Reflection final project

After the presentation of this final project, I realize how large and ambitious this project actually was. Because after all the work that I have done: thinking about the plot, writing the story, drawing the original illustrations, edit digitally the originals, create the interactive digital story and print the illustration for the paper version of this book. I felt that even though I have accomplished my original goals I need to keep working on it to improve a couple of thinks to get the best of it. For instance, I would like to ask a professional writer review and edit the story in order to simplify ideas and expressions that might help the story to be more clear and attractive.
I also will like to register the story and images in order to be able to publish it.

After all I am very pleased with my final project because not only was I able to make this idea become real but also I believe that this book might help kids and adults (parents and educators) to discuss and learn about important thinks like friendship, self-confidence and human relation ship.

Regarding the multimedia for educators class, I really enjoyed everybody presentations and I have learn about many possibles options that could be used to improve education in different levels and environments.

Thank you Selila!

Interactive Narrative

I google the words interactive media and the result to my request was a list of links to different pages with information about multimedia storytelling. I visited the web sites in particular this one http://www.interactivenarratives.org/ were you can find a list of other sites with multimedia material from news papers like The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, etc. The articles and the multimedia material was interesting but it was not what I was spectating.

I thought that I will found a list games like the one that we discussed in class where the player interact with a male and female couple in a everyday situation on real-time 3d interactive drama answering questions and adding comments to build the direction of the interaction. In this case was really interesting the programing behind the interaction because it seems like all the possibles answer that the player would write were already taken under consideration for another possible answer that will keep building the interaction of the game. So I went to wikipedia to get more information about the interactive narratives unfortunately there was not much information about it. I went back to google and searched for interactive narratives games and I found this interesting web site with a list of on-line games http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/12/the_majesty_of_colors.php

I played with The Majesty of Colors, by Gregory Weir. It is an expressive interactive story about choices and consequences. You play the part of a nightmarish Lovecraftian beast from the undiscovered ocean depths, as it creeps to the surface and encounters the human race for the first time. A first-person narrative provides context, and helps guide you through your emotional encounter with this confusing new world.
I was interesting and i never like video games or computer games that much but after this new approach I would like to keep visiting new sites with information, reviews and comments about new games and interactive stories in the future.

Wikis Presentation

What's a wiki? The word "wiki" comes from Hawaiian language, meaning "quick" or "fast."
A wiki is a web site that lets any visitor become a participant: you can create or edit the actual site contents without any special technical knowledge or tools. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection. A wiki is continuously “under revision.” It is a living collaboration whose purpose is the sharing of the creative process and product by many. One famous example is Wiki-pedia, an online encyclopedia with no “authors” but millions of contributors and editors. http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

Who uses wikis? Wikis are used by people collaborating on projects or trying to share things online, such as family information and photos, technical information from users of a product, data from a research and development project, clubs, or collaborative projects.
College and university courses seem to be using wikis far more than the K-12 community right now. In K-12 education, wikis are being used by educators to conduct or follow-up after professional development workshops or as a communication tool with parents. The greatest potential, however, lies in student participation in the ongoing creation and evolution of the wiki.
Uses of a wiki
http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Uses_of_a_wiki

What is the difference between a wiki and a blog? A blog, or web log, shares writing and multimedia content in the form of “posts” (starting point entries) and “comments” (responses to the posts). While commenting, and even posting, are open to the members of the blog or the general public, no one is able to change a comment or post made by another. The usual format is post-comment-comment-comment, and so on. For this reason, blogs are often the vehicle of choice to express individual opinions.
A wiki has a far more open structure and allows others to change what one person has written. This openness may trump individual opinion with group consensus.http://www.wikispaces.com/ http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-i-use-wikis-what-do-you-do.html

How to get started
http://pbwiki.com/ more info about academics http://pbwiki.com/academic.wiki
http://www.wikispaces.com/
http://www.wetpaint.com/ more info about it http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/
My wikishttp://artplusdesign.wetpaint.com/http://artplusdesign.pbwiki.com/


Wiki ideas for Education:
Design a collaborative project and shear resulting reports.
Collaborate with other schools.
Common problems and collaborate on how to solve them.

How do I use wikis with my class(es)?
Wiki ideas:
An online writer’s workshop or poetry workshop with suggested revisions from classmates. Start with drafts and collaborate. Make sure students use the notes tab to explain why they make changes.
Literary analysis of actual text on the wiki- with links to explanations of literary devices, a glossary to explain vocabulary, etc. You will be amazed how much they will find and argue.
Collaborative book reviews or author studies
A virtual art gallery with ongoing criticism and responses regarding artwork found online or originals from your art classroom.
Collections/montages of examples of an abstract concept, such as “surrealism”- why do you can this surrealist?- explain/refute.

Wikis just for teachers:
Visit the TeachersFirst wiki to add your own wiki ideas and successes!
How do I use wikis with my class(es)? How to get startedBefore you start your wiki with your class(es), make some basic decisions:
Who will be able to see the wiki? (the public? members only?)
Who will be able to edit the wiki? (the public? members only? vary by section?)
Who will be able to join the wiki? (students only? parents? invited guests? the public?)
What parts of the wiki will you “protect” (lock from changes)?
Who will moderate the wiki for appropriateness, etc?
Who will have the ability to reset changes?
Will you, as the teacher, be notified of all changes?
Will the wiki have Individual or global memberships? (by individual students if you want an individual record of who made changes, or with one log-in per group or class?)
Once you an envision how your wiki will work and be used, it is best to get your principal or supervisor's approval if you are one of the first teachers using such a "new" web tool. Recent news stories about social networking sites have administrators on edge. Your school's Acceptable Use Policy may have some specific rules about using tools like wikis.

You want to find out the following:
Is it permissible to post student work to web?
What is the policy on posting student names (initials? pseudonyms?)
What is the policy on posting pictures of students or class scenes?
What is the policy on posting any information that might identify the wiki class?
Can these policies be met through security settings, parent and student agreements?
Does the district filering prevent access to the wiki tools from school? If so, will your administrator facilitate UNblocking of the wiki's exact URL?
Buy a wiki softareLooking for more information about wikis? Want to learn the basics about Confluence?
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/wiki.jsp#whyuseawiki

Ross Mayfield Interview, founder of SocialText, which is the first Wiki company. He’s been at the center of a bunch of trends, including Web 2.0, blogging, social media, and boom and bust cycles. We hear what SocialText is up to, and what Ross is seeing from his office in downtown Palo Alto.
http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1255/inside-the-first-wiki-company-socialtext

What benefits are there from student wiki participation?
Creativity
Build creativity skills, especially elaboration and fluency. Build creative flexibility in accepting others’ edits!
Introduce and reinforce the idea that a creative piece as never “done.”
Engagement
Increase engagement of all students.
Interpersonal
Develop interpersonal and communication skills, especially consensus-building and compromise, in an environment where the product motivates interpersonal problem-solving.
Develop true teamwork skills
Writing
Improve the most challenging phase of writing process: revision, revision, revision!
Increase flexibility to consider other ways of saying things.
Build an awareness of a wider, more authentic audience.

Links
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2007/09/12/02wiki.h01.htmlhttp://animation.wikia.com/index.php?title=The_Simpsons&diff=3572&oldid=3571
http://arted20.ning.com/
http://asbvisualarts.wetpaint.com/page/Links+to+Cool+Places
http://avalonit.net/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Visual_arts

Final project

My final project is a interactive digital book for kids. The story is a story that I am wrighting about a cat that lost her family and have to learn for her self the about human relations ship and the meaning of friendship, love, pain, and decision making.

What is different in this digital story from other that exist already on-line? I would like to create a place for discussion for important subjects matter in life like: to die, to trust your self, to find and appreciate real love and friend ship between kids and family, parents and educators.

what will be the aesthetic? the illustrations will be drawings done with a masking tape technique that i have developed based in lines and shapes that help the viewer to have an idea about the spaces and characters characteristic but will bot fully depict them in order to allow the reader to go further in the story and create their own interpretation of the illustrations.

How will be the format? it will be a DreamWeaver file with image and links that connects alternative levels of related information about the story or important points where will be important to be discussed by the kid and the adults.

who it will be developed? I will use adobe Illustratore, Photoshop and Dreamweaver

I know that it is a big project to accomplish but i am very exited to do it.

The ABC of the World Wide Web

In order to fully understand the meaning of the Internet and the World Wide Web and its origins, evolution and radical changes through the years. We have to comprehend the highly complex meaning of concepts such us hypertext, hypermedia, links, and navigation.

The concept of non-sequential writing was very important to create the framework needed to develop concepts such us: browsing, text links, bookmarks, and the ability to move forward and backwards in this kind of endless virtual book full of “Pages” that the World Wide Web represents today. The Ted Nelson’s terms hypertext and hypermedia from the 60’s and the history of computers’ evolution allowed newer generation trough the years to re-thing and re-create the original concepts in what the internet and World Wide Web is today.

The early 1990s work done at the CERN, the circulation of the proposal for a hypertext-based 'information mesh'(World Wide Web), the creation of protocol for exchanging files across the Internet (hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)) and the hypertext markup language brought nelson’s ideas to a completely new dimension that change the understanding of the world. Starting a new era where the space where people, communicate, socialize and shear ideas could be real or virtual (hyperspace).

I personally thing that we are in the beginning of the understanding of the possibilities of this new media and we have a long way to go to developed the full potential of the WWW.

Open Source vs proprietary software. How these affect learners and educators?

According to wikipedia the definition of Open Source Software can be defined as computer software, which the human-readable source is made available under a copyright license. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. On the other hand, Proprietary software is computer software on which the producer has set restrictions on use, private modification, copying, or republishing. Similar terms include "closed-source software" and "non-free software". Proprietors may enforce restrictions by technical means, such as by restricting source code access, or by legal means, such as through copyright and patents. www.wikipedia.org.

Even though Proprietary software such as Microsoft word is highly used in educational environments educators and learners today, have another free alternative for digital documents creation. It allows, editing, storing and sharing freely. Google offers a free alternative on a web-based word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool that allows not only the creation and editing of documents but it also encourages collaborative work with multiple people at the same time. http://www.google.com/educators

In my opinion, this is a great alternative of open source software for educator and studentsthat offers an affordable option that can be used, at home, in class or anywhere with an internet connection such as coffee stores and airports.

In addition, the benefits of helping educators to raise the standards of presentation and quality of education for their students to achieve their full potential for free is extremely valuable. Furthermore open source software and material encourage the teaching community, to share content as well as resources to expand the boundaries of education around the world.

My three best education blogs

Even though there are many interesting blogs on the Internet, I have chosen three as my favorites for their innovative ways of delivering educational content, the well-organized architecture of information and interesting application of new technology.
The topic that these web blogs have in common is Education, but the approach to educational issues is different in content and format. In my opinion, their contribution to the educational field is particularly valuable because these web blogs are focused in the creation of dialogue between educators, parents, students and general audience. The blogs encourage the audience to share their viewpoints about situations in and outside of class, learning techniques, and application of new technology in education.

The first web blog is http://www.absolutely-intercultural.com
It is a blog and Pod cast (audio files distributed over the internet) dedicated to intercultural experiences and issues hosted by two European scholars.
I like in particular the use of Pod cast introducing the subject of the web notes and the format of web show that teach and help to understand the concept of culture as shared habits, beliefs and values of a national group. The subjects of the show are presented by the two scholars with contributions from people that share opinions and personal experiences in different parts of Europe.Its layout is simple but effective with a clear and appealing design. The content is presented based on a three color code and intuitive iconography. As a result, it is easy to individualize the notes, the additional material relate to the topic, and other links with more information organized by comments and dates.Finally, This blog allow participants learn from other cultures by interacting with the members of this virtual community interchanging opinions and experiences while theypromote digital literacy using Pod Cast technology.

The Second web blog is http://wordgirl.typepad.com/This blog is focused on sharing and discussing educational field’s concerns. It includesdiscussion about state, school and classroom policies and practice in the US. It also have a variety of recommended reading material as well as links with resources for students and educators.This blog has also a simple but efficient layout with a very well organized content.Even though it has a multilayer of information, the hierarchy on the content is very well thought out. It has the main information is in the center and the secondary content on the right and left using words and images for the internal and external links.I think this blog offers a good opportunity for sharing opinions and insight about learning and teaching practice. It also connects, students, teachers, and parents in a beneficial and productive way for the field. Moreover it a very good communication tool for those who live or teach in remote places.

The third blog is http://blogs.adobe.com/educationleaders/It is the Adobe Software company educational leaders web blog. Where you can get educator’s experiences using Adobe software for educational purposes. There are a lot of information related with Adobe technology and new applications for classes.Even though Adobe is the leader in the market for design and web design softwarethis blog does not have in my opinion a very good design compared with the two previous ones.It is not as friendly specially in the main body of text and notes.I consider this blog the best of the three for promoting digital literacy, teaching essential software skills, facilitating online learning, and linking with information and education about new risk on Internet specially for children and teenagers.