The 3rd annual DEN Streamathon is just about to get underway. TWELVE hours of non-stop presentations on getting the most from Discovery Education streaming and the Discovery Educator Network.
I’ll reprise my overview of streaming’s digital storytelling resources at 6pm EDT just before Hall follows that up with Ten Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Video and Two Things You Did and then Lance winds it all up with his State of the DEN address. Try to drop in at least once during the day.
I just finished “grading” the first assignment from my Wilkes U. digital storytelling students and it got me thinking (along with an iChat I had with Hall Davidson and his daughter last week). I needed to know what equipment my students have at their disposal to make the videos that will be the bulk of our assignments over the next 7 weeks. My reasons were ulterior, of course. I want to spot potential obstacles and head them off if I can. So here is my reflection on the class inventory. I welcome your thoughts on what you have access to, and what you would like to have.
FireWire (1394 or iLinc) ports: These aren’t necessarily standard on PC’s, especially the low bidder models that schools tend to buy. We Mac folk are spoiled; they’ve been standard since the original iMac. PC people need to buy a card for their desktop or laptop OR get video from a USB device like a still camera that can take movies, flash memory cameras like the Flip, or DVD and hard drive camcorders which also all seem to be USB.
Speaking of USB, I think all scanners are USB now because only the oldest computers have serial and SCSI ports. But do they get used like they used to? Helping an 8th grade class with their DVD yearbook last spring, I found they were very focused on video and digital stills. The few paper photos they had caused a temporary back up at the only scanner in the classroom. Sharing my senior citizen disdain for lines, they quickly figured out that the built-in camera could get a passable image with a lot less hassle and the scanner was soon completely abandoned. Does anyone import from a document camera?
Back to camcorders, the new DVD and hard drive models have been a pain in my workshops when people don’t bring along a laptop with the propietary software loaded. One of the few improvements I like in iMovie ‘08 is that it can import a hard drive camcorder effortlessly. I am thinking that flash camcorders will cause schools to leapfrog that technology all together, not to mention the Dembo/Davidson revolution of cell phone cameras in class.
Memory is another thing that suffers with low bidder computers (and age!) I have only one student with less than a gigabyte of RAM. I hope our modest assignments don’t bring her computer to the brink. I have to think a lot of the MovieMaker crashing complaints I hear are because of minimal RAM. We really just take for granted all the processing that goes on internally when editing video, but it is REALLY memory intensive. Pros used to regularly spend as much or more on RAM and expanded storage as they did on the actual computer. Now that both are so inexpensive, the ratio has fallen.
So, to paraphrase that recent TV commercial campaign, “What’s in your (digital storytelling) wallet?”
I know many of you are struggling with finding enough hardware to support the media projects you’d like to engage your students with. So here are a couple of quick tips on funding sources:
Best Buy’s Teach Awards will be distributing up to $2 million in $1-5,000 increments. Apply by October 12th. I got to spend a day with a district that won their $250,000 grant last year.
Tech&Learning magazine has a site with links to grants in addition to a few articles on funding opportunities.
Donors Choose lets you post your proposal and benefactors contribute to make it a reality. And speaking of that style of funding, you can be a venture capitalist yourself by investing in third world small businesses at kiva.org.
I suppose this is only tangentially related to digital storytelling, but it certainly seems handy enough to pass along. Thanks to an English Apple Distinguished Educator in my PLN, I have just started to play with this new online slide creation program, 280 Slides. Since I’ve only toyed with SlideShare (which I believe does not have a creation option), I don’t have much to compare it to. But I do like the look, feel and versatile options. You can publish on the web, send to SlideShare, embed on a site, and download as a PowerPoint. Also, it looks like it’s pretty darn simple to add media from the likes of Flickr and YouTube. Their demo presentation brings the new Batman trailer right up. So, take the tour and take it for spin. I think I may try to make my “Makin’ Movies” (minus all the copyrighted goodies) presentation available with this.
…you! As the summer “break” is a time to rest, recharge, and gather ideas for the upcoming school year, I thought I would take the next two months to reflect on the contests I have mentioned by looking at the winners and exemplary entries from each. Since imitation is the highest form of flattery and also a great way to learn about making student videos, I encourage you to join me this Tuesday at 7pm Eastern for a Discovery Connect webinar. In the coming weeks I will be attempting some in depth analysis of winning videos, but on Tuesday we’ll take a preview tour of just some of the sites. You can register here.
Here are the contest websites I’ve mentioned during the past school year. You can check my Contests/Festivals archive under “Categoties” for more details on each.
Fair Weather Entries
Don’t let this nice weather (unless you’re dodging tornadoes) distract you. There are just over three weeks left to get your 5th-8th grade student or DEN teacher video entry for the Discovery and 3M Young Scientist Challenge. To help you get inspired and get your facts straight, the fine folks at Discovery have put together a list of resources. And there are many great sites here that will be useful in the science classroom all year long. The list actually leads off with other competitions and celebrations that spotlight science in education. One that particularly caught my eye is Destination Imagination. It’s actually not just for science, but a multidisciplinary challenge, “Destination ImagiNation is a community-based, school-friendly program that builds participants’ creativity, problem solving, and teamwork in enjoyable and meaningful ways.”
Got a chance to meet some new friends today and reconnect with old ones at “Technology & Learning” magazine’s Midwest TechForum. What started out as a shared digital storytelling student showcase with good buddy Jon Orech grew into a full Makin’ Movies presentation in order to cover a friend’s session when he suddenly became ill. So, as promised, here is what would have been in the handout.
The American Film Institute’s ScreenNation. Watch, learn, upload, participate in a challenge. Also, AFI’s ScreenEd website.
Compare “How Do Parabolic Reflectors Work?” to “Bernouli’s Principle” on the Discovery and 3M’s Young (and “Old”) Scientist Challenge. It’s the difference between simply documenting an event and making a few simple edit decisions to bring the learning home.
The International Student Media Festival “No PDA’s”
Great Minds - Healthy Living Challenge. Compare how two different student crews make some dry statistics about adolescent health come to life in “New Threat” and “Dr. Weird”
My homepage with videos and tips.
And a list of exemplary student videos is never complete without a tip of the hat to my hero Marco Torres and the work of his many students.
Also a quick link to Apple’s new moviemaking curriculum. More (a lot more) on that soon.
Over on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog Vicki Davis is looking for the 10 best videos for promoting educational change. Drop in to add your favorite or see what’s in the running. And more than just a popularity contest, Vicki is looking to give tech ed evangelists “something that helps them ’sell’ what they are doing” to other teachers, school boards, PTSA, etc. Cool!
It’s spring and many a teacher’s fancy turns to video projects once the standardized testing marathon and break are over. Discovery Education streaming is loaded with ideas and tutorials. So let’s take a look and find what’s lurking in the Professional Development area in the Trainer’s Toolkit. You will need to be logged in to your ‘streaming account to follow the links.
Digital Storytelling is a logical place to start.
Make the editing software as easy and transparent as possible in order to focus on the content.
iMovie
MovieMaker
PhotoStory
Adobe Premiere Elements and a detailed walk through In Professional Development-> Project Demonstrations under Digital Editing
Interviewing Reagan is NOT just for Premiere Elements! That project encourages students to edit their questions into a President Reagan clip. You can mimic an interview or press conference with any historical figure by using archival footage or even still pictures with student voice over.
Nor is visiting Paris just for iMovie! Make a commercial for visiting a foreign country or even a planet with editable video and/or still pictures from ‘streaming resources. Follow the sun around the moon as you play 18 holes of golf and drive the ball six times further than you can can earth.
Got to reconnect briefly with Jason Ohler at MACUL last week and sat in on his “Web 2.1 and the World Beyond Essays: Kids, Art the 4th R, and the World of Multimedia Collage” spotlight. I have always enjoyed Jason’s insights and especially like his big picture perspective on “media narrative and the Web 2.1 mediascape.” Out of all the great thoughts and stories he shared in that hour, “well intentioned paperwork” is still echoing in my brain. In the age of AYP remediation and especially in this season of standardized testing, this PhD college professor fondly remembered his 2nd grade teacher and a music teacher for setting him on a path of life long learning.
So what will your students remember and keep close for the rest of their lives? A project that flipped on a light that rarely goes out? A story that made a point that resonates again and again? “Well intentioned paperwork?” I have also promised myself (a good intention no doubt) to finish reading at least one of Jason’s two books before I see him again.
Contest alert: Great Minds challenge videos are due by March 25th. Check the site to see what students have done to promote this year’s challenge on healthy living.
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