As one of the last reflections for this project, I would like to start off by reflecting on my reflections. Doing these reflections on the blogs remind me of the ones that I did for grade 8 Humanities. A few days ago, I found one of my old posts. As I was reading it, I remember myself thinking that the more I write, the better my post will be. Looking back on what I have written in the past, the first thing I notice is that I write a lot. This can be good, or it can just be long and wordy. The majority of my past entries for this project have been more updates on our progress, with some reflection. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, as I feel that details are important. However, I would like to incorporate some more reflection into these updates for my next project.
Last week, we did our peer review. I will admit, I was a little bit skeptical about it to begin with because many peer reviews that I've experienced mainly consist of people saying "Good job", with not a lot of real feedback. This time, I was pleasantly surprised by it. At first, our peer review started off as more of an interview than as a discussion, but as we got more comfortable, the discussion came more naturally. We gained a lot of valuable feedback from the peer review. Although obviously won't use all of it, it was great to hear what other people had to say. If you would like to see the notes that we collected, here is a link to it.
For the past few days, Andrew and I have focused on the video to get it done and to make it the best it can be. When it comes to editing, as I have mentioned before, it has been challenging. We have encountered multiple different issues in terms of effects, images, and the flow of our video. For these reasons, we decided that it would be best top postpone the date of our presentation so that we could have time to try and improve it. Looking at our video now, I am a bit concerned because currently, it isn't as good as I had hoped. However, there is still time to improve it. We have been working on the video as much as we can to make it the best it can be.
When I think about our project as a whole, I am proud of all of the things that I have learned along the way. Some things may not have turned out exactly the way that we had planned, as we changed our plans multiple times along the way, but I think that I have learned more from this project than from a lot of other projects that have gone according to plan. Not to say that it isn't a lot easier when things work out the way they were planned to, but I think that when you make mistakes, it allows for unexpected learning.
I am excited to finish this project and start my next one!
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Wednesday, May 07, 2014
Weekly Reflection #3
Last week, we got quite a bit done. We were able to complete our filming, as planned. However, we decided that instead of using Mr Milross for the interview in our video, we chose to use my dad instead. I think that the reason for our change was mostly for convenience of both ourselves and the person that we were interviewing. As a teacher, Mr Milross likely has a very busy schedule. Although he was willing to help us, we knew that filming can be a lengthy process and difficult to fit into a busy schedule. Therefore, we thought that a good alternative was to use my dad for the interview instead. My dad was very happy to do it and we had a lot of fun filming. For the purposes of our video and in the interest of making the interviewee seem more believable, we had my dad pretend to have a PhD.Thankfully, filming went very well for all of the elements of our video and we were able to finish all of it by Wednesday.
The efficient filming allowed us to focus our remaining time on our presentation and the editing of our video. We decided to try a presentation format called Keynote because it was something that was new to both of us. On Thursday, we started making our Keynote presentation. Upon looking at it, I was a bit concerned, as it seemed to be a bit dry. However, we planned to edit and embellish it more at home. Once I got home though, I found out that keynote costs $9.99; which is a little more than I wanted to spend on this app. I'm not sure why it costed money for me, as it was free for Andrew. Either way, we decided that we had to take our presentation in yet another direction. We decided to use prezi, as it is something that I have never used before. Our goal was to try and avoid platforms that we were both already comfortable with (eg. PowerPoint) and to push ourselves to try new things.
While we worked out our issues with the presentation fairly quickly, we had a few more issues when it came to the editing of our video. The editor that we're using is called AVS Editor. Andrew thought that this would be the best method, as it is free to download, so that we could both have it. Andrew started off the editing and quickly ran into some issues. Admittedly, I was concerned when Andrew said that he had run into some stumbling blocks. Obviously, the video is a very important part of our project and we wanted it to be as professional as possible. However, I have found that worrying and panicking over the challenges that we may have prevents me from moving to find a solution. It can be hard not to be stressed over these things, but spending time stressing more often adds to the problem than it creates a solution.
Going back to our video, we found out that we couldn't insert some of our videos or add any charts, graphs, or diagrams as we had hoped to. Since these are elements that are essential to our project, we had to come up with some creative solutions to this. Andrew came up with the solution to use Windows Movie Maker to convert these files into something that would be compatible with AVS.
As of now, we are finished with our prezi (YAY) and are about halfway done with the editing of the video. We are practicing our presentation in class and working on the video at home. I think that we've both learned a lot from using this new editor, though I don't think that it is my favourite to use. However, it is good to be able to adapt to new ways of doing things. I have learned a lot about video- making and the different medias that are involved in this process- which is part of my goal for the project. My movie making skills still aren't great, but I have a basic understanding of it to use for future projects or jobs.
This week, we are also preparing for our peer review. Since our video is not ready and we would like to keep it from the class, our goal for the peer review is to get specific feedback and suggestions regarding our video and presentation. We plan to show our reviewers our presentation and give them a rough idea of what our video is about.
The efficient filming allowed us to focus our remaining time on our presentation and the editing of our video. We decided to try a presentation format called Keynote because it was something that was new to both of us. On Thursday, we started making our Keynote presentation. Upon looking at it, I was a bit concerned, as it seemed to be a bit dry. However, we planned to edit and embellish it more at home. Once I got home though, I found out that keynote costs $9.99; which is a little more than I wanted to spend on this app. I'm not sure why it costed money for me, as it was free for Andrew. Either way, we decided that we had to take our presentation in yet another direction. We decided to use prezi, as it is something that I have never used before. Our goal was to try and avoid platforms that we were both already comfortable with (eg. PowerPoint) and to push ourselves to try new things.
While we worked out our issues with the presentation fairly quickly, we had a few more issues when it came to the editing of our video. The editor that we're using is called AVS Editor. Andrew thought that this would be the best method, as it is free to download, so that we could both have it. Andrew started off the editing and quickly ran into some issues. Admittedly, I was concerned when Andrew said that he had run into some stumbling blocks. Obviously, the video is a very important part of our project and we wanted it to be as professional as possible. However, I have found that worrying and panicking over the challenges that we may have prevents me from moving to find a solution. It can be hard not to be stressed over these things, but spending time stressing more often adds to the problem than it creates a solution.
Going back to our video, we found out that we couldn't insert some of our videos or add any charts, graphs, or diagrams as we had hoped to. Since these are elements that are essential to our project, we had to come up with some creative solutions to this. Andrew came up with the solution to use Windows Movie Maker to convert these files into something that would be compatible with AVS.
As of now, we are finished with our prezi (YAY) and are about halfway done with the editing of the video. We are practicing our presentation in class and working on the video at home. I think that we've both learned a lot from using this new editor, though I don't think that it is my favourite to use. However, it is good to be able to adapt to new ways of doing things. I have learned a lot about video- making and the different medias that are involved in this process- which is part of my goal for the project. My movie making skills still aren't great, but I have a basic understanding of it to use for future projects or jobs.
This week, we are also preparing for our peer review. Since our video is not ready and we would like to keep it from the class, our goal for the peer review is to get specific feedback and suggestions regarding our video and presentation. We plan to show our reviewers our presentation and give them a rough idea of what our video is about.
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