August 1 - iDVD

Caleigh's movie would not work on Jeremy's parents' computer, so I went back to the lab and worked with iDVD (after sending Jeremy out last night to get DVD-R's). I have to say that iDVD is a pretty easy program to use. In about 2 hours I made 3 copies of the DVD I made of Caleigh's movie and then I made a DVD of my summer 2009. I even put my iMovie on the DVD. It was really nice...I did not have to do anything to convert my iMovie; the program did all that for me! I brought the DVDs home and they all work!! Once again I have more ideas for school!!! I think that I will maybe play my DVD for our open house...and I am still crossing my fingers that we have all this tech at school. While I was waiting I played on the Mac. I found this program called PhotoBooth...pretty neat! That is where the pictures came from that are with this post. As you can see, I used PhotoShop on 2 of them. The other picture is a thermal image - how cool is that!

July 31 - Idea

I have been thinking about using one of my long bulletin boards as a photo gallery. I think I will start out with pictures that I have taken that represent me. I figure that I can probably get some cheap frames (different would be better) and hang the frames on thumb tacks. For a background, I am going to look at the clearance fabric section - something plain, but maybe shiny? I haven't figured out a border yet, but I think that will come in to play once I choose the fabric. Then I will invite the students to bring in photos of themselves or photos they have taken. Finally I think that I will have students display the photos they have taken for our class. I will have to work out the details, but I figure that I have 2 weeks before I have to decide. I want to be able to share the photo gallery with parents on Open House night. This way they can be informed of what we are doing and also learn about me.

July 30 - Caleigh's Movie is completed!

After only an hour (12 minutes faster than the computer predicted), Caleigh's movie was done being converted to QuickTime and I was able to burn it to Cd. It fit on my JumpDrive, so I put it there too. I am giving a copy of it to my mom tomorrow at lunch time. I am really happy with how it turned out. I found the Looney Toons sound clip of their closing music and also an effect that looks like their end and used them together to make a perfect conclusion. At 7 1/2 minutes in length, I have a really nice and personal memento of my daughter's first 28 months of life.

July 30 - My thoughts on our class...

I have really enjoyed getting to see what some of the programs available can do. I feel like I have worked more for this summer workshop than any other class I have ever taken... But I also feel like I got a lot out of this class. I really do hope to use digital photography in my classroom this year. I think the students will be really motivated - especially as they see their picture-taking ability improve and being able to use the projector to assist them in presentations. I was thinking that if we have the iMovie program on our school computers, I will put my "feelers" out to see if any teachers want to learn and offer to help them. I am looking forward to taking photographs for the yearbook this year... And since I am planning on having students help (for the first time) I think I am somewhat prepared to teach them how to take better photos!! I will definitely recommend this class to any other teachers I know who are asking!

July 30 - Am I crazy???

I have been sitting in the Northside Hall computer lab for the last 2 1/2 hours because I thought that it would be really special to have an iMovie for Caleigh since she has been so good throughout this course. I love the iMovie program and I thought that I could also burn this movie as a Thank You to both our parents for watching Caleigh during classes. It says that I still have 57 minutes left waiting to convert the file (that is better than 72 minutes originally). I think that everyone will really like this movie...I even had the opportunity to use Caleigh's favorite song, "Lollipop, " which I decided against using for my Photographer's Showcase. She loves seeing her photograph on our computer (and just about anywhere) and I cannot wait to get home to show her. What I am most excited about is that Jeremy says that copying it onto its own jump drive would probably allow us to show this movie on our television (through our cable box?). I hope it works, but I think it will depend on the size of the file.

July 29 - Lesson Plans

I plan on using all of the lesson plans that I created if I have students who have access to digital cameras (as far as taking pictures at home goes). The most challenging aspect of creating these 4 lesson plans was pretending that I was in a perfect world. What I am saying is, that I had to morph my mindset into planning for students who would have access to digital cameras and be allowed to use those cameras for school. I learned that designing lessons where students get to use digital photography is not that hard (in a perfect world). I also got the chance to think about how much more motivated students would be for lessons that they would get to take pictures and "play" on the computer. I think that they will be really proud of themselves and their end products will be nice reminders of how intelligent they really are. Real confidence boosters!!

July 29 - Project 3 Podcast

Going into this project, I expected to end up with something that I could use for my classroom. During the making of the Podcast, recording the sound was the most challenging part. I am definitely glad that I typed my script! The first time I recorded, the microphone was not working well. When I reviewed the QuickTime file, there was volume but it was too low to hear. So I recorded again (on the 3rd computer I moved to) and the sound was there! I kept my third recording. The Podcast that I submitted has a lot of background noise in it which is annoying, but still think that I can use it. I may re-record if I decide to purchase ProfCast (which sounds like it is fairly reasonably priced for teachers). I could definitely use this in my classroom to help students who are absent and also to help students who need review of major topics. I think it might be useful to have students record their own Podcasts to cover our standard about informational presentations - they could easily make a presentation on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, how to do skate board tricks, etc.. If I had students making a Podcast, I would require them to write a script.