PSA Project Reflection

This was a fun project. Our team was made up of 6 members. We started out well, with everyone on board and participating. My main contribution was to produce the audio track. As a group we chose our topic. After some research I created a rap, found a royalty free soundtrack and got my college age son to record the rap for us. This gave us the foundation to create our shot list. Once the shot list was created there was some video recorded. There were problems getting parent permission but that was eventually resolved. We had a semi dysfunctional group in the editing area. No-one was really willing to take on that commitment. We could definitely improve in that arena. There were three members (Sara Baragona, Jennifer Mihaund and myself) who seemed to do all the work and we were waiting for the others to step up. Our copyrights were all creative commons or original works used with permission.

For most of week 5 there was no participation by the group except the three of us who had done most of the work continued to chat and worry and panic about our finished product in the hands of a few who seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. We felt it necessary to create a version of the final product on our own despite the fact it was not our role because we did not want to get stuck with nothing. We were not going to post it unless we had to. In the end a final product emerged and that is what we have turned in.

This project had moments of great collaboration where I truly felt the “amplification” effect. It also had many moments of total frustration as team members “went dark” for days and days. When we were clicking it was phenomenal. I truly enjoyed working especially with Sara and Jennifer – between the three of us we kept the project moving and together.

here is a link to our PSA on Cyberbullying

Web Conference – 9-17-10

It was good to get confirmation about what was due for the week. This course has been confusing with the different assignment in week 2 and then have a way to submit things this week. This conference gives us the chance to ask clarifying questions and interact with the others in the class. I felt bad that Dr. A was not feeling well.

This weeks video web conference

I am glad that Dr. Abernathy provides the Video Conference experiences for us. There us always some clarification that I receive by attending. This week I shared with Dr. Abernathy that my son who attends UTSA is jealous of our video conferences. He is struggling with a teacher who is not wanting to answer his questions in his face-to-face class and he was telling me that he felt I got more support in my distance class that he did face-to-face. It is nice to always hear Dr. Abernathy tell us that she is here for us. With a distance class it is comforting to know that the support is there.

Easy Video Editing with JayCut

You can find my podcast here on my wiki
http://edld5388internshipmannas.wikispaces.com/Courses

Here is my video edit project.

EVALUATION of free video editing software.

I chose to review YouTube’s editor and an editor called JayCut. I was very excited to learn YouTube’s editor but when I got into it I was not impressed. It took me about 45minutes to actually find it and when I did the tutorial was not working. I went in anyway and spent about 30minutes trying to figure it out only to discover I could not upload within the editor I had to have uploaded video into YouTube first and then it would show up as video I could choose to edit. By this time I was getting frustrated. I did upload video and did get it to crop and then repost. It was pretty easy once I figured it out but the frustration level of getting there was not worth it to me. I also looked at JayCut. I chose this editing software because it intrigued me that it too was a web-based editor but it looked a little more robust. I found this editor very user friendly. Their demo area had clips you could play with as well as songs you could use. It had several video tracks, a sound track, transitions and title screens to create. I found it very intuitive and also found that I spent my time being creative and trying the tools rather than spending my time being frustrated and doing the bare minimum to just get through the software. I think I will definitely use JayCut in the future.

My quote is:
“Shooting with the Edit in Mind
Editing may be the final step of the production, but to make a truly successful video, you need to begin making editing choices in the concept stage.” (Lonnquist)

I found this quote very intriguing. We are doing a lot with backwards design in my district and to here the concept applied to Editing video really made me stop and think. I had never thought about it. I had always thought of editing video as an art. In art you do not always have the end in mind when you begin. The artistic process ebbs and flows and you can end up with something totally different than what you set out to create. To begin with the end in mind might take out a bit of the artistic element and make it more methodical. If you are shooting part of a scene that you know you will edit I am not sure what the advantage is to shooting it in the first place. Maybe they meant that you need to always keep the big picture in mind – I can see where that concept would be beneficial when editing video.


Lonnquist, J. (n.d.). The Art of the Edit. Retrieved 2010, from School Video News: http://www.school-video-news.com/index_files/Art_of_the_Edit.htm