Special Effects

Flower Study 03
Originally uploaded by colemama

In mid-December I had the honor of participating as an evaluator/judge in a trio of multimedia projects:

• Flat Classroom 2008 Project,
  
• Irving Independent School District Technology Media Fair , and
  
• our own Lorenzo Walker Technical High School
  Multimedia Technology sophomore's final projects.

Every experience was valuable and insightful for students and evaluator alike!

Most of the projects had a focal point of relevant content, as one would expect, but it was interesting to note the emphasis on the 'hooks' some used to entice the viewer to stick with it and engage in the content! As one who constantly fought the 'bells and whistles' syndrome in teaching PowerPoint, I was not surprised at the ubiquitous special effects.

Exploring and experimenting is a vital element for learning - and these projects usually showed evidence of such knowledge and skills. What I found lacking was the process of reflection on the part of the students...not to say that it wasn't part of the process - perhaps just latent, but valuable. As an evaluator, I wanted to know what the students were thinking and discovering as they created their final product.

Lagniappe: My dual love of iPhone and photography is enhanced with a small investment ($2.99) - the Photogene application. It created this photo (Flower Study 03 - a definite 'attention grabber') as part of my own exploring and experimenting with images and Flickr! I love its simplicity, but also the opportunity to try out new things and, in this case, see the results of the minimal Flower Study!

Lagniappe #2: It was easy to upload my iPhone pictures directly to my Flickr account with the Flickr upload email account!