For our first unit in technology, we created our own digital stories, of whatever topic we wanted to do. First we investigated what digital stories are, by watching some examples on Mr. Curkovic’s wiki. We also took many notes of it on this document, looking especially at the story structure and key features. After that, we started investigating possible tools to use for our videos. My tool was Quicktime and I  research about capabilities and limitations with Quicktime player. We did much more, choosing possible topics for our own videos, and thinking about when we could film it, or what we could do with it. We finally finished the unit with creating our own, and writing down reflections.

During the investigation, as I said before, we investigated what were digital stories. We did this for quite a long time, doing it for homework and also during class. On our documents, we wrote down what the story structures and key features, and I think I did well, but not enough. I could have watched a few more perhaps, since I only watched four, and if I had watched more, I could have a better knowledge of what a digital story was, and done better with my final project. We wrote down what kind of genre the digital story had, what kind of digital story was it, what did it include. With my research for my tool, I enjoyed it and I do think I do have a good amount of notes, and was able to explain how the tool is used, and what are the pros and cons.

For plan, we came up with possible topics we could use to create our digital stories. I actually found this quite easy on one side, and hard on another. I found it very easy to come up with ideas, also thinking when I would be able to shoot or when I would be able to edit it. However, because I had a lot, and some of them I never really planned to do them, I had a hard time choosing the topic. I knew that we definitely had to work on this besides class, and because I needed many other peoples help to finish my video with all my possible choices, I had a hard time. At last, I decided to create a documentary of my friend. After deciding with my topic, I chose three tools that were possible of using, and compared, contrasted them with one another. In the end, I used iMovie and Photo Booth with most of my video.

With our third phase, create, we created out digital stories, and also created a timeline. For me, the timeline was like a document to write down the due dates of what we were supposed to do, and to mark it whenever we finished them. I did kind of forget to finish the timeline, but did mostly finish everything by the due date in my timeline. For creating the video itself, I had a lot of  difficulties with it. I had to interview many people for my video, and I think that took most of my time with my video. I also needed pictures, but not much text because the interviews with lots of people helped me explain what my video was about. I uploaded it to youtube, and that took a lot of time because it was my first time uploading any videos to youtube, but was able to finish.

During this unit, I learned how to explain and narrate stories digitally. It also helped me improve with some of my editing skills, since I wasn’t used to editing, and also showed how enjoyable it is to narrate something with pictures or videos. I had a lot of fun creating, and choosing topics for my video, and wish to do it again.

For our first unit in tech, we have been looking at digital stories. Digital stories are stories that are told digitally, and for our assessment, we are going to create our own digital story. But before we actually start creating our own, we investigated and saw what exactly a digital story is, and what we think it is.

In our investigation task, we have been looking at examples of what a digital story is, and also tasking about our unit question, what tool we could use when we create our digital story, and the seven elements of digital story telling. During our first week, we started talking about our unit question, “How can we use media to communicate our stories?” in small groups. Me and my friends, thought that media can show what we can’t describe in words but in pictures. We talked more about media, ans we also talked about the key features to story telling.

The tool I researched about was Quicktime. Quicktime, is a tool that we might be able to use for our project, since we can do audio/screen/movie recording, but I wouldn’t really recommend it, since you can’t edit it, and you need to export it to iMovie to edit and add things on to it. The limitation of Quicktime, is that you can’t do different recordings at once, and the advantage is that you don’t need a account or anything, and you can share it online easily.

I think my attitude during class isn’t so bad, but I wouldn’t say I have the best attitude in my class either. I do stay on task and listen to instructions during class, but I don’t really try to contribute to class discussions, but I do say stuff when I am asked too. I can try to have a better attitude, by listening more and be part of the class more often.

This is my Evaluate video that I created during tech class. In this video, I talk about the Investigate, Plan, and the create units we did in class.

Hope you enjoy

For this unit in Tech class, each one of us created our own tutorial videos. We filmed it with help from our friends or family, and brought it to school to edit the tutorial during Tech class. We took about two weeks to completely finish editing our tutorial, and after watching our tutorials to make sure that there were no mistakes and it was perfect, each one us uploaded our tutorials to Vimeo. Then we took the embed code from Vimeo, and then we put the embed code on to our blogs and made a post about it. We also went to different peoples blogs from different classes and watched their tutorials as well.

While creating my own tutorial, I learned many things that I’ve never learned before. Since I am not exactly the kind of person who watches tutorial so much, I wasn’t very sure if my tutorial was going to be good enough for other people too see. But when I was creating my tutorial, I learned that you can learn so many different things from just watching one two to three minute tutorial video. I also learned more about iMovie, and the effects you can do on it. I still not very confident with my iMovie skills, but I think that I definitely gotten better with my skills on editing videos. I also learned specifically what a tutorial is, and the qualities of the video. By looking at other tutorial created by other people, I can see that they are very confident, and I also learned how goosd your tutorial has to be for other people liking your tutorial.

I am quite happy and pleased with my finished tutorial. I think I did a good job on filming the tutorial, and editing the tutorial as well. I think I could have done better with the camera quality, but it wasn’t extremely bad, or extremely good, so I thought it was okay. If I could do it again, he camera quality would be one of things that I would like to change. I know there are many parts I could improve on, and I think that I could have spoken in a louder voice and speak more clearly. I am quite happy with the pictures I  used for the tutorial, and some of the pictures were pictures from last years summer when the koto people went to Hiroshima to play for a competition. I also liked the part I had koto music in the background, because I like the song very much, and I thought it kind of suited the way the tutorial theme.

It was a little hard to create the tutorial, but because I had everything planned out before I did it, it was easier than I thought it would be. I found taking the video hard than I first thought, because the camera I was using didn’t work very well, and I had a hard time with that. I also had to kept on forgetting what I was supposed to say, and I had to do lots of takes before I was pleased with the tutorial. And editing the tutorial took a long time for me, since I wasn’t sure if I should add the music in the background, because I thought that the audience wouldn’t be able to hear the notes that I was playing on the koto, and just listen to the music instead.

I thought that I had clear step by steps. I made sure that people would understand each of the notes I played on the koto, and I thought that it was in a good pace, and I made sure that I repeated what the note sounded like, and what it was called in both English and in Japanese. I made sure that it would be clear, and it would be easy to understand. I thought that my tutorial was easy to understand, so I think it is quite understandable. I have about four pictures, and I also have myself playing the koto, and how exactly the koto looks like. There is the koto music going on the background, which shows how the koto sounds like when it is getting played as the song. I thought the language I used during my tutorial was the kind of language everybody knows and understands. I didn’t use any hard words, and I think most kids would understand what the tutorial is about, and it wasn’t very hard either, so I think it is okay.

To create better tutorials in the future, I think I need to know more and more things than I do know. I do think I already know quite a lot, but I also think there is much more to know. I don’t know exactly what I want to learn, or what I need to learn to make a better tutorial right now, but I think there is more than I expect there is. I think I may need to learn more editing skills than I do know right now. I am pretty sure my editing skills aren’t good as most people, and I think there is a lot more for me to learn in order to create a better tutorial than the one I finished creating for this unit. I also think that maybe I need to know the script really well to do a good tutorial. The script I made for this unit wasn’t very good, and it didn’t explain much. I think I could do a better on job on explaining things on the next tutorial I would create.

I watched Maya’s tutorial and Layna’s tutorial. I commented on their tutorials about what did they do good on their tutorials, and what I learned by watching their tutorials. I thought both tutorials were very well made, and I learned quite a lot from both tutorials. From Layna’s tutorial, I learned that there are four different tones in Chinese, and I thought she had step by step tutorial, and she also had a clear voice. From Maya’s tutorial, I learned how to speak in in confidently by having a clear voice and standing up straight. On Maya’s tutorial, I thought she had a clear voice, and it was easy to understand.

In conclusion, I am pleased with my own tutorial, and I enjoyed creating it. I thought that I had a nice script to begin with, but I could have made it more detailed if I wanted to. I am quite pleased with the pictures I had, and the music used for my tutorial. I liked the analyze part, where we went to other people’s blogs and commented on their tutorial that they made. Overall, I am pleased with the finished tutorial, and I thought that it was well done. I

This is the tutorial I created, and it is about “How to remember the 13-strings of Koto’

I hope you enjoy, and leave comments and feedbacks below !

For this unit, my class did quite a lot of things that I enjoyed doing. First, we watched a short video. The video was a small part from the movie, Monsters Inc, and we saw the draft and the finished version of it. Both the finished one and the draft were quite different, and I found it very interesting. Then, we started making an list of what we could make an storyboard on. When we found the thing we were going to make an tutorial of, we started making a storyboard of our topic on paper or on google docs. After we did, we started making a tutorial plan template. The tutorial plan template was to write the plan before actually making the real tutorial.

I think my plan demonstrates good tutorial design, since I think I have clear steps. I think I have clear steps since, I asked a few people who doesn’t know koto very well to see if they understand, and they did. I think I put in a lot of effort while writing down my storyboard, and I reread it several times too make sure it was understandable. My second reason of why my plan is good, because I tried to make it step-by-step as much as possible. I am planning to play 3 notes during one slide, but I will do it slowly and carefully so people will understand what I am saying, and what I am showing them. I also use language everybody knows. The words I use is not hard, and I think anyone older than me, ore younger than me would all understand what I am explaining. I am pretty sure nobody would get confused my what I say, and if they do, I will try my best to change the script or anything else. The titles I have for my slides are not complicated, and it is very simple. But it also descriptive, and you will know what the slide is for,

I think my storyboard will be able to ensure the viewer of my tutorial to learn the skill I am teaching, because I will show them how to do it, and how to remember the skill. I will play the notes on the koto very slowly so it will be understandable, and there won’t be any confusion. I will also speak in a good pace, not so fast or not so slow, so the viewer will understand what I am saying. Overall, I think I did quite a god job on my storyboard. I wrote down the script with detail, and I put pictures of what string I am going to play on the koto. I think most people will understand what I am trying to do on the storyboard, since the pictures are easy to see, and the script is simple and easy to understand.

I think I will need to learn a lot more about tutorials, even though I think I know quite a while right now. I want to know more about iMovie, or transitions on the computer. I  want to see more tutorials, and see what kind of tutorials there is. I also want to see what I van learn from tutorials as well. But otherwise, there isn’t what I want to know besides these things.

I am hoping my tutorial will be good, and the viewers will understand what I am doing. I also hope that all the things I learned in this unit, the skills and other things would be shown in my tutorial. I think I will do a good job on my tutorial, but I am sure I could lean more new things and there will be things to improve on.

During these past few weeks, my class have been looking and researching on different tutorials. First of all, we did a tutorial research. For this work, we watched 3 to 5 different tutorials online, and commented about them. I tried to make mine detailed as possible, and I included all the bad and good things about the video. Then, we chose one favorite tutorial from the ones we researched, and we made a blog post about why we liked it and why it was good. After this, we commented on two other peoples blogs about their tutorials, and why it was good, or bad. Lastly, we made a practice tutorial ourselves about something that we were confident on doing on the computer.

When we did the Analyze step, we looked on other peoples favorite tutorials. For me, I commented on Mimi’s blog, Maya’s blog,and Marina’s blog.  Me and Mimi had the same tutorial, which made it a bit easier for me. I enjoyed watching Maya’s tutorial video, since I never saw any tutorial videos like that, and it was interesting. From Mimi’s tutorial, I learned how to draw an manga eye well, and it was not complicated which made it easy to understand the steps. From Maya’s I learned how to make an bracelet, which was a very unique bracelet, and very easy to make too. The person had a clear and loud voice, and the directions were very clear too. Marina’s blog was really good too. It was short, and the directions were very clear and easy to understand. It was in high quality, and I enjoyed the video. I also learned that the video would be better if the video wasn’t too long so the audience wouldn’t get bored, but it shouldn’t be really short too. I think about 4 minutes would be good. I liked all of the videos, and they were all in high quality.

During the investigate, I learned what made a good tutorial. To make a good tutorial, you have to be very clear on what you are doing. The steps should be easy to follow, so you can understand what you are going to do. If the steps are complicated or hard to follow, I think most people would stop watching the tutorial because nobody will know what you are trying to do. I also think the tutorial shouldn’t be any longer than seven or eight minutes, because I think most people would find the video boring and stop watching the video. You might even forget the steps if it was so long. If you are going to create an tutorial video, you should have an clear, loud voice. You also shouldn’t cover your mouth with something, since if you do that, you won’t be able to project your voice to audience. If I do all of these, I think it will be a really good tutorial. This is a list of What makes a good tutorial. Me and my classmates made during tech class, and I think if I use these steps it will be a a really good tutorial video XD

For the practice part, I thought about what people usually ask me to help with, or what I am very confident on doing on the computer. At first, I couldn’t think of anything, other than people asking me what the homework was, but Ms. Cofino helped me and I knew what I could do well on the computer. So in the end, I decided to do “How to embed a video from youtube on to your blog”. I am quite confident in embedding a video on to my blog, so I chose this as my practice tutorial. Looking back to the three tutorial videos that I watched for homework, it’s not very good, but I think it is easy to follow the directions. If I was going to make it better, I would have definitely made it more detailed, and took better screen shots. I might have also changed the color of the font, because it was black. I would have liked it to make it an lighter color. One of the differences of my tutorial and the tutorial I watched was that I didn’t use my voice, and I just wrote it on a google presentation. I personally think that using my voice would have been better, but I am happy with my tutorial.

In conclusion, I found this unit very amusing. I really liked watching lots of tutorial videos, and I liked creating my own tutorial as well. I like the tutorials I watched, and I think I leaned quite a bit from those tutorials. I think the most important part of an tutorial is too have detailed and simple steps, and have a clear, loud voice. That way, the people who will look at it will understand quickly and easily and I think it will be a good tutorial!

This is my practice tutorial

Last week, we started watching tutorials in Tech class. And for homework, we were supposed to watch at least 3 tutorials and find out what was good or bad. I watched five of them, and out of the five, I liked “How to draw manga eyes” the video above. I liked it the most because it really is one of my hobbies, and I wish to get better at drawing manga eyes by watching tutorial videos online. I really like this, because the drawing is good, and it seems easier then it looks like it is. I wish to get better at drawing, and I hope the tutorial I am ging to do will be good as the ones I looked at!

This is my evaluate video I did during Tech class! Hope you enjoy

Kate Evaluate Video from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

On this unit during tech, we made a about me page,  which we wrote about ourselves. We also put four more widgets on our blogs, which are categories, links, archives, and meta. And we learned to make a navigation menu, to put links on your blog that you want your own readers to see, and to make a header, or search one in my case from creative commons.

I am quite happy about my blog design, though I am pretty sure that I can learn more things to make it more like the design I drew. I am happy with my blog right now, even though it’s not perfectly like my drawing, but it still quite looks alike. Also, I like my blog design because some of the people have the same theme as me, and my blog looks different to theirs. If I had to improve on my theme, I would try to do more things that aren’t on my design, because I want to make my blog better for the people who visit my blog(readers of my blog).

I am proud on mostly everything on my blog, but I really am proud of my posts, because I think that readers visit my blog to read the posts or the pages I have, and I have a lot of people who have visited on my blog right now. I don’t know if the things I wrote is good or not, but I think the visitors must have read at least some of my blog posts, and  hope that they enjoyed reading them. So I am quite proud with the posts I’ve written. I am also proud of some of the pictures, and videos I have on my blog as well. Most of them are for class, and I didn’t take them ,but I think some of the readers on my blog might enjoy. seeing them. And they are, mostly in high quality as well . I am  quite proud of the widgets I have on my blog, because at first, I didn’t have any widgets at all. However, I have a few widgets on my blog, and I am quite proud of some of the widgets I have.

I am pretty sure I need to know more and more things to become a better blogger, but at this moment, I am pretty sure that I know everything I need to know. If I need to know more things to make myself a better blogger, and my blog better, I am pretty sure I would learn them soon. Right now, I think I am pretty much an expert, but I should remind myself to not use slang words when I need to comment on other people’s blogs.

I want to make my blog better all the time for not just the readers, but for me too. I hope to learn all sorts of new things from friends, teachers and I want to make my blog theme better. I might change my header once in a while to make it match my design, or add more widgets when I have time. I hope to learn new skills, and I think I will try my best to improve on my blog every day.

Plan assignment reflection

For this unit, we were drawing designs, labeling our designs, planning out our designs on a word document. For drawing designs, we drew three designs(themes) that we wanted our blog to look like. I tried to do it neatly, and I copied everything that was on my blog, for example, header, and widgets. After that, we labeled the things we know, for example, I labeled the header and my other widgets that we drew on our blog.  This part was the easiest. Next we did the planning part. We had an word document which we had to fill in. There were three places we had to write in, and I wrote about the goals, how to make my blog better, and what I will do on my blog.

Out of three designs, I picked the one with blue stripes, because when I asked my partner(Yudai) in the last class, he told me that the one with blue stripes described me the best because it was blue. The other reason why I chose the stripes, is because I really like the color blue, and out of the three, I thought it will suit/describe me on my blog the best. I also liked the one the best when I drew it first, and I never seen a blog like that as well. And I thought it would be creative.

I want to learn how to do a lot of things. For example, I want to know if you can make your own theme, because even though the theme I chose looks quite alike to my drawing, I want it to look more like my drawing. I also want to know how to put an profile picture on, because I haven’t figured it out yet. Otherwise, I am pretty sure that I know most of the other things, and I am pretty much an expert I think. Also, I may know how to use them, but I may not be able to say what it is called.

I plan to learn these new skills by asking my classmates, friends or teachers. I might also ask the student tech person in my class, but they might not know it. If they don’t, I will ask my friends who already has found out to do the things I don’t know. I might also try to figure it out myselfI, by looking through my blog when I have free time. I want to know to do these skills fast, because I want to develop my blog as fast as I can.

I want to use the skills I know right know to make my blog better, and I want to learn more skills as well. I want my blog to be a good one, and I want to try hard to make it a good blog.