Final Blog

The Best of Multimedia Apps & Tools

This has been my favorite CCV course that I have taken so far, partly because I really enjoyed the subject and it's something I'm really interested in but also because the assignments were fun and I learned a lot doing them. I really enjoyed taking and editing photos, so the projects like the photo story which is featured below, and our final project or some of my favorites. They gave me a new way to share my photos with people and create a story with them. WeVideo is a program that I had never heard of before this class, and I really liked it. Some video programs are really complicated and hard to use but I found I was able to follow along pretty well and to make some awesome videos using it.

 

What I learned

I think that one of the most universally useful saying that I learned about the semester was fair use and copyright because I really did not know much about it. When I was in high school I was taught that we needed to cite our sources but I never even heard of fair use, so I was not really using other people's work the way I should be. Blogging is another thing that I don't have a lot of experience with and I thought it was really useful to know how a Blog should be formatted and to get some practice with logging. I think that my blog has definitely improved since my first one which was just one long paragraph with no photographs or headings it's a really good way for us to reflect on everything that we learned and to sort through our thoughts and difficulties that we had over the week.

My Final Project

With our final project I was pretty comfortable with WeVideo so I thought it was going to go pretty well, and for the most part it did. I did have one problem, the last time that I logged into my WeVideo to go over everything and make some final changes, some setting has been changed so that all the vertical photos were being set to a zoomed blurry background. It took a lot of searching and messing around with things before I found out how to fix it but eventually I found it under the edit button on the photos. I'm really happy with the way that my video turned out and it's on a subject that I really care about Christmas is always been my favorite time of year. It reminds me of my childhood and all the happy times that my family shared.

Data Visualization: Maps

Data Visualization Maps

Data is a really important tool to use to back up what you are claiming, and you can even find out some really interesting things just by collecting data. I thought that the video The Age of Insight: Telling Stories with Data was really interesting because I hadn't thought of it that way before. Of course data has been used for a long time to find some sort of conclusion for example the population of the country like the image on the right, but there can be really interesting stories created with data. I loved the example of the journalist who would answers readers questions with a data story because it is a great way to make our society more informed and educated.

Google Fusion Table

When I was attempting to using to use Google Fusion Table, I ran into a couple problems. It seemed like a really good idea because even after I made it, it would keep updating as more people filled out my survey, however somewhere in the many steps something went wrong. My computer said that Google hadn't approved the app yet so it would not allow it, so I am not sure if it was something I did wrong or if it was my computer but I chose to use My Maps instead.

My Maps

I created my form pretty late because I had a busy and hectic week so I did not get as many responses as I had hoped, but I chose to do mine on where you would want to go on Vacation anywhere in the United States. My maps was really easy to use, so I didn't feel like it would be that much of an inconvenience to go back and update it if I get more data. I like that when you click on the location point, it pulls up the reason why the people wanted to go on vacation there which was the other question in my google form.

People's Ideal Vacation Spots in the USA

Data Visualization

Data Visualization 

I really liked how Garr Reynolds says that data should be presented because all too often in school I found myself looking at a powerpoint slide or a piece of paper with way too much going on, and it's overwhelming. He suggested that you present one idea at a time which makes it a lot easier to focus. He also highlighted using the right graph to represent your data so that it can be easily understood. This is really important because if the data is not represented well, the point that it is showing may not be understood. Hans Rosling's video did a really great job of this while also making the it really interesting and visually pleasing with the floating points on the graph that he pushed around.

"Calling Bullshit"

Getting the data in the first place is also really important and where you are getting it from. "Calling Bullshit" is an awesome way to inform students about all of the information that is out there that is simply not true. It is really important that your information is accurate otherwise people are not going to take you seriously and it could get you in a lot of trouble. 

Ice Cream

I decided to my infographic on ice cream because it is my favorite sweet treat and I thought it would be fun topic to share some information on. I had a similar project in another class last week where I had to gather date and I used SurveyMonkey, but I really liked that Google Forms is connected to all of my other Google stuff. It was really easy to use and the spreadsheet tool is really handy. 

Canva

I used Canva to create my infographic because I really liked the way that some of their templates looked. I have used Google slides a lot so I wanted to try something different and I didn't end up using any of the templates, but I used them for inspiration. I liked that you could search for pictures right their in the app, it made it really easy to find pictures I could use. I was really happy with how my infographic came out and I would definitely use this program again. 

Prezi

Experience

I was introduced to Prezi in high school where I used it for some of my presentations, and I found that I liked it a lot more than the traditional slide presentation. Prezi is much more engaging as you can add more movement and hidden parts. This also makes it so that everyone's presentations are different, rather than just flipping through slide after slide.

Staff Picks

The prezis that were in the staff picks we're obviously much more advanced than anything I have created, but it is possible for anyone to create a really good presentation like those. The background of the prezis were interactive with the slides, for example it would zoom through a window to a slide with photos of the interior of the building. That was another thing that I liked, it is really easy use, but looks complex and well put together in the end. The twists and the different zoom locations make it flow, and it really seems like you know what you're doing.

New

A new feature that I hadn't known about before was making the background of the Prezi a photo. I took advantage of this in my prezi with a photo that I though captured my favorite part of the presentation, the Florida sunsets. It gives the presentation more depth and it really sets the tone as well.

Troubles

I have had some trouble uploading my Prezi to my blog, there is only an empty rectangle where is should have loaded, so here is the link in case it never loads. I tried copying the link many different times and it doesn't seem to work. However, overall I would definitely choose Prezi over other presentations.

Presentations

Presentations

I thought that this weeks topic was really fun, I have always enjoyed making presentation in class. I enjoy doing things that allow me to be creative and I think that knowing how to make a good presentation is also really important. They are not just useful for school, you might have to create one at work someday or for some other occasion, and it is good know to know how to make a presentation that is not

Tips

The articles that gave Garr Reynolds' tips on how to make a better presentation we're really helpful and I think that they all had good points. Keeping it simple was a theme through all of them and I can certainly agree that this helps the people watching the presentation. If you want the audience to be focused on what your are saying to them, it is key to not have too much going on in your slides, especially text. The audience will want to read the text and then they won't be listening to you. Another important thing that they said was to keep it short, after a while the audience will start to get bored so keeping things short and simple help keeps people attentive.

Using WeVideo

I used my photos that I put in my presentation as my backgrounds, only having one photo per slide, and made sure that there were only a few words on each slide. In my video presentation using WeVideo, I explained those slides more in depth, but the audience did not have to listen to me and try to read the slides because they easy and quick to read. I thought that WeVideo worked really well for making the presentation. The only thing that I thought would be better is if you could switch from the web camera to the screen view while recording, but I thought that I was able to make it work with the separate clips.

Passion & Creativity Presentation

Creativity Collaboration