BP4_Voki

Voki

For this week web 2.0 tools I ran into a pretty interesting website called voki. Voki is a web tool where you can choose your own avatar and record yourself speaking.

First, you start by customizing your own avatar. You can choose the shape of your face, hair , mouth, clothing to look like.  Then, you can add some bling and also a background.

After you are done customizing your avatar you can start recording your material or your own thoughts. You can decide whether speak by using your phone, or for those that are shy and don’t like to hear their own voice, you can choose the key option that provides a text box where you can type what you want to say. Finally you can also choose to record your own voice as well.

When exploring this website I found out that voki supports education. Teachers are creating their own avatars. They are recording their material, posting them into their own blogs and websites in order to engage students in a creative and innovative expression. Here they have a teacher community, where they can share their thoughts, post lesson plans and find some support from other educators that had worked with this great and helpful web tool.

One again, I am pretty interested and looking forward to work with voki this coming up school year. I would like for my students to create their own avatar and record their thoughts on given topics in class. I think that I also would help those students that are shy and don’t like to speak in public when they have to give their presentations. 

Here is a link to view my avatar that I created...

PE3_iMovie training Part III

Still working on the exercises file for this training I had a couple of opps moments, but I am so glad that I could go back and check importing from other sources file and there they were the videos on the proper event.

Later on, even that I knew how to use some of the tools, I still learned more about incorporating music to your project.  I learned that you can actually add not only one or two loops but u can also add background music. I used to attach a loop at the begging to the first clip and extended in order to make it as a background sound, but now I don’t have to do that anymore.  I just have to drag the loop into the empty space in the left upper corner and there you have some background music...

Then, concerning on how to share your movies, there could not be a simple way to do it. According to the tutorial you only have to go to share on the toolbar. Then, you have different options on how to export your project you can choose between YouTube, Facebook, with QuickTime ,etc.

After you have decided how to share it, you can select the size you want to publish your video. Some of the options are between mobile to medium, from large to HD 1080. You click publish and iMovie will do the conversion and publish it where you had selected previously.

And the time has come to an end… with these 3 hours and a half of tutorials I finally got my iMovie training certificate!!

Here is my video from the exercise files…

PE2_iMovie training Part II

 By going over the never ending videos from chapter 5 to 8 I started to feel pretty good about my experience with the footage and guidelines that Garrick was explaining with his videos. So I started to work with the exercises files provided by the Garrick Chow, author of the iMovie 11 essential training.

 I have worked on iMovie previously and it was always difficult for me to find my imported videos or photos. I found out that I was not placing them exactly where I wanted them to be.

Then, adding clips to your project I found out that there was an easier way just by clinking “Edit-tool E”. It was faster this way.  Also, adding titles and transitions are concepts that I had already practice before, but it is always good to refresh your memory.

Another, pretty cool feature that I learned with this tutorial was the green screen effect. It’s amazing how you can project a background from another video or picture into another picture or video.  I would really like to try  to work with this effect one of these days. 

Finally, the part that impressed me the most was creating movie trailers. Now, with this wonderful feature I am able to create videos that would almost look like the ones we see for our favorite movies. It’s all set up for you. You just  have to drop the clip or picture and add the name of the characters or people that were in the film, then click done and you got yourself a movie trailer.

PE1_iMovie Part 1

For this week blog assignment, I had to watch over 3 hours and half of an iMovie video training for my ETC class at   Lynda.com .

 I just finished watching the first 4 chapters of 8 of the training videos and I have already learned a lot. Let’s just say that I am really looking forward for the next few chapters as well.

It is pretty amazing how easy is iMovie to work with. It really makes it simple to use.

As I was going over the footage, I realized that I did not name my events files or projects properly on my event library so I went back and started to name my events.

Then, I learned something new too, how to rate videos clips and tag keywords. It actually makes your experience a lot easier to go over clips and use just the material you consider good to work with. You just have to select a video as favorite by clicking the green star and what you don’t need you can unmark it and delete as well, by clicking the gray star. So in order to put in practice these new tools, I went back to my old iMovie videos and started to mark as favorite and unmark those videos that were just taking space in my hard drive.

With tagging keywords, it also makes it easier when you have to search for footage that are similar or related to the project that you might be working with. You just have to go to preferences and click where it says show advanced tools. This will show a symbol of an old key. By clicking this button you can select what type of setting your clip is in and then you have yourself a tag video.

BP1_Welcome to my blog

Well I am siting here in my living room with my feet up, sipping a cold diet coke, and thinking about what I am going to write for my first blog.

 I was born in Napa, California and raised in Costa Rica.  Spanish is my first language and since I was little my dad encouraged me to continue to learn English. I remember that when I started to learn how to write, my dad made me write a little paragraph about the things I had done for the day, then he collected by the end of the week and checked what I wrote. To be honest, I hated it.... it was torture for me at that age. I was not allowed to watch television in Spanish only in English, that means if they had to sacrifice  going out for dinner as a family in order to pay cable TV my dad would do it. He really wanted me to learn English. 

 Numerous times, I ended up crying because I wanted to watch TV shows that my friends did and did not want to take the time to write the paragraphs.   What was the point of learning English anyway? That was my question and argument all the time. Not knowing, what my dad was just trying to give a better opportunity for my future.  

Now, I am in a country where English is the main language and where I work as a Spanish teacher.

I tell my students, “you need to be able to speak Spanish when living in South Florida”, because most of the population is from Spanish speaking countries. South Florida is a place that if you want to work and succeed in your job you must know more than one language. 

For that reason, I have tried to implement technology in my curriculum and the use of Web 2.0 as well. Web pages such as dictionary.com, wordreference, Prezi, email, YouTube and many other  web engines have been beneficial for my students when learning Spanish. There are so many resources out there that help students to improve their Spanish skills in a whole different level.

So stay tune and follow my blog if you want to know other ways on how to implement Web 2.0 pages to teach foreign language.