End of Year Post

Today will be the last post I'll ever make concerning Multimedia...ah, nostalgia. Gotta love it, right? 
This class has been somewhat of a pain for me, but it's still all a little bittersweet. I took my Multimedia final today...I think I did better than I expected to. It still wasn't too easy, though, especially the color stuff. I forgot about that. 
I am so ready for summer, although after June, I'll be stuck here. I guess I'll have tons of time to relax before an expected work-load that is called tenth grade. 
Ninth grade was a joy ride compared to what tenth grade will be like, I'm sure. I sure enjoyed the relaxation of this year. It was my laid-back year, that's for sure. 
My computer is supposed to be cleared during the summer...I'm debating whether or not I want to send anything to myself before the summer. A lot of my work wasn't that great, to be honest. There are some projects that I was really proud of, like the Pages Project that I did last September. I've sent those to myself a long time ago. Another project I was proud of was my Adobe Project Rome project. I even downloaded Rome on my Mac at home. 
This blog was actually pretty fun to keep up. It wasn't a pain like I expected it to be. 
I feel stupid. On my final, I thought blog stood for something fancy like binary linguistic blah blah blah...the meaning is actually pretty simple. 


I want to keep going, just because this is the last time I'll ever blog here, maybe...but I have nothing more to say, except that I wish everybody a great summer! 


:) :) :) :) :) :)

Last Day of Multimedia Class

I don't know if I'm right, but I think today is the last day of REAL Multimedia class. It's kind of bittersweet, even though this class drove me nuts. But I made a friend in this class, who's a senior, and she won't be here next year :( 
One thing that's also a HUGE bummer - I lost my voice. I don't know how, or why, I just know that I can't talk, so I have to lug around a little portable whiteboard with a marker and an eraser, and it's really annoying. Well, I can talk only in whispers, which really doesn't work - not at school, at least. I hope my voice comes back - it'll come in handy over the next few school days.


I am SO stressed with all the final projects/exams coming, all the little last minute stuff I have to do, like turning in textbooks, and turning in homework from days I was absent, etc. 
The final for this class is on Friday - I think I'll be doing the exam, as I have had it with projects. I was hoping I could do an extra credit poster, but I think I won't have time. There's a final project for another class that I haven't even started yet.


Well, I am off to put the finishing touches on my Dreamweaver project. 
This MAY be the last time I'll be blogging for Multimedia here, so it's a little sentimental, since I've been doing this all school year. I'm debating whether or not I'll keep up this blog for personal use...


Bye-bye! :) 

Dreamweaver Project

I'm almost, almost, almost done with my Dreamweaver Project! So happy. The year's almost over. I'm already having nostalgia about the first semester of this year, which was the better of the two. 
In Dreamweaver, I put all the links to my work on the site and I had to add a row about the row with all my links to explain my work. My website's nothing complicated. It's actually more simple than was expected, but with only two days left to work on this, there's not much I can do. Then we'll move on to the final exam or project, which will be to make a poster talking about the future IB Middle Years Program at my school. I don't know which I'll choose to do. I might do the poster, but I have so many projects to do I don't know if I want to add on an extra. I have so many projects that I forgot to do the homework. That's how many projects I have. The things I do for school...sigh. 


I was also wondering if there's any sort of extra credit assignment I could do. I have a high B in this class, and I'd really like to raise that to an A so my grade for the semester can be an A. GPA reasons. I'm aiming for all A's this semester.

Dreamweaver

Our final project is to create a website showcasing all of our work done in this class this year. This just might kill my grade this semester. I don't want to make the website overly complicated, and I don't want to stick to too easy, either. But sometimes, it's the best I can do. I discovered this year that I'm really really bad with most programs that fall under the name Adobe. These programs are overly complex. The program we're using is Adobe Dreamweaver. I'm so grateful that the person who sits next to me in my class understands what to do, because I am clueless with this program. 
This is the only class that I fear of doing not so well on. If I could exempt any final, it would have been this one. I don't know how simple "simple" can be, but I hope it can be pretty simple, out of time issues, just as long as everything that we're supposed to showcase is there. 


It's not so long until summer is upon us. I'm personally excited. No more school.. even though ninth grade was piece of cake for the most part. I know next year won't be the same. I sure enjoyed being able to relax this year, even this is the heaviest year for me regarding finals. I don't know whether it's out of laziness or what it is, but teachers don't feel like making tests so they just give us time-consuming projects. I actually like tests, because I can get them done in one day and I'm also good at remembering school material. I have, what, like 4 or 5 final projects? There's no time for me to slack off or procrastinate, that's for sure.


Well, I have to go work on the Dreamweaver Project. Wish me luck! :) 

Done with Flash :)

I am done with Flash! It wasn't TOO hard once I got the hang of it, but it's still not my favorite program in the world. I learned how to tween, and I created this dumb-looking snowman that just moves. There's no real point to the snowman's movements, but it's an animation, and that's all that matters. I also animated a star and a heart that I drew in Flash. I'm so proud of myself. 
These days, I seem to be on a book-frenzy, reading books like crazy. I mean, it's strange because there are phases - they can last weeks or months - in which I don't care to read, and then other times when all I want to do is read as many books as I can. This is one of those "read tons of books" phase. I have a list of books I want to read. A lot of them aren't out in stores yet, but it's weird, cause there's always one book per month that I'm dying to read comes out. One comes out in June, another in July, another in August, another in October and the other in November. It's crazy. 

Questions for Final Exam

My Multimedia teacher told us to come up with 5 questions that may or may not end up on our final exam. 


1. What is an input device?
2. Which of the following is an example of an input device?
3. What is an output device?
4. Which of the following is an output device? 
5. What is the difference between a vector and a pixel? 


I also checked Family Access and I saw my grade for the PSA project and I was wondering why exactly did I get the grade I got. I was also wondering what kind of animation are we supposed to be doing on Flash or can we do whatever we want?


Tweening so far is fairly simple on Flash, but I can't get into anything too advanced or complicated or I'll get seriously confused.

Sick of iMovie

I know that technically, this is Sunday evening and I'm not at school, but I need to get some technology frustrations out on here. I have this biology project where we have to create a digital story on a virus (mine is Yellow fever) and I decided to do mine on iMovie. Yes, I procrastinated a little, but because I assumed that I would be able to do this project on iMovie easily, as I've never really had any problems with iMovie before. Let me just say this: I hate iMovie. So. Much. 
First, for some reason it gets really slow when you work on it a lot. It's never done that to me before. Second, I can't seem to get the words on my slides long enough without having the actual image be several seconds longer than the words. I got so frustrated with this program that after two hours working on it I decided that I didn't care if I got points taken off of anything, I was done with iMovie, and so I finished all the basics without going into too deep details and I quickly exported it into a Quicktime movie. And it is taking forever. 11 minutes. And the video is only a minute 20 seconds. It's a lot less than my bio teacher expected, but I seriously am sick of this program. 

Assignment

I watched two more videos of the Flash tutorial videos. It's such a relief to find out how to move objects in Flash without leaving a blank space where the object used to have been. 
I am so so happy that it is Friday! And it was Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton today - of course, I didn't wake up at 5 AM to watch the ceremony, but it's still an exciting occasion nonetheless :) 

Flash...Again

I watched two more Flash tutorial videos...and I made a robot. Yay for me. It's a really ugly robot, but whatever.
I took somewhat of a break day after I created my robot. My book came out yesterday, and I really loved it. I read it in one day. On the bad side, I broke my brother's earphones. Or, rather, they broke on their own. I found the exact same pair of earphones on skullcandy.com but they're, like, $30. My brother would get so angry at me if he found out I broke them...he doesn't really use them anyway, but still. He'd get mad. I plan to buy him a pair and myself another. I can't live without my headphones.


Also, another thing A LOT of teachers don't get is that students actually don't like to help other students. Well yes, some do. But the majority...no. That's because they find it annoying when people ask for help. The patient people don't mind. However, I don't think there are a whole lot of patient people in this world. A lot of students actually refuse to help others because it takes up their time or they'll just ignore you...or they'll say they don't know how to do what you're asking them for help on, when that's a lie. They know perfectly well how to do it, but they don't want to have to explain it...unless they're being paid, of course. I don't know why I'm saying this, but I feel like I need to say it, to get it out of my system. To put it out there. Because it's all true. 


26 days till summer! :) 

Watching the Flash Videos

I watched five out of the nine videos today, but I can't watch anymore. It's killing my brain of boredom SLOWLY. I know the videos don't hold any entertainment purpose, but these videos are really boring. The videos are SOMEWHAT helpful, though. This process seems overly complicated if it takes 9 whole videos to explain it all. And they're all, like, 8 minutes long. My grade in this class will drop so low with this project - why couldn't we do something simpler? I don't know how to use Flash yet, and I already hate it. Perhaps even more than Photoshop. I know all I do is complain, but this class isn't too easy for me. I know anybody's response to that would be "A challenge is good for you", blah blah blah, but it's not a good thing when I'm supposed to hold an A for all my classes. I'm going to die if I don't have all A's on my second semester average grade. 
 I don't get it - why are we watching videos on how to use Flash CS3 if the version on our computers is CS4? Are they basically the same thing??? 
Animation is so not my thing. I also saw on my teacher's blog that the yearbook class is selling old yearbooks. I was wondering if they had any yearbooks from last year, because I want one. 


28 days till summer! 
1 day till my book comes out! :) 

Flash Animation

I'll probably be making two posts today as I've just started class and I'm already blogging. This one is, of course, to complain about Flash. First, we have to watch 6 videos in order to know how to create a character. If I wanted to create a character, I'd go to Yahoo Avatar or something. I know it does more than that, like create internet games and make websites...I am so not in the mood to make a computer game...I tried to make a computer game in my computer class last year on Scratch Animation as a project, and everything went completely wrong. It's not like I'm going to have to make a computer game in my future or  career - I hate art. I'd never go into something that involves computer art.
Nevertheless, I'll probably watch the six videos about Flash, but I doubt it'll accomplish anything. I like when things are written so I can go back and look at the step if I don't know how to do something. 


30 days till summer...
6 days till my book comes out! :) 

Script

On my Multimedia teacher's blog, it says that we need the script, but we don't have it in writing - it's online. So I'll post the link to the script on my Google Docs.


PSA Script


I may play around with Flash today, even though I really don't want to - on the bright side, there is a three day weekend for me this week! :) 


32 days till summer...
8 days till my book comes out! :) 

Flash

We're supposed to be playing around with Adobe Flash today, as that is our next project. However, I opened up Adobe Flash and it confuses me a lot. My Multimedia teacher warned us that it would be as complicated as Adobe Illustrator...great. I don't understand why the teacher likes to give us the complicated computer programs. I know, its a "challenge" and all, and its not like I'm expecting anything easy, but in my opinion, there's no reason to stress students out.like that. It doesn't do me any good. Tutorials only help me to an extent. I'm good with following directions, but it's not something I enjoy doing. I'd rather not have to stick to any directions. Like I said, I'm really really REALLY bad with anything slightly artistic, even computer art. 


34 days till summer :) 
12 days till my book comes out! :) 

Recording Our Voices

Today, we will FOR SURE be recording our voices for our presentation in iMovie because since I was absent yesterday from school, I have to make-up a biology test...ugh. Understanding Spanish is easy for me, but speaking it is so much harder. I make a lot of grammatical errors when I'm speaking Spanish, too. My voice sounds all weird when its recorded, too. All we have to do is record our voices, and then we'll be done! :) We have to jot down every step of our way in the "Design Cycle Journal." We started a little late - I think I was unaware that we had to do this "Design Cycle Journal" EVERY class period we were doing this project. Oops.


14 days till my book comes out...
36 days till summer! :) 

PROJECT

We were going to put our voices in today, but one of our group members wasn't at school today and she had the main part so we couldn't really do that today - we decided to wait until she came back. 


We also had to get onto her account to gain access to our video...don't tell anyone :) 


Our school principal came into our class and we got to tell her about our video and what it was about. We showed her our depressing pictures of abused animals. She seemed to be proud of our work. I really like the music in our video, too - My group member made the music on Garageband. I remember trying to use Garageband and I couldn't use it - it was too confusing, I guess. Or too complicated. 


38 days :) 
18 days till book comes out :) 

Script

Today, we got our script done and we translated it into Spanish. However, we didn't record our voices just yet, even though we set up who was supposed to say what. 


I have an English E.O.C exam today...blah. Not fun, right? I'm a little bit worried about it. 


Now, I have two countdowns. One for summer, and one for this book I've been waiting to read for a WHOLE YEAR. 


40 days till summer :D 
20 days till my book comes out :)

Filming

I'm not sure if we're filming, or if we're just going to put our voice into the video - I'd rather just use a microphone and record my voice than be in an actual video. 


I just got back from the filming session. We didn't film - we decided to just put our voices into the slideshow, because first, we didn't have an animal to "abuse", so there wasn't anything we could really do.
We also have to make a script - that will be pretty simple, except for the part where it has to be in Spanish.


I have three projects going on at the same time - one for choir that we have to present today - we'll have to sing a song in Swahili that we were supposed to make up...great. I don't even have it memorized, and I have to create a magazine by Tuesday for my world geography class. Joy. 


44 days :) 

Animal Cruelty Project

My group members & I are continuing with the public service announcement project. If we don't know how to say things for our project in Spanish, I wonder if it's okay to use Google Translate...
We're working on our storyboard, and soon we'll start filming. I don't want to film, but I'll probably be filmed because I'm the only one in my group who REALLY knows Spanish. The other two group members dropped out of their Spanish classes. We're going to rehearse first. There's also a collaboration rubric that we have to look at, and that's about how well we work in our groups. 


I like to work in groups sometimes, but most of the time I prefer to work alone because often, and I mean REALLY often, I get stuck with the people who refuse to do anything, and they take credit for MY work. I hate it. Or, which is even worse, when we get to pick our own groups, I'm with people I can work with, but then I'm moved to a group with people who don't want to do anything. 


46 days :) 
And yes, I'm only counting school days in this countdown, not weekends.

Project: PSA

Today, we started creating our video on iMovie - we used all free-stock photos of animals being abused. We're wondering if we have to film, or can we just use images off the internet and talk into a microphone or something? 


We also started sketching out our storyboard, but we're not done with that. I've been so tired today - I don't know why. 


I'm so happy its Friday. This week has felt like one of the longest this year for me. 


48 days :)

PSA Project

So, I found my group. I'm glad that both of the other people in my group have taken at least one Spanish class at school. It helps a little. We did some research on animal abuse & on PSAs. It made me so sad, watching the videos and photos of poor, helpless animals being neglected and being beaten by people. 
Animal abuse needs to be stopped because animals don't deserve to be treated unfairly. I know that people abuse animals as a result of being abused themselves - therefore, they take out their frustrations on the animals, and animals often die from being tortured & neglected by humans. 


We filled in a design cycle worksheet, which helped organize our ideas. We looked at the SPCA & PETA websites that gave us information on animal cruelty. Even though countless websites put information on the internet about animal cruelty - how animal abuse can be prevented/avoided, how we can detect animal cruelty if it is going on around us, how to stop animal abuse, and why people abuse animals, but nevertheless, animal abuse still occurs every day and thousands of animals die from this abuse every year. I find it sad that so many people take their time to spread the information and post information online about animal abuse, and yet so many people are still cruel to animals. 


I read an article online on how several hundred animals are killed in U.S labs each year. I don't think I can be proud and happy to be a part of this country if animals are being tortured in our labs for "experimentation". I could never use products that have been tested on animals. 


I read on Yahoo that a truly amazing film legend has died today. RIP Elizabeth Taylor :( 


50 days :)

PSAs

A PSA, or public service announcement, is a type of advertisement featured on TV, radio, print, or other media. Unlike a standard advertisement, where the objective is to market a product, a PSAs goal is to benefit the public interest, by raising awareness of an issue, affecting public attitude and possibly stimulating action. 


Yes, some PSAs are more successful than others. I would believe that the stronger the effect a PSA has on a viewer or reader or listener, the more successful that PSA is. PSAs that prompt actions are definitely more successful than others that audiences may listen to and completely forget about within the hour. 


My next project in this class is to film/create a public service announcement. Of course, I'll be in a group, but that is the next project. I don't like to film, but maybe this will be fun. I'm thinking of what type of PSA I can do. There are thousands of options, so this might be a little difficult. 


I kind of have a group, we just need one more member, and hopefully someone who is taking a Spanish class like I am, because surprise, surprise - our PSA has to be in a different language. Make that double the difficulty. The point of this being in a different language is unclear. I don't understand why my teacher thinks this needs to be more difficult than it sort of already is by kicking the difficulty level up a notch. I'm not even that great at Spanish, and my partner isn't in a language class, which doesn't help, so most likely I will end up doing most of this project by myself, so the point of groups is unclear as well. I thought this was Multimedia class, not Spanish class..... 
Don't get the two confused - that's my opinion. One of our ideas for our PSA is animal abuse. 


I'm not even going to be sarcastic about being glad to be back at school. I just want this school year to be over - 52 days...

Reflections: Mid-Semester 2011

I think some new skills & knowledge I've acquired so far this semester is basically Adobe Project Rome. I've learned how to use it and how to manipulate images and make them look interesting. I could use Project Rome with classes whenever I have a project where I have to create a poster of some sort. I've found that Rome can sort of be used as like, a poster on a computer. My level of effort was high this semester compared to the Photoshop phase last semester. I'm proud of myself for that. I've gotten a lot done this semester, despite being absent some days. 


This has absolutely nothing to do with Multimedia, but I'm excited for tomorrow...I got this book a month or so ago, and I read it, and then at the end discovered I had to wait a month until the final chapter of the story goes online..and tomorrow is when the chapter goes online. I'll probably put the widget up here on this blog, but I'm not sure...I'll have to take it down once the chapter goes online. 


Only 2 days till Spring Break!! 

Rome Projects

Here are my Adobe Project Rome assignments. Hope you like them :) 

ROME PROJECT

I worked more on my posters with Adobe Rome. I have to say, though, that my work on Adobe Rome is much better than the work I did on Photoshop. My posters aren't perfect - I'd say that they were perfectly average. I can't believe spring break is only four days away.
Just four more days. I think I can get through this week, only for spring break. Then it'll be a week or so until April, and then I can start my countdown till the end of the school year :) 

Project

So today I worked a little bit on my Project Rome project. I learned that I could use IPhoto for any photo manipulations, which is good. I'm so happy its Friday. 
All I really did in class today was work on my project, and I searched the web a little. 
Bye! :) 

Project Rome, Again

So, I still like Adobe Project Rome. 
Even though my projects aren't as creative or as cool as my other classmates, I tried, and that's all that matters.
Our final project with Rome (insert sad face here) is to create a fictional movie poster and to create a poster for a humanitarian/environment effort. It's going along pretty well, I guess. Its a fun project, and its not too difficult, except apparently this is supposed to take us until spring break, but I doubt that it'll take that long for me. I don't really go overboard with my projects. Like, I don't freak out if its not absolutely perfect, like some people I know...I won't mention them here. 
I have aerobics next, and I highly doubt we'll be doing much...unless the other gym teacher decides to make us suffer today.  
Bye!

Talent Show Certificates

This was my original design for the certificates
I used the words high school for my certificates instead of upper school. I don't see why they call it "Upper School" anyway, so I just used the words High School. 
The four certificates are exactly like the one below, except for the First & Second place. Here's another example

Adobe Project Rome - Logos

So, today I worked with Adobe Project Rome, again. It's actually pretty fun. I like it, and the tutorials are not confusing to me, like the Photoshop tutorials were.

Today we had two assignments: Create a Logo, and make certificates for the winners of this weeks Talent Show - the Talent Show is tonight. I know mine won't get chosen, but I'll try anyway. 

Here is my logo assignment. Its not very good, and I didn't follow all of the steps, because something went wrong and I couldn't work with the glyph tool or whatever its called. 

I like my work, though, even though it may not be exactly what the teacher is looking for. Well, I'm going to go work on the certificates, and then I'll blog in a little bit. STAR is an imaginary company, and thats my logo for my imaginary company.

Adobe Project Rome

Ok, I take back what I said last class period. I hate Adobe Project Rome. I looked at the tutorial, and I realized it was almost exactly the same as Photoshop. 
Great. Just my luck. 
Well, then I used the tutorial and I found that this is somewhat easier than Photoshop. I like it a lot more than Photoshop, too. It's not really that good, but here's my Adobe Project Rome tutorial results. 

By the way, the words in the star is a Lady Gaga song quote. 
"My mama told me when I was young, we were all born superstars." It's from the song "Born This Way". 

Adobe Project Rome

I'm guessing that my next project/assignment/whatever will be on Adobe Project Rome. It's not actually that bad. Its similar to Pages, in my opinion, with a few extra things that Pages doesn't have. It's not as simple as Pages, which is a down side. I'm going to play with it for a little bit, as I'm not familiar with the program. 
I'll be watching the rest of the presentations today. Like I said on Wednesday, I was so nervous but so glad to have gotten that over with! :) 

Wikis

Today, I will be making a Wiki article about Animoto, my web 2.0 tool. There's really not much to say about this. It's just like creating a paper on Animoto. 


Wiki Article Animoto

I also got to present today. I get really really nervous when I have to present (even after taking speech class). My voice sounds all weird when I present, and it's just because I'm nervous. But I'm glad I got that over with. 

Wiki Article

So, I have no idea what the point of creating a Wiki Article about our web 2.0 tool is. We did Keynote presentations already. Can we please just be done with this project and move on? 
We had to do our rough drafts today, and it wasn't fun cause we had to have memorized it. I did, for the most part. But my information wasn't as long as it could have been if I was looking at my presentation on the Mac. 
I enjoy writing, but on the computer. I hate writing with pencil & paper. I discovered a long time ago that I type three times faster than I write. I don't even have to look at the keys, and I can even look at a piece of paper and type it on the computer at the same time, with barely any spelling errors. So, yes, I tend to type a lot of my school assignments (specifically notes) instead of write them. 
I can't believe it's already halfway through February. There's not much left to go until the end of the school year. It's kind of a shame, though, because I'm actually enjoying this year. I heard that next year there will be so much more homework than this year. Joy...


Here is my video...I had to compress it and put it on Google docs because Quicktime wouldn't work. 
Please ignore the fact that the slides go way too fast. I'll fix that. The Quicktime doesn't go that fast, but this does. I don't know why. If you want to read the real story, the link is on a previous post. If you don't see it, 
the title is The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank Richard Stockton. 


Lady Or the Tiger?

The Lady, Or the Tiger?

Ok, so I have no idea what text animation is. After seeing the examples, and searching on Google, I'm still as confused as I was before. I used the text animations in Keynote (the shimmer, the fly in, etc) - but I'm not sure if that's the type of text animation my teacher is looking for. Another type of text animations was the mumbo-jumbo of letters placed sideways and backwards, and words that are sideways or backwards with tiny font or HUGE FONT. I would really hate to redo mine like that. I didn't even understand the example my teacher gave us that's like that. Just because of the text animation. It was confusing. 


My story is interesting, I think. I've always liked the story The Lady, Or the Tiger? ever since I had an assignment on it in 6th grade - we had to continue the ending. My altered ending was pretty good. 


Sometimes I wonder whether my Multimedia teacher actually looks at my posts. I'd imagine I'd be in trouble by now because of some of the things I say on here. But I guess that's what you get when you give students liberties like being able to use the computer to blog. It's not that what I say is necessarily offensive, but I just enjoy ranting about the unfairness of school. It's not like I'm the only one who feels this way about our "policies". If I were my Multimedia teacher, I'd appreciate the fact that me, as a student, at least blogs and does her work MOST of the time, unlike other people, even though she doesn't care for most of it, and not watch soccer games through class on the computer. 

I need some help. For my text-animation project, I was assigned to tell a story in Keynote using Project Gutenberg, and I wanted to do a classic, like Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre, but the stories are way too long. 
Any suggestions on books I can tell on Keynote? 


I could do Romeo & Juliet, but honestly, I can't understand a word in anything Shakespeare. 


Actually, I think I have my story - The Lady, Or the Tiger? - by Frank Stockton. 

WHY?

Why does this class enjoy making my life miserable? 
Yes, this means I will have to be using typography for this next project, which unfortunately is done on Photoshop. 
I'm considering whether or not I plan on doing this assignment, project, whatever it is.


Well, once I saw the example video, it doesn't look like Photoshop so much as just capitalizing some words in a sentence and not capitalizing others and making the font bigger for some words and tiny font for others. 
I still don't see the point in this, though. When are we going to use something like this in life? Powerpoints aren't meant to be like that - normally in life, you'll make presentations for either work or school, and I'm sure they don't want that type of presentation. 


And since I went on a field trip last Wednesday and was not in class, I have to talk about the current situation in Egypt. 


Basically, in late January 2011, a mass protest erupted in Cairo, Egypt and in other Egyptian cities in response to President Mubarak's intention to run for reelection in September 2011. In response to the protests, Mubarak promised to not go for reelection, but still protesters were not pleased. Many wanted Mubarak to step down immediately, which has led to violent clashes between pro-Mubarak and anti-Mubarak protesters. On Friday, February 11, 2011, President Mubarak resigned as president in order to satisfy the protesters' demands. Massive crowds celebrated in Tahrir Square in Cairo and throughout Egypt many cheered and celebrated. 
Protesters used the social media to counter Egypt's security forces. This is one method the protesters used to oust President Mubarak from power. Mubarak's 30 year presidency was destroyed in 18 days. Amazing.  

My Cooliris Wall

Substitute Work (Continued)

My Web 2.0 tool is Animoto, and basically, what it does is create short presentations. It offers a variety of things, including royalty free images, music and video clips - this allows people to avoid plagiarism. It also allows for students to focus more on the content of their presentation rather than the technology aspect of it, thus the design of the presentations are pretty basic. 

Animoto Home Page

Animoto is great for everyone, but especially for students & teachers because educational accounts are private, unless emailed to a parent or linked to from another site. Animoto will send you an email when your presentation is fully processed and ready to go. Teachers have unlimited access to all of the site's resources FOR FREE, and teachers can also establish group accounts in order to monitor students' work. Another benefit for teachers is that teachers can create quick videos about the upcoming lesson or unit with Animoto. 

              One bad thing about Animoto is that you have to pay a fee every month or year, whatever you prefer, in order to access the full benefits, like being able to create videos as long as you want them to be instead of only 30 seconds long. Sometimes most students, especially students in middle or high school, need presentations to be longer than 30 seconds. On the plus side, if videos can only be 30 seconds long, other students viewing the presentation won't get bored so quickly. 

                                          This web 2.0 tool can be very useful to students because of all the reasons I explained in the previous paragraphs, but also because the video, audio and textual elements in producing videos helps students with creating visual messages and assist with visual literacy skills.  Animoto allows students to develop 21st century learning skills by being able to critically evaluate each presentation.

Substitute Work

We had a sub today, so basically all we did was a bunch of work. The plus side of this is that I get to postpone my presentation until Wednesday. 


The first assignment was to take the people that presented on Thursday's surveys. But see, I forgot who presented and I don't even know what their blogs are called or their URL. So I skipped to the second assignment, which was to identify input/output devices on a picture. 
Here are my results for this picture.


1. Computer Screen/Monitor - 
2. Keyboard - Input 
3. Mouse - Input
4. CD/DVD drive - Input & Output
5. Headphones - Output
6. Flash drive - Input/Output
7. Projector - Output
8. Printer - Output
9. Wireless Internet/Hub - Input
10. Activote - Input
11. Activboard Pen - Input


The third assignment will be in the following post. 

PRESENT DAY :(

So today I have to present my Keynote presentation - I hate presenting. I should be used to it by now, having taken speech class last semester and all, but I hate presenting so much. I just don't understand the point of a presentation if you can just go up and talk about what's on the slides on simple note cards without going to the trouble of making a presentation, especially when everybody can just read what's on your slides - you don't even need to talk. 


When I got to school today, I realized I was missing my gym shorts and sneakers. Great. I hope my gym teacher doesn't, like, explode or something. I hate when people make such a huge deal over nothing. But I hope that I do well with my more or less boring presentation (really, I'm just crossing my fingers that my name isn't called today because I completely forgot how to set up the projector.....) 
Wish me luck!

So, as you can see, my survey is completed and properly embedded into my blog. I know I was ranting a bit in my last post, and I'm sorry about that. 

Nevertheless, I still hate Google Forms just the same as before I got some help with embedding. I was doing it wrong the entire time! 

Silly me. 

Today, I will learn how to set up the projector, or something like that. It better be simple, otherwise I will freak and spontaneously combust...just kidding. No, I'll be fine. Except I'm really bad with technology equipment. Some people think I'm good at almost everything, but that's far from true. 

For example - I'm bad at BIOLOGY. I hate that class with a passion. I think it hates me, too. I dislike doing things that involve my hands, such as building and art. I am not good at either. Many people can testify to the horrible "art" I make. 

I will present my Keynote presentation, but to who, I have no clue. Maybe to the senior who sits next to me. 

I'll update here towards the end of class. :) 

Google Docs Form SURVEY

Keynote Presenting

Today I am showing my presentation to a classmate. Afterwards, we have to create a survey on Google Docs for the partner to fill out, to give us feedback on the presentation. I've already created the survey, as I'm done with the presentation but don't know who to present it to. I'll put the link right here (there are no answers yet - when the survey is completed I'll replace the link with the completed survey. 




Actually, I have to edit this post - and the reason is because when you click on the link for the survey, ERROR 404 or whatever the number is shows up. I'll try to have that fixed and I'll put the link to the completed survey below.

The PowerPoint rant that got a colonel fired

The article I was talking about in the previous blog-post, which I just found we not only have to talk about it but also blog about it (again, point of this is???). The article was about a colonel, Lawrence Sellin, who was fired after he didn't clear his comments through public affairs & failed to clear "written or oral presentations to the media" through a designated public affairs officer. 


In his PowerPoint, he talks about how in the two months working as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan, he has not done anything productive. He mentions how the International Joint Command was most likely founded to provide some general with a three-star command rather than to coordinate operations among all the regional commands. He humiliates the generals by calling them "cognitively challenged", and how the headquarters staff mainly has to make PowerPoint presentations to spoon-feed the generals' information. He makes a sarcastic comment as to how he has to attend series of PowerPoint briefings and meetings with PowerPoint presentations, because, "just like gym class, they take roll." 
He also makes fun of the commander, who never actually attends the "commanders update assessment,  or CUA," and his immediate subordinates, who sit through the CUA in a "semi-comatose" state. Finally, he talks about how the IJC (International Joint Command) will attempt to embed a new stovepipe into an already existing stovepipe. 




This is a blow to the IJC, I believe. I can understand why he was fired. At first, I thought firing someone because of a PowerPoint was a little too harsh. Well, since he obviously didn't like his job in the IJC, he can look on the bright side - since he was fired, he can search for a job he will like to do - maybe one without having to make PowerPoints. 

Article

So...this week we had a three day weekend, and it would be an understatement to say that I was completely refreshed. It should be officially established that we had a three-day weekend every week. I'm not going to go into the many, many reasons as to why I believe that so much school is not really very useful, because I suppose it would be considered "offensive" to the district, or whatever. I don't think the district honestly cares what I think, though, so...it shouldn't matter what I say about it. Point is, I hate school, there should be more breaks, no school on Mondays, etc. 


Today in Multimedia I will have to work with a partner on some article and present to the class...and I don't see the point of this...but then again, I don't see the point of 90% of the things teachers make us do. Just simple busy work, I guess. Then, we have to work on our Web 2.0 tool power point, which we should be "almost finished with" - I thought this was a full length project...I guess I was mistaken. Also, I was wondering - is too many transitions between slides bad? I had transitions on all my slides (and they were all different) but then I decided to stick with only one transition between the slides, so all my slides' transitions are the same. Is that still bad? When I use transitions on some of the slides but not others, it looks sort of weird. 

MY Web 2.0 Tool

I finally found my Web 2.0 tool - Animoto!

Confused

I really don't understand - why must we use a specific Web 2.0 tool in our presentations? That's not fair, since I wasn't really here and most of the Web 2.0 tools are blogging and social networking and that doesn't really fit in with a presentation - and most of the others have already been taken and I wasn't here when they got to choose. Yes, there may be thousands of Web 2.0 tools, but only specific ones or the best ones are given, and yes, those "best ones" tend to be Wikipedia, Flickr, Youtube, etc. I don't understand also - what presentation? What is it supposed to be about? The Web 2.0 tool? 


I wanted to be moved out of this class, and go to something like broadcast journalism or newspaper, because this class is starting to prove to be very difficult for me, but the counselor wouldn't let me change...something about losing a credit? I don't know, but it made me sad. :( 

Web 2.0 tool?

I'm wondering whether Wikipedia, stock.xchng, Youtube, Flickr or even Photobucket have been used. 

Web 2.0 tools (continued)

There are thousands of Web 2.0 tools, but I put the ones I found interesting on the last post.
I'll have to present my Web 2.0 tool to my Multimedia teacher. Afterwards, I will play with Keynote, which is Apple's presentation creator. As I didn't get to present today, I'll work on this some at home and I'll present next class period. 


I'm not sure why I would like to use Vimeo or Writeboard on my presentation - I don't even know what the presentation is supposed to be about.....


I have a bad feeling that I'll have to present a lot to the Multimedia teacher...one reason is because it's my first day in this class and I already have to present something.... 


Bye! :) 

Web 2.0 tools

Happy New Year everyone! I'm back, and I had an extremely relaxing break - right until the very end, when I missed my flight back from Mexico & was stuck there for another week - it's a long story that I really don't feel like going into - point is, I missed my flight and that is why I was not here at school for the last blog post. 


What I missed last time was something called "Web 2.0 tools" - I don't understand it very much, but I know that Web 2.0 tools are a new category of Internet tools & technologies created around the idea that people who consume media, access the internet and use the Web shouldn't passively absorb what's available but instead be active contributors, helping customize media and technology for their own purposes, as well as those of their communities. Web 2.0 tools apply to, but are not limited to, blogs, social networking applications, RSS and wikis. 


My instructions were to choose two, and I may choose another one just in case somebody else has chosen the one I want to present. 


One of them is Vimeo, which is sort of like the counterpart to Flickr. I would do Flickr, but I know somebody else has probably already done that. One of the cons of Vimeo is that to increase from 500 megabytes to 5 GB you have to pay a yearly annual fee of $60. Unlike Youtube, which only allows videos to be no more than 10 minutes in length, Vimeo allows you to have videos that can be however minutes you want in length, but you have to pay for it. Youtube allows you to upload however many videos you want for free, whereas Vimeo does not. Vimeo is more like a video hosting service rather than a social community. A pro about Vimeo is that the compression in videos is almost unnoticeable, and this is good for, say, a motion graphics piece that has a very specific color palette. The aesthetics of Vimeo are great, and one reason for that is that when you hover your mouse off the player, the controls disappear, allowing you to fully view the video without the controls in the way. When you put your mouse back on the player, the controls reappear. For those who don't like the annotations that are stuck on Youtube videos by the author, Vimeo does not have that option to put annotations on videos, which is somewhat good, because I, for one, find them annoying. 


Another one is Writeboard, which is a good collaboration/word processing tool because it is a web-based word processor that allows multiple people to sign in and share ideas. This can be very useful with students who are in a group and are doing an assignment or a project together - with Writeboard, they can all share and see each other's ideas. Another good thing about Writeboard is that you can export "your board" into an email or text file, too. A con with Writeboard is that it's not really possible to make a spreadsheet or a chart on it. You can't change the font color & type, and the basic capabilities such as bold and italic. The formatting is done with a code rather than buttons, which will make it a bit confusing for people without a whole lot of tech experience, like me. Another plus of Writeboard is that it's free.


Of course, Youtube is another, as Youtube allows people from all over the world to post videos and share ideas. Myspace and Twitter are other Web 2.0 tools, and the pros of these are that people of all ages can communicate with friends and family who live in other areas, but a con is that because of social networking sites such as these, less people are going out into the world and actually making new friends, face-face. Another con of social networking is that it becomes easier to write nasty things about others and start rumors. It fuels arguments and lots of drama. 


This post is getting sort of long, so I'll continue on a new post.


& here are the links to Writeboard and Vimeo. 


1. Writeboard

2.   Vimeo