music12: Group Vodcast Blog

The rationale of our group vodcast was to collaborate and discuss thoughts about Blended Learning and Community of Learning. Our intended audience included parents, teachers, and administrators at our school. The purpose was to inform our audience of how blending learning integrates face to face learning with online technology, and also how the community of learning incorporates the social, cognitive, and teaching presences.

Link to iMovie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBhfWX_aBbM

My Reflection

Before my group began the iMovie project, I was very overwhelmed. As a group our first responsibility was to evenly divide responsibilities, which helped relieve some of my anxiety immediately. The people in my group included Emily, Kerry, and Nick. Our first task was for everyone to research content and images related to the topics of Blended Learning and a Community of Learning. As we researched, our findings were placed in a Google Docs document that we all shared.

As I reflect, I strongly believe the dividing of responsibilities had a great impact on the success of our project. Everyone had something to do and worked on tasks where some of us had strengths. Here’s the process:

· For planning purposes, I developed the FATP on our research page and Nick created a mind map using Inspiration.

· Kerry created a Research page on a Google Docs document where everyone in the group could document the research, images, and hyperlinks.

· Kerry and Emily were responsible for developing the script and adding the “acting” voices to the Garage Band software. The recorded voices in Garage Band were exported into iTunes.

· Nick and I were responsible for searching for images and downloading the images into iMovie. After each of us found an image, Nick downloaded the image to the desktop and then dragged it to iMovie. If a picture could not be downloaded, a screen shot was taken of the image.

· Nick matched the images to the script.

· I created a Reference page on a Google Docs document for both images and content.

· Emily added the credits and the image and content sources to our movie.

· Everyone in our group continued to search for images that related to the topic. We now have 43 images!!!

Teamwork:

I feel our team worked well together and the process went smoothly. As I reflect, I believe our teamwork improved for two important reasons:

· There was an even division of responsibilities. I found that I had much more to do on project four. Of course, project four involved images and project three did not involve pictures.

· Some image searching, movie editing, and research were done outside of class. This was important because it gave our group an added momentum to complete the project.

As I reflect on teamwork, I realized how important it is to complete tasks ahead of time. I have always been one to turn things in on time. However, with project four I made an effort to perform my tasks “ahead of time”, rather than “on time.” I believe the “ahead of time” philosophy is contagious and motivates other people. I envision myself using this philosophy more in my career.

Mind mapping/Flowcharts:

The FATP process and mind mapping using Inspiration continues to be a great tool for planning.

With a difficult project, mind mapping can prove to be very beneficial.

Tools and Applications:

I mentioned several tools and applications in the process section. I learned a great deal in doing this project. I realized how easy it was to do a screen shot on a MAC. I can see myself doing screen shots on my MAC at work. As you will read in my e-portfolio, I will be using Garage Band with my instrumental music classes, and I will be using Google Docs with my colleagues at work.

Creative Commons Statement1 -I only searched for images that were found under the website http://sites.google.com/site/edvibes/Home/projects/project-cc-2 , therefore, these pictures were Creative Commons images. There was only one exception and that was the “Pattern for Online Inquiry” image which was found under Google. The only reason I utilized it was because it was used on a slide for class.

Creative Commons Statement 2 Our music source was found under the website listed above.

Creative Commons Statement 3 We published our video under YouTube last evening. When I mentioned it to someone in my group today, the individual said it should have been done last night. I think we forgot about it.

Bibliography of hyperlink resources:

Research Content

Here are six out of seven!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_learning

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/192/274.%20Accessed%2019th %20 March%202006

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blended_Learning_in_K-12/Blended_Learning_In_Grades_7-8.

http://www.inacol.org/research/promisingpractices/NACOL_PP-BlendedLearning-lr.pdf

http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/k-12_online_learning_2008.pdf

Images

Here are 10 out of 43!

1. Computer 1

2. Computer 2