Wrapping

Of wrapping, Dr. Lamb says: “Students need to consider what kind of product will best communicate their vision to others. What's the best way to express your ideas to others?” (http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/wrapping.htm

I have already given this some thought as I considered the weaving step, for when you organize ideas and resources, you must, I believe, consider the final format. The final format of your work is going to affect how you organize it.

Moving through a website is different that viewing a PowerPoint, and reading a blog is different from reading a wiki. Editing of these various format options is also a consideration. I have no real love of PowerPoint, and while blogging is fun, it manages data by days or months, not by subject. Webpages are terrific, but Google Page Creator, while fairly easy to use, also has some repeated editing issues. (I lost some formatting when changing templates on the last project, and I spent considerable time fixing it.)

One format I have started using this semester, and am gaining a greater appreciation of, is the wiki. Here is an online article on the advantages and disadvantages of wikis.

http://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/What_is_a_wiki/Advantages_and_disadvantages

From my own personal experience, using a wiki in another class, I agree with what the article author says: “The wiki has no predetermined structure - consequently it is a flexible tool which can be used for a wide range of applications.” This, for me, is a huge advantage for this project. Why? Here are my reasons:

1. I have a great many resources to sift and sort through. A wiki allows me to create a bunch of pages, then sort the resources onto the pages as I go.

2. Editing and reediting a wiki is very easy.

3. You can find free wiki hosting sites, and free is good.

4. I can add videos, pdf files, audio files, and images to my wiki with equal ease.

5. I can continue this project in the future, if I find more information, without ruining the format or layout I already have. I seem to do this regularly when editing webpages.

6. Did I mention that editing a wiki is easy? Well, it is. And easy, along with free, is very, very good.

I have used Wikispaces (at http://www.wikispaces.com/) and just to be different, and to see how another wiki service works, I chose to put my project up at wikidot.com. While this wiki host has slightly different methods of editing and composing from Wikispaces, I quickly learned what I needed to know, and off I went.

My wiki is found at: http://annettegriessman.wikidot.com/introduction.

Once I registered with wikidot.com, I was off and running. Nothing to it. Wikis are fun!

Videos and Publishing

One thing that I wanted to add to my wiki was some movies or videos of Derbyshire, at least the portion of the subdivision near my house. For another class, L603, I had already made some videos of the Chief Kokomo monument, using my daughter’s Canon digital camera to do so. For L603, I managed to convert the original Quicktime movies to .wmv format (Windows Media Format), in order to reduce the size of the files. Yet, I was never really happy with the size of the files, and would have liked to make them even smaller.

For this project, I really wanted to explore doing just that. A friend suggested I try converting the .wmv files to Flash, or .flv. To do so, I tried using a converter program called Total Video Converter. (Available for download at http://www.effectmatrix.com/)

This was something of an adventure, as I was able to convert the files to .flv, but in a couple of instances, the audio didn’t work with the Flash file. I tweaked the software, and finally got the audio to come through, but then for some reason, my Flash video player wouldn’t always open the file. (Sometimes it would, sometimes not. Gah.) I uploaded one of the files to Google Video (http://video.google.com) just to see if I could play it from there. I could, sorta. The quality of the video at this point was not what I was looking for—the image was definitely blurred. I know that others are able to convert video files to Flash, and still keep the quality. I’m not sure if it’s the converter I’m using, or the way I’m setting it up. I suspect that whatever I'm doing wrong is a simple thing, easily corrected, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was.

However, in the end, I decided to keep the videos in .wmv format. I converted these from .mov using a program called River Past Video Cleaner, available for download at http://www.riverpast.com/en/prod/.

Citations:

Lamb, Annette. Inquiry: The 8Ws: Wrapping. http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/wrapping.htm

Wiki Educator: Wiki Advantages and Disadvantages.

http://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/What_is_a_wiki/Advantages_and_disadvantages