I feel that I have learned more about technology in this course than I ever have in my entire life. There are so many options and resources available online that I never knew about. I have said this before and I'll say it again: this course will help me in my school career and my work career. The information gained will prove to be extremely valuable in all aspects of my life.
The final project.
The final project was fun for me. I love watching digital stories and was excited to create my own. Using WeVideo was a little confusing at first. It was all very foreign to me because I've never created a video before. I enjoyed adding my own flare to the piece. It was a very nice way to save our dream coming true in video form.
Here is my digital story of our journey to homeownership. I hope you all enjoy it! We certainly did!
I have seen many digital stories, I just didn't realize they were called digital stories. I must say that I love them. To me, they are much more effective at conveying a message than presentations are. They include an element of emotion which I think is why they are so thought provoking and draw the viewers in.
WeVideo
I was able to play around a little bit with this program. I did not save any work done because I haven't figured out how to make a cohesive video yet. I'll keep working on it! After looking through some of the WeVideo's on the Youtube channel, I can see that you are able to do a lot with this program and I am excited to explore more.
Storyboard
This is a rough outline of my story. It was hard for me to come up with an idea for my story. My final decision: my journey to owning my own home at 23 years old. It was a long, hard journey for me but it was also so exciting and a dream come true so I thought it would be fun for me to create a story about that time. I still need to gather more pictures, choose my audio and write my script, but I'm very excited to create my own digital story.
I had never heard of infographics before this week. I had seen a couple of them in magazines and such but never quite understood their purpose. They are a new way to present data. They can include the old go to's like bar charts and graphs but you are able to present these in such a way that catches the eye of the reader and is easily understood.
Videos:
The two videos we watched, one from Hans Rosling and one from Garr Reynolds, were extremely helpful in understand how to present data in a way that is visually appealing. Hans spoke about the rise of the washing machine, or in more general terms how much energy is used by each income class. But for me, it wasn't the message of his presentation that stood out it was the way he presented it. His visuals were clear and interactive, and he used physical props which brought an element of theatrics into his presentation. Garr Reynolds's video was a nice overview of what you should be doing with your visuals of a presentation. It was interesting to note that Hans used most all of Garr Reynolds tips. I think that's why he had such an effective presentation.
Google Forms:
I had obviously used Google forms before when submitting responses for this class but I had never created one. I think this is an awesome tool. It is a quick and easy way to gather data about basically anything. Google also makes it really easy to distribute the form to people through Google+ or other social media sites.
Infographic making tools:
When looking at all the different tools and websites available to create infographics, I chose to use Google presentations. I think I chose Google because we had just used it to create a slide a couple weeks ago so I was familiar with it. I found the other sites to be overwhelming and confusing, but it's possible I didn't take enough time to "play around" with them. I also found that I couldn't do the quintessential infographic with Google presentations, there weren't enough options. If there was something in the middle of Google and infogr.am, it would have been perfect.
Infographic:
I wish I had taken more time to use the other infographic creation sites because I felt very limited on Google Presentations. I don't feel that mine is in the normal infographic style but, here it is:
Before this course, I had used Prezi before but I hadn't had a chance to really explore and see all the program had to offer. I was also able to learn from the Prezi website how to create really effective presentations.
Challenges
My challenge using Prezi is that sometimes my mind is so stuck in PowerPoint mode that it is hard to think and create outside of the box. Or in this case the rectangle that is a PowerPoint slide. When I first starting using Prezi it was hard for me to create a "slide" because of the different shapes. However, referring back to Garr Reynolds I realized that it didn't matter what shape of the slide was, the content and visual on the slide is what matters.
Prezi Topic
This Prezi was actually done for another class I had taken, Principals of Management. I chose this topic (How to give effective feedback) because at that time I had recently been promoted to a manager at my current place of employment and I found the task of giving feedback to my employees daunting. I was able to not only teach my classmates how to give effective feedback, but throughout creating the presentation I was able to learn myself.
As I mentioned in my forum post, after reading Garr Reynolds website I realized that I had been doing presentations all wrong. Here are the major tips that I took from his website:
1. Too much text is distracting
2. Images should be re-sized to fit the slide
3. High quality images should be used
4. Don't have too many distracting visuals ie. animations, bright colors, etc.
5. Let the slides accompany the presentation, don't let them be the actual presentation.
Overall I think that the point emphasized is that all to often presenters allow the power point to steal the show, when really they ARE the presentation. Presenters should use powerpoint as a guide and a resource.
CREATING PRESENTATION
I have never used Google to create a presentation before. I had previously used Power Point and Prezi. I fould that Google did not have as many options as Power point does. But after learning how to properly create slides, maybe this is a good thing. I think Power point has so many options that people often want to put so much "pizaz" into their presentations that it is very distracting. I found myself wanting to simply put a white boarder around my photos and Google did not allow me to do that. Here are the slides:
PRESENTING ONLINE
I had often wondered how an online course would go about doing presentations. After this week, I know how. There are a couple options: Screencastify, Google hangouts, and MoveNote. After checking out each option I chose Screencastify, it seemed the most user friendly. After doing a couple test shoots, here is the final product:
OVERALL
Before this week, I never realized that you could video while sharing the screen on your computer. I had only known of Skype for video calling and conferencing. The assignments this week showed me that there are many other options for presenting online. This week also allowed me to learn the correct way to create a presentation. Hope you all enjoy and use my Quick Tips!
