"On The Road"

Hello Everyone,
I did a On The Road video of me heading to work this morning.  Well I wasn't quite sure what I would do this assignment of and thought this would be a great time to video the everyday process and pit stops I make on my way to work.  I hope this video works because I made little individual videos that i attempted to put together creating a slideshow.  I tried editing but had a hard time figuring out how to upload it to YouTube from photo bucket so I used photo bucket link instead.

So I wasn't successful with photo bucket so i decided to redo the whole video editing and to use a different software.  I downloaded Camtasia 2 and I was able to get better results and I was also able to embed my video on to my website.  I had a very hard time trying to figure this out but now that I have figured it out.  It feels great!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihF0fVojULg


http://samanthaashline.weebly.com

Vlogging:

I did my video on how to make brownies from a box.  I went over to my friend Hannah's and she filmed me on how to make these delicious brownies.  I was super nervous to do this assignment because I don't like taking videos of myself and I don't like center of attention on me.  Before I ended up with the final results which isn't even the greatest but I did my best, it probably took a good 10 to 12 shots because I either screwed up the process or I just kept laughing.  I find it a lot more difficult explaining something rather then just doing it.  After the first 5 shots I finally decided to measure everything before hand and by doing that made the process of explaining a lot easier. Overall my friends and I got a few good laughs in the process of making this video.  

http://youtu.be/96EUNW9jlKE

Wk8: Blog: Presentation magic

 How he uses technology to enrich and enlighten his content and deliver it. What are the key elements of his technique? What can you take away from his talk and apply to your presentation this week?

         This week we were assigned to watch Hans Rosling presentation: The Good News Of The Decade, with the best stats you've ever seen presented on Ted Talk. The content that Hans was educating us and showing his audience visual improvements of how child property has been reduced through the years in different countries.  After watching the full video I think the his main point he was trying to get across was proving there is improvement and statistic documentation showing that we are making progress within the millennium development goals which goals our nation has made to make progress in countries throughout the world in: "ending poverty, education, gender, child and maternal health, control infections, protect our environment, and get the good global links between nations in every aspect from aid to trade." 
         He took advantage of today's media source by using a PowerPoint type software that he added animated graphs (GapMinder World software) that he used to show visual representation of data that would make the audience understand it more clearly. The way he delivered the data and presented using the animated graph which allowed the audience to see the movement of improvement through the years made it that much more rich and more enjoyable to input the information he was sharing. I believe one of the key elements he used was movement and color to help make the graph more understandable to read. I really like how each line was a different color but in the top right corner he represented the world of countries and each country was a different color to match the line that was represented on the graph.  I thought that was a great way to present a color key.   Adding movement in the graph I thought it made it much more realistic because seeing the improvement is more believable then just seeing a bunch of standstill lines because sometimes you never know if they are representing up or down. 
       Those two key elements that I thought was used throughout his presentation to help his audience understand the data was movement and color and I would like to apply that to my presentation.  Color and movement helps liven the "dull original PowerPoint" to more exciting and more interactive presentation and hopefully help engage my audience. Plus that software called GapMinder that he used to create the data graphs and I would like to try to create my own graph because I like how I could input the dates in the background and as the dates are increasing you see the increase or decrease.  Over not a bad Ted Talk and he did a great job in presenting his research and data that shows the improvements in child poverty.
   

Wk7: Blog - "Kindle Me a Story, please"

After reading each one of the articles which focused mainly on the new Kindle 2 with the new "read aloud" feature.  These articles also had a lot of controversy between digital and actual physical books.   The main concern with Kindle 2 was that the Kindle 2 isn't paying for anyone for audio rights. Kindles are the new modern and convenient way of reading and storing books. I.B.M has developed a computerized voice.  " These sounds can be incredibly subtle, even unnoticeable, but have a profound psychological effect. It can be extremely reassuring to have a more attentive sounding voice." according to The New York Times. I believe one of the issues of the new "read aloud" is to be the computer generated and that is taking away rights from the authors option to create their own personal audio.  Guild is trying to allow authors to get a share of the value that audio adds to the kindles and other tablets. Although guild is trying to help author's to gain a share of the profit, people are turning this all around and saying that guild is arguing that it is illegal for blind people to use because people who need alliterative ways to read only options are braille and audio. 
 I believe that this lawsuit is quite ridiculous especially if copyright laws have provided free audio available to the blind.  I think this whole lawsuit is people being selfish and just thinking of ways of making more money.  Other then the blind not everyone can read a book and know what they are reading.  Everyone has different ways to learn and understand what they are reading. What about people with disabilities or even those who are dyslexic?  I believe the new "read aloud" feature gives people the advantage to be able to have more options for those who have a hard time reading and want to but don't have the money to buy the actual book and the audio to go along with it. By giving the audio option I believe it ought to have people who have busy lives or people who don't normally buy books the option to be able to multitask so that would bring in more sales because of the convince.
In the tech dirt article Authors Guild's Scott Turow: The Supreme Court, Google, Ebooks, Libraries & Amazon Are All Destroying Authors states that Scott Turow is trying to attack Google with scanning book project. "Google says this is a "fair use" of the works, an exception to copyright, because it only shows snippets of the books in response to each search. Of course, over the course of a thousands searches, Google is using the whole book and selling ads each time, while sharing none of the revenue with the author or publisher." As the article fights back stating that the snippets sentences that google uses is that when the book is searched a sentenced is used and that sentence is usually the result of where you can buy the book.  Google book scanning is creating a useful card catalog for books, making it easier to locate the book. Google books has increased the sales of books. 
Overall I don't believe this is a legit case.  I believe the share of the older authors and publishers are afraid to let go of the past and they are scared to move into the modern world of technology because older folks have a harder time learning new ways of life especially if they grew up in a society where there wasn't such a thing as technology.