My Technology Film

For my current module I had to introduce technology and a chosen technology that I use in my work setting, and will continue to use for the module. For my patch I decided to create a film. I recently had an INSET at school and we had some basic audio training. Although I have created a small film for a module before it was only words and pictures. This time I decided to follow a completely different procedure, all for the first time so it was a massive learning curve.

· First I created a PowerPoint presentation. I decided to use post it notes, so I used a clip art, and to make it more authentic I downloaded a handwriting font to use on them. PowerPoint was used in the main as sort of a planning tool. I designed my film on it. In fact what became to close of my film was originally smack bang in the middle. I added notes to each slide. Once the presentation was complete I saved the files as GIF files, so every single slide was saved a s a separate picture.

· Next I imported the pictures into movie maker and arranged them in the correct order, still using the presentation as my plan. I added a few more pictures to fill in a few gaps and to add some impact to certain areas, and to break up the boredom of looking at one picture for any length of time.

· I then recorded the notes I had made on each slide as a voiceover, using audacity audio software. I recorded each slide as a separate file, saving them with the title of the slide number, i.e slide 1. I then exported each recording as a WAV file, so I had the audacity project files and the WAV files all together.

· Once each slide voiceover was recorded, I began to put the recordings together with music as a background, in a separate recording. This took ages as I had to picture in my mind how the film was going to look as this helped me with the timing. I had trouble to begin with as although it was easy to work out how to amplify my voice recordings, I could not find how to quieten down the music backgrounds. Once I had finished I then saved the file as a new project file, and then exported it as a WAV file also.

The audio part of the film was the real learning curve for me during this patch. By the end of the film I had managed to work out how to soften the music, how to add various effects, and how to cut out mistakes made during the recording. I had even spent approximately two hours repeating a small section of audio (music) within its actual wave form, to lengthen a piece a music so that it fit with the end of the film.

I used royalty free music to ensure that I was covered in terms of licensing. The PowerPoint was my own design even though I used a clip art within it. When I listen to the film, I can still hear mistakes and areas that I would want to correct, all things that I would not have been able to do before making the film, but now through the informal learning that I have gained following the process, I could improve on. I now know how to soften music backgrounds, add effects, amplify sound and repeat sections of audio. This has been a fantastic learning opportunity, and one I hope to expand on.

Whose opinions count?

No one seems to agree what organisational learning is. I wrote this in a patch for my degree and I supported it with a cite from Kim. It was my opinion after reading loads of literature that had served to completely and utterly confuse me. But that was ok, if Kim had recognised this, then it was right that I was more confused than ever. But no, I have to be careful with quoting this.

So, this has made me think. I am learning, all my course outline material states that I have to question what has been written. I have to form an opinion, yet my opinions are irrelevant (and that is not my opinion). Only last semester I wrote that academic writing seems to prohibit people from understanding its content, and could not understand why scholars would do this. The legal and medical proffesions do this too, along with government. Now we all know why they do it. If they didn't we would all be doctors, lawyers and members of parliment, in fact the latter would mean we would actually recognise being fed waffle at election time (my opinion), but why in education? Now the response surprised me. I was wrong and this only went to show that I had alot more learning to do. Haha, well ofcourse it did, because Japanese would have been easier to understand, and I cant speak Japanese. Consiquently, the language used makes it impossible to learn, and so they cycle begins again. I felt very deflated at the comments, because I had given the area a great deal of thought, discussed it with many degree qualified people, even some with masters degrees, and didn't find one single person that disagreed with me. So why was my opinion shunned? Simple, when a student reacts in a totally different way to something than the teacher expects, it has to be wrong.

I recall in school reading Shakespears Richard 3rd in English. The teacher asked me to write about what I had gained from the book, I avoided being totally honest and saying that I had gained the biggest migraine I had ever had, and simply wrote that I had gained nothing from the book because I had not understood it. She lost her temper with me in front of my peers, gave me a weeks detention, and lines to write every night for a week. Now, it turns out that I am dyslexic, need i say anymore. But nonetheless, dyslexic or not, I gave an honest answer. I gained nothing. My opinion didn't count for anything othe than punishment. Why ask a question if you actually don't want the answer? I might add that this teacher put me in for a much higher qualification than I was capable of, and despite my talking to her, her opinion counted. I failed, so whose opinion was right?

My point is this, life is made up of peoples thoughts and opinions. Scholars rely on it. After all, if they didn't have an opinion about someone elses theory on say reflection, then there would not be so many theories on it. So I agree with what someone wrote years ago, its still a valid opinion, right or wrong.

Degree Depression

O dear, where to begin. Well we are now....what....5 weeks into this semester and I appear to absolutely totally and utterly not have a clue. I have now submitted 3 different proposals for my action inquiry, all wrong. My email to convince a friend that they should use a post positivist method of research appears to have had major flaws.

Governing Variables; I have not uderstood them, yet they are not difficult to understand. I even re-read what another learnign facilitator wrote about them, and he seems to say the same as me. So why does this current one think everything I have put is wrong? Ethics. I understand ethics. My 800 words does not allow me to write reams about them so i didn't.

OK so I am letting out some pent up frustration here, but what purpose does it serve? Well I kinda hope someone might see it and make me feel just a little bit better than I feel right now. There is no one to discuss things with in the community, and then, if my last post response is anything to go by, it appears that even the post from LF's is not correct. I totally understand that the job of the LF's is to get us to think about our work so that we improve it, but seriously, constructive critisism please. Just one well done right now would make me feel better. One ounce of praise for something I have achieved here. But nothing. When I entitled this degree depression, trust me it was not simply a title, its exactly how I am feeling right now.

Depressed, deflated, unsupported, and totally totally alone. Do I just give up now? The only thing that is keeeping me going is the money that will have been wasted. Dont think I will bother with level 3 even if i do get through level 2, which at this rate, I cannot see happening at all.

Action Research Headache

During this currant semester, we have been covering Action Research. A very interesting subject, but a major headache also. I came up with my action research question, how can improve my performance with the ICT department. As a cover supervisor, improving my performance inany one subject area does depend on the amount of cover I have. Well a colleague has been quite sick and was scheduled to cover his classes until is return. This was a fantastic opportunity to follow my actin research. My goal was to load lesson plans and documentation onto memory stick, to save the nightmare of running around trying to locate someone to set th ework. This way, I could simply acertain from the students what they covered last lesson and continue from there. It should all be neat and tidy. Files were loaded, including 3 active boks loaded onto my laptop along with all th erelevant lesson plans ect. I began the lessons. All nice and neat and simple.

Then it came to collecting evidence. How???? In school, it is the students and I in a class unless a TA is joining us. I cannot get feedback from students as they are under 16, a questionaire it appears is not an appropriate form of evidence collection, however an interview that would involve asking the same questions is. "Video your lesson" it has been suggested, again I have students under 16 in class, and therefore without their parents permission, I cannot do this either, or record it. SO I am stumpt. This leaves me with my cover feedback documents, which are for the schools benefit and not mine, so would be about the students behaviour, any problems ect, not how well i did or did not do with a lesson. They are for feedback for the teachers, HOCA's and cover coordinator. So I am truly at a loss to see what I can do. A massive problem, and evertie you think you have a solution, it is not good enough.

I am falling behind, it takes n some cases almost a week for the LA's to respond, if they respond, and the remainder of the cohort are so busy with th e work, they do not have time to think about your problems too. This is proving to be a nightmare.

Finally Finished

I have finally finished stitching together this module. Investigating the work Setting was a realy intersting module to cover, despite the frequent panicks. I have learned so much about my role that I was unaware of, yet much of it I could have seen had I actually been looking, or maybe I just feel like that now because of the learning I have had over the past 2 months.

This final week has been manic and incredibly worrying, yet for me it has actually been very uplifting too. I have completed a university module, the thing I am too stupid to do, according to many people. I could have typed for ever about the learning, but trying to keep it concise does worry me that I may have missed out loads of beneficial information. I am not going to sit and threat about it until the results come in though, having submitted it I am happy to leave things well alone now and wait. I think if I had held off from posting it I would have simply been checking, re-doing and re-checking and eventually messsed it up completely.

So to all my cohort I say a very big WELL DONE! We have made it this far, and in September we panicked about wether we could do any of it. I am now going to shut down my computer, pour a glass of wine and relax. Friday I will start going mad with the other module to ensure I am up to speed there.

WELL DONE ME!!!!!

A success

I finished my task on learning online this weekend. I was going to write a magazine article, but everyone was doing that and many had posted their work, so I was worried that it would look like I had copied someone Else's work. I decided to write my report in a word document to get started, and then look at what medium to use once I had finished. At least that way I would have all my information, and would have done my research.

On Saturday evening I decided to have ago at making a video using Windows Movie Maker. I collated my media files, many of which i had to search for on the Internet, and using a combination of text slides and picture slides, actually managed to make my video. Having never done this before, I had to learn as I was going how to put it together. I thoroughly enjoyed this. By Sunday evening I had finished, so I posted my file on First Class. Wow that took a while.

On Monday I returned from work and switched my lap top on straight away to see if there was any response to my post. My facilitator had messaged saying well done, and I had many messages from other researchers saying the same. Later I received a message from Kevin Thompson, and that really made me feel very proud of myself.

I have since been asked to say how I went about making the video. I am putting together something but it will take time as I have my other tasks to crack on with. I will do it though.

For now, I am feeling incredible, and very keen to progress with my degree.

What a struggle!

OMG, what can I say? I started this next task looking at the competencies for my job role thinking what a walk in the park this would be. WRONG! My job description had soooo much information on it and it was very difficult to figure out exactly what were the competencies and what were just requirements.

I then had to research using the university library for a work related article. It seems the search engine understood the words cover and supervisor, but not the two together. I looked into education, competencies, teaching assistants and so on. I found nothing. Days and days and days of searching to get nothing. Talk about deflated. I began searching the internet for absolutley anything to do with cover supervisors. The most interesting thing I found was the national remodelling guidance on Cover Supervisors. Everything else was a direct copy of this. I was however able to find many many job descriptions for the role for schools across the country. My role is a new one, however it has been about since 2004, that's four years. You would have thought that by now there would have been more information on it. I contacted a researcher from cohort 6 whose resume showed also worked with cover. She emailed me back saying that because of the lack of information on the role, she decided not to use it for her degree.

Finally last night I found a site called coversupervisors.co.uk, I thought great, finally, I should be able to locate something on here. Again, WRONG! The only information it listed was the very same information that I had already come across, or lack of it. This has caused major problems because I have had to show in my essay that I have researched this. How can I show a week of constant research with no references?

So, end result, I feel incredibly deflated that, not only could I not find any information relating to my role, but it appears that my role is insignificant enough to produce nothing. And here I was thinking I was doing something worthwhile. Frustrated, demotivated and just plain peeved is how I am feeling right now.