This I Believe Essay

In this essay, I argue the importance of including practical application in the classroom setting and how this teaching modality is utilized in UM-Flint classes.

Updated: Galaxy Nexus finally Available at Verizon Wireless

Almost two months ago Google and Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which is the next in the Google Nexus lineup and the first Android phone to sport the newest version of the Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0.

The Galaxy Nexus has been available all over the world, except the United States for almost a month now. Verizon was holding up the release for some unknown reason.


View Larger Map

Above is a map of the closest Verizon Wireless stores in the Flint area.

Updated with pictures of the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon.

The Android Blog

I ran into some trouble trying to record my screen on my mac where I had my blog ready to be recorded. I also did not allow enough time to do this project, poor planning on my part. I tried both photobooth and Quicktime on my macbook and neither would let me insert screenshots or record the screen and myself at the same time.

See the video below, my blog is located at http://androidblog2011.blogspot.com

Marty Dow Blog Introduction

I did not allow enough time to do the project. I encountered a few problems. I loaned my digital movie camera to my girlfriend to video her daughters dance recital, so I did the screen shots with my droid phone. I had never downloaded from my phone before, so I had to set up the phone in my laptop. I recorded the main video with my laptop and Microsoft Moviemaker. Editing it was not bad. I was familiar with doing that. As the professor said to upload I had to do more than just having a standard YouTube Video Account. Once I did that I could not upload the video because it was the wrong file format. YouTube had a good tuitorial on how to convert it. I have to use an old computer to access the internet reliably, so the file is saved to a removable memory card and now I am uploading to the blog, I hope all goes well.
Technological Logistics bit me in the butt.

Please see the link below:

Christopher's Corner(?)

This is my introduction to my blog week. I will be covering student groups on campus. The subject will range from fraternities, to CAB, to everything else. I look forward to completing the rest of my blogs and I look forward to hearing yours as well. Editing the video was tricky. I've seen (not done) video editing done only four times before. The last three were done in my Broadcast Journalism class, which I ended up not liking at all. The first was during a job shadowing of Dawn Jones. I had remembered enough of the basics to give it a shot.

First I'd tried using Movie Maker. It's part of a series of editing software for PCs. It automatically comes with the PC out the box as far as I can tell so I thought I would give it a shot. It was pretty awful. Every video editing system out there (except for Movie Maker) has the timeline in the bottom middle. You know, the place where you put the content you have. From there you arrange and modify the content until you have the edited series of content that you want. There can be timelines for visual and audio content, for texts, and other pictures and effects. All the timelines are independent of each other until the user arranges them in a way that will make sense.
Movie Maker doesn't have that. Movie Maker has only ONE timeline. Video and audio content is together. That means, as far as I can tell, no voiceovers and no narrating. And for a class where I have to put sound to  photos that I take, that makes the program useless.
AVS was better. I downloaded it mostly out of frustration. The importing was easy. There were different timelines for visual content, audio, and text. As you can see the video is mostly me talking in the first half, and then photos I took in the second half. The only real "eureka!" moment I had was trimming up the visual content while leaving the audio intact for said photographs. Overall, it was an interesting and fun experience. I liked being able to edit my own video content rather than watching somebody else do it.
The same can't be said for converting the project file to something Youtube could use however. I downloaded AVS converter only to find out later that all I had to do was press the "Produce" button in the regular editor. Thank God for FAQ forums.

Clarkston blog

Here is the introduction for my blog about Clarkston. I used Windows Power Director to edit the video. I found trimming the audio to be a bit of a challenge when editing this video. It was difficult to get the audio and picture to line up exactly the way I wanted them to. All in all, it was a great way for me to get more practice with editing and uploading videos.

Do it Yourself Happily Ever After Wedding Blog

This is my introduction to my blog Here.I used Windows Live Movie Maker. First I wrote the welcome page, the I created and inserted my video. That was a lot easier than I expected, it was nice being able to edit the video right there. I ran into some trouble adding the music and figuring out starting points and ending points. Then I added some photos and the last of the music. The part I liked most was choosing the effects. I did run into some trouble uploading to YouTube since they do not accept Windows Live Movie Maker files, but thankfully there was a button to post to YouTube and that turned out to be pretty easy. What I learned is that I like talking on camera better than in front of people and its easier for me then recording my voice. I also learned that I can do videos, it might take some exploring and a lot of saving but I can do it. I should branch out and try using other video software.