DV for Teachers

Video with a Used Mac

What if you want to use video in your school, and you don’t have the budget for a new whiz-bang machine? If you have an older Mac, it may work pretty well for video, especially if you’re planning to go right to the Web or CD-ROM with it. Low End Mac has exhaustive information online for keeping your older machine running, and has a series of two articles about the video capabilities of older Macs for video editing and processing. Part one is here, and Part two is here.

I’m looking for a site that will have the same information for PCs, and I’ll post it when I find it.——-

Media Literacy Review

I found a very good thread at 2-pop’s DV for Teachers discussion group on using iMovie with K-4 children.

Michael Belanger started the thread, asking about its uses for “storytelling, creative expression, critical thinking….” Ellen Reynolds responded with information about her work with older students, and a reference to media literacy sites. She didn’t provide a specific link, however (it’s the Web, Ellen!). I did a search on good old Google and found this link to the online Media Literacy Review from the University of Oregon’s College of Education. Take a long look there.——-

QuickTime Is Important for Teachers

I taught a workshop this morning on basic web page creation with Macromedia Dreamweaver, and the professor who organized it with me asked for three things: importing pictures, a “mailto” tag, and how to import video on the page. As I worked on it, and then, presented it, I realized again how important a technology for educationQuickTime can be.

I put links to Real and Windows Media on the demonstration page, and I remembered how comparatively difficult it is to get video into those formats. QuickTime Pro, whether you’re on Mac or Windows, is a powerful editing and authoring tool for a meager $29.99. This isn’t an ad for Apple; it’s me telling you about a tool I use a lot. Most video editing apps on either platform is based on it. Here’s an essential point that I know I’ve written about before: you cannot edit a Real file, or a Windows Media file. That’s great for folks who need copyright protection: movie studios and record labels and so on.

But we’re teachers, and we need flexibility in our tools, and the ability to change and re-use and copy and adjust. QuickTime gives it to us. ——-

Here’s an excerpt from a message on the DV-List:

Totally Hip Software is proud to release a new showcase site: http://www.blueabuse.com

This site is a showcase of interactive QuickTime content. Everything from complete sites using QuickTime to individual QuickTime movies. Our goal is to promote the interactive video community by showing “what is possible”, and how easily it can be created.

Our commitment:
Until the end of the year, a new tutorial will be posted every week.

This is exciting. It is advertising for their products, but it’s also the best kind of advertising: it shows people using their stuff to do good and interesting things, and sharing how they did them. It’s less a “lifestyle” based, marketing created need, and more a good demonstration of the power of a good tool in the hands of an imaginative craftsperson.

Totally Hip makes some very powerful software for authoring in QuickTime. I haven’t used it, but Judy and Robert of the Little QuickTime Page write quite favorably of it. If you’re making an instructional or interactive piece, for Web or CD-ROM or video, look around on BlueAbuse and let your mind run with the possibilities.——-

More Online Resources

So you want some help with iMovie and Final Cut Pro in your school or your labs. Final Cut’s documentation is great, but may be too much of a good thing if you’re in a time crunch. iMovie’s only documentation is in the online help, which definitely is too little of a good thing. What’s a reasonably quick way to get some training?

As usual, 2-pop proves to be among the best resources I’ve found. This thread covers too many links for me to post here today, although I hope to add them to the Cool Links section under the calendar on the right side of the DV for Teachers home page. Read through the different messages and bookmark the links. You have a lot of help out there.

Ain’t the web great?

NENA Shooting Ends

We finished the shooting today on the Nutrition video series. Eric at Showcase has the job of editing all of them: six short videos, each series in six languages… and we only speak English. Welcome to America in the 21st Century! These new Americans are teaching us as we try to teach them, and I love it. It isn’t easy, but there isn’t much that’s both easy and worth doing.——-

Good Mics for Cheap

2-pop guru Ken Stone’s Final Cut Pro website has posted another good article – all of his articles are good, actually. This one reviews three inexpensive shotgun mics for use with DV cameras.

If you don’t have a good mic, you’ll have trouble making a good video. Remember: people will sit through dubious visuals if they can hear what’s going on, but they’ll turn off great visuals if the sound is no good. Read up on these mics, and see what they can do for you for not a lot of money.

About Weblogs

A colleague here looked at my site and wondered how I got people to write the articles. I told him I just linked to them—and he said he meant the articles on the main page. Well, I told him, that’s a weblog – it makes it really easy to write a web page and update it. Thanks to Dave Winer and Userland for the site software. I was able to set this up when they were still offering free signups. They don’t now, and I don’t know if they will again. I may set up a Manila server here at the ITC at Georgia State for colleagues and schools in the area. It would be a large responsibility, but I know it would be worthwhile. We’ll see.——-

Get RAM for Good Performance

You need RAM to do video. Lots of Random Access Memory helps make your computer purr and process more quickly and (all important) with more stability. Prices aren’t just low, they’re dirt cheap, so go get some. Get money from your PTA, your petty cash fund, or chip in a little yourself if you can; it could quickly pay for itself in less time spent waiting for renders and restarts.

Try these sites: ramseeker (Mac only) or dealram (PC or Mac). Thanks to Macedition for the tip.

Follow up to FCP2education

A reader asked for help with Final Cut Pro in a lab setting yesterday, and I suggested the reader post the problem at 2-pop. The thread is here.
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NENA – Nutrition Education for New Americans

So we’re working on a six-language series of short videos about the six food groups, in English, Vietnamese, Russian, Korean, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. I’m directing – and the actors keep finding errors in the translations, and it’s interesting to collaborate across the languages and cultures. Good work worth doing, and I’m watching Eric, the camera operator and editor from Showcase, a local production and sales company, who teaches me a lot.

Read about the project here.

Final Cut Pro in a school lab

In the discussion area, FCP2education writes to ask about Final Cut in a lab, especially concerning the apparent need to re-enter serial numbers if using an Apple NetBoot server or trying to install a consistent lab image. This thread at 2-pop’s DV for Teachers discussion addresses some of these issues; I suggested to “FCP2education” that he post his question there. We don’t have a lab that size so configuring that way isn’t a problem I’ve had to address. If you’ve got an idea, send it this way.——-

I’ll repost this tomorrow. I was about to hit Submit when Internet Explorer ate my entry for today. Nuts.——-

OS X Server, Version 10.0

I’ve been setting up our G4 Server, a year and a half old, with the new OS X Server. We want to stream video clips for a technology-in-film class, and the set up has been rocky. I don’t know a lot about networking, but Apple markets the Server as rock-solid and easy to administer. It hasn’t been perfect, though.

I’ve solved a number of problems with help from Matthew and Alex in Apple’s Server support, and from Reginald and Randy in my College. One problem was the assignment of a static IP address for the server; new wiring and switches meant new sub-net masks, and the main university networking folks didn’t know about it.

BUT… now it’s up, and I’m getting folks to test it. When it’s actually running publicly, I’ll post some URLs and ask for feedback.
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