Week 5

  Welcome back to my blog as we approach the completion of my Genius Hour Project. This week I began the process of gathering information to wrap up my project. First, I planned the ideas for both my Ted Talk and then the way my culminating Drone video would complete my final piece of the project.  After that, I prepared and completed my Ted Talk with the purpose to educate others about my learning on Drones and how these devises could be effectively implemented in education. Next week my final project will be posted, so stay tuned. 

I found preparing the speaking parts and filming my Ted Talk very challenging. My initial goal was to share a comprehensive captivating story about my journey without seeming it to be a simple retell.  With that in mind, I created my Ted talk without a script because when looking online I found that many excellent Ted talk speakers mentioned that they did not use scripts and the ones that did use scripts found the scripts were very distracting to their presentation to the point that they lost the audiences’ attention. In preparation, I knew my material and lived my learning experiences so I knew I could perform my speech naturally. After some research, I decided to use Will Stephen’s How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk to help me. My Ted Talk was a little bit longer than expected as I found I had so much to share about my topic and experiences that it would not fit into the 5-minute timeframe even with being concise with my word choices. I realized during my online search, that most Ted Talks were about 8 to 9 minutes long, so mine at 10 minutes would be an acceptable timeframe. I wanted to make my Ted Talk a lasting quality video that could be used to educate others about my work and the way Drones can help others learn about the world around them. If you would like to watch my TED Talk, please click on the link on this blog. 

As this was the final week to capture video to use for my final project, I had little choice but to film in the rain. I did get permission to film at Green Venture again and I was curious to see if the footage would be compromised with the rain.  I had to video tape the footage during the evening when the location was empty.  This precaution kept me within the restrictions of my Drone licence, according to guidelines set up by Transport Canada.  I planned ahead and brought extra batteries which I ended up needing to finish filming. I quickly learned that a 5-minute Drone video can require much more video footage using up many batteries.  After many hours of flight time to get the different angle shots, I took the video clips home to work on the editing part.  I also kept in mind that I would not have the chance to obtain any additional video clips during editing at home so, I made sure to get extra shots.  During the Drone flights, I unexpectantly found that birds and Drones have a love or hate relationship. Some birds I had to avoid as they tried to attack the Drone.  Most birds tried to fly in groups with the Drone which affected the video quality as they would get in the way of the camera lens. Once I got home, I did some additional research to include factual information for my voice overs on the final cut. 

This upcoming week I will edit my final clips to my video using Final Cut pro and place the finished product on my Blog site for everyone to view. Thank you for following my Drone journey on this blog.  I hope it will inspire you and others that Drones can be used to film places of interest or help teach STEM related experiences that would benefit any lesson.