Final Post of the Year!!

Wow!! It's the end of the school year! I seriously can't believe it. This has been such a crazy class, but it was great all at the same time. We pretty much just came up with something that we thought would be fun to do, made a criteria sheet, and began to learn by exploring different programs. I really feel like I have learned a lot of new stuff about tech this year. At the beginning of the year I felt very confident in my tech skill especially when it came to microsoft word and power point, but Mr.A brought it to a new level and I know now more than I ever have about microsoft office. I also learned a lot more about website making, blogging, garage band, imoive, and so much more.

Final Project

I think I finally found a software that will work on pc's for screen recording, but I haven't downloaded it yet. I'm going to try get some recording and uploading done in class today and the rest at home. :)

A Website Made Outside of Class

Hey Everyone! :) So it would be awesome if you guys would please check out me and my friends business website. We make cake pops for many occasions and the first order we get through our website gets 25% off! Check it out here!

The End of Wiki and the Start of the Final Project

So we've finally kind of finished the wiki, minus the fact that we have to complete the final project part of it. Now we are starting the final projects. For my final project I am making a youtube channel called, techsamurai23. Here, I'm posting screen recording tutorials that show how to do several of the projects that we've done throughout the year. I think this would be awesome because not only could I display what I learned, but I could help people from all over learn some new things.

Class Wiki

So, now that we've completed making our own websites, we are now making a class wiki! A wiki is pretty much one website with many people working to create it, instead of just one. Our wiki goes over everything we've done throughout this entire year and showcases every individual's projects. It took about 2 weeks but it's basically done now. We just have to figure out how to blur some personal info on peoples word processing artifacts. Our next project which we have to complete is our final project. It has to be mind blowing and awesome!

Website Evaluation Reflection

So for my website evaluation I found that I need to work on the content of my site and this visual appeal. I didn't have any widgets or audio in the background which I totally forgot we had to have. It may have been helpful to have a list in docs where we could follow the criteria. Also on the visual appeal, some of my pictures are bigger than the others and others aren't in line. I tried to figure this out but google sites is really stupid and there really isn't a way that I know of. Maybe a google search might help me figure it out. So, my websites not to bad just a few little things :)

Here's the data I collected with my survey evaluation

Video Project Summary

So our video projects are finally done and I think they turned out pretty cool! :) It was fun to watch every ones different ideas. I think some things I could have fixed on mine was the quality of the video as it wasn't very clear, but I didn't have time to re film. Another thing was that mine wasn't very entertaining in my opinion, so I need to work on my creativity. But otherwise I feel like I learned some cool features of iMovie I never knew about like adding music in the background, and separating the audio from the video. One of my clips actually had the audio separated and I lined it up. One thing that I would change that was kind of annoying was the block out. It took forever to do and I didn't find it very useful at all. So yeah, to sum it up I reviewed a few things but I learned some new things as well and it was an easy project to do.

Video Projects Concludes

Hi everyone! So, with spring break and all this catching up, I totally forgot to blog. Not to much has happened in the past two weeks though. In class, we filmed our movies and then we spent a week splicing them together and such. I learned how to extract the audio from a movie so I could line it up with different videos and how to add sound effects. Next class we are uploading them, so it should be fun to watch. Next I think we are doing some social networking stuff and then our final projects, so that should be fun :)

Video Project Block-Out and Script

So, I finished my Block out and Script. It took me forever because I am not super creative when it comes to these things, and I couldn't make my script long enough because there is more action rather than dialogue. I feel like it will still be at least 3 min though, but I added a commercial just in case :) Next, I have to figure out who my actors are going to be and all that stuff. Should be fun and interesting.

Video Projects

So, I haven't posted for a bit, but what we have been doing in class is a video project. I have found this to be REALLY challenging because I'm not super creative when it comes to things like this, so I came up with this really dumb block-out about this games show. Now I am working on the script but this is also super challenging because I don't know how to add any humor to it or make it interesting.
So ya, this project is going to be a harder one :)

Photo, Sound, and Video Editing Software

       So for our assignment, we had to find a photo, video, and sound editing software and blog about it. Here is what I found.
       For a photo editing software I found an app for Ipad called Snapseed. I only have the lite version, as I don't want to pay the full price, but even for the lite version I really think that you can do a lot with a photo, you can add several effects, change the saturation, brightness, color tone, etc. Also, since there is a new update, there are a lot of other cool features too.
       Last, I found an app that does both sound and video editing all in one. It's called VideoStar. This app allows you to create music videos and you can edit the video by slowing it down, speeding it up, changing the color, etc. Also, when choosing a song before you start making the video, you can adjust the speed and pitch for the song. I have found that Taylor Swift sounds great as a guy when you turn her songs down to a lower pitch. LOL! I totally recommend this app. Check out Ellie's blog if you want to see a music video we made with her, her sister Abbie, and Elise :)

So these were some of my findings that hopefully you will find cool and useful too!

Photo Editing

So, today we started photo editing, which I am excited for because I love taking photos! :) However, I found the fireworks application to be confusing and hard to work with. I much rather prefer photo editing apps on my iPad. Hopefully fireworks will become easier to use. I'll post a pic of the photo edit I made later :)

3/4/13

In class, we showed our storytime projects. There were actually some really great ones that I enjoyed watching. I was also able to help Abbie B. with uploading her storybook from iMovie on her iPod to Google Drive, so I definetely learned something new. This wasn't anything to new for me but it was a quick and easy project that let me learn a few more things about iMovie.

Storybooks Finished :)

So the storybook project is finally done! :) I found this way easier to do than the garage band project and I really liked the way my story turned out. I think the hardest part was making the Kens Burn effects work right so that you could see both the pictures and words from the page.

Storybook

I am enjoying the storybook project way more than the garage band one. In class I was able to get my recordings in. Now I just need to time it and record the name of the title of the book.

Podcast Sharing!

So glad that we finally finished our podcasts! :) There were actually some really great ones and I enjoyed listening to them. My didn't turn out as great as I hoped, but it worked. Though I didn't really enjoy garage band that much, I did feel like I learned a lot.

Podcast = DONE!

I am soo happy that I finally finished my podcast. I can't say that this was one of my favorite assignments, but I have really learned alot about garage band that I would have never known before. I don't think my podcast turned out as humorous as it was supposed to, but we'll see when I present it. Also, I learned that I don't know how to stop a song from playing when you download it from online. I cleared my downloads, folders, and everything possible, and the song I had dowloaded was still playing. The only thing I could do was restart my computer.

Podcasts

Last calss, we worked on our podcasts! :) I had pre-recorded the parts of my script that I was able to at home and I put parts of it together. I also recorded some more parts of the show that I needed to such as commericals. I have found that garage band has a bunch of fun effects that work great for podcasts, such as audience laughters and drum rolls. I am so happy that I am actually understanding garage band! :)

Radio Show Script

In calss we pretty much spent our times quietly typing out our radio show scripts. I also learned of a good app to record my radio show on. My shows going to be on a just a few random things with a commerical. I am happy that garage band finally makes for sense though. Lastly, we were introduced to VHS tapes which we own like 100 of :)

Garage band with vocals?

Kind of interested to see how garage band with vocals will go in calss. I would bring a recording, but I don't know what program to use. This should be interesting.

Garage Band/ Semester Summary

     Last class, we kind of "started over" with garage band, because the majority of the calss was incredibly confused on it, including me. Our podcast assignment is going to come later. What we did is just simply play with the pre-programmed tunes on garage band to make our own songs. This was kind of fun, and I enjoyed listening to small songs everyone else made. I feel like I am finally really understanding some of the things that garage band can do and I am so glad we are taking it in small pieces.
     In addition, since it's the end of semester I thought I would reflect on some of the things I have learned in ed tech.
     The largest amount of learning I got in ed tech was from blogging and, suprisingly, the word processing unit. Blogging was completely new to me and I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to customize our page and post things different ways. In the word processing unit, I was actually surprised on how much I learned. I really thought I knew everything there was to word processing until we got assinged our 7 challenges. I now know how to resize a paper on screen so that it will print out on the same size paper, how to change backgrounds for an entire document, and a bunch of other fancy stuff.
     Also, I have learned some new things from the other units too. For instance, during the slideshow unit, I went out of my comfort zone with powerpoint and explored google slides and prezi.
     Ed tech has really taught me a lot this semester, and I can't wait to see what we'll be doing in the next.

    

Garage Band Update

Garage Band still continues to be confusing to me! It doesn't make any sense. I am starting to become more familiar with what the features do because I have found several websites that show you how to start working on garage band. However, I still do not know how to actually record, make music, edit, and stuff like that. Garage Band is definetely challenging for me.

Prezi Presentations and Garage Band

We had some pretty awesome Prezi presentations in class today. Some humorous some serious. After that we started working with garage band. I'm excited to learn how to use it, but I am lost! I have no idea how to do anything on it. I tried to make a song and couldn't get the instrument to work. I tried making a podcast and I couldn' t figure out how to record. I'm gonna need a lot of help with this one, but it's also going to be a fun challenge. :)

1/10/13 Learning

I didn't learn to much today. But I got to explore more on Prezi and started creating one of the Cell Phone. Prezi is a lot more complicated than it looks. It should be interesting to see how it turns out as I am making it from scratch.

Ed Tech Project Ideas

After everyone gave their pitches I hear quite a few ideas I liked and thought would be fun to do in ed tech such as youtubing, using garage band, using presentations in different ways, etc. I am especially excited for youtube, since I love to go on it, but haven't ever made videos for it. Next semester should be pretty fun if we can do the ideas pitched :)

Prezi

After presenting my pitch for a class project, Mr.A suggested that I check out Prezi, which is another website to make slideshows. I found this site to be incredibly cool! There are many slideshows and they also have 3D onces which bouce all around. The animations and side tranitions are pretty crazy . There are somethings I still have to learn, but I am excited to continue checking out this awesome site.

Happy New Years!

Happy new years to everyone! I can't believe it's 2013! One of my new years resolutions is to learn about technology to the fullest so that I can use it efficiently.  What are your new years resolutions?