Websites to Integrate

(ABC)

This week while searching for something to blog about I stumbled across a link my instructor posted on our class’s site 47 alternatives to using youtube.  I understand that youtube is apparently a website that is blocked on most school networks. Fortunately for me this is not an issue where I currently teach. However, I did find this article very informative. In looking through the list of 47 websites I noticed a few I was already familiar with. TED talks for example is always a source of great inspiration for me in blogging, and hulu has provided me with entertainment for hours personally.

The first site I came across that I was not familiar with was How Stuff Works.  Almost immediately I found material that I could possibly integrate into my lessons at school.

Material ranging from games and puzzles like this one of an audio mixing board to informative articles of a variety of industry related topics.  Monkey See was another interesting site that I was introduced to with a variety of tutorials. In particular I found detailed videos on beatboxing that I thought was very entertaining. Finally the last site that I dove into was this week in rap. I loved this site and think it would be perfect for my students. It’s essentially current events and issues highlighted through rap to make them more entertaining.

If you are looking for websites to integrate into your instruction I highly recommend checking some of these out. You are bound to find something informative and useful that  your students can benefit from. 

Home Monitoring Project.

Digital Storytelling RR#5

A particular area that I wanted to address in my lectures at school is what’s wrong with the home monitoring environment that my students are using to mix and master their recordings in.  I teach Digital Mastering which is the final class of the Recording Arts bachelor degree at my university. I think that it would be interesting for them to create a digital story in the form of a video or slide show where they can film their monitoring environment and identify potential problems and provide solutions on how they can be fixed. If the student does not have a sufficient home monitoring environment an analysis of the listening room at the school can be done as a substitute. This project can be created in either iMovie or Keynote.

Information to include in the presentation would be: 

-What kind of speakers do they have

-How many sets

-Where are they placed in the room

-What problems and deficiencies does this cause

-How can these problems be overcome

The story would need to include pictures or video of the listening environment. Detailed specs of the equipment used by referencing manuals, manufactures websites, frequency response charts. An analysis of the monitoring environment marking where certain frequencies build upon or cancel with each other will need to be provided.   Following the analysis of the deficiencies of the environment should be a plan for overcoming these deficiencies detailing how acoustic materials and repositioning can effect the environment.

A List of websites to reference:

Gear Slutz

http://www.gearslutz.com

Walters-Storyk

www.wsdg.com

Steven Klein

http://www.soundcontrolroom.com

Book Online Integration

For this weeks ABC option I am going to bring the blog back a little closer to home. In my class we have been toying with the idea of switching to a new book. The current option that we have for the class is lacks substance and aside from a few passages is a difficult read.  After experiencing the textbook for my grad class with just as much online substance as what was contained between the covers I knew I wanted a book that integrated digital media.

I teach digital mastering and was very pleased when I found that Bob Katz had a second edition of Mastering Audio. I was familiar with the first edition and was pleased to see that they were addressing the subject of Internet delivery in the new edition.  The book references several sites that can be used to supplement the learning.  One of which is the authors own personal site.  I believe this will give some students the opportunity to delve further into some topics, and hopefully will take much longer to go out of date because of the constant upkeep on the Internet links. Wish they had books like this when I was in school.

Digital Story Embedded

How do we maintain interest? Students develop a new initiative to learn when we can keep their attention.  One of the best ways to keep their focus is by engaging them with a relevant story, building a concept with a climax, resolution, and possible twist. Offer students a challenge to create their own digital story leading them toward the potential for success when the project is complete. These elements make up the ARCS Motivational Model.

This week I tried to delve into the realm of digital story telling using PowerPoint. I am not perspicacious when it comes to using this program. In fact, this was only the second time that I have ever made a PowerPoint.  I am more comfortable with using Keynote, but I thought I would change things up a bit and introduce myself to a new software. Prezi  is another software I became aware of after I created my PowerPoint.  I watched several videos on it and I am very excited to try to create my first presentation on it.

In creating my digital PowerPoint story I discovered firsthand the importance of storyboarding and preplanning.  Being a little unfamiliar with PowerPoint I just dove strait in to creating slides. This caused me to spin my wheels for a while figuring out the program. Just before getting frustrated and giving up I just wrote down a brief outline of my story. Then bam! The presentation was made. See it posted below.

It may be a bit elementary in its design but making this presentation has planted a new found interest in developing assets like these into my teaching to make my class more entertaining as well as engaging.  Incorporating the use of my digital camera is my next goal. Taking pictures and incorporating those into the slides, and after that finding a digital video camera would be the next logical step in incorporation.   I especially like what can be done with cut outs, a little artwork, and a video camera like in this video of Digital Story Telling.  Videos like these definitely can maintain interest by the viewers always wondering what is coming next. Hopefully with a little practice and determination I will soon be making digital stories like these.

Presentation1

View more presentations from rikkpalmer.

Rising tide of Mediocrity ABC

I stumbled upon an article posted by my professor on our class webpage Technology in the classroom: why it needs to catch up fast.  It is another article that states the desperate state of education.  Claiming that technology has not effectively improved our global ranks. Now I pose the question is this because other nations are becoming more globally competitive? It always seams to imply that America is failing and slipping in rank because we are being outpaced. Is it that other countries are finally catching up?  Have we been “oversold and underused” on integrating technology in the classroom? 

I believe this all boils down to maintaining a students interest and creating a desire to learn.  I have heard brilliant ideas that completely shake up and change the education system as it stands now.  One of those is creating a mixed mode version of learning less days at school and more outside work with online elements. That may not be such a bad idea. I remember one of my personal issues in school was just how much time I had to be there and how much of my time I felt was just wasted with pointless busy work.  Students can tell when they are given busy work and that does not push them to learn. In my case it just frustrated me and made me lose interest.

Building interest I believe is the single most important thing that we could do as educators to improve our students. If I was interested or could see a point to a task in school it motivated me that much more.   Build interest and them push them for results. Stop the rising tide of mediocrity that causes community colleges to have to teach remedial high school tasks to students. I see this all the time and wonder and worry if the next generation will all be complacent with just barely good enough. 

(ABC) Lets Make a Video

I was recently exposed to the idea of creating education videos for the classroom in one of my graduate courses. I am not sure why this idea had not come to me sooner knowing how much I love to watch videos, and how hard it is to remain focused on someone lecturing for multiple hours.  I may have thought that having my students watch videos was cheating them of their education, and if they can just go youtube a lecture what is the purpose that I serve. Then the connection was made of creating my own videos giving them my own personal touch just for my students.

I began looking up different software to accomplish this task. The one demoed in my graduate class was of software called Camtasia.  This seamed like a very useful tool but was PC based and the bulk of my work lies on the Mac platform. So I began researching other software, and I found ScreenFlow. This is mainly Mac Based software that I can run on my old PowerBook.  It turns out that my school even has a continuing education class on this software. So I have signed up to expand my knowledge a bit more.

The Idea of having videos for my class excites me for many reasons. I can make sure that everyone is receiving the same content, they can view the video multiple times for clarification and reinforcement of the content, and hopefully it will be entertaining and more engaging for the students. Now all the time I spent repeating myself in the past I can use to reinforce ideas and hopefully inspire a few more.

Online Presence

Our reputations, identity, and how we want to be remembered can all be drastically changed and manipulated in the digital world we live in today. You really have to be mindful of how you are representing yourself online. Every post to a social network and every email you send must be written with the mindset, “What if my mother was to read this?”  If you don’t you might be stuck dealing with a documented digital embarrassment.

Sadly few people seam to be aware of the importance of this.  The Internet seams so vast and so unending, but part of that means whatever you put out there is going to be impossible to real back in. “Spoken word dissolves, but written perpetuates the scandal” this is a Daniel J Solove quote from the Future of Reputation and it resonates to the core of this issue.

There have been many cases of employees being terminated due to a Facebook posting or an improperly forwarded email. At my work recently a woman was let go for posting a craigslist rant in which she vented all of her frustrations with the school and the students in a 6 page online document that seamed to go into more detail than our constitution.  She did not post her name or the schools, but in reading the post it was certainly not hard to figure out either.

I had a blast using the online identity calculator and MIT’s Persona project. I have developed and unique spelling with my name that makes it very easy to find information about me online, and I am very pleased that the online identity calculator showed that I was represented in the way that I wish to be. My personal web page, Facebook, and Myspace are the first things that show up when my named is searched. This is amazing for an online presence, but that just reinforces the importance of maintaining a positive online image.

As educators I believe it is our job to maintain a positive online identity and to inform and stress the importance of this to our students. With the popularity of social networks and the ease of access to information we would be remiss if we did not aid our students in dealing with this issue.

Resources:  

Daniel J. Solove. The Future of Reputation: Gossip Rumor and Privacy on the Internet, October 2010, http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text/futureofreputation-ch2.pdf

Change of Seasons (ABC)

Summer is turning to fall and it’s starting to feel as if there is a little breeze to the air. The winds of change are rippling out into the education system.  Education seams to have been spending a bit more time in the spotlight lately.  Which is not a bad thing. Talking about improving education can only be good.

With the film Waiting for Superman on its way to theaters, a documentary by Davis Guggenheim, there has been rejuvenation in the debate of our education system. The film seams to tackle the productivity of charter and public schools, and brushes on controversial topics of performance based pay for teachers and ending tenure for un-productive teachers.

Oprah spent a day discussing education and the documentary on her show where she unveiled a 100 million dollar donation by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, to the failing Newark schools system.

In the senate democrat Tome Harkin has proposed a cut of funding to for-profit colleges. This is an issue that directly affects me.  The thought is that to many students amass large amounts of debt dropout and then default on these massive loans.

So education has been busy becoming the talk of the town lately. Lets hope that this helps us move in a positive direction. :0)

Referances:

http://film.waitingforsuperman.com/videos

http://politic365.com/2010/09/28/newark-school-system-flush-with-donations-from-zuckerberg-gates/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/09/30/bloomberg1376-L9KYK81A74E901-0DG69CV545LPHQ8PGD7PBNH9RS.DTL