Hey guys, term 1 of school is almost over and it’s time to reflect on all of the videos I’ve created over these last few months. Although every video each had completely different topics they all still had one thing in common, the ISTE standards.
Since all of these videos use these standards as guides to create better media, I’ve decided to set up this blog post so each ISTE standard has a paragraph dedicated to it. Feel free to look at each section in any order you’d like.
Empowered Learner
“I have leveraged technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in my learning goals.”
Although it is short it’s still one of the most open standard since it can apply to basically all of our videos we have created. Because of this I’ve been able to continuously improve my use of this competency over the course of term 1. At the start of the year I wasn’t the best at using this standard, I was still able to use the technology provided to create a video but I wasn’t “leveraging technology” to get to my learning goals. An example of this is our Drumheller Documentary from the Alberta field school. For this video I found that I had forgotten all of my learning goals from my previous videos like finding good angles to use and knowing what is needed for the video. I was unable to achieve my learning goals for this videos which may have set me back for that video but I used my mistakes there and was able to improve on my next ones.
Knowledge contractor
“I can critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful experiences fo myself and others.”
Although it may seem a little unclear this standard is about using digital tools to build knowledge and resources for our studies. I found that I was fairly good at using this ISTE standard, because I was able to find research many different subject for my different videos. The best example of this would be my revolution videos, I used critical thinking to narrow down all of the different sources our group had found on the different revolutions until we had a few great sources that we could continuously refer to when making our videos. I was also able to improve on this standard through out these videos because each one required research so each time I was able to use what I had learned from the last video and apply it to the on I was creating at the moment.
Innovative designer
“I use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problem by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions.”
I found that this standard was one of the hardest to improve on because it is about solving problems in new and useful ways. This can be hard because if you find a solution to a problem that works pretty well you won’t want to try to find other ways to fix the problem. This is why I found that I struggled with this standard a bit when it came to making our videos. One of videos I had trouble with for this standard was our four shot film. We had made a story for our film but only had four shots to tell it in which made the task much harder, we ended up having to cut a lot of our story. However we could have avoided if we had spent time brainstorming and using different technologies at our disposal to come up with an innovative way to tell our story with four shots. I’ve used what I learned from this experience in my future videos, like the Alberta Identity video where I had to come up with a creative way to tell the story of the Artists in a mere four minutes.
Computational thinker
“I developed and employed strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions.”
I found that overall i used this standard in almost all of my videos since I always run into a problem when making a video. Since there are always problems that need to be solved when it comes to making videos I’ve gotten pretty competent in this standard. The best example of me getting better at using this standard is my Ghost Town video and Run Remake. For the Ghost Town video we had gotten to the Ghost Town and it turned out that the places we had wanted to film were blocked off with bars and glass so instead of just finding a new place to film that looked close to the place we originally wanted to film we ran around trying to create a whole new story setup for the new set. We were unable to use this standard and understand the problem and develop solutions that would have been a lot easier. However when if came to the Run Remake video when we had gotten feedback that our first draft wasn’t close enough to the original we went through and came to the conclusion that we had to reshoot everything. We understood the problem and used our technology to come up with the solution that made the most sense.
Creative communicator
“I communicated clearly and expressed myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to my goals.”
I believe that this standard is the one that I can use the best because every video I create is to communicate a message or to express myself. I have used many different styles and tools to help covey my message. I use all these different methods because each video has a different mood and theme to it so I have to change my way of telling the story so there’s no weird double moods going on in the video. Take, for example, my Take Your Kid To Work Day video, I decided that I wanted a more professional tone to the video so instead of have myself do a voiceover I used subtitles and my interviews as the ways to tell the story. I also feel like I was able to express myself creatively by using the interviews as voiceover.
In the end I’ve grown tremendously when it comes to my use of the ISTE standards, some more than others. I’ve been able to learn from my past videos and stop myself from making the same mistakes. I was able to figure out what worked well in my past videos and how could I apply it to the one I’m doing now. This reflection has helped me realize what I still have to work on for my videos and how I can improve them in the future.