California DEN

I just really wanted to say “nomenclature” so I thought I’d write an entire post on it. Actually, I had been a bit confused by the changes in names of some Discovery products over the last few months and wanted to get a few things cleared up. In particular, I was curious about the new “Discovery Streaming.”

I spoke to Jannita Demian, a national manager for the Discovery Educator Network to get some insight on what I thought was a a huge brand name (United Streaming that is). Jannita said that Discovery wanted all of their products to have brand unity and that, as big as United Streaming is, the name Discovery has even bigger brand recognition. For instance, most people know of the Discovery Channel and now they can connect the two. Makes sense…

Don’t forget to check out this great Discovery site to catch their episodes of your favorite shows! (I get a $1.00 kick-back for everyone who clicks on this… kidding). Along those lines, many other major stations offer online access to their shows as well. Missed the last episode of Grey’s Anatomy? Catch it on ABC.com

Greetings CA DEN! We hope all of you have had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends! Are you attending CLMS/CLHS/CUE? Several of our CA Star Discovery educators are presenting at the conference, so be sure not to miss: Carol Anne McGuire, (closing keynote speaker), Scott Skidmore, Scott Johnson, Martha Snider, as well as Hall and Kim. (Please let me know if I’ve missed anyone on accident). Don’t forget to swing by the exhibit hall. We’ve partnered up with CUE to form a special DEN/CUE member lounge at our booth. We’d love to see you, so please stop by!

The CA Discovery Education team will be hosting a DEN social gathering during the conference and we hope you’ll join us! Feel free to bring a colleague who you think would be a great new Star Discovery Educator!

When: Friday November 30th, 2007

Where: The Crown and Anchor, 150 W. Franklin, Monterey, CA (Across from the Marriott, we’ll be out on the patio baring no rain).

Time: 5pm-6:30pm

RSVP: Please RSVP here.

Appetizers and fun surprises included!

Welcome to guest blogger, Herman Bautista, a DEN member from Santa Ana, California. Herman writes us his account of a recent DEN event:

I was lucky enough to win a spot in one of AFI’s Screen Education classes. As a sort of “thank you” for allowing me to attend, I’ve agreed to provide a guest blog regarding my experiences with the program. It’s my hope that you’ll be inspired by my ramblings or at the very least, be more willing to be creative with the inner-director in you.

AFI Screen Ed. is a program geared toward 9th through 12th graders and K-12 teachers. It’s intent is to demystify the video production process. In essence, it crams the very basics of film school into one or two days.

I was confident that my skills as a cameraman/director were good if not better than average. Since falling in love with iMovie a few years ago, I have dabbled in making videos for family and school purposes. In June of this year, I won an award in the teacher created video category of the 41st annual Student Media Festival for a video entitled “The Star View Experience“ . As an “award winning director,” what more could I learn?

In a couple of words, a lot…

Our AFI Screen Ed. instructor, Frank Guttler, is a master of his craft and took great pains to teach us the technical aspects of camera work and editing. He put us through the same lessons that I will be teaching my students in an afternoon GATE enrichment class. This includes a lesson where students take a camera and, with very little instruction, shoot a film sequence about a person opening a door while hearing a frightful noise. This of course is followed by a critique of the sequence and a discussion of what could be done better.

I was taken aback from how much I did not know about making movies. My sequence seemed to have a lot of comments from Frank about how things SHOULDN’T be done. I heard for the first time terms such as “garden hosing” and “lack of use of a dolly shot.” (Not good things in film speak.) In retrospect, the fact that so many of my fellow classmates looked like REAL film students with $2000 video cameras should have given me a clue that I wasn’t in a classroom full of novices. So much for an award winning director.

The most important thing I learned was something that was conveyed in class but never directly said: a videographer uses the camera to make videos; a film maker uses the camera TO TELL A STORY.

That being said, I took in all I could from the remaining four lessons of the class and will implement them and others with my GATE students.

It is my hope that I will report many good things to you in the future.

Herman