Final Semester Project Report

Briefly describe the topic of your digital story and discuss the major objectives of the project.
Eating is the most common and important thing in our life. What you eat now may influence your health when you get old. My father was diagnosed cancer last year. All my families changes our eating habits to a healthier way, to help my father and ourselves cope with the cancer. We changed our life by changing our food. The goal of my story is by sharing my experience about eating to help people pay more attention about food that we eat everyday.

Why did you select this topic?
In the beginning of writing my script, I tried to tell a story about the process of my father fighting with the cancer. After talking with Dr. Robin, he reminded me that the story should include both popular culture and personal experience. That inspired me to adopt the food change story of my father into my scripts and it turn out to be a personal story with food issues included in the final version.

Who is the intended audience?
I assume the audience is everyone who eats foods everyday. I care nothing about my eating or cancer before my father sick. When I see people in some all-you-can-eat restaurants, grabbing a whole-table foods and devour them within a blink of eyes. That's not a good way to eat, I murmured. I tried to convey this idea in my story to people who does not think about it before.

Describe if and how this project might be used in a classroom or other educational setting.
It's a true story about a cancer patient changing eating habits to cope with disease. It's a good teaching material for kids to notice what they chew. I would bring some foods, both healthy and unhealthy to the class. Present the story and discuss more about how can foods lead to cancer. What kind of foods contains carcinogenic substance? A broader knowledge about healthy foods can be implemented after this story presents.

What technology hardware and software programs did you use in creating this project?
I got a Sony Vaio SZ, Intel Centrino Duo CPU, Nvidia graphic enhanced, 2G DDR memory and a exterial auxiliary screen. Sony Vaio has very good multimedia production ability, because it sells with many software included, such as Adobe photoshop elements, premiere elements and other Sony Vaio proprietary softwares. I used Adobe premiere elements for production, some pictures were revised by Photoshop and Picasa help me organize the pictures that I use in my story.

Where did you find the content for the project, including images, text, music, interview material, video clips, etc.?
I search about cancer on google and youtube. I found the video "My Chemical Romance - Cancer" on youtube and it really touch my heart, especially the girl cuts her hair. I decide to use it as my introduction in my story.
Most of the images were found on google. I used some pictures of my family to put the story into a real story, a story really happens.
I love the background music which is the theme music of a famous movie in Taiwan. It's sounds a little bit sad and depressed. I think the melody and pace were perfect for my story.

What items in the project changed from the early stages of selecting the topic through completion of the final digital story?
I changed some narrations during editing the story. It was too long in my first draft. I also replaced some pictures, because I found something better to express the idea.

Describe any challenges you faced in creating this project and if and how you overcame them?
The biggest challenges for me is writing the script and popular culture. I have no precise idea how to use popular culture or what is popular culture in this project exactly. After talking to Dr. Robin, I have more concrete ideas and directions for my story. I tried my best to get this project done. Maybe it's not perfect, but I have conveyed what I want to say in my final digital story.

What were the most significant things you learned from from completing the final project?
The most significant things I learned is confidence. At the beginning of this class, I have no friends, not much talks, because I cannot understand the popular cultures of American that we discuss in the class. I can't even figure out is it a joke or not.
Special thanks for Mark for helping me out with the popular theme project. Both Dr. White and Dr. Bernard are all very kind to me and help me a lot with difficulties.

Please add any other information you feel would help describe your work on this project.
I don't know why Adobe premiere elements can't support USB microphone, so I used analog input for my narrations. It sounds gruesome, but that's all I can have.

Blog Assignment 13b

Have the linked courses been beneficial to you and if so how? If not, why not?
For the first semester of my study in UH, the link courses that I have is really a benefit to me. I can have two courses at one night, which means I don't have to spend much time on traffic.
However, the popular culture discussion of this class was really frustrated and devastated. I think this class will not work well if the student comes from other country, just like me.

Have the digital photo/storytelling assignments been worthwhile in helping you learn the technology skills presented?
All the assignments are steps of final project. They were also very helpful for me to get more knowledge about emerging technology. I used Adobe premiere and Ulead video studio for educational use of video before, but I have no much idea about how to deal with still images effectively, like microsoft photo story does.

Do you think that the linked course pairing helped you connect technical skills to content area knowledge? If so, how and if not, what do you think did not work?
It helped to connect skills and content because I have to read much information about the theme before I embark my digital story. Technology changes fast and content is the soul of digital production. Using emerging technology and abundant content information are all important in this work.

Would you be interested in taking other linked courses if they were offered and would you recommend this pair of linked courses to other students?
I will be interested in taking other linked course, but I wish the other part of the class can be broader. 

Is there anything else you can suggest that you feel would improve the digital photography/storytelling half of the linked course pair?
Microsoft Photostory is a good software for teachers to use, but I think Adobe Premiere Elements is more flexible for different level learners. You can have all the functions in MS Photostory, but you can get more if you want to try. That will be more challenging and more space to create for students to produce the project. Despite the time is not sufficient and it's not a FREE software to learn, but I still think Adobe Premiere Elements will be better to learn in graduate level.

One option under consideration is to have a linked pair of courses where the content area course would be offered as a traditional 3 hour per week face-to-face course and the digital photo/storytelling course would be offered online, or mostly online. Please discuss your reaction to this idea and provide any questions or comments you have on this topic.
I think it's not a good idea to offer digital part online, especially for a novice learner. The thinking process of instructor and learner are totally different, particularly in learning computer software. Learner will fall behind in face-to-face class, not to mention a online course. I would suggest provide most of the class online, but face-to-face discussion and working are indispensable.  

Do you have any other comments that you would like to add?Have the digital photo/storytelling assignments been worthwhile in helping you learn the popular culture content? 
I learned a lot in this class and I think it's a good start for me to success in UH.

Texas Renaissance Fastival

The Renaissance, based on my history class in high school, was the revolution period of western culture. It was almost the same time with the Ming Dynasty of China. The communication of the east and west were also important in the period of Renaissance. Before I came here, my understanding of Renaissance was just a historical even and limited within the textbook. Today, I am so excited having the opportunity to experience the quintessence of west culture in the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Hands-On Assignment 9

Click to play

story circle

My first story circle time, which I even can't understand the meaning, has influence me a lot about my project. I said that this is my very first class in the UH and never been to the U.S. before. I talked something about my home country and they said that it's an interesting story.
I am not sure how interesting it is, but I am sure it will be easier for me to do the research.

Assignment 6 - No. 324 CHINESE SEISMOLOGY

No. 324: CHINESE SEISMOLOGY

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 324.

The reason that I choose this topic is vary simple. The episode is congruent with my personal experience and background. I have read this story when I was at junior high school. I think it will be perfect for me to introduce this historical celebrity by digital photo story.


Download high quality version(640x480,160kbps): http://ifile.it/7buwtnr

Today, an earth-shaken invention -- far older than we'd think. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

We face an odd problem when we look for the origins of our cleverest machines. So many were invented in China and never plowed into any mainstream of knowledge. So much spectacular human ingenuity was poured into the various Chinese royal courts and then forgotten. That's the way it was with seismography.

"China has always been plagued with earthquakes." observes historian Robert Temple. Some of them, like the great earthquake of 1556, were just awful. It killed 800,000 people. Down through the millennia, the Chinese have left very good records of those disasters.

So it was that Chang Heng, astronomer royal to the Han Dynasty, invented an accurate seismograph in AD 132 -- 1600 years before anyone in the West did. It was a large bronze urn with eight dragon heads gazing outward in eight directions. Each dragon held a ball in his mouth. Around the base of the urn, under each dragon, sat a frog with his mouth open.

A delicate inverted pendulum was hidden in the urn. The slightest seismic ripple moved it. The swinging pendulum tapped a mechanism that dislodged one of the balls. The ball fell from the mouth of the dragon into the mouth of the frog below. It landed with a great clang that announced the earthquake. Knowing which frog had been fed, you could tell the direction of the quake.

Members of the court thought the device had failed when the alarm sounded one day and they felt nothing. Doubt turned to astonishment a few days later. A messenger arrived from a town 400 miles away to report that it'd been savaged by an earthquake.

Chinese writings talked about Chang Heng's seismograph and ones like it until the Mongols overran China. After that, it vanished as though it had never been. The next seismograph was invented in France in 1703. But seismography really started up again -- and with pendulum devices -- only 130 years ago.

Chinese seismography was no flash in the pan from a one-time inventor. Chang Heng was brilliant. He described a round earth in infinite space. He invented lines of longitude and latitude. The Chinese called that, "throwing a net over the Earth."

And why is such brilliance so badly remembered? It's probably because people like Chang Heng were tied so tightly to their patrons. They didn't belong to the same loose, open communities of freely moving scholars that have diffused knowledge so effectively in the West.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

narration practice