Alive and Well!

Greetings to All:

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend. I am a year older as I write my first post following the close of school for the summer. I thought that once school was closed I would have more free time to dedicate to my studies. However, this is not been the case and I am trying to get caught up. This post will be dedicated to my trials and tribulations with developing my video and website. 

My experience with developing the video assignment was cumbersome to say the least. I originally tried PowToon. I was interested in using this video program because a student in my government class used it to present her final government project. She received many kudos from classmates and I must admit it looked great. She did mention that it took her hours to put together.  Well, I found the program not simple to use and very time consuming to put together. After several hours playing around with my content and the video program, I decided to go for something much simpler. In my opinion I think the program is good for high school students because it appears that they have the know how and patience to play around with the program. With that having been said I moved on to another program to work with. I looked at Animoto as a possibility. This program really captured my attention. It looked so professional. I was somewhat hesitant because they only offered a free trial and I did not want to commit myself to the pricing options. However, took advantage of the free trial and although I did not use this program for my video, I am definitely considering making an investment for use in my classroom as I am trying to infuse the ideas espoused by Gary Reynolds in TedXTalk to move my powerpoint presentations toward a story telling platform. I finally settled on the Wideo. Wideo for me was simpler to use and at this point I was looking for ease and convenience. I found Wideo to be compatible for my presentation. Although not ground shaking my Wideo video is a brief overview of the Protestant Reformation. What I liked most about Wideo is the ease of linking the Youtube video to my presentation. My wideo can be found by clicking this link:

http://wideo.co/en/view/10352471436483528495-the-protestant-reformation. I am looking at using Animoto as a way of introducing themselves to their new classmates. I think this video program lends itself nicely to uploading family photos and other cultural artifacts as a means for infusing their family's history into the histories studied in world history. I would use Powtoon and Wideo as a presentation platform for illustrating students' understanding of the content under study. For example, I could see students using PowToon to creative representations of WWII.