Building a portfolio of my work during this semester has been quite
rewarding. I didn’t realize how far I had come. While compiling the
portfolio I have remembered things I had forgotten I had done, and
more importantly - skills I had forgotten I had acquired.
Portfolio Summary
Graphics
The graphics activity was my first foray into using any image manipulation
beyond simple crop and red-eye removal. I knew there was great power
to be found in the use of layers and masks, but I definitely had much
to learn about how they interacted. The final image shows an adept
and restrained use of these tools to create an atheistically pleasing
product.
Audio
Since I am a professional audio engineer, I had two goals with the
audio project. First, I work primarily with high-end professional
audio applications, so I wanted to experience the capabilities of
an open-source free application like Audacity. Second, I wanted the
content to helpful to other people in the course who might be new
to audio.
Video
I have had plenty of previous experience using iMovie over the past
several years, creating videos and slideshows of my children, for
church, and for work. I branched out on this task by experimenting
with different transitions and title types. I also found a few shortcuts
- such as drag and drop - that will make my future work much quicker
and easier.
Web
The web activity challenged me to learn about and edit cascading style
sheets (CSS), though I thought it would be incredible difficult. I
immediately loved many of the free templates available on the web,
but was quickly frustrated by closed structure. I decided to build
from scratch my only CSS template, which is admittedly simple at the
moment. I hope to continue to tweak this template as I progress thru
the EDET program and build my website, both to showcase my audio engineering
and my EdTech accomplishments.
Final Project
The Final Multimedia Project gave me an opportunity to create an instructional
video I have been considering for some time. The video is designed
to guide the MUSC 365 students through a typical signal chain in the
School of Music recording studio. I look forward to putting it into
practice in the spring.
Reflections
This semester I acquired a large number of new skills and abilities.
For example, a quick glance thru my graphics activities reminded me
that I had learned about and built my own GIF animations. I also became
more familiar with production applications such as Photoshop Elements
and Dreamweaver that I had not used extensively before. I also learned
to branch out and not rely on the tools that I know already.
I didn’t realize the robustness of many of the Web 2.0 tools that
are available. At the beginning of the course, I assumed an online
photo editor would be hard pressed to even handle cropping and rotating.
But I found that some of these online tools have deep feature sets
and can be useful for real work.
Unfortunately, these free web services often have limitations. I had
some troubles with format incompatibilities. The screencasts I made
for my Final Multimedia Project using Jing were only available in
ShockWave Flash (.swv) format, which could not be imported into iMovie.
While I was able to work around these problems, I learned that I should
be careful with free services. In the future I will test them on a
small scale first before utilizing them for the entire project.
Throughout my work, the maxim of garbage in = garbage out was constantly
reinforced. As I progressed thru any of the activities, the finished
product was always more satisfying if I began with good material,
whether that was the content or the methods used for creating the
content. I found a manipulated image turned out better if the initial
image was good. It was always better to re-record narration with good
flow and diction rather than trying to edit it into the material.
One of the portions of my Final Multimedia Project that still bothers
me is the shaky camera work - something that could have been easily
prevented with a good tripod and almost impossible to remove with
image stabilization software.
The other concept that I kept in mind while working on the Final Multimedia
Project was that of cognitive overload. I was always trying to balance
the scope and completeness of the content versus brevity and clarity.
Out of concern for not overwhelming the viewers, I ended up removing
a few minor portions from my storyboard to make the final project
more concise.
I look forward to continuing to develop the tools and techniques I
learned in EDET 603, especially building a well designed and effective
website of my work.
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