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.
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