IT 469 Overall reflection

IT 469 was all I could say the first day of class. I didnt know what to expect from the instructor. When I first walked in the class, Dr. Yuen made me feel comfortable and relax. He seemed as if he was going to be a cool teacher and he turned out to be one of the great proffessors I' ve had thus far. Even though, I was comfortable with Dr. Yuen, I still  had no idea what this class was about or what to expect.  Coming into this class , I knew I was going to be doing or creating things using the computer. I wasn't unfamiliar with the computer or anything but I knew it was probaly going to be something I have never done. I guess you can say I was kind of anxious and nervous at the same time. On the first day of class, it was confirmed that the assignments on the syllabus were new to me. The assignments included a photostory, flicker,audacity, animoto, jaycut, moviemaker, fuzzwich, and jing. These assignments required time and effort. After all the time and effort put into these assignments, we were asked to display them collectively in the last assignment. We were asked to create a blogfolio of all our assignments. The assignments overall were very interesting. I learned somethings I was always curious about and learned somethings that I had no clue about. This was a rewarding experience because these assignments tested my creativity. It allowed me to have fun and try new things. These assignments have taught me how much technology changes and all the outlets out there for it. I would recommend anyone to take this class because it is fun and a rewarding experience. I was glad to have met my classmates because it was an enjoyable atmosphere to be in.

Jing/Screencast

Jing is a tool that allows the user to take live screenshots and video. Jing is so easy to use. This will be great to use when doing an instructional video. This  particular video I created, I wanted to show my users how to use twitter. Twitter is a new social network so I felt people should know what twitter is.  Screencast allowed me to do a live recording of myself doing a step by step instructional video. This particular tool allows the user to add text boxes and shapes to futhermore help the user with this tool. It is really not much to say about screencast because it straightforward and to the point. I will definitely recommend this tool to anyone. I will be using this tool for upcoming projects that I may I have later on in the workforce.
http://www.screencast.com/users/chriskells/folders/New%20Folder

Fuzzwich/Goanimate

This assignment was a fun assignment overall. In this assignment we were asked to create an animation using the tool fuzzwich. From the beginning fuzzwich looked so easy that a kindergarten could do it. I was really not looking forward to doing this particular assignment just because it didnt make any sense. Luckily my mind was changed after fuzzwich was deleted and we had to use Goanimate as an alternative tool. I really loved Goanimate.  Im not an artistic person so this tool allowed me to be creative. For instance, this tool allowed the user to have live animations, use live voice feed, movement, and all types of other neat resources.  The best thing about this tool that it is very easy to use and it is all free.  I am going to let my niece know about this tool so she can have fun also. In my video, I wanted to have fun and create a little laughter for the viewers. In this video, I wanted to show a typical day of two best friends hanging out. Take a look at my video and enjoy. The best thing about this tool that it doesnt take alot of time at all to learn how to use this video. For instance, when you use this site, it has an interactive tutorial that the user can use to help create the animations. This is a great thing that the site offers.
GoAnimate.com: chris movie by ckells

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Moviemaker

Moviemaker is a great tool to use. Moviemaker allows the user an easy way to make to make a movie. In this tool, you can put videos and pics together in a sequence. I really cant explain how to use this tool because everything you have to do is provided in the moviemaker. Its just that easy. It was my first time using moviemaker and it was very user friendly. In my video I decided to show the people that are very close to me and dear to my heart. Throughout this video, it will display my closest family and friends. I love my family because in the end that is all you really have and I wanted everyone to see the importance of my family. The second part of this assignment was to make a youtube video.  I have always used  youtube but this was my first time making a video and uploading one myself. Youtube made it easy for the user to upload thier video. One thing that I like about youtube was its privacy setting. The video I created was not a video I wanted to share with everyone so youtube gave the option of only sharing with people who have the link to the video. One thing about movie maker is that you really dont have the access to edit your videos like you want if you made a mistake. I have used moviemaker alot and this the only problem I have with it. Overall, it is a very easy and great tool to use and would recommend anyone to use it.Take a look at my video and enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs3VByTNAF0

Animoto

Animoto is a great tool.  This tool allows the user to upload pictures and it creates a photo story. In my opinion this a great tool if you want to make a professional video. It is very easy to use. It is  only three things that user has to do. First upload the pics, pick a theme, and pick your choice of music. After this, animoto creates a video for your enjoyment and pleasure.  I like this tool.  I would recommend anyone to use this tool. The only problem about this tool is that you do not choose how your pictures are displayed.  For instance, if you wanted to tell a story you couldn’t do that. The second problem I have with this tool are their limited choices of themes and music.  Some of the music they have probably isn’t your taste. I went through all the music and I had to choose something that would just make the video ok but I really didn’t want to use it. Don’t get me wrong , it had some nice themes but those themes weren’t what I thought it would be either . Overall my video came out great. Looking at my video, people can see that i wanted to show a special moment In my life when I was name Mr. Canton High School. This was an honor and I wanted to showcase it. Animoto did a great job of displaying my pictures. Knowing that I really didn’t want to tell a story, it really didn’t matter what order my pics were in so animoto did a good job overall. Take a look at my video and enjoy.

Jaycut

I really liked jaycut. This is an online streaming website that allows the users to create and edit videos.  For this assignment we were asked to create  a video.  This website was very easy to use. All you had to do was upload your videos and you were done. For instance, I already was working on a video for another class so I decided to take this video and combine it with another video in this class. My theme was "Interuptions". In this video I just showed how you could be watching something good and all of sudden a breaking news report interupts your programming. It was cool and I had fun with this.  Jaycut allowed the user to add text, music, and tranistions to the video. Also did I mention it was free.  Jaycut is a great tool to use if you don’t want spend any money on a professional video and editor.  For someone like me, it was fun because it allowed me to be creative and show my skills.  If you feel the same way I do then jaycut would be a good tool to use. On the other hand the only down fall to jaycut is how slow it is.  By it being an online streaming video editor it took so long to load or preview your movies. Using this website will take patience and effort.  Sometimes it  got so slow that it took five minutes for a 2 minute video to play.  Don’t get me wrong if you have put the time and effort into it, waiting to see your finished product will not be a problem. To future users I suggest you use  web browers such as safari or internet explorer to launch this website because it is just a little bit faster than firefox. As you can see I have embedded my video. Take the time, enjoy, and ask yourself " have something like this every happen to you?". If so you can see why I took this approach for creating a video like this.

Audacity

Audacity was a project that I was unfamiliar with but it was something  I always wanted to do was mix music. For this assignment we were ask to take make a commercial well at least I did.  My commercial was a commericial about my own mixing studio.  I thought this would be fun to do but when I was doing the work I realized it wasn’t so easy to do.  For instance, I wanted to use music that was on  my computer to make me feel like I was actually mixing some music. I tried one my songs on my computer but soon realized it would not allow me to put in to audacity because it was not an mp3 format.  Being new to this I didn’t know how to convert my files to mp3 so it would be allowed to use in audacity. I played with it and played with it, still no luck. I got frustrated until I start searching for converter web sites. I downloaded one but it still didn’t recognize it in audacity so I had to do the best I could do. One of the things I found interesting was that it had all types of neat things you could like the sounds and effects. I think this made audacity a little bit easier. I finally thought of a way I could use the music I had and it came out pretty good.  As you can see at bottom I have a link to the music or commercial I created and mix using my voice and music and sound effects. Take a listen to it.  It was alright quality because I was unaware how it made me sound but I think I did good for the most part. In essence, audacity gave me a little trouble but I think I managed to do well on it. This lesson also taught me that a lot of time and effort goes along with it. Maybe mixing music might not be for me after all. Even though this is for mixing music, I found it useful to use as a way to do other things such as PSAs. I had to do a PSA for another class and it was so much easier to use. Overall Audacity is a good tool to use, I guess it just takes time and patience to use it to the best of its ability.
http://www.screencast.com/users/chriskells/folders/Default/media/8ee70338-094c-4035-a5dd-a48e12dfbda1