Time Heals All?

So the semester is coming to an end, but not nearly fast enough.  This has been, by far, the worst semester of my teaching career and has made me really question my choice of careers.  I guess I feel like Bilbo Baggins from J.R.R. Tolkien's, The Lord of the Rings, in that, "I feel... thin. Sort of stretched, like... butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday."  That may be a bit dramatic, but it's very descriptive.

This semester has not been nearly what I expected.  I have not been able to accomplish many of the things at work, that I had planned because I am literally drowning in grad school.  And I have not done well in grad school because I have taken on more at work in order to make myself invaluable.  With last year's RIF cuts, and the possibility of more this year, I have to be seen as someone with a contribution to make.


I want to be able to look back on this semester and think, "Wow.  That's the semester I really pushed myself and look where I am now." but honestly, I don't see that happening.  I will just be happy to survive... forget pride.

Excellent Job Josh!

Once again you have proven yourself to be one to watchin the integration of technology in the classrom. I certainly wish I worked at your school and had someone of your academic level to bounce ideas around with. Good Job! However, your project reminds me how far I have to go in this Endeavor.

Anet

My Video Project

For my video project, I have created the first in a series of videos that I will use in my classroom to teach about Broadcast Law and Ethics.  I have found that the State wants us to teach this, but they have given us no resources to do so.  I think that if I am able to continue this series, it is something that could be useful to video teachers around Georgia. 

Let me know what you think.



I thoroughly enjoyed doing this project. I love doing video production and even more, I enjoy teaching video production. I feel that by having such a passion for the subject matter, no matter what that is, you get more students interested in it. For me, my passion started in high school, thanks to Ms. Linda Morris (Central High School). I just wanted to get to a classroom and share what she had shared with me.

As for my reflection of the project, I really did learn a lot. I have been very hesitant to include videos that I have gotten off of the Internet. In doing my research for this project, I found that I have the right to include snippets of other people's work, provided I credit them and do not seek monetary gain. If you are interested in reading more about Fair Use in Education click HERE.

I also learned more about my editing software.  I am self-taught in using Final Cut Pro, so I am always learning how to do cool things.  One thing that I wanted to incorporate in this video were fly-in transitions.  I was able to accomplish this using the coolest little things since sliced bread... motion key frames.  Setting a point here, advancing the timeline, and setting another point, I could have a picture start over the shoulder and then zoom to fill the screen.  This was really cool and I can see a number of ways to incorporate this in future projects.

 Doing a project that interests me and has immediate value in my classroom really helped to make this project more beneficial to me on a personal level.  I haven't enjoyed some of the projects in this class because I couldn't see how I would ever really apply them, with this project, I have seen tons of applications.  Maybe quite literally tons, who knows?

Friends Don't Let Friends Blog Drunk!

Don't let the title fool you, this blog has nothing to do with drinking, or really blogging for that matter.  I am just a TV guy, so I always bring up past campaign slogans in random situations.

This post has to do with the chaos that is my life.  Aside from the fact that I am the father of an extremely energetic 17-month old, I am a video production teacher.  We have really been going all out this year and have done the following projects:

Friday Night Football games
Tomahawk Today Morning Show
Chorus Concerts
Guest Speaker Presentations
etc.

We have something new going on almost everyday and we are adding another show to our line-up next week.  This blog is the place where I have decided that I want to cyber scream at the top of lungs to relieve some of this stress.  Hold your speakers... here I go.



AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



There... that feels better.  Thanks for listening world.  Thanks for listening.

Ahhh... Fall Break?

I wish that I could say that I have been able to use my Fall Break to its fullest "break" potential.  I wish that.  As it is, I have been working on things around the house, trying to get caught up on grad school, and trying to get plans in order for the rest of the semester.

It seems that there is so much busyness in our lives today, that our "breaks" are filled with more to-do lists than our regular work days.  I have caught myself, on more than one occasion thinking, "Man, I can't wait to get back to work so I can have a break."  Of course, I don't really mean that, but it seems like a good alternative at the time.

One thing has made this busy week worthwhile though, my son.  I have gotten to stay home and give his regular caregiver the week off.  It has been so cool to see all the things he is learning and doing.  He just turned 17-months this past weekend and the world is still a new place to him.  Everyday he is going somewhere and doing something that he has never seen or done before.  I look at him with wonder about how he must be processing things.  I see his amazement at simple things, like a balloon, or as he says, a "ba-woo".  I envy him.

I know this may not seem like a very pertinent blog posting for a Technology in Education class, but I would disagree wholeheartedly.  This technology, which is supposed to make our lives easier and make teaching easier, also does something else... it captures moments.

Goooooo Braves!

Blogging... to this Point

I have to say that the use of this blog has been a good experience to this point.  I do wish that I could have created a blog that would be of more use to me in my current teaching job.  I understand the purpose of doing a reflective web log, but I believe that doing a graduate program would be more beneficial if we could create only things that met an immediate need in both our professional and academic lives.

Tomahawk Today Blog

 This is the blog that I started for Tomahawk Today, my school's weekly morning show.  I haven't had enough time to go on and update it, but my initial goal was to create a place where people who were watching the show could go and interact with us.  These people could follow the show blog, offer story suggestions, submit funny script ideas, and read about who we are and what we are doing each day.  I still plan on doing this, but I have had so many projects this semester, that I wish my grad school projects could have allowed me to complete these types of assignments and make them better.  The page would link out to our videos, so people could use this as a hub to jump to the various projects that we have been doing.

Again, I completely understand the purpose of having a blog as a reflective tool.  I have even considered having a blog that I use to evaluate my lessons on a daily basis.  This would be a way for me to link to Google Docs and keep online copies of my lesson plans, but it would also allow me to comment to myself and any followers (other video teachers) to read or comment on what could have been better and what was great.  If enough teachers were contributing to this, we could have an invaluable resource at our fingertips.

Connecting the Classroom to the World

Videoconferencing Connects Missouri Students with Peers Around the Globe

This is a great article that talks about how students in Missouri are learning about things from around the world, from people around the world.  The program that is making this possible is actually one of the oldest educational initiatives in the "Show Me" state.  The Virtual Learning Center was started over twenty years ago with grant money and is still changing the way students there are learning.

I feel that this is a valuable resource because it talks about a technology that is only improving with age.  I don't know how readily available this technology is for most of us in Georgia, but I think it would make for great experiences for our students.  For my students in particular, it would be great for us to be able to talk to someone overseas and then record that for use in future video projects.

Camera Upgrades

One way that I feel that we can help our students most is by giving them the most up to date technology to learn with. In my video program we are using the Canon GL2 camcorder. This is a "prosumer" model camera, which means that it has some professional applications, but is easy enough for an average joe to pick up and use.
Due to ever-changing video technology and the fact that my cameras are about seven years old, my students are not getting the best educational experience.  The GL2 is a good camera and has a number of controls that will help the students to learn many professional camera functions, but the world is moving toward a hard drive capture device and these still use mini-dv tapes.

Technology Integration

As a way of reflecting on what I learn and what I expect to learn about integrating technology into my classroom, I feel that my first posting should be to clearly define what this means to me. I should be able to come back to this post and make changes as I learn new things and hopefully, this will help me to move beyond technology integration on an informational level and move into a more useful knowledge level.

That being said, I believe that integrating technology is the use of computers in general content areas in education in order to allow students to learn computer and technology skills. (Wikipedia) To me technology integration is so much more than just the use of computers. It is the use of any tool that makes learning more effective.