Saturday, October 23, 2010

I Regret to Inform You

So just a little disclaimer before watching my digital story: I have to apologize because it's depressing and a bit uncomfortable.  However, I chose a topic like this because the repercussions of anti-gay bullying is very near and dear to me.  I also sort of end up keeping most of the emotion more in the music rather than the voices used -- that was done on purpose.  And I know October 20th has already passed, but those who wanted to show support for the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Questioning) community wore purple that day.  Raising awareness was more my educational intention than anything else (rather than instructing or teaching).

As for the information, I pulled the article about the four teens from the New York Times, written by Jesse McKinley.  Music was again taken from bluelaguna.net, and the song "Dive into the Heart ~ Destati" was written by Yoko Shimomura.


I approached this digital story a little more differently than last time.  I still made it in Adobe Premiere Elements, but I mixed the song with the narration in Audacity first.  I found that it made the project go a lot faster when I was finally working in Adobe, and it took less hassle.  I also made every image in PowerPoint this time, something I didn't do at all in the previous digital story, and Tim helped me figure out how to get the pictures to slowly move in (THANK YOU!), so that was a cool effect I am proud of :)  I know the digital story isn't as flashy as it could have been, but then I thought a simpler story would be cleaner and smoother, and the subject of anti-gay bullying isn't really flashy anyway.


Credits for Pictures:

Seth Walsh:
"Gay Teen Dies After 10 Days on Life Support, Following Suicide Attempt over Anti-Gay Bullying." Photo. My Purple String. 22 October 2010. <http://mypurplestring.com/category/news/>.

Billy Lucas: 
 "Bullying Drives Student to Suicide." Photo. The Advocate. 22 October 2010. <http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/09/14/Bullying_Drives_Student_to_Suicide/>.

"The Principal with His Head in the Sand." Photo. Project Honest. 22 October 2010. <http://projecthonesty.org/tag/billy-lucas/>.

Asher Brown:
"Bullying Brings 13 Year Old's Suicide." Photo. DoSomething.org. 22 October 2010. <http://www.dosomething.org/news/bullying-brings-13-year-olds-suicide>.

Tyler Clementi:
"Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei." Photo. Freedom Eden. 22 October 2010. <http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2010/09/dharun-ravi-and-molly-wei.html>.

"This One is for You: Tyler Clementi." Photo. Human For Human's Sake. 22 October 2010. <http://humanforhumanssake.blogspot.com/2010/10/this-one-is-for-you-tyler-clementi.html>.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Questions for Will Richardson

Hello!  My questions are pretty simple, and I don't really have anything to preface them, so here they are:

1. What moment did you realize you wanted to gear your career toward the technology facet of education?

2. How do you think wikis can best be used in a math classroom (middle/high school)?

Thank you!

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Land of the Rising Sun

I did my digital story on my hike up Mount Fuji with my family.  All of the pictures were taken from my Facebook, and the music was taken from Bluelaguna.net but was written by Junya Nakano

There were a couple of snags that I hit with this story, though.  I could not seem to figure out why my narration was echoing so much!  I decided to just let it be since I was talking about a mountain, and I thought an echoing would be appropriate for that kind of a subject.  Also, I few of my picture effects did not take.  I tried to put in the "Earthquake" effect for the pictures of the descent to help emphasize the mood, but it did not come out in the final video.

Also, something I tried to do with the music was set each piece to the mood that I was feeling during the climb.  "Welcome Elder Sage Mica" was used to sort of make Mount Fuji look glorious and grandiose while we were ascending.  "Those Who Come Closer" gives more of an subtle urgency and foreboding as we descended the mountain, though.  Mount Fuij looks majestic going up, but when going down, it actually looks pretty scary and barren!  Toward the bottom of the hike, I picked a song like "Daughter of the Grand Summoner" to be a little more peaceful.  The songs come in that order in the video.  And when you hear them, yes they're a little dorky because they're from a video game, Final Fantasy X...