Creating an Author Webquest.wmv

Reflection and Evaluation

Thanks, Pal. I couldn't have done this without your encouragement, leadership, and unstinting kindness. Your tireless efforts on behalf of all of us are very much appreciated.

This is a photo of the silver medal won by Scott Donie at the Barcelona Olympics. His mother kindly brought it to Spanish class so we could all see it and hold it in our hands. Awesome moment. I feel that we L2P3 players have earned something similar, but I don't want to equate it with a real Olympic medal. Maybe ours could be silverplated and made in China.

No more escalators for me. I am in a happy place tapping away!

Analyzing each portion of my project served to rein me in and keep me focused. As you know, I do not think in straight lines but tend to jump around like a hungry flea. I do believe that following a step-by-step format made me aware of how to teach this project so that students will build on the rung of the previous ladder step. It certainly helped me to realize when I had forgotten to do something critical!

I'm not really all that keen on everybody's reading my blog. Some of it is downright pitiful. I hate to be so exposed, but if it makes anyone else feel a bit better about what they're doing, I suppose I can live with it. It does make the process of creating an author webquest using Photostory understandable for someone who has never done it. I like the systematic format of L2P3. I needed the structure.

I plan to share my project and all its life lessons with the English teachers who plan to assign author studies and their students. I believe I can adapt it to other research projects as well. I had wanted to use i-movie, but it was just too much of a learning curve for the short time I had available to work on this project. So--my next immediate multimedia activity will be to make this project using i-movie so the classes can create their author webquest projects using the new Mac laptops! I will add my new struggles to this existing blog. Lucky you....

You-Tubing Down the River of Life

I was able to upload my video to YouTube, but the cautionary advice about copyright and ownership gives me pause. Not sure my project counts as using the information in a new way? That area continues to look murky to me. What does that tell me? I need to do some research and clarify. Putting that on my list of things to do before I die.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYGvADDqOiw

Wow! Weird. I clicked on this link and got only the audio portion of my project. Bigtime boo-boo here. I am so sick of listening to myself! This has been a strange journey some days so I will leave in the link because it might work beautifully some days. Who knows?

I chose "Education" as the YouTube category. Secondary English and language arts classes are my target audience. Tags in YouTube are sbisdL2P3, webquests, Photostory 3, multimedia.

Just realized I had neglected to tag #5. It is a good thing these questions serve as a checklist. You can find my Photostory on creating webcasts on my blog and on YouTube.

It works!

Did You See That? Did You?

My Photostory uploaded to my blog!! I worked on that until the wee hours of the morning and thought the sitution was hopeless! When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was to check on the status of my Photostory, and blow me down and call me Shorty! Well, don't call me Shorty. I really don't like being thought of as short. I think tall; therefore, I am?

The upload always seemed to get stuck about halfway through, and I would get an error message and a dictate to try again later. And later. And later. And later, later, later. It was really annoying me that I couldn't make this work, and I absolutely hated letting it get the best of me.
Reading other blogs and comments had already alerted me to this problem so I didn't feel alone, and the bird woman told me that Photostory and Blogspot or Blogger had been bickering all summer. Still, it wouldn't be the first time that some detail had slipped past my lightning-quick brain.

Ah, well. For now, I am just so relieved because I saw it appear at least once, and I did so want to use it to show the English classes working on their author webquests. I need to ride the escalator before trying to upload to YouTube.





This is the escalator you ride when you are getting nowhere fast.

Thing #5: Trying to Share

Thing #4 bump, bump, bump

Were there any bumps along the way? Indeed. Speed bumps and pot holes and "lions, and tigers, and monkeys, oh, my!"

(image of crying lion by Iwan Wolkow)

Honestly, most of the bumps were of my own making, but I hate to admit that so I am just whispering it.

I realized once again that I am not very creative, but I was able to make a fairly decent lesson

that my teachers may find useful when they assign author studies as they indicated they would.

My flaws are noticeable, according to a pair of fresh, honest, and uncompromising eyes, but the Photostory will still introduce the assignment in a comprehensible manner. My voice is breathy (a whole semester of speech class to no avail), hoarse, and wobbly and will probably be hard to hear even though I used a microphone. Static bursts interrupt my narration which is boring, boring, boring. Will anyone listen to it? Fresh eyes and ears are doubtful. Obviously, it needs refining. Aaaaaand, my credits page is a mess.

But I did it!

Just as Much Fun as Skateboarding!

What is?? Storyboarding, of course!








The white speck in the otherwise empty parking lot is my car. There is only one uploaded page of my storyboard for two very good reasons: (1) it is not a success story and (2) I had time only to scan in one page before getting kicked out of the building Thursday afternoon. Read it and weep.

Only problem is that I am not linear sequential, and I just don't do this part correctly. This would be another example of "Do as I say, not as I do!" Sorry about that because that is a lousy teaching model. Oh, well. Who's perfect?

I don't believe there is just one storyboard template that will work best for everyone. I used the DigiTales template myself because the layout helped me to think in a linear sequential fashion but allowed me to skip ahead a few frames if I felt it necessary. The template for original shot order works well for those who are making their own shots. In my school, the multimedia teacher insists that the students use a storyboard, although there doesn't seem to be anything formal required. I have seen students plan their projects on a notebook page.

The important thing is that planning or outlining occurs before filming. Using a storyboard requires students to plan the shot order, the narration, the music, and the transitions before production begins. Actors and narrators know what they are supposed to do and say, eliminating guessing and the flubbing of lines!