Final Project.

I haven't informed you to the fullest of my final project. What I plan to do is make tutorial on how to play the harmonica. I am going to take a video with a digital camera of myself explaining how to play, such as the different notes, cords, how to clean it, how not to clean it etc. I will use Windows Movie Maker to put it all together, with pictures I have found on the internet and also some songs that have the harmonica that I really enjoy. Since I have come down with a bad cold (got blood taken for mono today), I do not really have a voice to do this. I am going to have to wait until next weekend to film this. However, I have found all of the other information I need to use. So I think I will be alright. Thats all for now, I think I need some honey lemon tea and buckleys.

Podcastin' Problems Prevented.

Thankyou to Robin yet again. In one of her blog posts she gave a link to a site that turns my audio into an html and lets me embed it into my blog!It was under the blog title Skyping with Maria Knee. So here you go, my very first podcast. Music at the beginning is by a great old school ska band called The Specials. I hope you enjoy this and maybe find some of it helpful!

Set your goals high enough to inspire and low enough to encourage you.
-Author Unknown

podcast problems

I have finsihed my podcast, I am just currently trying to figure out how to put the mp3 onto my Blog. If anyone knows how, fill me in! Otherwise I think I am going to have to post it on YouTube, and then embed it from there. I really don't want to do that though, so if anyone knows of an alternative, I would love to know and would be very thankful!
In the meantime I will share with you an email I recieved the other day. I love nature so I thought this was pretty neat. As you can see to your right, is an iceberg.I cebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed
by layers of snow that react to different conditions. Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form. When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can
freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a
green stripe.
I thought these were very beautiful. And even thought the weather has been nice lately, do not let it fool you, it is possible for it to get cold again. I do hate being a pessimist, really, but the bright side is, our earth wouldnt have these beautiful things without the feezing weather right? So thank Mr. Winter sometimes, because he needs some love too.

Google Maps

I had already made a map on Google Maps, for one of my videos. However, I did not go into full detail as I did for this one. As Amber said, I could not figure out how to do the video portion of the assignment. Anyhow, here is my trip to Jamacia!

View Larger Map

Educational How-To Podcasts

For my second and educational podcast, I chose "One- Minute How-Tos". I thought this was perfect for my final project and others as well and there were many helpful how-to videos. for example, How-to make a website, How-to get noticed on Flickr, if these apply to you, I really suggest that you download them because they are quick audios packed with information. The one I chose was "How-to Perform before an audience". For my Aesthetics Education class I have to perform a song I wrote and play the harmonica. Now, I have expressed in the passed that I have a little bit of stage fright, and I thought this would be very valuable to me. Some of the tips were given by a man named Ken. He is from Dallas Texas and performs something he called "bad attitude comedy" he said he has had encoutners of messing up on stage therefore he thought he was qualified gave these tips:
-assess audience, how old are they, adopt an attidue to fit with their attitudes
-embrace your fear, when you do this at least you know your alive
-practice your material till your sick of it
-persevereve till your done, even if you mess up like forgetting a lyric, it is okay. The point is if you dont try at all then it truly will be a failed attempt
accept the fact that you are terrified and do it anyway
-give self freedom to be horrible because if you do forget that lyric you will have experienced that moment of blankness and know how to cope with it for next time. You will always learn something new
-set up and survey the performance space before hand, then when you go back you feel more comfortable.
This short educational video helped me for a number of reasons. It showed me that everyone gets frightened on stage, at least once in their life. But if you hang in their, people will respect the fact that you had the courage to perform in front of them. It was also helpful because it gave me confidence to know that I already know my audience as they are my peers. I am guessing they will be supportive of me, whether they like my music or not.
These one minute How-To's are great, in addition to this specific video, as a how-to video in general, it will help me create my final project. These videos didnt supply or rather, fill their video with useless information. They were straight forward and too the point and this kept my interest. I think keeping it short and directly share my information.

Podcast of my choice

I love my ipod. I know I criticize technology but, truly my life would be less without music, and what better way to transport it in such a mini device as the ipod. I used to ahve podcasts on it as well, but my space got a little low so I had to remove the wonderous "Flight of the Conchords" so I could continue to put on my sweet jams. Nonetheless, I really liked looking through the podcasts and I also enjoyed that they were free :). So browsing through them the other day I found one that sparked my interest. It was Rolling Stone magazine doing reports on many artists which I love, like Paul McCartney, Al Green, so I subscribed to the whole thing. The one in which I will explain to you about it about the replacement of Conan O'Brian on the Late Show by Jimmy Fallon. Now, I think Conan is hilarious and am sad to see him go but, Jimmy Fallon ain't bad. He's never let me down on Saturday Night Live so I am hoping he can live up to my expectation and the Conan Fans expectations around the world. A plus about Jimmy is his house band will be the great hip-hop group, The Roots. They are a very talented band from Phildelphia, they play anything from blues to soul to punk to surf. I will leave you a little taste of their music from way back when called "The Seed". I chose this podcast because I love music, and Rolling Stone magazine, so what better way to get it for free on itunes, then to pay for the paper copy. HOWEVER, I will continue to buy the ones I am interested in because I think they are a collectors item and they have a lot of politcial and current event criticsm that I value, that you do not get on the podcasts. I will get the best of both worlds, I will be able to sample the music from itunes, and feed my brain with actually reading the hand held copy. I was not able to get the actual version of "The Seed" as it was disabled by request. I was able to get a live version, but please check out the real video if you like the live version, because the actual song and video are superb. I'll give you a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFb9UqELX8w
object width="425" height="344">

Mentorship

My mentorship has come to an end. I recieved the students' final essays on Thursday with their grade on them. Maura Moritz had marked all of the essays and also done some corrections on google docs, so I could see what she approved on and what she didn't. Besides some grammar errors, and some structural issues, the essays were very well done. Two out of the three essays recieved a 90% and the other a 95%. All in all I think that those are some pretty darn good marks. I would be pretty excited if I recieved those marks. I hope that I contributed to those marks and helped the students learn a few things about essay structure and over all essay writing. I valued this experience and feel like learned a lot myself. It gave me an opportunity to better my skils of giving contructive criticism. Reading these essays also helped me in my essay writing becuase it reiderated things I have forgotten about. Thankyou to Maura Moritz for allowing me to help her students and to Dean for giving me this opportunity!