5. Reflections on Movie-Making

Windows movie maker is a really really easy and intuitive software to use! Basically, you import all the images/videos/audios and sounds you want and start dropping them into your storyboard (Steffie made a great video about this so I shan't repeat her tips)

However there were some issues I encountered while trying to make the video:

1. I realise I was so used to writing text in Word documents that I forgot initially that a text file was NOT an image document and I couldn't import the text lines directly from a Word file. Instead, I had to write them in Paint and found out I wasn't use to not having text-wrap, automatic alignment etc.

2. I also couldn't open the midi file for the background music in Audacity and had to actually play on the speakers of my computer and have the program record it as it was playing and then save it. It feels like a pretty lousy to do this though and I tried using the "Open Midi" command in Audacity but that didn't work! Any ideas?

3. With regards to affect, I realise how difficult it really it to use sound! The principle is simple, but as I was making the movie, I realised that I was unsure where I should insert the background audio for maximal effect! Is there any research on this i.e. where should visual and audio be combined for maximal affective effect, or how does different onset times invoke emotions differrently?

4. As I was looking for midis online, I realised it's pretty hard to look for pure tunes without lyrics if you don't know the title. I had a very famous tune in mind when I realised I had absolutely no way of looking for it on the internet because I can only hum it!

So yup, just some thoughts on what it was like to make a movie...

4. How to annoy your neighbour!

For media 2 I decided to inject a bit of fun (and hopefully comedy) resulting in a short movie titled "How to annoy your neighbour!" I made it using Windows Movie Maker (to get around the sound problem with powerpoints) and hope it's fun to watch! I'll update soon with a post describing the process of making this clip!

Enjoy!

3 Videos

Here's a short introductory video on myself (I can't help but feel completely silly doing it! >.<) using my webcam.



Also finally figured out how to post videos from youtube! (I've always been hesitant with posting things from youtube because I'm not very sure what constitutes a copyright infringment) Here's a song I like by Damien Rice:

2. Learning Goals?

Some things I would definitely like to learn from this course:

1. How to use all the new learning technologies (and maybe start thinking of how I can integrate them into my teaching next year after I graduate?)

2. Be more familiar with neuroscience findings and technologies

3. Learn more about how learning occurs in the classroom!

1. About me

Starting and maintaining a blog for this class sounds like so much fun as I've been an avid blog-keeper since 2004 and I have had blogs on blogger (this particular one) as well as sites such as VOX, Wordpress and Xanga. (Click on the names for links!) The features on each of these sites are quite different and I've had fun experimenting with having blogs on those sites.

Something which was quite important for me in a blogspace is privacy and I'll like to share some of my experiences with the privacy features on the sites I've used:

It was quite recent that blogger had the private feature where only invited readers can read your blog. However, I was not fully satisfied as it did not allow me to differentiate between different readers. For example anyone whom I invite will be able to read all my posts unless I only save them as drafts.

Vox was about to address this better as it allows you to designate readers as "neighbours, friends, family" and allows you to decide which post should be open to which reader. However, your readers will need to have their own accounts with Vox to be designated as any of the above so it is more inconvenient.

My most recent blog (apart from this!) is on Wordpress and it's turning out to be my favorite so far. Instead of having to invite friends to have either a google account like blogger or a Vox account like Vox, you're able to choose whether to make a post public or private. For public posts, you can choose to set passwords for posts which might contain more scandalous details (*wink*) and give them to people whom you are comfortable with reading those posts. You can set a different password for different posts and while I think there are inconveniences to it as well, it's something I'm most comfortable with by far.

Ok! Enough about technical details, I haven't even started to introduce myself!

My name is Yanxiang and I'm from Singapore, currently doing a Masters at the Ed School in Language and Literacy. I'm really excited about this class because I was quite blown away by the readings in the first week especially about how technology is not supposed to make learning 'easy', just to remove unneccessary obstacles. So here's hoping I'll learn to do that! I'm sure there'll be more to say and discuss over the weeks, but for now, here's a picture of myself, edited with what I hoped was some artistic flair with PICASA (another free graphic program you might want to try! It's a picture organizer that comes with a photo-editing tool. You can download it at www.picasa.com)



(You can tell I'm very into the monochromatic colour scheme ^.^)

0.

Will have more to say soon =)