Sunday, September 26, 2010

Multimedia Week 5: PSA Post-Production

In our readings this week for the course, I watched a video on Edutopia entitled Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age: A New Model for the Workplace.  Randy Nelson, the Dean of Pixar University, stated “The core skill of innovators is error recovery not failure avoidance.”

When I first started this Master’s program I had a fear of failure, but I didn’t let my fears cause me to abandon my dream of furthering my degree. Failure can be the best motivator at times because it causes us to refocus on what our goals are and find new ways to achieve them. In my opinion we need to educate teachers and students that failure is not something to be avoided but is sometimes the best object lesson available to us. In practicing my multimedia skills during this course, I made a lot of mistakes, but with each mistake I learned something valuable that will help me improve my technology skills over time.

This week our team was not able to find a workable time to all meet together so we largely communicated by emails and Emily P. and I met on TinyChat.com on Thursday night according to our project schedule. Emily P. and I discussed the Rough Draft #3 of the PSA. We both agreed that Michael A. did a great job of editing our PSA.

Michael showed rough draft #3 to a friend that composes film scores who suggested using one theme only since the PSA is so short. Michael unified the music in rough draft #3 and added it to the dead parts. He also added the credits to the end of the PSA this week. Emily P. added the talent releases for both actresses to the “files” section of our Google site this week and added modifications to the script outline in red. Michael A. created a Final Shot List page to reflect the final revisions that were made to the PSA shot list. Emily W. kept our project proposal updated with the changes to the PSA and Janie F. contributed by editing and posting comments on the Google site.

Our team agreed to meet at 4 p.m. on Sunday. Our plan is to complete our debriefing at that time, clarify everything that is required for completion of this assignment, and discuss the strengths and weakness of our group project. Our team has been great about communicating with each other and keeping the project on schedule as originally planned. I think we have all been pleased with the outcomes and have learned alot in the process.

Debriefing Web Conference:
Everyone agreed that the project was a terrific accomplishment and a result of our team effort. Some areas that were suggested that could be improved if we were to take on another project would be to use a better camera and look for improved lighting conditions. We agreed that working together from various locations with differing time schedules presented challenges but did not seem to affect our overall communication.

Using the Google Site and email allowed us to communicate with each other and work at the times that were most conducive for each individual team member. Our use of the Google Site was preferred over the method used by other teams who used wiki sites. We found the Google Site was very organized and easy to navigate.

One advantage that we felt that our team had was the fact that we were proactive in organizing our team early on in the course and each member provided leadership and no one felt like they did all the work. Another strength that was identified was the use of TinyChat.com to collaborate via web conference. This created a feeling of cohesiveness among our team and we all agreed that we enjoyed working on the project.


Nelson, R. (2008). Learning and working in the collaborative age: A new model for the workplace. Edutopia. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from http://www.edutopia.org/randy-nelson-school-to-career-video.

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