Shellae’s Education Blog

I just finished up my website for my final project.  I tried a few new things, like creating a video of me to introduce the site and adding it to the home page.  I also added the Tech video from YouTube and put it directly on the site.  The only major frustration I had was trying to add my mp3 files.  I tried various gadgets but I just could not get it to work the way I wanted so I just added links to my blog.  Let me know what you think.

http://sites.google.com/site/multimediaspete/

I am currently working on the website for the final project but I am not really sure about my explanations and how to bring it all together.  I have a separate page set up for each of the 7 projects that we turned in and the home page with the introduction and brief overview of the site.  Not sure where to go from here but I am trying.  Hopefully I will make it over this stump soon and have the final site ready by Wed. or Thurs.

In the last few days I have watched tons of videos on YouTube and found several that I liked and disliked.  The first is an old favorite Schoolhouse Rock video called Dry Bones.  

I love all of these videos because 1. they teach a lesson, 2.  they are in terms that can be easily understood 3. they cover a wide range of topics across all content area  and 4.  they are all set to music which kids really seem to enjoy.  If you work with kids 12 and under, these videos are a definite must (most of my high school students enjoyed them as well).  

Another video that I found interesting is called Education Today and Tomorrow.

This video goes through the changes in the classroom through the last century and it is filled with some startling facts (I checked of course) that should open a few american eyes. It is also set to music that will catch that attention of young people.  

The videos that I did not think were useful included the following problems:  incorrect content, no music or music that most young people would find boring, small or illegible font, lessons that spoke above the intended audience, or made light of difficult tasks.  Instructional videos are meant to be just that…instructional.  They should catch the students’ attention, be up to date, and contain content that is used to enhance your lesson.  If these guidelines are met, then personally, I choose not to use the video in my class.

Tags: education, Schoolhouse Rock, videos, YouTube

I went through my updated iMovie program and redid my video with it.  I have conformation that it successfully uploaded to YouTube but it may take a while to get it published due to YouTube server time.  Anyway, I hope it it viewable there by this afternoon.  The link for the video is below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUjtyIJ2m_k

As I was preparing for this lesson, I decided to stay within the science field but to have a little fun too.  My topic of choice is digestion.  It may seem like a boring topic but it is really interesting to see the amazing way our body is made for our survival.  All followed up by a School House Rock favorite. Hope you enjoy it (and learn a little something too).

educ644-project-2

Tags: body machine, digestion, school house rock

It has definitely been a rough week, with my son in the hospital and my husband & I getting sick, but I finally finished my audio project.  I had a difficult time deciding what to do but as I was playing the piano, I decided to start the project with a piano introduction then read part of my favorite book of the Bible, James.  Hope you like it.

644project-1-1

Tags: Amazing Grace, Bible reading, James 1, James 2

I subscribed to a couple podiobooks 2 weeks ago and it came in somewhat handy this weekend.  My son has been in the hospital (finally released about an hour ago) so this gave me something to listen to while I sat there watching him sleep.  The book itself if good (what I have listened to) but I did find one glitch.  When I set up the initial subscription, I set it to add a new podcast every other day.  Unfortunately, since I did not always turn on iTunes daily, not all of the successive chapters downloaded.  I didn’t realize this until I was listening to the book and suddenly I was lost; something was missing.  Had I not paying attention?  Had I dozed off?  When I started examining the downloads, I noticed that some of the chapters were missing.  Lesson learned.  If you are not online (with iTunes up) on a daily basis then it would be better to download the entire book but you can still listen to it one podcast at a time.

I know it is not supposed to have a title but I couldn’t help myself.  Don’t worry, all the kids pictured here are mine and I am officially giving them permission to be in my project.

I have not written much lately because I have been working on a very special project for my momaw.  A few months ago, momaw’s nephew found an old picture under a matress and it turned out to be a picture of my momaw when she was about a month old being held by her mother.  This was such a special find because my great-grandmother died when my momaw was just 2 years old and momaw did not have any pictures of her mother.  The picture was on a cardboard backing and it was badly decayed.  Over the years, people had tried to tape it together which made it even more deformed.  I didn’t think there was much that I could do but I took a picture of the picture and got a a friend to try to help me restore the picture using Photoshop.

We began by lightening the picture and using the patch tool to try to correct sone of the worse areas.  Then we put a soft overlay on the picture to add to the antique flare.  Some areas were too badly decayed to fix, such as one of the baby’s eyes and the mother’s pinkie finger, so we drew a closed eye and used a copied layer of the index finger and resized it to make a pinkie finger.  We then kept adjusting the levels, brightness, color balance, and contrast until we had finally created a picture that we were pleased with.  This project took massive amounts of tiral and error but in the end, it was well worth the effort.  I then printed a 16 x 20 picture on convas and framed it for Momaw.  Needless to say, she loved it and actually so did I.

This is what the picture finally looked like when we finished it.

I enjoyed the sense of accpmplishment that I got from this that I decided to start someing else for Momaw’s birthday (yesterday).  I went back through all the old photos that I could find and created a book for her.  By using Photoshop to edit the pictures and software that I downloaded from Mpix, I made a book that began with my great-great-grandparents and ended with pictures from now.  All total, there were six generations of our family in the book.  The thing that I like about the Mpix software is that you can also add text so the book turned out more like a story of her life with pictures as the added bonus.  The book is hard-bound and had 20 pages inside.  If you are interested in projects like this, I definitely recommend Mpix for the publishing.  Check it out.

I have played around with some pictures in the past and the contrast of color on black and white is a time consuming endeavor for me but it is well worth it.  When we visit different places, I love to exam the landscape.  The differnt trees and flowers are of particular interest to us so we take pictures of almost everything.   This particular picture was taken on our trip to Germany last summer.  The roses are everywhere there and it seemd that they were all different.  The most difficult part of taking a good picture of flowers is capturing the detail of each petal.

I used Photoshop to edit this picture.  First I opened the picture I wanted to use and created a new project.  Then I dragged my picture onto the new project background and set the mode to grayscale.  Then I adjusted the brightness and contrast to get the desired effect and flattened the image.  Next, I went back to my oritinal picture and outlined the section that I wanted to have in color and copied it as a new layer.  I drug this layer onto my project then erased any excess around the flower.  Finally, this project is complete.  Hope you enjoy!!!