Flying up to Anchorage last Friday, I had plenty of time to flip through the Northwest Airlines magazine. I found myself drawn to the article on the fact based HBO movie “Taking Chance.” Northwest has a special interest in the program since so many of their employees’ actions and reactions to the Marine Corps officer escorting Private Chance Phelps’ casket significantly contributed to the story. I was lucky to catch the movie as I flipped channels during my last night in Alaska. It is just a great story, masterfully told. There is so little dialogue! They let the images do most of the talking: eyes, a bike in the front yard, hands, Chance’s few personal effects, car headlights, and the ever so slow casket salute that is a regular refrain throughout the movie.
And the story of the story is an interesting story in itself. The cubicle bound Lieutenant Colonel who volunteered for this particular escort duty emailed his 20 page trip log to 8 friends. It spread virally through the Internet and he soon had HBO and Kevin Bacon knocking at his door. I heartily recommend this movie as a great exercise in visual storytelling and a fitting tribute to those who have fallen in combat.
…if you and some of your students get to go on one of 8 amazing trips to the Arctic, Australia, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador/Galapagos Islands, Italy/Greece, New Zealand/Fiji, or South Africa in 2010. And to prepare for that, in 2009 Discovery will be sending 9 DEN STARs to one of the 3 locations (Australia, China, and South Africa) along with 4 of their students at NO COST! That’s right, DEN STARs… these trips are free for you and your students!
You can get the whole story on the DEN home blog: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/
Graphic: Discovery Education. “World Map.” Discovery Education: http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/
As you can read over on the main DEN blog, “the Discovery Educator Network is participating in the next global collaborative project that Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay are creating!” You should head over there for all the details. Of course, what I have to add and want to focus on is a video challenge that goes along with Vicki and Julie’s newest project. You probably know author Don Tapscott for his book Growing Up Digital. Well Don is celebrating his new book Grown Up Digital by hosting a video challenge with the first prize being $1,000 to be used towards college or some sort of educational development, including subscriptions and conference registrations.
The challenge is open to all teachers and students AND “impassioned parents” and business professionals. You have until my brother and his son’s birthday, March 31st, to upload your video answering the challenge question, “How can we reinvent education for relevance and effectiveness for the 21st century?” Hall and I will be offering a few webinars in March during school hours to help teachers and their classes get their answers to that question into video format:
Webinar 1 (me): Wed, March 4, 1pm EST
Webinar 2 (Hall): Wed, March 11, 1pm EST
Webinar 3 (Hall): Wed, March 18, 1pm EST
Webinar 4 (me): Wed, March 25, 1pm EST
And in late breaking news: my copy of Apple’s iLife ‘09 came today. After only 15 minutes of noodling around, I think they have made up for last year’s disappointing rendition of my favorite video editing software. I’m not going to go overboard here but I’m seeing a time line once again, green screen, picture in picture, …!!!
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