BP6_Polleverywhere

Polleverywhere sounds like a web 2.0 tool that every instructor could utilize in their classroom. Follow this link to my comments on Hunter's blog where he discusses this tool.

Image from polleverywhere website

BP5_TrackClass

For a great student organization web 2.0 tool follow this link to my comments on Kimberly Duran's blog on TrackClass.

Become a follower of Dorreen on my blog:
DoDesignBlog

BP4_Kuler

Adobe Kuler is a very good site for anyone who has to choose colors for their design themes; graphic designers, interior designers, or anyone that wants to see how colors go together to create a mood or feeling.

Go to the website (http://kuler.adobe.com) which takes you to a theme window where you have a large selection of color themes.  You can see the highest rated, most popular, random or even type in a word that fits your design concept.  I chose romance and it came up with 340 selections.  I can reduce that number by adding the color rules for the theme.  For example, I want to use only complementary colors. If you do not like any of the themes, you can make your own (even from a photo from flickr™) or change one you have found. 

First selection after search for "romance"
339 more to look at

Once you have selected a theme you click on it and you go to a second window. Here you can manipulate the colors even further. It also gives you all of the numeric color values, so when my students need to know the CMYK numbers to make that color in their brochures or RGB if they need that same color scheme for a website, they have it here. 

Cool Romance is the color scheme I chose

Second window for "Cool Romance"
Here I can adjust the colors or get the color values for each

If you are a registered user you can then save the theme to your own Mykuler space where you can go to any time to view and retrieve the themes you like. If the person using Kuler has any of the CS5 programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.) they can go to the panels within that program, connect to Kuler, find the color scheme they want to use and then add it to their swatches tool within the program. 

I really like this web tool and will start requiring my students to use it to select their colors for their projects. 

PE3_iMovie

By the end of the video the theme had changed from having everyone just meeting my dogs, to a video for my daughter about her leaving for college and helping her remember the menagerie that she left behind. So this is for her!

I had gone through the video making my own transitions with no theme and then at the end I wanted to see what would happen with using one of the themes they have and how it effects the outcome of the video.  I liked both but ended up using the themed video for the end.  I would like it if we could create our own theme, but understand that this program is for the masses and not necessarily for the professional.

I have been using ScreenFlow the last few projects and I am liking features in both;  combined they would be very powerful.  

Now that I have my movie uploaded and have played it I'm not happy with the quality.  The quality is a little better on viddler.  The link for Viddler is: http://www.viddler.com/explore/dpetersendavis/videos/11/
Here it is a little better, but if I go higher in quality it takes so much time to upload. Is there a standard?

PE2_iMovie

After shooting all three of my dogs, I went into iMovie and started to import video and edit.  The tutorial really made this much easier, especially in choosing the video and marking the parts of the videos I wanted to use.  I still had to go back the tutorial a couple of times for the audio and transitions.  I soon had the majority of my video but I didn’t have a beginning or and ending so had to go back to past video and photos to complete the storyline.  Again, it was easy to find everything and bring it into the event and then into the project.  

All video imported

The hardest thing for me is to grab the part of the video or audio that I want to change and adjust.  It would take me a couple times to get into the correct window or effect the change properly.  Testing the video manually also doesn’t flow as easy as it appeared to move for Garrick in the tutorial. 

Rejected video

Voice over and music added

Overall – a much better experience. 

PE1_iMovie

When we were introduced to iMovie during month 1 I spent a lot of time experimenting the testing different effects and how to move things around, etc., which was discussed in this tutorial.  I only wish I had worked smarter then and used the tutorial instead of using the iMovie help windows and struggling.  I tell my students to use Lynda if they need help and then I didn’t do it either. 

For me seeing how Garrick thought through his project was just as helpful as how the tools within iMovie work. I’ve overseen many photo shoots and videos but have never been on the editing side.  It is very similar in thinking about how to set it up but very different in the execution. Understanding the difference between a project and event now makes total sense. I particularly liked that section on organizing the clips as the first time I worked in iMovie I kept reviewing the same clips over and over, that the majority of the time was spent deciding what to use and what is valid or not.  The shortcuts to help you make those decisions more efficiently and will really help in the future.  The other section that was very helpful was the audio section and the shortcuts there as well. 

I have gone through the tutorial once making notes and now I’m off to go shoot some video and put the tutorial to the test.  I look forward to sharing my next few steps with you. 

BP2_ConceptShare

In researching Web 2.0 tools I chose ConceptShare.  When I first selected this tool I was thinking that is would be a tool that my students could use that would help them come up with a concept for their projects, but I was very wrong.  But this is a case of being wrong took me to something so right.  While researching this tool, I discovered that Full Sail uses this tool, so if any of the instructors or students who work at Full Sail have used it I would like to get some comments on how you like it.  

I reviewed the website and went to the blog which took me to a couple tutorials on schools and companies who have used it. I then requested a trial version and also talked to one of the representatives with took me through some of the features I hadn’t gotten to.  

I can see this as a very helpful tool, not only for my class critiques, but for proofing with my clients. Currently I either get an email or a phone call with the corrections.  Their comments may say “page 10, left column, 3^rd paragraph, change 3^rd sentence to read . . .  ”.  With this they could just highlight the problem area and then type in the new comments.  With this tool they can highlight and make the correction either in place or in the comments box.  They can go through the whole document with comments and if I don’t understand something I can reply back to the comment I don’t understand. 

A Main Asset

Two projects in the main asset

You can point at a problem area and make a comment

You can highlight an area of interest and made comments

Here I am showing points for the same problem,
circled another problem and made comment

It is very user-friendly; even my clients (who are not necessarily web 2.0 tool savy) could use it. When I received the trial version it took me about 5 minutes to start adding projects and to start commenting on them.

For my classes, I can have a learning resource center where I can create tutorial listings for demos I use in class or I’ve made for a project, then direct the students to the tutorial to fix a problem.  I can have students upload their projects here and either make comments or allow fellow students to comment.  It will allow the student to reply to me or anyone else as well. I can make it as private or as public as I want. 

I am also a member of the portfolio committee.  Currently, one of the faculty members is using a blog for the students to show their portfolio and to allow faculty and fellow students to comment on portfolios.  However, this would be a great tool, more interactive and allows for visual comments as well. Here we can easily see other faculty comments, eliminating redundancy, hence not wasting our time or the students.

At the end of the project I could make a PDF summary so the student could download all the images, comments etc into one document and keep for their records.

This may be a perfect tool to use for my capstone! I’ve gone way over the word count but I am so excited about this tool. I have already shared it with a fellow faculty member and plan to show my director tomorrow.