It’s baa-aack! The Insomnia Film Festival that is. 24 hours of cinema making bliss (or pandemonium). It’s fun. It’s quick. It’s exhausting. Assemble a team and come up with an original story and incorporate at least 3 elements from the super secret list that won’t be released until Nov. 15th at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. Then, you have all the way until 8:59 a.m. EST on November 16th to upload a 3 minute masterpiece. Get a team together and register by Nov. 13th. You can view last year’s winners and the ‘07 criteria here. But one of my personal favorites, Speechless, is from 2006.
Just as AFI’s second movie review challenge winds down and Halloween looms on the horizon, ScreenNation has another challenge and another Flip cam for the winner. In the spirit of the season, it’s Ghost Whisperer’s Jennifer Love Hewitt encouraging students to tell a ghost story. This one closes on November 14th, just in time to give everyone plenty of time to rest up for the Insomnia Festival and give one lucky spooktacular creator something else to be thankful for. I wonder if I could get my nephews to put that old Boy Scout legend of the pink-eyed walligammus on film…
The American Film Iinstitute’s ScreenEd program may have lost funding and been shelved, but the AFI’s own Bob Jennings is doing his best to make sure its spirit lives on over at ScreenNation. He has migrated some of the more useful assets like a few “Lights, Camera, Education!” how-to sample clips narrated by Sean Astin and (my personal favorite) the downloadable PDF 21st Century Teacher’s Handbook: Protocol and Materials Guide to the Screen Eduction Process from the old AFI.edu link. They can both be found in Channels section on ScreenNation. Of course, you Discovery Education streaming subscribers have full access to the two and a half hours of LCE! videos as well as the handbook which is the “teacher guide” found along with all of the “Lights, Camera, Education!” clips.
OK, looks like there have been some “technical difficulties” with the AFI server. If you’ve already uploaded a film review, you might want to check to see if it actually made it onto the site. AND if you haven’t entered this most recent movie review challenge, you now have until October 20th to share your opinion on a big screen release.
The American Film Institute’s ScreenNation has taken the Columbus Day weekend into account and extended the deadline for the most recent challenge to midnight PDT October, 15th. That gives you east coast people an extra three hours! All students have to do is review a movie in less than three minutes. The logic we have all come to know and love in good writing is tantamount as are a creative rating scheme and parent permission. Throw your opinion in the ring balcony for a new Flip cam.
Last spring Discovery Education and 3M partnered to invite 5-8th grade students and science teachers of any age to throw their safety goggles into the ring for the titles of Young Scientist of the Year and DEN’s Science Teacher of the Year. The initial application was done by making a short video explaining one of several choices of space related scientific principles. Last week, after being chosen as one of 10 student finalists out of hundreds from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Melissa Rey of Chesterfield, MO was selected as the grand prize winner of the student competition, capturing the prestigious title and $50,000 in U.S. Savings Bonds. Edward Evans from Welch, WV was named top teacher, winning a $5,000 cash prize, the Discovery Education multimedia service suite, and numerous products from 3M to be used throughout the school year.
Both were among the 10 students and 5 teachers chosen to compete at the Goddard Space Flight Center near D.C. All of the students will be appearing in their own Science Channel special on January 18, 2009 and each received a special award for their very own, individual science field trip. You can read and watch more about the competitions and peruse entrants’ videos at the Young Scientist Challenge website. Hopefully you will be inspired to join in on the ’09 challenge.
With just 3 weeks left in this inaugural term of the Wilkes University/Discovery Instructional Media master’s program, I feel like the god Janus. I find myself looking backwards on the wonderful work and collaboration my current students are sharing and forward to the Fall 2 term which begins on October 25th. There are already another three full sections for Digital Media in the Classroom and almost two full for Digital Storytelling. There is still time to get in before the new year and, of course, plenty of opportunity after that as other members of the Discovery Educator Network team (Kathy Schrock and Steve Dembo for instance) bring their expertise to a different set of classes.
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