Best of Ross and Rachel!

Wow this assignment took me a lot longer than I thought it would and in the end I am only 80% satisfied with the finished product!  Today's DS106 assignment came in the form of a mashup.  I spent way too long clicking through the choices but I finally chose one.

A changing character required me to pick my favorite character from an ongoing TV series and show video clips of the character's changes throughout the series.  'Friends' is my all time favorite show, so it only seemed natural that I complete this assignment using this show.  I decided to focus on the history of Ross and Rachel over the 10 seasons (if you are not familiar with the show, sad for you if you're not, Ross and Rachel date on and off all 10 seasons).  Some clips are longer and some are shorter but the goal was to show a dramatic change.

I used Clip Converter to download YouTube videos of Friend's clips.  It was very easy to use and required no reading instructions, my kind of program.  I then uploaded all the clips to Windows Movie Maker and edited the clips from there.  I added a title page and credits page and captions depicting each season.  I was unhappy with the transitions between clips.  I couldn't figure out how to make them fade in or out nicely and make the transitions smoother.  Maybe next time I will try a different movie making software.  Anyway, here is the finished product!

You might be wondering what this video mashup has to do with technology in the classroom...well I took my classmates' advice from last week and decided to discuss how I might use something similar in my classroom.  I was thinking this could be a cool way to show a student's growth over the year; to show the progression of their writing, reading tests or progression of their blog posts from fall to spring.  It might be a little challenging for third graders but we could work on it together as a class or save this for the day I might become a technology teacher for all grades....