This project was a success! I had my students learn new technology and begin a projet that drew on prior learning. Most of the students seemed to enjoy the project and process however, I need to make some changes.
One:
I need to make sure the students can develop their comments to their peer a bit more. They seemed to answer with one word answers which I would try to get them to expand on a bit.
Two:
The account that i have set up has a limit of voice credits for the voice to text function which i did not realize at the start. Next time i will have to make sure that the students understand the limitations.
All in all it was a success and I think any teacher can use the lesson and also use it as a collaborative learning project as well if possible with other classes.
Here is a link to the video documenting the lesson. The video is also below. Enjoy!
But then, this is just for your "what it's worth" department.
I created the above animation using the pan and movement effects which gives the illusion of movement with the character in relation to the background. Really cool! Today I also met with the ELA instructor to prep for the script portion of this lesson and I also introduced the software to the students and they were very excited and went right to work. They were all engaged from the start! Awesome!
I have also learned that you can bring layers, or object forward which is quite nice. For example in the above picture I can bring the television set forward so my character will appear as though he is stand behind the TV and still keep the shot perspective.
I started to work on becoming a better user of GoAnimate so I would be better prepared for the animation lesson my students will be gin when they learn to use this program to produce an animated short of 1 - 2 minutes. I already applied for a teacher account and set up my class prior to the week start as you can see in the above picture. I found many useful tutorials that helped me create the following video. In this video I tried using adding sound, using the cut effect, and also adding emotion and movement to the characters. You can also create original characters very easily as well and the two featured are ones that created in minutes.
As I completed chapter 6 of the essential training, I learned about working with effects. this chapter covered titles, transitions, one-step effects and other topics.
Here is a short video on how to add titles and one-step effects:
I really liked the way iMovie sets up the audio editing visually. I found this feature very useful and could see how this could simplify some explanation to sound-scaping to my students:
In the picture above you can see how iMovie shows the user the waveforms of the audio files attached to the project and clips. I especially liked how you could extract audio from clips by clicking and dragging and pressing the Shift+Command keys.
Overall I really liked the essential training and definitely learned a lot about the advanced features of iMovie.
I have been using iMovie and other video editing software programs for a while now, but it has all been self-taught. I really liked how these video covered the basics of file management also. I can not stress to my students enough how they need to understand and utilize file management. In the business of video and sound production that is almost key to your success or demise if you lose your assets to your productions and ultimately, your clients.
The beginning three chapters were a bit basic, however there were some very valuable information that I found in each of them. For example, the stabilization feature when importing footage. I have decided that instead of creating something from scratch during this training, I really want to use the exercise files and follow along with the instructor so I do not get caught up in the creative side but spend more time actually learning the techniques that are being taught.
