Digital Media Project

Here is my digital media project.  I worked pretty hard on it – so I hope you enjoy. 

The purpose of my project was to explain the difference between affect and effect.  Here is the results of my work.

Learning Through Creation…..

I have always had a slight difficulty differentiating between the words effect and affect.  Both words sound almost exactly alike and have very similar meanings.  Both an affect and effect cause a result.  An affect influences while an effect causes a result.  The similarities are so close that it makes these two terms confusing.  I know if I still struggle a little with these two terms then students may as well be perplexed by these words.  For my digital media project I wanted to create a MovieMaker video to help clarify the differences between the use of either effect or affect.

 

Well after I had idea then I had to decide how to demonstrate them.  A friend mentioned to me that the cartoon Curious George had much to do with affect and effect (I guess because George is always causing trouble).  So having no other ideas myself I adopted this one.  I developed the idea that I would take a cartoon and compare events for George as either an affect or effect.  To capture a cartoon I downloaded one off of YouTube buy using the tool KeepVid.   Once I had the cartoon downloaded I did not know how to transfer it to MovieMaker.  I did some research and discovered if I downloaded WinFF I could covert video media to other formats.  Once I had the cartoon ready for adjustments in MovieMaker the project took on a life of its own. 

 

 In the cartoon, George is reading a book.  I thought this clip would be an awesome introduction to these two terms.  In my introduction, George is reading his favorite book and enjoying a red apple.  He notices two words on the page that are similar, affect and effect.  George, in his confusion, looks quickly around the room and notices a dictionary on the floor.  George picks up the dictionary and continues eating his apple.  For this scene I spliced two video clips together.  I repeated the previous clip of George reading a book with George looking at a dirty room.  The book lying on the messy floor would be the dictionary that George noticed.  To signify that George is using a dictionary I transitioned to a picture of a dictionary with a blue cover.  The book that George is reading is also blue which was a consistency that I was looking for.  While George is sifting through the dictionary I wanted the viewer (my students) to also be reading the definitions for the terms.  To give the viewer a sensation of reading the dictionary along with George I downloaded a picture of an open book.  Inside the book I detailed the descriptions for both affect and effect.  Between these two definitions on different pages I used transitions in MovieMaker to visualize page turning.  To further emphasize the use of these two terms I cut away from the Curious George cartoon to explain the terms more in depth.  In order to bring the viewer away from the cartoon I used a picture of film and imprinted text on it.  With the text I could give the viewer more information to help them understand these two terms while they view the rest of the video.  After I have explained the terms fully as an editor I transition back to Curious George and allow the viewer to watch a portion of the cartoon.  While watching the cartoon the viewer will be encouraged to be thinking about effect and affect.  During the cartoon, sentences and questions will be displayed to keep the students thinking about these two terms.  As a final touch to the video clip I added the song “Upside Down” by Jack Johnson to emphasize the confusing circumstances between affect and effect.  Since the two terms are similar in spelling, sound, and definition Curious Georges thoughts are upside down. 

 

I felt my final production would be very affective to utilize in a classroom setting.  First I would introduce the two terms to students and ask them if they knew what each meant.  I would ask if anyone knew how to use either term correctly in a sentence.  Then as a class we would go over the definition for each term.  Afterwards I would play the video clip.  The video would reintroduce each term, their definition, and examples of their uses.   When the video finishes I will lead the class into more discussion on the terms.  I would ask more students to give me sentences properly using affect or effect.

 

While creating this video project I learned more than how to define the differences between affect and effect.  I also learned more about technology: downloading MovieMaker, downloading from YouTube, formatting video, saving video to a movie, and reposting my movie to YouTube.  All of these tasks were challenging and I had to research to understand how to perform each.  To download MovieMaker I had to find an alternate copy because I was unable to download from the Windows Website.  Second, I knew how to download video from YouTube by using KeepVid.  But I discovered on my own to download WinFF to format the video to be used in MovieMaker.  I originally formatted the video in wmv format which later proved to be a mistake.  While using MovieMaker the program crashed constantly which I never learned how to prevent.  I just had to edit a little bit of video clips at a time.  Once I had all my video clips completed I tried to transfer the project into a movie but the effort was unsuccessful.  I learned avi formatting was much better than wmv to transfer video into movie format.  Then I had to reformat my video clips.  Then the whole movie was completed in avi format and I felt I was done.  When I tried to upload the video project to my blog I could not find the ability to upload directly to my computer.  I researched different sites to upload video too but discovered YouTube to be one of the best options.  On my first try downloading my movie to YouTube, the movie was still too large.  In order to most effectively upload the movie to YouTube I reformatted the whole movie again into avi format which condensed the movie.   Then by utilizing YouTube I was able to post the movie into my blog.  Well maybe this process for being able to download video, create a personal video, and upload the video back to the internet sounds lengthy (and it was).  Now that I have learned so much this process will be a simple task.

~ by hwilhite on December 4, 2007.