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.
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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.
But before I spill those beans, I should you remind you about Digital Storytelling Week kicking off our back to school webinars. 8/3/09 Thinking Outside the Slide: Creating non-linear PowerPoint presentations and learning centers with Discovery Education Media 8/4/09 Digital Storytelling Made Easy: Using Discovery Education Content with Animoto and PhotoStory 8/5/09 Director’s Cut: Discovery Education Media and MovieMaker (PC) 8/6/09 Director’s Cut: Discovery Education Media and iMovie (Mac)
The students and staff at Full Sail University shared an inexpensive, “secret” formula for chroma key green paint just in case you’d like to paint a wall (and maybe the floor) some place. Thanks to several Apple Distinguished Educators for sharing the recipe that I either forgot to write down or lost. I believe these tint codes are for Loews:
103-4Y
113-1Y
1145Y32 BASE 4
And yet another ADE recommended Behr S-G-430 (“Sparkling Apple”) from Home Depot.
The American Film Institute is hard at work integrating ScreenNation into its newly revamped website. Your students can view the work of others their age and add their own. Interested? If you’re 11-19 years old, send a link to your YouTube film or video to screennation@afi.com.
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!
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!
You probably know that I always stress writing as the basis of good storytelling. And you know that you can’t tell a good story without getting your facts straight. So, with that in mind, the DEN would like to get your story. If you have participated in the Discovery Educator Network or ever attended a DEN sponsored event, could you take 5 minutes and give us your thoughts?
On Tuesday, April 14th at 7 EDT (since I’m sure you’ve all got your taxes finished and those refunds in the bank) you can drop in on my last Makin’ Movies webinar of the school year, Lights, Camera, Publish! and see ways to share your videos and learn from others. We’ll take a look at the American Film Institute’s ScreenNation, TeacherTube and a few of the winners in various education video contests like the Great Minds Foundation and BrainyFlix. You can check the schedule and register here.
And two weeks later on April 28th, you can follow up with Makin’ Movies, Made Simple:
Digital Storytelling doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you may be surprised at how easy it can be! Jennifer Gingerich breaks it down for you and shows how you and your students can achieve incredible results using tools you most likely have access to already!
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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.
