Am I Blue? DE National Training Academy 6/2
* If you want to learn the latest and most exciting ways to integrate technology in your classroom, then I highly recommend the Discovery Education National Training Academy. Since returning home I’ve been asked a myriad of times the standard question, “How was your trip?” Each time I must honestly tell them I experienced the most amazing professional development opportunity of my entire career! And this is definitely not hyperbole!
* Reflecting on my trip, my mind passes over so many highlights. I’ll be sharing several of these in blogs to come. Forgive me if my approach is somewhat non-linear. When you enter the “technology candy store” you can’t help but dash from delectable treat to delectable treat!
*On Monday night we ended our day with desert training sessions. As we enjoyed key lime pie and ice cream we were given the opportunity to attend several mini-training sessions. During the day we were given a little preview of these sessions and one of them stood out to me immediately: Creating movies with a “Green Screen”.
* If you’ve watched the nightly news and have seen the weatherman standing in front of an animated weather map, then you’ve seen this technology at work. The amazing thing is that any of us can easily use this same technology to create videos, inserting ourselves into existing video clips (such as Discovery Education’s editable clips) and even into still pictures(also available on Discovery Education)!
* Being a second grade teacher, I knew how powerful and entertaining this would be for my young students. This session was definitely worth my time and full attention. Lance Rougeux presented this mini-session showing us how to use Premier Elements by Adobe to take full advantage of “Green Screen” technology.
If you have any of these programs you too can insert yourself into video clips or still pictures:
- Premier Elements
- Frames (Tech4Learning)
- Windows Movie Maker (Using a patch described here: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/streaming_a_to_z/2008/05/27/are-you-feeling-blue/)
* Sitting in Baltimore/Washington International airport awaiting my trip back to Portland, Maine; I had a lot of time to kill. That’s when I began working on my first “Green Screen” video. I decided to use the program Frames by Tech4Learning to do this. My video uses a stop motion animation I created. I also used a great still image from Discovery Education. I created this video to teach my students about animal adaptations.
*The video, Is “Anybunny” Listening, is posted below… Check it out!

