Assignment 11d: Reflections on Linked Courses

I think that the linked courses have been beneficial because the content portion (Historical Development of Children’s Literature) provides great material for the substance in the hands-on technology portion (Educational Uses of Digital Photography and Digital Storytelling). I feel that the digital photo/storytelling assignments have been worthwhile and have consistently reinforced and enhanced skills that were taught in class. I also feel that the assignments assisted me in gaining a better grasp on the children’s literature content by appealing to my visual learning style. The linked course pairing helped me connect technical skills to content area knowledge by allowing me to see firsthand how I could implement the use of technology to teach themes within children’s literature.

I would definitely be interested in taking other linked courses if they were offered and would recommend this pair of linked course to other students. Not only is it a time saver to have two linked courses on one evening, but the overlap increases understanding. I believe that the digital photo/storytelling course could be successful if it were offered online, or mostly online. However, I feel that due to the varying technical skill levels among the students, some of the more challenging assignments would require face-to-face time to minimize confusion and provide adequate help.

Additionally, I would like to add that I think the use of a course blog and a personal blog are very beneficial to this course. Not only do they provide a way to discuss assignments and problems, they allow for visual examples of work to be displayed and shared.

Assignment 11: Making CDs

Our assignment was to burn a CD that contained our final project and our final project report. In order to make my CD, I inserted a blank CD-R into my disk drive and then opened it through "My Computer". I then selected, copied, and pasted my files in the CD window. When I closed the window and pressed eject, the computer burned all of the files and ended my session. Now my CD files can be viewed on any computer.

Assignment 10: Software Used For This Course

In order to complete my assignments for this course, I have used the following software:

Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Camtasia Studio 4
Goldwave
Microsoft Office Word 2007
Paint
Photo Story 3 for Windows
Windows Movie Maker

Glogster

I'm not sure if you guys have heard of this, but http://www.glogster.com/ is an awesome free Web 2.0 tool that can be used for personal and preofessional use. Think of it as a visual alternative to blogs, where you can use images, video, audio and links to tell a story. I've seen examples for marketing products, alternative book reports, poetry display, and digital scrapbooking...to just name a few. I played around with it and made this one. If you get a chance, check it out, but beware....it is very addictive!!!!

Assignment 9

For this assignment, we were asked to mix audio and music on one track. I used Goldwave for the editing and uploaded it onto BooMP3 and embedded the player here.


sample_script_with_music

Engines of Our Ingenuity: #1197 King Arthur

This is a digital story I created for an episode from Engines of Our Ingenuity. The topic is over the legend of King Arthur and how the real person is not what we have come to know through medieval and modern interpretations. I found various images from literature, art, and film to illustrate the ideas and themes from the script.

Assignment 8

Here is my storyboard for my digitalstory. I'm still working on cutting out some of the dialogue, but this gives a basic overview of what I am planning visually.