!

 Ok – in reflection this was a very challenging assignment – made that way by my very technical selection.  I do feel that I have really gotten a good start on understanding a very deep topic and am prepared now to head back into Final Cut Pro with a new array of understanding of what is actually going on.  Mr. Jordon does have a very even voice that made it challenging at times to keep focus, and I would have enjoyed more graphics through out the course – but if you can make it through it contains the seeds of knowledge that any further growth in video will find necessary.

Of note, in one of the final chapters – there is a section on Digital Audio.  This is, as Mr. Jordon says, a very deep subject on its own, and he only briefly touches on some of the aspects.  However, with that being said I would again urge you to give a watch to Waveforms in particular as well as the section on Bit Depth – as both are something that will help in our modest level or work within our video projects.  If you make it through those – also note the section on Reference Tone Levels and setting the appropriate audio levels – as both help explain some of the aspects available to improve the sound on your podcasts.

I would have liked a bit more on how to mic and record some of the audio – especially my most challenging area personally – outdoor recordings.  However, I feel the scope of the course, as a whole was more a foundation on how it all works – as opposed to the technical, gritty aspects.  It was a great foundation and a worthy investment of my time!

From the uber useful Waveform chapter - watch it!

PE5_Deep In the Trenches

Ack.  Mr. Jordon dives right in with an explanation of what seems like everything in regard to video terminology.  This is something that really is essential to getting a solid start into video but was a tedious start.  It grew much more interesting later in the first chapter with the discussion on Aspect Ratio and what you need to understand in regard to your own videos as well as the various Video Output formats that are commonly used in.  I will see with some of the aspects that have been discussed in the first two chapters – both Video Terminology and Digital Data – the course seemed geared toward folks entering the field as a whole, but the course so far has really helped get a grip on everything for this “interested amateur”.

I don’t want to give a blow by blow of the course – as with a bit over 1:45 min into a 2:30 hour course that would be enough blogging for my lifetime…I did want to touch on a few things that he covered.  If you are reading this and don’t look at anything else – please go over the Video Formats and Images Size in chapter 1 and Video as Digital Data and Image Compression clip found within the Video as Digital Data Chapter – all of them are really essential in understanding what options are available to us in working with our camera’s and editing programs.

As I’m nearing the end and into the Color and Video chapter – I have to say I’m not sure this is a course that is well suited overall for the student project level of interest most of us might have.  I have learned a lot so far and am happy to say I have a much better handle on what is being discussed in the actual Final Cut tutorials – but this course covers some aspects that would mainly be of interest to folks doing editing and such for TV or a local organization.  I’m continuing as I do feel it is giving the necessary foundation for my future video plans – but caution those that follow: Mr. London’s voice is hypnotic.

PE4_Behind the Cut!

For this weeks Practical Experience exercise I opted to another Lynda course that was under the listing for my experience last week: Final Cut Pro.  When first looking into this program last week I was hugely overwhelmed with unfamiliar terminology and what was being altered and affected by some of the changes that were made.  I noted that last week, it was mentioned we were allowed to continue with our experience and that was my original intent – until my discovery…

Lynda has a whole course within the Final Cut area that is on Digital Video Principles and presented by Larry Jordan.  All and all I thought this a perfect fit – I plan on continuing with the Final Cut lessons – but think this course will allow me to grow and gain a lot more from the later return to Final Cut.

This has the added benefit of preparing me for all the future videos and podcasts that we’ll be working on throughout the remainder of our Master’s here at Full Sail – so all and all I can not think of a better return on time invested.  Off we go!

The whole course laid out!

BP12_OOM WikiSpaces!

I wanted to try another approach with this one - not sure if it works for me as much.

PE3_Final Cut DOH!

This is an awesome program.  The tutorials on our Lynda.com accounts allows you to go through the process in a stepped manner – which as I mentioned in my second post – I feel is essential with a program that offers all the tools this one does.  I followed through the first few tutorials and have successfully put together a clip of various scrap bits I had sitting around from other podcasts.  One of the features I LOVE and is the one I feel is missing [it maybe buried there somewhere] in iMovie – is the ability to have one shot fade into the other with control so you don’t “lose” footage on both sides of the transition you include.  I am still unsure the difference with all the different sequence presets – but mostly they seem to deal with the final compression form and how it is handling the audio.  The ability to adjust for your lighting and such is also present in iMovie but Final Cut goes about it in different ways to allow the final product to be broadcast safe [meaning will broadcast over television without loss of quality]

The wonderful feature though that has only lightly been touched on so far, is that the audio tracks are separate [instead of having to use Garage Band AND iMovie – you can just go here] and the program has filters to help cut and even out the sound from the clips – a great boon for those of us that have tried to shoot outside with all that background noise.

All and all it is a great program – one I would recommend for those that love to dig around – it is a beefy one though and will take many more lessons before I think I can produce something that is a matter of dragging and dropping in iMovie.  Not that this is a bad thing – as the depth of effects and what you can control is far great in Final Cut – but it is one that with the current time crunch for the Master’s may preclude using this as my main ‘go to’ program for media delivery at this point.  I am looking forward to digging further into this in week 4 and seeing if it gets easier for me.

Working through a lynda.com tutorial - GREAT resource!

PE2_Poking Around _ But With a Guide!

Starting out with iMovie there are some major jumps that are required to work in Final Cut Pro at a comfortable level.  Just opening the program drops you right into choices that were outside the realm of my understand by asking what “sequence presets” you want to choose – which are various sets of sound, video compression, and size options when you find out some of the info later – part of my difficulty is that I don’t have a film or audio background and it does show at times with the terminology here.

Moving past that we have the various windows and panes.  These panes and how they are integrated also differs somewhat from iMovie, although some similarities are present.  The timeline window however in Final Cut is huge; I would liken it very much to the layers palette for Photoshop – except in this case it is layers of clips, text, and audio all set out on a familiar timeline for editing.  The opening tutorials I’ve been going through are mostly a tour of the areas and how to use them, importing a clip into the viewer or adding it to your timeline, how to do a transition in the timeline using the tool options, etc.  So far it has been ok, as with all new programs I am not familiar with where all the options I may be looking for are – but it is these basics that will “at least” let me edit and put stuff together in Final Cut with the chance of much more advanced editing existing a bit later.

I have to say, I dragged my feet on this task this week – but am now so very happy that we were given this task!  Final Cut is an awesome and very powerful tool – I am certain I will continue my growth in over this next year – and I am grateful to get a foot in the door of the capabilities it offers.

Working through an import tutorial.

BP11_Blog Post Comment

Please follow this link to read my comment on Patricia Ort's blog post for Web 2.0 tools!  Seriously though - follow this link and read her post, it is awesome!

Ariel view of the Gettysburg Museum and battlefield area!

BP10_Blog_Comment

Please follow this link to read my comment on Kris Newton's blog post on Web 2.0 tools!

Kris has done a great job with his blog and posted some great information.

PE1_The Plunge

I’ve decided to go the path of scaring the bejebus out of myself and try to learn the extremely powerful tool: Final Cut Pro.  I’ve made this choice because we have been doing a large number of podcasts, and will be for the remainder of our time in this degree program.  I like the iMovie and Garageband tools we have played around with but as I have particularly enjoyed making the videos, I am hoping that Final Cut has a level of entry that will allow me to make use of it as a tool without taking such a large time investment from my already stretched budget.

I am in the lucky position of having the program installed on my work laptop, which overcomes the first hurdle of the program: the large price tag.  It is a professional suite for film editing though so I shouldn’t be too surprised.  I tried yesterday to open the program up and ‘mess around’ a little in the hopes that it is one of those programs you can figure out the basics of on your own.  I was in error.

It is not overly complicated, but certainly has many more options and tools than the humble iMovie have.  It also makes the fans on my poor little laptop kick in to such a high speed that I fear my computer may actually take off in flight!  

Tutorial #1

BP9_WikiSpaces

I was torn this week with my choice of which web tool to utilize.  I was originally going to pursue Moodle and I looked into it after the discussion in Wimba and by Jeannine email about how wonderful it is for her class.  It seems like a great tool, but I thought with it being discussed in Wimba and her email that I would forge into other areas and see if I could find another tool that works well for my AR or course needs.  I struck out into the lands of Web 2.0 lists and found one that I thought would be amazing in terms of additional website support for my class: Wikispaces!

Wikispaces is a wonderful little place that lets you create extensive, but private, wiki pages for your respective class or institution.  It uses a simple WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get] editor in the creation of your pages and allows files and resources to be uploaded for use on your Wiki.  I found it particularly interesting because it allows RSS notifications, which I think would be a great tool to keep your students aware of updates and changes as well as announcements of important information for the class.  It also allows you to use various statistics of end user actions so you can track what parts of the pages are being used or underutilized by your students so you can better target the key information that you want to focus on.  Finally, it has its own set of discussion forums for your pages, and being that I’m keen on establishing a sense of community for my online students I find this particularly appealing.

The one and only real downside to this is that the Free sign up does give you most of the features I mention with one unfortunate exception:  No private pages.  With my institution requiring any additional resources and websites to be secure for only our students, this puts me in the position of having to pay for the site to maintain it for the class.  Sadly, my yearly budget for my class doesn’t have any extra room for me to squeak this en, although the prices are reasonable for individual use – when you get to the Education pricing it climes higher than I would be able to afford.  Good stuff overall, but sadly priced out of range for me.

Home page for the Web 2.0 tool

This is their private aspects - still personal use though.

They provide a large number of tour videos that are very well done.

BP8_OMM Voice Thread

Click and sit back and enjoy - a short clip on a wonderful tool!

BP7_Blog Comment

Please follow this link to read my comment on Jazmin Jones blog - she is looking into ideas and tools for teaching in South Korea and has some great thoughts to share with a wonderful sense of wit making the read enjoyable.

BP6_Blog Comment

Please follow this link to read my comment on Kris Newtons blog - he is looking into some very interesting ideas in regard to Second Life as an educational tool.

BP5_Crocodoc

This is an interesting little bit of Cloud based software.  The idea behind the tool is that it allows the sharing of documents in various forms with the ability to high light, add comments, edit, annotate, and write review comments onto them.  I am not sure this is a tool that will be of immediate use in regard to my AR or my students in my course, but with the growing number of my Associate Course Directors that I have to have work from home it may be a great way for us to continue curriculum development.

A user does not need to create an account in order to use the sites functions, but creating a free account does allow all documents that were worked on or uploaded to be marked and kept in a list form with that account.  The Crocodoc site deals with privacy by assigning a unique, random url for each document that you can give to others – so it is secure in regard to items not being published to the Internet openly.

The one feature that I find very interesting, especially in regard to sharing work with staff at home, is that the site also accepts power points – so work on Wimba lectures can be done in a sharing environment instead of constant uploads and updates.  It also has the added advantage of being cross platform [a happy nod to the Cloud structure being employed here] so my instructors are able to work from their home PCs or their Macs as needed.  Some good possibilities for professional use here I think, although use in my curriculum by my students I’m unsure of at this particular time.

Below is a quick shot of a sample document and some of the notes and edit features that it includes.

BP4_Web2.0 Tools

I must admit the go2web20 site had me a bit nervous from the beginning.  There are so many option and tools available that I felt a bit overwhelmed.  However, keeping my AR in mind – as well as the needs of my current curriculum – I used their category/tag tool to narrow it down from the massive about of options to a single one; Wiggio.  This is an amazing tool that I’ve been playing around with over the course of the weekend in the hopes of finding the ‘catch’.

By catch I mean that many of these sites cost a subscription fee, those that don’t usually require something or limit the duration of use or elements that are available.  A great free example of what I mean is Dropbox, a very useful Cloud tool but also one that suffers from a small storage size unless you upgrade or invite friends and coworkers to expand the size of your storage.  So far I’m happy to say that wiggio not only appears to be free of this restriction, but has so many of the tools and functions built into it – it may very well be THE solution I need for my curriculum’s group work.

The obstacles I wanted this tool to address was an easy way for the students to meet and share work on their project, but also give my instructor’s a way to keep tabs on who is contributing and doing what aspects of the project.  Both of these are addressed in wiggio.  Currently we use Dropbox for the students to share work and they usually use iChat to have their meetings with some of them using my courses Wimba classroom when it isn’t otherwise in use.  This has worked somewhat, as the combination of these tools allows full collaboration.  However it requires the students use at least two separate programs in order to get the difficult task of group work done in an online environment with the onus that there is no accountability or easy way for the instructor to track group work and contributions.

Wiggo has the abilities of Dropbox, iChat, and even some aspects of Wimba [archived group chat sessions] with the nice addition that the instructor can see who has contributed what files and when.  This also helps the student group to stay on task, as there is even a calender feature that shows everyone when aspects of the work are due, when meetings are scheduled, and even can send out emails to the group reminding them of these tasks.

All and all Wiggo seems so far to be a great site for online group collaboration work – I highly suggest my peers give it a look!

This is the home screen each student would see - look at the organization tabs across the top!

W1_Reading

How to Survive a Virtual Group
This was a wonderful article about the obstacles that are repeated throughout online group work.  I greatly appreciated the structure of the article in that it breaks down the issues into smaller aspects and then discusses some of the problems these approaches my have.  Group work is always difficult, and it is important for the instructor to facilitate more than lead.  This article comes to the rescue to the educator in need by offering firm ideas that allow the pitfalls of the various approaches to be bypassed or built upon.

We currently employ a group project in my CSI class and after reading the article I think that it will have to undergo an overhaul.  The points mentioned in the article, such as avoiding overlap of roles to cut down on the inherent competitive nature of groups, will help each participant “buy into” the project as a whole.

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing
An interview of Dr. Marcos Athanasoulis of Harvard Medical School by Sramana Mitra in regard to some of the aspects of Cloud Computing.  With a focus on the needs and focuses of HMS and what they need to get out of the virtual network to enable their researchers a stable environment.  The separation of their private cloud with the public cloud is of some interest as well, although the Dr. does mention that they would likely make more use of the public cloud later on.

Of specific interest to me was the mention of public Software as a Service packages [SaaS] that are out there.  While the Dr. doesn’t feel that there are any that will help with the high end research carried out at Harvard – it has put me on track for researching some of these items and how I can bring them into my AR.

How to Design Effective Online Group Work Activities
Some very interesting points brought up in this article.  It discusses some of the challenges facing group work, but points out the largest failure of group work is that we integrate the task, that it is usually a task that could be accomplished individually, and that we encourage only synchronous tools for them to use to work together.  Combining this with links to a seminar about online group work makes this one of the most valuable articles I’ve found this week for my AR.

As I mentioned in the other group article, my current curriculum faces this very challenge in online group projects.  The suggestions in this article, and the guidance it gives, will hopefully guide my group work into a more successful state for my students.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Learning
This article is an interesting look at some of the pros and cons of online learning environments.  I think the information is a little dated and the author doesn’t go into much detail on the reasons other than flatly stating them.  It does have some good points it contributes but overall I feel that I may use it more as a springboard for what to look for and avoid in future articles.

Cloud Computing
This is less an article and more an entire Wiki on the subject.  It gives great scope to some of the characteristics and economics of cloud computing.  It has been the baseboard from which I’ve been able to explore from with a better understanding of what is behind the web 2.0 tools I’m looking into.

A shot of my blog post

BP3_DiigoGroups

I am impressed with the usefulness of Diigo in the area of groups research in online environments.  I have created my Action Research group and added the articles I've been reading over the course of the week so far.  If you are reading this blog and wish to contribute some links or articles through Diigo then feel free to join up!

Unfortunately, the members already invited haven't responded at the time of this posting - so I wanted to include a shot of the group invites screen as well to give an idea of where I am starting in regard to critical friends.

My Action Research group page.

The other groups I'm a member of.

The current invite list.

BP2_iGoogleScreenShots

Below are some screen shots of my PLE created on iGoogle!

Home Tab

FSO Tab

AR/CBL Tab

ETC Tab

BP1_Google Reader

Hello everyone!  It is a pleasure to share my thoughts and ideas with all of you – or at least the ten folks required to follow my ramblings!  My name is Lionel and I’m a Course Director here at Full Sail University.  I teach an online course called Computer Science and the Internet and we’ve been in the process for about 4 months of totally overhauling the course curriculum into a new exciting direction.

With these changes in mind, as well as aspects of my AR on Group Accountability and Collaboration Using Cloud Computing tools – I have focused my Google Reader subscriptions on various sites and feeds that I have found of use or hope to use in the future.  Being now a course more fixed on teaching our students the ropes of the Mac OS X, I check Apple sites regularly to keep up with changes and patches so my information in class is current and up to date.  This, combined with gadget and game sites, allow me to have useful discourse with my students and ensure the lessons taught are of use.  I have opted to follow:

• ·      Apple
• ·      Mac OS Rumors
• ·      Gizmodo
• ·      Kotaku

For the AR aspect, I have gathered together a collection of some top Cloud Computing sites as well as some with information and ideas on working within groups.  I am hoping to be able to forge an enjoyable group experience into my course for my students and these sites should help make that happen!  For this aspect of my subs I have chosen to follow:

• ·      Cloud computing CIO.com
• ·      Cloud computing services with VMware
• ·      Dealing with Students Who Hate Working in Groups! [I love this one…lol]

It promises to be an interesting month!  Good luck to everyone.

Below is a quick snapshot of my Google Reader page and the subscriptions.

Testing Design

Just making a post to check design elements!  =)