Digital Storytelling

I have to admit to myself (and you) that I just can’t put together cogent, well thought out blogposts when I’m caught up in the swirl of a conference like NECC. Keynotes, debates, concurrent sessions, poster sessions, chance encounters, vendor visits, old friends, new friends… I think I just need to serve things up as little more than 140 character Plurk/Tweets until I get home and can distill some of this overpowering input. So, with that off my chest, I attended our annual birds of a feather Digital Storytelling SIG for just 30 minutes this afternoon and got this gem to share from PBS’s Frontline. They are putting a new spin on “work in progress” and inviting us to not only look and listen in, but also to be part of the story. Digital Nation is a documentary that will air in January 2010. Watch how it progresses and maybe take part in it yourself.

Watch this morning’s debate about the role/future of bricks and mortar schools. Though they declared a single winner, we all win by listening to these well thought out statements by some well known educators and two very eloquent high school students.

Just got a press release from the American Film Institute announcing a major upgrade for the ScreenNation site. There doesn’t seem to be a hard date yet, so I’m guessing by the end of summer at the latest. Join me in posting some of your favorite moivemaking how-to’s and/or encourage your students to share their work with the world.

Dear Educators:

This summer, the American Film Institute will launch a complete redesign of AFI ScreenNation - AFI’s Web site dedicated to featuring the best teen filmmakers on the Web.

The big difference is that AFI ScreenNation has been re-tooled to fully integrate YouTube into its framework.

In fact, AFI ScreenNation is part of an ambitious overhaul of AFI.com to include AFI’s Digital Archive. This means that teen filmmakers will have an opportunity to be featured next to videos that include AFI Life Achievement Award winners, AFI television programming and featured films from AFI Fellows and Alumni.

Furthermore, AFI ScreenNation will still include helpful tips and tutorial videos, as well as the complete instructional series LIGHTS, CAMERA, EDUCATION!

Now is your chance to recommend teen filmmakers to AFI ScreenNation. If you or a teen filmmaker that you know has a YouTube link to submit, please send it in an e-mail to screennation@afi.com.

  

Reflecting on this last school, it has become quite obvious to me that schools are moving away from mini-DV tape camcorders and towards less expensive, flash memory cameras like the Flip and Kodak’s Zi6 or Zx1. I think there may have been some brief flirting with DVD and hard drive camcorders, but they have their own management problems and don’t represent any significant cost savings. I had been planning to write a comparison of the two right at the end of school. What stopped me was importing video into Windows computers. (I am holding my Mac-biased tongue here, all my Apple video editing programs seem to be just fine importing video from either camera.) MovieMaker can handle the Flip’s video files after installing the right codec and Adobe Premiere Elements is  happy with the Zi6. However, the converse is not true and I haven’t been able to find any online solutions. So, one of my main goals at NECC week after next will be to try and get some face time with the camera and software people to see what they know. I would also like to hear from you. Do you use one of these cameras or another flash memory brand with PC software? Would you please share your story here via comment or email me at jbtv(at)mac.com?

Our own Scott Kinney testified before a House committee today. Here’s a cross-post from the DEN national blog.

Today, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing to examine how technology, innovative education tools, and digital content are transforming and improving education in America. The DEN’s very own Scott Kinney, Vice President of Outreach and Professional Development for Discovery Education, served as one of seven panelists who testified as to how technology and digital content can improve American education in the future.

Citing recent research, Scott illustrated that students use technology profusely at home, while most are unable to use that same technology in the classroom. Today’s tech-savvy students function by consuming, processing, and learning from media, in many forms simultaneously. Scott asked the committee to envision an educational system that supported the use of technology in the classroom, therefore, supporting how students learn naturally.

What do you think? If you were asked to testify in front of the House Education and Labor Committee on the Future of Learning, what would you share with them?

Most of us think of June 6th as D-Day, the Normandy Invasion. Well my neighbors and their teacher, Tricia Fuglestad, down at the Dryden school here in Arlington Heights, IL added their own “D” this year on June 6th as they won two first place awards at the Shortie Awards festival in D.C.

I had mentioned “Let’s be Green” in my re-cap of our state festival but had never seen Tricia’s own work about when red met green, “Complementary in Every Way” before. Leave it to an art teacher!

Complementary in Every Way from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.Check out all of this year’s winners in news, documentary, animation, and teacher created at http://www.shortie.org. Tricia, by the way, is an alumna of our Wilkes U./Discovery Education Digital Storytelling class (but not a section I taught personally- sigh!).

The latest round of winners have been announced in ISTE’s 30th anniversary, tell your technology story. But don’t dismay - you still have until June 15th to upload your story to be in the running for a trip to NECC Denver in 2010. Check out all the videos celebrating our journey incorporating technology into the classroom and ISTE’s 30th at http://www.istevision.org.

Kindergarten teacher Al Doss snagged an HP mini laptop for “Al’s Ah Ha Moment.” How can a brick and an Apple IIgs lead to a technology enriched classroom?

“New T-E-C-H-nology“  is a fun take off on a commercial done by engaged high school students who like learning in teams. Their effort won a Flip Ultra video camcorder.

Jack Tovey’s “Art for the Digital Generation” puts a new spin on Picasso and got him a copy of the ISTE book Visual Arts Units for All Levels.

I think I have a new favorite show on the Science Channel: Science of the Movies Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. It looks like it’s going to focus mostly on high tech F/X but I think we can borrow a few ideas for our students’ videos. Last week’s premiere episode featured a couple of neat effects that we can imitate easily enough in schools.

Doggicam is the name of a camera/filming company that got it’s start because a dog food commercial needed some dog’s eye view shots of the world “with attitude.” They developed a rig to see through Fido’s eyes and created a whole new industry to give us a fresh perspective by changing how we look at the world. There’s no reason we can’t share that philosophy through creative student projects. Set the camera down low to get an ankle level view of kids coming up the stairs or trooping down the halls during passing periods. Or strap the camera to a skate board to get a worm’s eye view of the world as it moves from here to there. (Picture courtesy of the Doggicam Photo Gallery)

Split screen is also a way to multiply your talent. This depends heavily on your software so Mac users are going to need at least iMovie ‘09 or iMovie HD6 with purchased plug-ins while PC folk would have to own a next level video editing program like Adobe’s Premiere Elements. There is a free MovieMaker plug-in but it can be a challenge to integrate. The big trick here (aside from either picture-in-picture or green screen capability) is to keep the camera locked down and immobile so that the backgrounds match up perfectly when you combine shots.  I think there are two ways to do it. The first is simply picture in picture where a cropped portion of one take is laid over one side of another take (i.e. actor on the left over actor on the right). The second is with the green screen/chroma key effect. You will have to wait for me to rearrange my kitchen studio to be able to video an example, but it’s just a take-off on the Harry Potter invisibility cloak that I demonstrated before. Your base shot is done with the actor talking to himself from one side of the screen. The second shot is either in front of a full screen green screen or with the green set up where the first self was (kind of a key hole). When you lay the second shot with its key color over the first, the first actor shows through the green and appears in and seems to be interacting with the second shot. See “Simply Integrated” from the finalists’ page of the California Student Multi-Media Festival. It’s about half way down.

And speaking of the CSMMF, it looks like they had another wonderful celebration of student creativity last weekend at both ends of the state. See our man-on-the-street Hall Davidson report over at Media Matters.

P.S. and a quick tip for you MovieMaker users from my Digital Storytelling students at Wilkes University. In order to separate the audio from a video clip, just drag the clip down to the audio/music track. Voilá!

Since NECC is just four weeks away and the deadline to get your impact of technology story celebrating ISTE’s 30th anniversary in, in time for this month’s drawing (an HP mini notebook or iPod touch, Flip video camera, and the ISTE book, Visual Arts Units for All Levels) deadline is May 31st, I thought it a good time for a little reminder. The grand prize will be a trip to NECC 2010 in Denver. You can see plenty of contributions already at the ISTE Vision website but might you not have some thoughts to add also? All submissions will be playing on special kiosks throughout the NECC convention center.

Graphic from ISTE’s site supporting your learning (and teaching) journey with a focus on digital citizenship.

The clock is winding down on this year’s Discovery Education and 3M Young Scientist Challenge. To add just a little more impetus to your students joining in or simply using digital storytelling to share what they know or care about in science, last year’s Young Scientist of the Year, Melissa Rey, will be doing a webinar Wednesday, May 13th. Whether you plan on throwing your hat in the ring or just want some ideas to get or keep your students interested in science, this should be an hour well spent with an exceptional young lady. Register here for the 1:00 PM EDT webinar.

 

FYI, just got this from the Center for Digital Storytelling:

Dear Friends of the Center for Digital Storytelling,

As we wrote last month, the 2nd International Day for Sharing Life Stories will take place this Saturday,  May 16th, 2009.

We are asking all of the folks on our mailing list to take 10 minutes this week to visit http://www.ausculti.org and join on our newly updated website.  Log in to add your name, information about your organization’s work, links about sites related to your work, or of general interest to our communities.

We have also built the site so that each point on the map can include a media story.  You will simply need to  copy the embed code from the story (as with Youtube videos) and paste it into your post on the site.

About the International Day

Began last year as an opportunity to celebrate and promote life stories, as well as a way to encourage critical thinking, cultural democratization and social transformation. The International Day is organized by The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling (USA, Canada, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ireland and Portugal)

The chosen theme for this years’ Day is Journey for Justice – Migration and Refugees. The Human Rights Commission of U.N. estimates that there are currently 21 million refugees in the world. According to the International Organization for Migration, there are 200 million international immigrants all over the world. We want to hear the stories of people who have experienced migration in order to develop dialogue about this important matter in our societies and promote social change.

The day was chosen in part to honor Studs Terkel, the American writer, radio journalist and oral historian who passed away in October of last year.  Studs would have celebrated his 97th birthday this May 16.

Besides that, we could not leave aside the importance of any other person’s life stories. So, whatever your work with life stories is, join us!

The idea of the ausculti.org website is to show these stories and to promote a space for listening and exchanging experiences.

Post your stories, listen to other stories, and celebrate this day with us!