Don't You Know What Your Doing? (opening line from INXS song, Suicide Blond) HMMMMMMMMM. NO, not really. I am guessing at this point. I deffenitely am not working by experience.
And, I only have a few days to finish.
I spent a good bit of time today trying to resend my Powerpoint to Dr. Romano since it won't upload because it's 10.5mb. Suggestion was WINZIP but the Angel wouldn't accept that. So I sent via e-mail I hope it was received but AShland e-mail took three days to notify me the full size file I e-mailed on Friday was too big to send. If not I have to burn to CD and send snailmail, I don't really want to go that route.
I have been housesitting for friends watering flowers and keeping the pool clean. So between moving the hose I am working at my friends pc. Well don't you know my flash drive won't work when I plug it into his computer. So I had to do work and e-mail it to myself so I could get it at home tonight.
Like RoseAnne RosannaDanna's father always told her, "Well, it just goes to show you, it's always something".
Monday, August 4, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
OverKill. Will doing more get me a better grade?
I borrowed a camcorder over the weekend. I proceeded to spend 4 hours at the state and national wildlife sanctuary. The proplem with this was it is a Sony camcorder which writes directly to a DVD. After the DVD is finalized it was a file not recognized as a digital file that I could work with without converting to another file. More hours spent finding conversion software that was free. The conversion software was trial only and after 12 hours converting 1.5 hours of digital files left a stamp in the middle of the picture.
So, I then spend hours cutting up the tape into clips which I could then assemble into a finished project, minus music and narration. 9 minutes long. I had over 20 hours in- to get 9 minutes. I reread the assignment rubric and found I only really needed a minute long film. 12x5=1m. 12 still photos viewed for 5 seconds each makes a minute long movie using moviemaker. SO, I cut my movie down to 7 minutes.
The ? I have to ask myself is; Will 7 minutes get me the same grade as 1 minute? I don't know why I do this to myself but I do. In the business world I wrote proposals that were 12 pages long when 2 would have sufficed. Overkill. In government I wrote grant proposals that had to be trimmed down to 5 pages from 15. Overkill. I write press releases for the campaign I am Campaign Manager for. 4 paragraphs and they print 4 sentences. OverKill. This is my fifth posting to this blog. I only need 3 and no more than 2 in a week and we are barely into the 3rd week. Overkill.
Overkill. Why? Will it get me a better grade? Or, am I really doing this to get a better grade?
So, I then spend hours cutting up the tape into clips which I could then assemble into a finished project, minus music and narration. 9 minutes long. I had over 20 hours in- to get 9 minutes. I reread the assignment rubric and found I only really needed a minute long film. 12x5=1m. 12 still photos viewed for 5 seconds each makes a minute long movie using moviemaker. SO, I cut my movie down to 7 minutes.
The ? I have to ask myself is; Will 7 minutes get me the same grade as 1 minute? I don't know why I do this to myself but I do. In the business world I wrote proposals that were 12 pages long when 2 would have sufficed. Overkill. In government I wrote grant proposals that had to be trimmed down to 5 pages from 15. Overkill. I write press releases for the campaign I am Campaign Manager for. 4 paragraphs and they print 4 sentences. OverKill. This is my fifth posting to this blog. I only need 3 and no more than 2 in a week and we are barely into the 3rd week. Overkill.
Overkill. Why? Will it get me a better grade? Or, am I really doing this to get a better grade?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover
In doing my research for the WIKI technology review, I found that many of the sites listed as Virtual Field Trips were nothing of the sort. My personal opinion of many of these were garbage. If I was a kid and my teacher told me I had to read all these pages of text and look at a couple of still photos, would have me cringing. I looked at many of these and just shook my head. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was more of a historical field trip than the ones I reviewed. Bogus. No video clips, no interaction, and no creativity. It was terribly disappointing.
Luckily, I found some that were very impressive. Excellent, guitar strum. http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1119486233/ (You have to watch a short commercial maybe 15 -20 seconds)
Technology in the hands of amateurs is well, BOGUS.
Luckily, I found some that were very impressive. Excellent, guitar strum. http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1119486233/ (You have to watch a short commercial maybe 15 -20 seconds)
Technology in the hands of amateurs is well, BOGUS.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
User-Friendly
I learned something about myself today with the Inspiration Software. It was the same message I learned in 1985 while a student at Ohio State taking a mainframe computer programing class. It was do or die - learn it or drop the class and I said to my self, "self, you have to take the risk to make a mistake and start over if you have to, nothing ventured nothing gained". By the end of that day I had written a Pascal program that ran and did everything I had hoped it would.
In Inspiration I didn't know where everything I am used to using while formatting was but found that Control Z worked as undo in this program same as many others. So, I was to not get to far away from what worked. I realized computer programmers in the 20+ years since I learned how to work with computers figured that if "people can't use it then people won't buy it" (user-friendly).
I am pretty pleased with my work product while using Inspiration and already have many ideas for future storyboards.
I also signed up for a web page on Freewebs.com it was pretty easy. Something else I was worried about but again User-Friendly. Niiiice.
Later,
Bryan
In Inspiration I didn't know where everything I am used to using while formatting was but found that Control Z worked as undo in this program same as many others. So, I was to not get to far away from what worked. I realized computer programmers in the 20+ years since I learned how to work with computers figured that if "people can't use it then people won't buy it" (user-friendly).
I am pretty pleased with my work product while using Inspiration and already have many ideas for future storyboards.
I also signed up for a web page on Freewebs.com it was pretty easy. Something else I was worried about but again User-Friendly. Niiiice.
Later,
Bryan
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Delays and Worries
There have been three things this week to stress me out even more than I was on Sunday night. The folks at the help desk didn't have me in the system so when I got Dr. Romano's e-mail I couldn't log on, and couldn't log on and I contacted DR resolved, no problems just got a late start.
Wednesday,I tried up loading my one page newsletter created in Word w/1 picture, 3 clip arts only 13MB. It won't take, it just gives me an Upload Error message "larger than maximum allowed size." Geez.
This afternoon the video card in my computer starts to do goofy things so I go buy a new one and install it. Now figure this out how is it you switch out a piece of hardware and now all the fonts on my desktop are now bigger and in a font I don't really like. I changed nothing other than unplug, then plug nplay. Added 45 minutes trying to find the stuff I like, again what I don't know about computers is gigantic, yet, I swap out hardware which most people wouldn't even try.
Hope to be taking daughter Brynn to Cedar Point tomorrow.
Back at it Monday.
Bryan
Wednesday,I tried up loading my one page newsletter created in Word w/1 picture, 3 clip arts only 13MB. It won't take, it just gives me an Upload Error message "larger than maximum allowed size." Geez.
This afternoon the video card in my computer starts to do goofy things so I go buy a new one and install it. Now figure this out how is it you switch out a piece of hardware and now all the fonts on my desktop are now bigger and in a font I don't really like. I changed nothing other than unplug, then plug nplay. Added 45 minutes trying to find the stuff I like, again what I don't know about computers is gigantic, yet, I swap out hardware which most people wouldn't even try.
Hope to be taking daughter Brynn to Cedar Point tomorrow.
Back at it Monday.
Bryan
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Start UP - First Posting
Remember the Movie "Airplane", I picked the wrong time to Quit"________", (fill in the blank)drinking, smoking, sniffing glue, etc. AS soon as I read Dr. Romano's Email, I have been having the same sense of dread, only this time it's "I picked the wrong time to fore go my sanity". Wow we, what was I thinking when in my 3rd class, in the 20 years since college, I am going to do a semesters worth of work in 4 weeks. How nutty really.
Class doesn't start officially until tomorrow- realizing the above I began my research immediately, started my blog, went to the end and am trying to figure out what is an E-portfolio and what is it created in, likewise with a WebQuest, I have done a ton of Ppt's but what are non-linear links, on and on go my questions.
I am a technology pioneer who was lost in the wilderness for a few years. My saving grace is that Word, PowerPoint's and Excel are my bread and butter. Even though, I have used movie maker to create a film about teasing/bulling called "Fact Is" I don't have access to a digital camcorder which means I will be working from still photos.
Leap before you look.
bryan
Class doesn't start officially until tomorrow- realizing the above I began my research immediately, started my blog, went to the end and am trying to figure out what is an E-portfolio and what is it created in, likewise with a WebQuest, I have done a ton of Ppt's but what are non-linear links, on and on go my questions.
I am a technology pioneer who was lost in the wilderness for a few years. My saving grace is that Word, PowerPoint's and Excel are my bread and butter. Even though, I have used movie maker to create a film about teasing/bulling called "Fact Is" I don't have access to a digital camcorder which means I will be working from still photos.
Leap before you look.
bryan
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