Reflections on the Way

I learned two key lessons from this project: I have a profound respect for podcasters, and I do not have a voice for radio. There were a few hiccups along the way, such as my first interviewee disappearing and my own inability to get my hands on a copy of Garageband, but the assignment turned out to be far more engaging than I initially expected it to be. I wound up using Audacity to edit my tracks, and just seeing all the different ways I could manipulate the audio was a blast. I stuck to some pretty basic features, like removing background noise and using some audio level manipulations, but there was definitely a lot of power there for it being a free program. I tried to use music as a framework to the piece and to move it beyond just being a recording of people talking. I was really pleased with the song, "Paint the Sky" by Dysfunction_AL ((c) copyright 2015, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license). I searched a few creative commons music sites, b...

This is a short presentation on a follow-up lesson for Shakespeare's As You Like It . It was an interesting thought experiment to read up on the ISTE standards and SARM model and try to create from scratch an idea to incorporate as much of them as possible into a lesson. I still am not sure that a video/audio recording like this is my favorite way to present something compared to a written report, but it pushes me to engage in the standards I would expect for my students. I think creating projects like this is really helping me understand the challenges and pitfalls in using these tools, which will definitely help if I use them in my own classroom.

This graph provides a slightly simplified look at the variety of media I used at different times of the day. There are clear spikes during both days of linked media use in the morning and evening, with less concurrent use occurring throughout the day. I liked how clearly the charts showed certain trends, though the full record is needed to get the whole picture as a result of how I recorded the data. It did not lend itself to too many simplified comparisons like that seen above. The infographic was made on piktochart.com. I did this experiment while I was on vacation, so I do not know how representative it is of my everyday use. However, it still does show some interesting trends in my media usage. Before going into the study, I assumed my media usage would be relatively consistent throughout the day. However, both days showed large spikes in usage when I first wake up and prior to bed. In hindsight, this makes a lot of sense as those are the two times I am least likely t...