Week 6 Reflection 5

                              iMOVIE


IMovie was the technology of choice for this week.

My very first attempt to create an imovie was last year when my husband and I decided to audition for the block 2014. We had to create a 5 min video about ourselves. I had no idea how to create one..so again YOUTUBE came to my aid when I had access to 'more knowledgable others'. The result was a rough compilation of media ...still I was proud of what I had created as rough as it was.

This however is my second attempt of movie making. I chose to explore this option more and to build upon my existing knowledge which now had become a little vague. But I thought  if I had done it before I could surely do it again.

Imovie is a great tool for students to use as a way of presenting their content in a more engaging and creative way rather than more traditional methods. I have experienced first hand the benefits of watching instructional videos to help me learn and I feel this is one of the most effective communication/educational tools out there for 'how-to-do-it' content.  It affords the ability to be able to learn as quick or slow as you like...You can stop, rewind or replay instantaneously to re-learn the information.  For visual people like me....its a dream!

The imovie was created last week for my Literacy and Numeracy Assessment 1 for secondary students. The main aim was to promote literacy and numeracy and convey how they are both embodied into our subject area. So I chose to present in a movie format.

A mobile phone device was used for the question and answer part from secondary students. I did not even have to be there to take these footages. My son went over to his friends house and did it there after a bribe and then texted it too me. I also got another friend who has 4 secondary kids to take it on her phone and send it too me.  This saved me a lot of time in having to be there and record myself.  This is one of the benefits that technology offers. On the down side, I had no control of how the students engaged with the questions etc...so the quality of it could have been better. The quality of the You tube videos I used within my movie were not perfect illustration. It was hard to find something that I really wanted. It definitely would have been better if I had some willing actors to do it myself...

Using YouTube to learn the various components and features imovie offered was essential for me to understand how to do it. Themes and transitions were easy to work with as was adding pictures from iphoto. I downloaded various YouTube videos to integrate into my movie by using Aimesoft. Amiesoft converted the You Tube video into an mp4 format very quickly and easily so I could then export it into imovie.

The music was the most challenging part for me as I wanted music to be played continuously  throughout the movie except for when the students were speaking...I'm sure there must be an easier way of doing it because it took a long time to manipulate the volume settings. I obviously got there in the end.

The most frustrating part was trying to get it onto my blog or anywhere for that matter. I tried slideshare...paid for an account to increase the MB as the movie was over 300MB - even after I did this it kept  stopping and not completing the process. I uploaded it to dropbox but it still would not allow me to put it straight into my Blog. I did try YOUTUBE at the very start but it said I did not have enough disk space. Long story short I eventually got it on to YOUTUBE and then onto my blog!

To make a quality movie there are other devices that you can buy to enhance the audio and visual setting. This would be a good investment if you were doing it often enough.