This section contains work from the following courses: ESPY 5195 and ESPY 5220. I should note that the videos that are uploaded to show the basic technology skills (for ESPY 5195) were redone in July of 2011. I did not fully grasp what was being asked of us in July of 2010, and the work produced at that point in time, I believe, reflected my confusion. I chose to redo that assignment on my own initiative once I had a better understanding of what was being asked of me. The work for ESPY 5220 was possibly the most technically challenging assignment for me throughout this program. I admit struggling with the web site creation and still do not feel totally confident in that arena. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. My weakness is website creation. My strength, however, is in video production. I chose to include two videos (in the sub page "video creation") that I created for ESPY 5195 in this section to highlight an area where I feel I excel. The first video is from July 2010. Every aspect of the video was my creation with the exception of the music and acting. I conceived the idea, wrote the script, shot, and edited the video. The second video was created in July 2011. Again, I came up with the concept of the story to be told and edited the entire video. The only aspect I did not control here was what the rest of the actors said when leaving their advice. Finally, to highlight the fact that I can think in “video” terms, I included two examples of student work from the past year. I strongly believe that my personal strength in video editing and creation allowed me to assist these students in their own video creation (without doing it for them). 

I have created a series of videos in response to the ISTE-nets 2008 basic teacher competancies. Overall I found this to be one of the more difficult assignments last summer because I had a hard time verbalizing what I have come to see as second nature. In redoing the assignment I found that making screen shot videos with narration helped me "go meta" with the process.

I found the web page creation to be a bit tedious and extraordinarily frustrating for several reasons. I understand the KompoZer is a free creation tool, and you get what you pay for. The process of actually creating the page was interesting but attempting to link it all together and upload it to the server was difficult. As such, there are several mistakes that ended up on my final publication. The most glaring of which is the fact that there is not a working link to return to the home page on all of the sub pages. If time permitted I would have gone back to fix this, however I was under deadline and  I could not upload to the Uconn server for whatever reason, and was fortunate enough to be granted access to my school's server which allowed me the ability to submit this work just in time. Ultimately, I felt that in this day and age, where we have fantastically customizable WYSIWYG platforms like WordPress and Blogger, the need to create your own site is quickly becoming extinct. However, I am sure that if I ever wish to customize my WordPress site further, knowing "what's under the hood" will help.