Lesson Reflection

After observing some of the lessons that went before mine, I developed my lesson to include a lot of class participation. I felt this would be the best way to preemptively eliminate the behavioral problems and take less stress off Joe and I. With the class constantly involved with something, it was easy to handle the few behaviors that arose. This was also my way of assessing the skill and experience level of my students, which allowed me to adjust the lesson on the spot. My lesson plan was not necessarily followed as I wrote it, but all the activities that we did in class were planned. My formative assessment was not necessarily perfect, and Dr. Luogno advised an "exit slip" strategy that would best for assessing the progress my students had made that day. It seemed to be a good choice as it made my students focus on their work. Closing the lesson was somewhat improvised prior to teaching it. I felt it was effective in seeing contrast between two speakers. Overall I felt the lesson was successful and I have improved since I first began these exercises. There is not much I would have done differently, I tend to move with the attitude of my audience when it comes to teaching and adjust accordingly. One way I could have made the lesson more effective was by bringing the class to an auditorium and let the students sit in different areas as they took turns speaking. That may be a good follow up lesson once the students completed their "Current Event Speech".

Digital Story Self Reflection

So my digital story is finally finished. There was a bit of a set back when I got sick the week it was due as it prevented Joe and I from meeting up when we intended. Nevertheless we persevered and got the story done. The hardest part (and probably longest part) of the process was teaching myself how to use and edit from iMovie. I have a macbook pro so access to it was easy, but when I tried to apply photos to the video it would only allow photos that were in iPhoto, no problem right? Well when I moved photos from anywhere (my desktop, folders, etc.) it wouldn't register into iMovie (probably because Apple likes to format things differently with their software). We bypassed this by downloading the photos to my iPhone, then uploaded them from there to iPhoto, which put them in the proper format I suppose. The most fun part of the project was inserting sounds into the different scenes. It felts cartoony and ridiculous but that is what really ties the story together and gets the viewer to understand the "urgency" involved with the plot of our story. iMovie has numerous sounds for your disposal and each can be edited to play for a certain amount of time. I'm really satisfied with the direction our project went and the software we decided to use because I do not believe I would have the same project without iMovie or Joe's input.

"A Rough Morning" Digital Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izSwwvHh1Do

Above is the link to Joe's and my digital story.

End of Day 2

Joe wasn't here today, but I did more visualizing on what I wanted to do with the digital story. Dr. Luongo did help me break down how the picture and sounds will work together despite not having too much dialogue. Knowing this is due next week, I feel a little more inclined to work on this as soon as possible because of the amount of work it actually requires to have it complete.

Digital Story Day 2

Last Tuesday Joe and I have worked on trying to understand what exactly is required from us when it comes to our digital story. I believe we have an adequate understanding and are able to move on. Since last class I have written out a rough outline as to what will go on in our digital story. It involves the subject waking up late and being completely unprepared for their presentation coming up later that day. By showing the consequences and chaos that occurs when being unprepared we hope to convey an example of what not to do on an important day to our students.

Today Joe and I will go over the "plot" and the sequence of events that will occur in our digital story. Once we come to a consensus we will hopefully start working with any of the story making programs. We will probably make our way to finding, collecting, and saving our photos by the end of today.

Digital Story Day 1 - End of Day

Joe and I have an idea of what we want to do with our digital story that we believe will be pretty entertaining. Our lesson is on Public Speaking, so using our digital story as either a anticipatory set or a closer, we intend to create a story based on a man or woman who is preparing for their speech that is about to go drastically wrong. We think by adding humor and situations that nearly everyone has been in, our class will be able to relate as well as take a lesson from our digital story.

Digital Story Day 1

Having been absent the day we started the digital story, I feel at a disadvantage. In addition to that, I do not have the digital story text book. Judging from the digital story hand out I do not feel this will be entirely impossible for me to create or understand as it coincides with my major. The part I fear most is the finding, selecting, and scanning of images as well as picking one particular topic for the digital story. I'm not entirely creative, either, and that much will impede my progress.

Group Lesson Plan

My partner for the paired lesson plan is Joe, but because we haven't talked about it yet we still need to decide what we will be working on.