Media Matters

Joe Brennan wrote me that Wal-Mart must be reading my blog. They pulled the losing format hi-def DVD players (HD DVD from Toshiba) off their shelves. I did predict the triumph of Blu-Ray when Warner Brothers jumped ship and left HD DVD for Blu. That being said, now is a great time to bottom-feed for great image technology. HD DVD decks are great technology, they just ceased being commercially successful. Making it the perfect time to buy one. A search on eBay this morning showed 9199 items for sale. And going up every hour. Yesterday, one player went for $61. That’s a lot of great image technology for the money. Why would you want a dead format player, limited to the movie/TV titles out now from the studios that supported the format? The RV, the cabin in the woods, the home of the elderly relative you visit who plays the TV too loud and only watches old movies. Watch also for retailers to start dumping their HD DVD titles, too. Get there FAST. The good ones will go immediately (then go back to eBay). I went through with Betamax (yes, I have one) and Laser Discs (I have two, thanks Steve Glyer). Another tip: Now that the price-depressing format war is over, the price of Blu players will go up. The features will improve with Blu 2.0 (look for online connectivity), but the prices won’t go low for awhile. So be on the lookout now for a Blu 1.1, and get them while they’re around at the old price. The expert quoted in the LA Times (Paul Erickson) agreed that Bu 1.1 is the one to look for. Of course, remember, a Blu lives in your PlayStation 3, if you have one. And remember, this only makes sense if you have a hi-definition television. Otherwise, just stick with old DVD players.

Videos are worth a thousand pictures–or least 24 pictures per second. When making points about global warming or other phenomenon on a global scale, wouldn’t it be fantastic to have visuals to make your point. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if you could build a story with those visuals to compare, contrast, and otherwise stimulate student thinking. Make a visit to Discovery’s EarthLive site. Here you can check out the basic World News about the Earth or select From the Field. From the Field gives you a selection of pushpins (shades of school bulletin boards!). Click on one of these pins and get information from experts in the field about the state of the earth. A click on the pin near the Canadian border yields a report on Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf from Dr. Robert Bindschadler, Chief Scientist of NASA’s Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory. A World News pin in Southeast Asia takes you to perilous dams in Cambodia. But the most fun is the feature that lets you overlay layers on the earth. You can click on Featured Stores (Biosphere, Earth Lights, etc.) or my favorite, Create Story. Click there and get a storyboard into which you can pull layers. By controlling opacity, or the order of layers, you can create a picture story. I built a story to let students compare Earth Lights with rainfall. Does the heat of city lights effect rainfall? Check the data every day and see for yourself. The hydrologic cyle, maybe? When you create a story, you also get code to post on, um, your blog. Here it is. Visit the site and try it yourself. Tell a story with the earth’s data!

OK, I was at MacWorld (as faculty in the education strand) and met Steve Wozniac— and didn’t blog. I was at FETC, where I spoke several times and began a meaningful dialogue with David Thornburg. And didn’t blog. I went to the Discovery corporate meeting where CEO David Zaslav was. No blog.   So why now?

Clark Magnet High School is why. On Saturday, Feb. 2, as the DEN knows, the DEN gave a virtual conference for more than 950 registered attendees. I was giving one of the first talks and made the presentation from the site of Anderson W. Clark Magnet School in Glendale, CA, part of the Glendale Unified School District. There, Katie Warren and Brett Harvey had done a really magnificent job of finding great food, great presenters, and a great facility. Frank Guttler from the AFI and I were both lucky enough to be in that neighborhood. So I gave my little talk about kid’s modern media minds and how they really have changed and the great rewards awaiting education if they engage that new mind. Afterwards, a man come to me and said “I want to show you this school.” That man was Doug Dall, the principal. No surprise he was there on a Saturday. He, Dr. Lila Bronson, district tech director, and I went on a tour of a school that was doing everything we talked about in the virtual conference–for real. Steel and formica real. It is impossible to do it full justice, but on the tour we passed volunteers from nearby JPL (the rocket science place) working with students on their robotics project. A doctoral candidate was helping kids in an ROP project. There were not only labs, there were model tech projects, new and old, include a flashing room of Intel switches (IT folks know they’re not in that business anymore). Everywhere there was evidence of students being engaged through the real use of technology. There was data from the Pacific shoreline on heavy metal pollution, there were magazine covers, essays, and graphics. There were also sculptures around and a serious nod to the arts. It was a school that did real work with kids, tied to a real and meaningful curriculum. Reading skills, too.  Yes, they were a National Blue Ribbon School (When asked how he accomplished that with so much project-based learning, Doug just winked). They warmed my heart with their chromakey studio and their world-class work with heavy metals at the ocean. “You know I’m doing something right when the FBI calls and wants my kids’ harbor data,” Doug said. Two really epiphanal things on the tour, that maybe only experienced teachers can appreciate. First, a printed note on a stack of papers that said “Note: I couldn’t finish the final because (name) made me enter the fish data in Excel - Love (name)”. And, a look in the bathroom (yes, they are key indicators). The school was ten years old and still had the original mirrors in the boys room. Teachers will know that this speaks volumes about students investment in the school. In an area adjacent to Los Angeles Unified, where my kids went, where the drop out rate is around 50%, Doug knew the one kid in ten years who didn’t complete the program at Clark. They are a Magnet, yes. ROP and AP tests are both live there. More than twenty home languages. Career building co-exists with Health. They are Title I, but have kids on the way to Cal Tech. The same principal for ten years, which tells you something. And a Saturday where the virtual met the real. Worth a blog, don’t you think?

The format wars fought over high definition DVD’s reminded many folks of the VHS-Beta videotape format wars decades ago. Many buyers sat out the war, not wanting to buy a format that would soon be obsolete. Stop the presses–you can start buying now. Blu-Ray has won. HD DVD was the competition. Content, of course, is more important than format when formats are roughly equal (hear that, Apple?), which means that the media studios were going to pick the winner. Paramount and Universal backed HD DVD, while Disney, FOX, Sony, and Lionsgate, went with Blu-Ray. Warner Brothers just broke the tie by going with Blu-Ray, so “expect HD DVD to die a quick death” said Pali Research in the LA Times today (Jan. 5, 2008). No coincidence that this is the first year in history that DVD sales went down instead of up. The studios would now like you to re-buy all those old DVD titles in the new hi-def formats (and, yes, “Lord of the Rings” will come first for me). Those of you with PS3 game machines already have Blu-Ray built in, and if you have other game boxes, check those manuals! Sorry times for we Wii players. Of course, any more time wasted might have caused manufacturers to miss the boat entirely, as hi-def movies become available online in the near future over those nice fat pipes (nice pipes for online educational media, too!). There are new formats always creeping around., There is 500 gig DVD format demoing at CES this week and we will able to go large from iPods, cellphones, etc., within a year or two, using technology like DisplayTech’s. But the satisfying ownership of media will be mean Blu-Rays will make their mark. If in doubt, drop into a store selling HD TV’s. They invariable show Blu-Rays and they look fantastic. The reason why The Eagles Greatest Hits remained the #1 selling album title was not because more people bought it on vinyl. They bought it on vinyl, then 8-track, then cassettes, then CD’s. Nice timing, Eagles. And, bad timing Warner Brothers–because I would have wanted Blu-Ray Casablanca under my tree had you weighed in a few months ago. More on media technology will follow here throughout 2008. It looks to be a fun year.

By the numbers: DVD sales and rentals by studio (Blu-Ray in bold)

Warner: 18.4%, Fox: 16.8%, Sony: 15.1%, Disney: 12.3%, Lionsgate: 5.8 Paramount: 12.5%, Universal: 10.3% (other: 10.1%)
source: LA TIMES, 1/5/2008

What Next?: Flat screens replacing projectors in classrooms? Check with Eagle County schools in Colorado, when John Kuglin is moving that way. Now there’s a shoot-out! I love both projectors and flat-screens. How would they compare connected to a Blu-Ray…..:)

Lots of different kinds of media in the first post of 2008. It will be a digital year! Numerologically, if you add the “2″ to the “8″ in 2008 you get all zeros and ones. Close enough. First, Young Hollywood: If you didn’t see Joe Brennan’s post, it still isn’t too late to judge the student media work from Irvine, Texas. Go here and take a gander. I LOVE student media like this. It’s a project from Elaine Plybon, a great DEN member whose picture was almost a permanent fixture on the DEN site. You still have until Jan. 7, unless they extend the deadline. Another idea worth a peek is the Student AUP videos from Scott County, Kentucky, courtesy of Jeanne Biddle. These Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) videos are a terrific way to bring the point home to kids of every grade level: put them in a video! And if “surfing” is involved, both metaphorically and real, you know you’ve grabbed the kids (I’m referring to the K-3 Training video). If you want some tips on chromakeying students into a curling wave using Mac’s Leopard OS, check out Brennan’s latest post. While you’re there, find the visual answer to the vital male question “when does real hair look like a toupee, instead of vice versa? ” Optical illusion since Joe has more hair than my college student kid. Joe made it into David Warlick’s 2007 Pictorial Review but he’s too modest to mention it. Myself, I made it into a Warlick podcast so I’m happy, even though he said I lived in Beverly Hills, not Hollywood. A digital difference of many zeros and ones in the real estate…Speaking of Hollywood, the terrific windstorm we had last week knocked down a 170-foot tree that almost took out the original Hollywoodland office. The famous Hollywood sign originally read “Hollywoodland” as part of a 1920’s real estate development. Last century’s big windstorm blew off the “H” and it was repaired with its current name in 1949. Los Angeles Times story and pictures here. The true New Hollywood is in today’s classrooms. A 2007 survey from Deliotte & Touche reveals that Millennials (age 13-24) generate–and consume–the most user-generated content. A staggering 58% create personal content in a typical week and even more, 71% regularly consume it. This generation “will define the future of media” and the big issues for media industries in this “media democracy” are the impact on “ad dollars, what devices need to be developed, and how internal operations need to be realigned”. Makes me happy to be at Discovery, which gets it. Note: When Millennials IM, the most common topic is favorite television shows . Old media: meet new media. Also, television is driving traffic to websites, second only to word of mouth. Big takeaway: Watch your cellphone! 62% of Millennials think of their phone as a source of entertainment. Just behind, 25-41 year-olds 47% see their cells that way–up from 29% just a year ago. Watch for cool stuff in these pages this year, including Discovery Mobile. How about a made for mobile series like this one: Earth Grooves, 6 4-minute episodes of music and visuals from nature. Produced by Christopher Wojcik. Stay tuned, boomers. So from ‘Hollywood students,’ Hollywood blowhards, and Hollywood in your pocket, that’s the end of the first post of 2008. I look forward to your comments.

Census image from deloitte.com at link provided above.

Discovery and the teachers of the Los Angeles School District connected with each other Saturday, Dec. 8, for a great Discovery Educator Network event at KLCS-TV in downtown Los Angeles. Great presenters were onhand, like Los Angeles Unified teacher Brad Upshaw, pictured with his critical questions poster he used in his videomaking session. Check out the rough version of the program below. It was deja vu for me. When I taught with LAUSD, my last job was as a teacher adviser at KLCS. The studio where I taught on television and where Doris Johnson and I worked as writers and teachers of VideoMathematics are still there. New and digital now, they still deliver instruction over the air. The magnet school where we had the DEN event was where the Video in the Classroom awards were born. Marilynn Fong (now at LACOE) , Cheryl Lee (now at Apple) and I worked on them as they were created twenty years ago. The first winner, those decades ago, was Julie Drake, now the media director at the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

I was privileged to give a mini-keynote. That, and all handouts are below. Handouts include the latest version of the Google Earth, iPod, and Media Project Building on the Dark Side sessions. Great thanks to the presenters, including DEN stars Dennis Grice (who was on his way to his father’s birthday), Sara Johangiry (who made the drive from Fontana), Brett Harvey, and LAUSD teachers Ken Shelton, Karen West, Warren Dale, and Brad Upshaw. Great working with them all! KLCS was represented by Jorge Briseno and his crew (thanks for the coffee, Jorge!). Discovery folk included Mike Botte, Kim Randall, and the ever-present Jannita Demian!

KLCS miniKeynote,

GoogleEarthI&II, the Word doc with Codes to Cut and Paste

iPods in Education (the MegaVCR)

Media Project Building (Media from the Dark Side)

GoogleEarth files: FloatingHead, ScottKinneyLivesHere, MannWebCam, Shakespeare1, Shakespeare2. These will launch in Google Earth –or open them from Google Earth. Then save them to My Places.

Rough Program - This is the nearly last rough draft. I’ll post the final one when I run it down.

“I Touch the Future, I Teach” was the wise and memorable quote from Christa McAuliffe. At the technology conference named for her in New Hampshire, I heard wonderful stories about her mother, Grace, the archetypal New England lady. Twenty years ago I was working in the library media branch of the Los Angeles Unified School District when Challenger was launched. LAUSD had its own television station (still does!) at KLCS and was one of the teachers working with the materials for classrooms supplied by NASA. I still have a box, somewhere, of those classroom guides and doing the closing keynote at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference was quite an honor for this old media teacher. The conference was a great one, with 19 concurrent sessions that it made it hard to choose. Matt Monjan and I did workshops in media, and deep dives into Discovery Streaming and teachers there were great. I worked on content building from the basis of PowerPoint media through PhotoStory, MovieMaker, and Adobe Premiere Elements and a session on Google Earth (handouts below). The conference was a great tribute to continuing the reach of technology into the classroom, where in New Hampshire they ‘reach for the stars.’ Serendipidously, I will be returning to KLCS on December 8, where the DEN is having an all-day Saturday with savvy presenters from southern California. Be there! After a seven hour flight from Boston to San Francisco–headwinds!–I arrived at the California League of Middle Schools and High Schools / CUE Technology Conference. After doing a Google Earth workshop with the great Jerome Burg, some people told me that they had implemented some of the things I talked about last year–and they worked. That always makes a presenter feel good and I hope I’ll hear that when I return to New Hampshire.

Handouts: This is the link we used during the keynote for the GCast cellphone podcast. Keynotes should be interactive–don’t you agree?

Why is Winter Colder than Summer? - Don’t forget to go to GCast and get your own free cellphone podcasting website. It’s fun and it works! I will put a pdf of the whole keynote up when I have the bandwidth (see below).

Google Earth PowerPoint: Here is a pdf of the PowerPoint and the Word doc of the copy-and-paste codes for cool effects. This is slightly different because it is the one I used in Georgia, not New Hampshire. Same information.

New 3 “R’s” / Digital Media for Every Classroom. Here is a handout I build based on what we did in these sessions. Took a bit of time to pull together shots of everything we did, but here it is: PowerPoint, PhotoStory, Movie Maker, and Adobe Premiere Elements. This is not a complete look at these programs, of course, since we only had an hour. But this is a review of what we did.

Thanks! - Hall

This is a quick post with the PowerPoint and other goodies from the webinar of November 20. Thanks to everybody that helped out, especially Joe Brennan, Scott Kinney, and Teryl.
Here’s the Word doc with the video copy-and-pastes, the Gcast site, and the “Why is Winter colder than Summer” site.

webinar.doc

Things we did at GaETC! We worked with the great resources from GPB (home to the equally great Patrice, Mike, and Katherine). We made media on the dark side with Photo Story, Movie Maker, and Adobe Premiere Elements and incorporated GPB’s huge educational digital library. We also pulled clips and projects into iPods. And did a little thought leadership–all on the first day. Everything is below. Participants built digital stories from wildly random pictures of pandas, beauty queens, and oil-soaked birds. They added narration, and music–and then we converted the files to put into my iPod. PS Don’t forget the great Photo Story tutorials at http://jakesonline.org/.
Turns out Leslie Fisher was also showing off Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 at GaETC.. I told her the DEN tale of buying chromakey fabric at Walmart before a training. “Walmart sells chromakey fabic?” she gasped. Hey, green is where you find it….Leslie also killed a hard drive as I watched. Ugh. During the “Thinking Bigger Session” I used my Gcast site to quiz the educators with Why is Winter Colder Than Summer? They called in their answer on their cellphones to the live website and then we assessed the answers. Go the site and see what they said. What would you have said? Most non-educators get this wrong. Hint: It in not because the earth is further from the sun. Bonus Hint: Why is December warmer than July in Buenos Aires? Next day we had the luxury of two sessions for Google Earth, a beginning session and a Part II for those that wanted more advanced application for the classroom. More resources are below. PartII showed some advanced tips on HTML in description boxes, including inserting webcams, photos, and media. Passed along Brad Fountain’s strategy for embedding videos into the box instead of watching through a separate browser. Below are the copy and paste masters and the PowerPoints (as pdf’s) from the GE sessions. We also connected via iChat with Jerome Burg, creator of GoogleLit Trips, a site that truly bring Google Earth’s feature together in a way that serves education. I have never seen a better .kmz folder full of magic than GoogleLit’s literary mappings. (If only the audio had worked!) The next session is about to begin–a repeat for the Digital Video on the Dark Side. I’ll be back to post resources shortly. The Internet was slo—ow.
Back now and after setting up the Firefox ftp site, we finally got these big files up. Remember that these are big–30+pages in color, etc. Allow for some download time
iPod session: pdf of the PowerPoint presention This should be all you’ll need.
GoogleEarth sessions (Part I and II): pdf of the PowerPoint. It covers all the bases. Also, the word document for the HTML copy and pastes. The smart Georgia participants discovered the “Picture in the Description Box” code needs to img not imc. It’s fixed in the Word doc. Not sure I patched the PowerPoint. Finally, Brad Fountain’s handout (with copy and paste code) to get media to play in the description box. Not on Macs, remember Here are some other kmz files to use for your cut and paste. FloatingHead, LookDown, and one from Jerome. Check it out! Remember, download these, then open from Google Earth. Then save onto your own desktop, then open in Word, etc. An don’t neglect the resources in the earlier post. And remember educators get Google Earth Pro free! Start the process by emailing Anna at GEEC@Google.com. Note: Just got an email from Carol. The Google Link wasn’t work, but it should work by 6 PM Eastern time Friday. Sorry about the glitch! (11/17 3 PM - Carol, it’s working now!)
Thinking Bigger session, with all the data on kids and society: pdf of the PowerPoint.
If you have trouble with any of these, leave me a comment. We did some new things to get these big ol’ files up here and we want to know if they don’t work! We’ll fix it! I’ll post more of the kmz files we saw tomorrow. It’s getting late!   PS. Comments take some time to get through the filter. Please be patient.  It’s a bug not a feature..

The DEN did a Streamathon yesterday. Hundreds of folks took part, some with their staffs or classes watching through a projector. I referred to some both basic and ‘advanced’ Google Earth tips, techniques, and classroom strategies. These have been littered across this blogsite for more than a year. Here’s the aggregate! It has somethings old, somethings new, somethings borrowed, and something blew. Enjoy–and contribute in the comments! The chat box during the Streamathon was alive with great advice. A couple of notes: My own floating head won’t work (it gives you a red “x”). That’s because when we changed blog engines, all the old web posting went down and that’s where the head lives. I’ll fix that later. But know that when you cut and paste the code with your own floating graphic– like a school, a district logo, or your own head–it will work. Just follow the recipe in the “Codes to Cut and Paste” doc. Note: the head shot, so to speak, were taken by a 5th grader and the backgrounds erased in Photoshop Elements so the head floats alone. I recommend doing that so the graphic really floats (use the magic eraser in Elements!).

Floating Head, Text formatting, and other Instructions

Download codes_to_cut_and_paste_for_googleearth2.doc

Download google_earthwebinar.pdf (older version, but valid)

Floating Heads kmz, kml, and other files for downloading and opening in Word for cut and paste (follow the instructions above). Note:  These kmz files will no longer launch my own head because it resided on the old Typepad blogsite.  I need to redo them and repost.  However, the point is just to cut and your own graphic anyway and it still works very well for that! - hd

Download HallOz.kmz

Download LookDown.kmz

Download scott_kinneypictureinserted.kmz

Download manns_chinese_webcam.kmz
Floating Head Graphic Examples from the NECC session

They are here:

Interesting Layers to move into your Places in Google Earth and other interesting file examples
Download cloud_layer_at_altitude.kmz

Download flickr_photos.kmz

Download the_grapes_of_wrath.kmz

Download Gettysburg.kmz

Download plaza_park_jhs.kmz

Google Sky stuff, Google Mars and Google Moon link: Here.

Inserting Video Directly into Google Earth

Thanks to DEN media maven Brad Fountain for sharing how to embed instructional streaming videos into Google Earth. He writes ” Okay, I think most of us have wondered if this could be done. Take a look…what you see below is a screen shot from Google Earth with embedded video from Discovery Education streaming . For a small finders fee (or you can simply follow directions on the attachment) you, too, can wow your friends and associates with this great trick.” Here is his doc, which includes a cut-and-paste that readers of this blog have come to love. Burns me that you beat me to it, Brad…. More great tips are here at GE Lessons.com

The exact PowerPoint is I used, lame and tame as it was with screen shots, is here as a pdf. This link will work for a week, then we’ll have it here permanently. Get it while it’s hot!

Note on Google Earth Pro offer to Educators.

This seems to be free for one year, a slight change. DEN member and fellow VSTE presenter Kathryn S. passes along that the email link I gave works! Here is the response she got. There is some quid pro quo, apparently. But Kathyrn went for it. If you are interested, read on! There is some good information. I have slightly edited it and the bolding was done me. If not interested, you can go back to what you were doing. This is the end of the post. Thanks! - Hall

Dear Kathryn,

My name is Anna and I’m following up on your recent request to participate in the Google Earth Education Initiative. We’re glad that you are interested in integrating Google Earth Pro into your curriculum or research and hope that this message will answer your questions about the program.

Google Earth “free” is accessible online and available to download onto your computer or your school’s servers to be used by all who have access. It must not be used commercially, for business or any other revenue-generating venue. Under most conditions this option will fulfill the majority of your student and teacher needs.

Google also has a Google Earth Education initiative, through which Google Earth Pro is offered free for one year to qualified educators. If you require more sophisticated functionality than Google Earth “free” offers, the Pro version is available through this initiative. As with any software program, I suggest that prior to requesting to participate in this initiative, you should become proficient in using Google Earth “free.” Both programs are updated at the same time and have the same imagery and clarity. The difference lies in the user features and functionality. Please visit this link to see our comparison chart for specific product details. http://earth.google.com/product_comparison.html

Below I have included the qualifications questionnaire for your review and response, should you be qualified for Google Earth Pro and wish to participate in the program.

Our program involves outreach and distribution of Google Earth Pro to qualified educators affiliated with (employed by) lower, middle, and upper grade schools, accredited community and four year colleges, universities and graduate schools, selected vocational training programs, certain education oriented NGOs, public access museums, and academic libraries. This wide distribution of Google Earth Pro is
provided for one full year as a means to increase the use of Google Earth in core curriculums.In return, we ask for your yearly contribution to a forum of educators
facilitated by the Google Earth Community at http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0 or http://groups.google.com/group/google-for-educators. There, you will be joined by other educators seeking collaborative opportunities with their peers for the benefit of students. Whether it be information in the form of a lesson plan or in a detailed testimony outlining your successes, these contributions will foster incentives for creativity and innovation which that can ultimately evolve into Google Earth enhancements geared specifically toward curriculum development.

To participate, please return your completed application to GEEC@google.com. Should your organization qualify you will receive notification via email with detailed instructions on how to set up your account, and register for Google online support.

Information required:

1. Your name (key contact person)
2. Organization / Institution
3. A brief description of the Institution / Organization
4. Full mailing address
5. Telephone number
6. User name (complete email address that will be assigned to the
license key)
7. Institution’s web address
8. Your Institution’s Tax ID (if applicable)
9. Your Institution’s 501(c)3 number (US only, if applicable)
10. A description of the intended application including grade
level(s), discipline(s) or subject.
11. What features in Google Earth Pro are important to you and how
do you wish to use them in your classroom.
12. Number of computers you are requesting to download this software on.
13. Prior license key information.

PLEASE NOTE: Applicants are required to download the free, 7-day trial version of Google Earth Pro at http://earth.google.com/ before applying. Please be sure to include your Google Earth trial account user name and license key above.

We look forward to working with you to create a one-of-a-kind, global resource for educators.

Anna Bishop
Google Earth Education

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
GEEC@Google.com
http://earth.google.com