Not the End, but a New Appreciation

My Initial 3 Goals

The first of my three goals this semester was inspired by my wife and I’s wedding. We regret a few of our choices when it came to documenting memories, such as videos or a full-time photographer (our main photographer was in the wedding and the backup was not as good). So, what I did is I learned how to use Movie Maker Video Editor and I made a slideshow of photos from our wedding and set the music we used to the photos as if the slideshow played through our special day. The video provided is the final project of what I learned from Movie Maker Video Editor. This project not only helped me create something fun for my wife and I, but it also played a big role for my CIP project.

 

 

The second of my three goals was to find some time this semester for myself to complete a game that I  bought a long time ago. Ghost of Tsushima has been said to be a phenomenal game and I would agree. By setting some time aside for myself to complete this game each week, I was able to deescalate some stress from this semester (which was filled with stress from things outside of the class) and enjoy a great game. The picture provided shows the PlayStation Trophy that is awarded to those that complete the Ghost of Tsushima game.

 

The final of my three goals was to use a Fitbit to track my sleep and see if there were any patterns between my sleep and weight loss. My goal was to lose 10 pounds and I was successful! Although I was successful with the weight loss, the data is important for the sake of this project. I graphed my average sleep score compared to the change in weight that I had week-to-week. From my results, I can determine that for my small sample size, there appears to be little to no correlation amongst the data. The R^2 value is just above .01, which means that the line of best fit doesn't explain much of the data. Also, if we find the R value, which is 0.1229, we can tell that there is little to no correlation amongst the data. Even though the Fitbit didn't give me a reason to believe that my sleep score is connected to my weight loss, it was nice to have a routine that made me feel like I was making progress. I am sure if I tracked calories compared to weight loss, maybe I would have had a stronger correlation.

 

 Reflection

Some potential applications that I could use the technology I interacted with this semester could be to create more interactive classroom experiences with the Movie Maker Video Editor and the data usage from Fitbit. As I mentioned in my summary of the experience above, this project is what helped propel my CIP project forward using the Movie Maker Video Editor, of which centered around creating an Escape Room experience within the curriculum. I plan to use Move Maker Video Editor for future interactive experiences for my students. Currently, I have made a Saw Escape Room experience that can be used for any subject or curriculum. I could also do a project with my students that uses Fitbits to track different data values and we can analyze the data values through the use of graphs, like I provided in my above discussion about my Fitbit experience.

Some of my personal insights for this experience are that I enjoyed having the freedom to explore technologies that I have interest in and I like that I found a use for them in the classroom setting. Although the Movie Maker Video Editor started as a personal interest, it very quickly became an idea to use in the classroom. I enjoy video editing and I think this will help propel my interest in video making for the future. Even though the Fitbit didn't necessarily fit what I was looking for with it for this project, there are tons of features that the Fitbit has that I look forward to using in the future, both for personal reasons and classroom instances.

One of my new goals that I now have after doing this experience are to push my own boundaries with video editing. I have a handful of skills and ideas when it comes to video editing, but if I continue to pursue different skills and tricks for video editing, my classroom experiences will become that much more interesting and involved for students. I plan to pursue these new boundaries with video editing by trying to think of different projects that would require skills that I don't have and see what I can create.