I just want to remind you all of the Department of Education’s invitation to have students (13 years and older) share the importance and relevance that their education has and will have in their lives. The deadline is Monday, November 2nd.
Reposted from September 26th:
I am what I Learn
Apparently, that’s what the Department of Education thinks and would like to hear students’ thinking on that in a 2 minute video. And by student they mean “an active middle, secondary or college student 13 years or older.” I’m sure they set 13 as the starting point because of YouTube’s terms of service. If sharing their viewpoint with the federal government isn’t enough of an incentive for your students, the three winners will also receive a $1,000 award.
And if your students don’t want to or can’t enter the actual contest, they could still take the challenge to share their feelings with the class, school, administration, and maybe even the community as a whole. This is a great opportunity to encourage your students to think about what value they place on their education (and what investment they need to make personally).
Saturday, October 24, 2009
9 AM to 4 PM ET
Click here to register for the virtual sessions.
10. College football is overrated.
9. The digital treats you’ll take away won’t cause cavities.
8. You can attend in your pajamas (virtually or in-person, we’re flexible).
7. Two full hours of the soothing sounds of Justin Karkow
Can I Help You With That? The Student as Collaborator, Creator and Director (9 AM and 3 PM ET)
6. A chance to win a HD Flip Cam for dressing up as your favorite Discovery personality
5. Brand new interstitials
4. Any time Steve Dembo uses the word “bling” in a presentation, watch out!
Putting the Bling in Your Builders (12 PM ET)
3. The archived sessions just don’t have the same pizazz.
2. Amazing professional development for the very reasonable price of…FREE.
1. Networking, networking, networking!
For the schedule and more information, visit: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/virtcon09.
Crossposted from http://blog.discoveryeducation.com
One of the contests that tickles this old linguistics guy’s fancy is the one a couple of MIT alumni run celebrating vocabulary words: Brainyflix and Brainypics. This time they are starting out with a Brainypics flashcard contest, in which students create interesting sentences and pair them up with memorable pictures as a visual cue. Between now and Dec. 7 they will be selecting 5 Brainypics each week which will qualify for the Grand Prize of $200. They are also giving out iTunes songs for every 5 Brainypics created and gift cards to the runner ups of the finale. Full details here: http://brainyflix.com/main/contest_rules.
And if a $30,000 classroom makeover puts a song in your heart, how about making your own music video explaining the value of technology in education? eInstruction’s contest has three categories spread through K-12. Get your song in by Nov. 10th to be considered.
Just a little under 3 weeks left in the Department of Education’s contest asking for videos answering the question, “Why is your education important to fulfilling your dreams?” November 2nd is the deadline and 13 is the minimum age to enter.
Upload a 1-2 minute video, podcast, or other multimedia file that explains how you use Discovery Education resources to engage your students. Whether you take students on virtual field trips, or guide students as they produce their own multimedia projects, we’d like to share your ideas with the entire Discovery Education community. Each submitter will receive a limited edition Discovery Education sweatshirt “hoodie” just in time for the changing seasons. Upload your submission by 8pm EST on November 15th.
For the details log in to your streaming account through discoveryeducation.com/awesome
I’ve been getting a few questions from Mac users (including myself) who recently updated to Mac OSX 10.6 wondering what happened to their Flip camcorder accessibility. Turns out it’s just a matter of re-installing the latest Flip software and/or adding Perian to your bag of tricks in order to get the 3ivx codec. Now go on. Make some movies with your students. No excuses.
Apparently, that’s what the Department of Education thinks and would like to hear students’ thinking on that in a 2 minute video. And by student they mean “an active middle, secondary or college student 13 years or older.” I’m sure they set 13 as the starting point because of YouTube’s terms of service. If sharing their viewpoint with the federal government isn’t enough of an incentive for your students, the three winners will also receive a $1,000 award.
And if your students don’t want to or can’t enter the actual contest, they could still take the challenge to share their feelings with the class, school, administration, and maybe even the community as a whole. This is a great opportunity to encourage your students to think about what value they place on their education (and what investment they need to make personally).
When I retired from teaching 3 years ago I thought I’d have plenty of time to spend with my grandchildren, keep up with educational technology, and get serious about playing the banjo and guitar. So, one out of three ain’t bad, right? .333 would just about make me an all-star in baseball. And the grandbabies and I are enjoying life.
Just when I thought I had a handle on flash memory camcorders, my good friends at Apple give the Nano a video camera. After a week of mulling it over, I finally went over to the Apple store to try one out. Kid stuff, just as I expected! And the “kid” at the door at the Apple store knew she didn’t even have to accompany me over the the row of sample models, “They’re over there, help yourself, sir.” The only problem I had was keeping my big fingers out of the way of the lense on the tiny device. Menu to video record, center button shoot, center button stop recording, Menu to play video. Importing is just as easy. Now, do I think this is a viable device for schools to invest in? No. If you’re getting iPods, get Touches - they are flexible Internet devices and interesting mini-computers. If you’re getting flash camcorders, I still like the Flips and Kodak’s Zi series (presently working on Kodak to send me an evaluation Zi8 model). BUT, PC or Mac school though you be, you’d better be ready for a flood of students who will be bringing their own video equipped iPods to school in the near future.
Now, where did I put my finger picks and that Peter, Paul & Mary book?
P.S. R.I.P. Mary, sure loved your singing, energy, long hair flying, and wry humor. I will be sharing many of your songs with my grandchildren as the years go on.
Michael Hakkarinen took on the iMovie webinar duties on August 6th and diplomatically stuck with iMovie HD6, avoiding the iMovie ‘08 and ‘09 quagmire. I won’t stick my foot in that (or my mouth) right now except to say that if you have iMovie ‘08 in your school/district, update to ‘09 ASAP. It’s very cheap. A site license also allows for 50 home licenses. ‘09 is what I had hoped ‘08 would be (even though it’s a big change in the interface). In any event, Michael’s webinar is archived and available for download. He does a nice job showing how easy it is to find and add Discovery clips to a project, edit them and then do your own voice over. There is easy integration with importing from iTunes and iPhoto and exporting to iDVD. And I have to second his advice about keeping transitions unobtrusive, maybe even just limiting them to major changes in the story. His advice about adding transitions and then audio at the very end in order to not disrupt the timing of the whole project is golden.
There is just a bit of wishful thinking about being able to download HD6 from the Apple site if you only have ‘08 or ‘09. Apple did offer a free download of HD6 if you only had a copy of iMovie ‘08 on your computer. However, when iMovie ‘09 was released that download disappeared from the website 
The downloads that Michael references at the beginning of the archive are just updaters if you already have the two previous versions. But he is right in his thinking - iMovie HD6 and iMovie ‘09 can be a powerful combination for editing video and creating great learning stories with your students. If you want to move seamlessly between the two programs use the Apple Intermediate Codec to export.
Suddenly no one is wearing white, so it must be after Labor Day! To much controversy and hoopla, the president has welcomed our students back and encouraged them to work hard. And we are all wondering where the summer went. So just in case you missed our back to school summer webinars that would have warned you school was about to happen again, they are all archived or in the process thereof. If you were especially absent during the first week in August like I was (Disney World with the grandbabies - I have a note!) and missed the best series (no prejudice on my part here), you can catch the Digital Storytelling Week webinars at the top of that archive list.
Let’s start with Lance Rougeux’s take on using MovieMaker and streaming resources since I just recommended that my Wilkes University students take a look at it before turning in their first edited video this week. You can download both a movie file of the presentation as it happened and Lance’s PowerPoint. Some highlights:
- navigating the new DES website interface
- copyright
- replacing the narration with student voices
- saving the file vs. exporting as a movie
- exporting in high quality in order to import as a new project and get an extra audio track
Also archived (or about to be): “Thinking Outside the Slide,” PhotoStory, Animoto, and iMovie.
At the beginning of the summer I promised a good comparison between what I think the two front running video flash memory cameras for education are. Almost exactly two months ago, I shared some general thoughts about the Flip line and Kodak’s Zi6. Nothing’s changed in that time; I still like them both. While you can import both camera’s video files easily into Mac programs, MovieMaker will only take the Flip’s files without conversion. However, the only higher level PC video editing software I use, Adobe Premiere Elements, accepts the Kodak’s files effortlessly, but needs the Flip’s converted first. Go figure!
In a completely unscientific comparison test this summer, we used both cameras on our trip with the grandbabies to Disney World. I preferred the Zi6 but my Flip Ultra isn’t an HD model so that’s apples and oranges. Still, both cameras’ videos turned out just fine on the DVD I put together. Now here’s the newest wrinkle. On Tony Vincent’s blog today I see that Kodak’s next generation, the Zi8, will have the ability to take an external microphone and still come in under $200 (but you’ll need an SDHC card). Now that’s a dealmaker!
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