For the first week of ETEC 647e, we were asked to compile a short video/slideshow to introduce ourselves to the class. It’s a great assignment since it really made me think about characteristics about myself I would like to share with others.
Immediately I wanted to showcase the different places I’ve travelled to. Luckily, my husband and I have been pretty organized with our digital photo collection using Picasa. We’ve also had all of our photos from film scanned by ScanCafe.com a few years ago, so all of our photos are now on our desktop and backed up on a hard drive. Additionally, we subscribe to Back
I had some challenges narrowing down the thousands of pictures since I’ve visited 17 countries, 7 United States National Parks, and 24 states. So I decided to highlight some of my favorite places that I’ve been to with pictures of my family.
I made the slideshow using Slide.ly. It was fairly easy to use. I like that there are many options to choose your images from (Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Picasa), so if you already have your photos on the cloud using these services, it’s easy to find them. After picking the photos, it’s a matter of uploading an .mp3 or finding song in their list for the audio. There were also many options on how to present the slideshow with their unique set of “skins”. I was able to make my video within 10 minutes from start to finish – which is super fast by my standards. I’m used to making my slideshows on iMovie and it can take a long time to render, export, etc. Below is my finished Slideshow.
Additionally, this assignment allowed me to get to know new classmates (especially those I have not had classes with before). It’s neat to see how others decide to present themselves and how they went about doing it. I also learn of new web 2.0 tools to try out, such as screenr.com and Popcorn Maker. These were among the many tools listed on http://50ways.wikispaces.com/StoryTools that Dr. Bert shared with us for the assignment.
I’m looking forward to learning more about Emerging Technology through this course and from my peers.
Teaching and Technology 