Lights! Camera! Action!

Recently, there's been a lot of firsts for me.  I joined twitter, started tweeting. I started a blog and started blogging.  This week my first was creating a digital story!  Yes.  It's hard to believe, but it really was my first.

At first, I was really worried about putting a "movie" together.  I had a hard time choosing what kind of movie to make.  It was difficult partly because I had to post it on Youtube.  I had reservations about putting my personal pictures and pictures of my family members out in public.  I had to put much thought into deciding on the topic.  I started a movie about my favorite  person, my niece, then decided I didn't want that.  So, I started one on my friends but didn't want that either.  Finally, I ended up doing one on donuts.  It was about something I liked. It was personal. It was fun! It was a perfect topic!

Although I was worried about putting my digital story together when I began, I found that it was quite easy with imovie.  I was able to upload pictures from my personal photo collection and download images from the internet to make my movie interesting.  It was simple as drag and drop.

The next part was adding music and narration. This was when the challenge began.  Timing the music, ordering the pictures, deciding on the length of each picture was based on my preference and style. So, adjusting and watching, and adjusting and watching was a lot of work. The tricky part was to fit all the pictures to music in the way I wanted it.  I wanted to do it in a certain way, and that really took up a lot of time. The little things that had to be done after the initial set up, such as, altering and realigning and shortening and lengthening and cutting here and adding there, was a lot of tedious work.  The task was not hard.  It was just time consuming.  

When I was finally finished with my production, I was quite pleased and it was fun to watch something I had created.  I wasn't so inspired as I was making the movie.  However, when I saw the finished product, I was motivated to continue making more and thought of other ways to make and incorporate digital stories in my teaching.

Here is my first digital story.  Please take a look!~ And if there's anyone out there that thinks they can't do it, remember, I did it and so can you!~

I love donuts!

Tweet!~ Tweet!~

It's all new to me, this tweeting thing.~ What is tweeting?  Why do people do it?  What is there to talk about all the time?  And why does the world need to know everything about you?  These were some of my thoughts before I joined.  Well, now that I finally signed up and started using it, I got some answers!  

First of all, I thought tweeting was just for teenagers who wanted to be cool.  Or, for the outrageous celebrities who just needed to say... stuff.  However, when I started looking closely into it, reading posts and participating in some of the twitter chats, I changed my mind...~

After signing up for twitter I started following several organizations and people that I knew. I read through their tweets and realized tweeting is not all about ranting and sharing your negative view on things.  Reading the tweets of some of my colleagues and other professional organizations, I realized, twitter is a place where people share their thoughts, their feelings, inform others and share what they know. I learned that in most cases, people just want to be heard, say what's on their mind, and connect with other like minded people. I found this out when I read through some of the ELL tweets and joined the #ellchat. 
  
When I joined the chat, I didn't really know what to do or expect.  So, I just told them it was my first time joining a chat.  They were all so very nice and welcoming.  As the chat got rolling, others signed in and introduced themselves. For this particular chat, there was a moderator who posed questions.  Of course, this being my first chat, I sat back and read all the comments and answers being posted.  Although most of the conversation was directed to high school level teachers, I felt like I was part of the community of ELL teachers all over America. Actually, there were few teachers from overseas that joined, so, I felt like I was part of the ELL community all over the world!~  I think it was then I realized, twitter connects people!~ For teachers who are teaching in other countries or are in jobs where they don't have other colleagues who are in the same situation can totally connect with others around the world and get ideas as well as support by connecting with twitter! I found that I can look up just about anything and there is someone out there with whom I can connect with.  It's a great way to reach out and become a part of a community! I'm probably never going to meet these people, however, I have become "friends" and I am connected to them.

What I appreciated about the twitter chat was, I could join a group, be a part of it however long I want and leave without any obligations or apologies.  It's casual.  It's relaxing.  It's interesting. And I'm learning.  

Although I feel like I don't have very much to tweet, I am trying to get myself to tweet more. It's challenging for me to create a habit of tweeting but I am trying.  And so far, joining twitter and participating in the chats have been a rewarding experience!  I will continue to push myself to put my ideas, my thoughts and maybe even some of my feelings out there!~ Follow me on twitter @sarahlim828!  

These are some of the twitter organizations and people I enjoyed following.

#educationweek is an educational newspaper.  It has many links to articles, blogs, video clips etc. regarding education.  I found this to be very informative.  I can keep up with the latest news.

#spiraleducation is developed by a former 3rd grade teacher who believes in the spiral education from preschool to PHD programs.  She posts her thought on education, traditional teaching, new methodologies and much more.  It's interesting to read some of her thoughts.

#FingertipsEnglish focuses on ELL learners.  It's full of information on how to address certain topics with second language students, new technology that can help language learning and methods to improve vocabulary and grammar.  This mainly focuses on technology support for language learners.

#Seattleseahawks is a great way for me to follow my favorite football team!~  Because I live in Chicago, I often miss the Seahawks games and updates.  Twitter is a great way to follow them and keep update on my favorite quarterback and team!~