DV for Teachers

UK Sites for DV in Education, and Our Conference

Checking in this morning on the DV for Teachers discussion at 2-pop, I found a very good link to MediaEd:
The UK media education website. Their main page blurb:

www.MediaEd.org.uk is for teachers, students and anyone else who’s interested in media and moving image education in primary, secondary, further and informal education.

This site offers much of value to educators: a variety of media education resources for a larger context – not just video but radio and print; links to U.K.-based online resources for media and media education, in which you’ll find good resources; and a provocative discussion forum for topics ranging from hardware trouble-shooting to media education theory.

Look in particular at their section on Media Education Worldwide, to get an idea of how insular American media seems to others overseas… and I think they have strong points to make.

Technology for Teachers Conference Here Thursday and Friday

We at the ITC are closing our doors temporarily to our usual “customers” (GSU students) to host a two-day conference for helping local school teachers improve their technology skills and to help them find good ways to integrate technology into their curricula.——-

DV Workshop for Teachers Next Monday

I’m doing a workshop on DV and iMovie for some education students, most of whom are not too up on the demands of video technology on a computer. I have to remember to keep the pace easy, the geek stuff simple, and let them discover. Between this and the next item, it’ll be a busy week. Updates may be lean.

2001 Technology for Teachers Conference

The ITC here is hosting a small conference next week. I’ll post a report afterward. Here’s a link to the info.

Google is so impressive.

This search found this page from New York’s WNET and their WNETSchool web service for teachers.

Here’s the summary of the lesson plan, It’s a Beautiful Day in MY Neighborhood:

This lesson is based on the video series A Walk Through Harlem. After viewing portions of the documentary, the students will take key aspects from the video and use the techniques to create their own video-produced piece. This lesson will take students from “not just watching television, but making television” about their own neighborhood.

The students are going to be introduced briefly to the concepts of what makes a good story by watching a short segment from the PBS documentary and assessing the importance of techniques used for video production. Finally, the students will view and take an interactive map tour of Harlem.

Students will be able to:

It looks thorough and well-designed to me; I’ve never been a classroom teacher, but these sites seem well-suited to the teacher who wants to use video technology to expand experiences. If you have a comment about this, let me know.
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More Video Tips for PC Users

From Tom’s Hardware Guide, I found a two-part series on building a DV edit system on a PC by Guy Wright. His summary of Part I:

Building a Digital Video Capture System

The commercials make it look easy. Get a video camera, shoot some scenes, capture the video into your computer, and with a few clicks and drags you turn those disjointed shots into a cinematic masterpiece ready to put on a CD, email to grandma, or stream off your Web site. No problem. But capturing and manipulating digital video in a computer is a little trickier than that.

Part II gets into the gory technical details, and backs up its strong recommendations.

Classroom Applications

The TeachNet.org site has some good examples and lesson plans for using video and other multimedia in classrooms. In this example, students learn about and produce Public Service Anouncements, and their site posts a sample clip.

It’s one of nine different video clips showcasing use of computers, video, and multimedia in a variety of classrooms and subject areas. Note that all the video is available in Real, Windows Media, and QuickTime formats, and at different download speeds. Very nice site for information as well as a method for posting video and multimedia online.
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There’s So Much That’s ‘Video’

Finding links and information that fall under the heading of ‘DV for Teachers’ can mean filtering a lot of information, and sometimes it means talking about technical stuff.

Not today.

Today I’ll point you to a nice, easy-to-use program that makes a slide show from a folder of pictures. Irfanview is a $10 shareware app for Windows that will open most multimedia formats (some plugins may be required). If you use a digital camera that saves to a floppy disk, you can pop out your disk, put it in your PC, and have a slide show playing within 30 seconds. It’s a mainstay for teachers and media specialists in schools around Atlanta, so far as I know. Check it out.——-

While at the National Storytelling Festival over the weekend, we saw a demo of Intel’s Play Digital Movie Creator. I confess that I didn’t want to like it; too crude, too Intel/Windows, too simple. My wife, a library media specialist in an elementary school, thought it was just the thing, though. Easy to pick up and use, almost no learning curve, no worries about focus or exposure or microphones. Just aim it, hit a button, record a couple of minutes, and put it on its base connected to the computer.

Once it’s there, it seamlessly loads the video (or up to 750 stills) into the simple editing program; trim the clips, add titles or superimpose basic animations, and you’ve got a video clip in either AVI or Windows Media format that’s small enough to email but viewable. It’s probably the best entry-level video tool for elementary education I’ve seen, because it gets the equipment
out of the way and lets users play with their images. It’s only $99, works with just a 300 mHz Pentium on a USB-equipped computer. Pretty snazzy.

And about the Storytelling Festival: you should just go next year, by the way. Just go. Trust me.——-

I meant to post here in reply to Leslie’s question about script formatting programs or templates [see yesterday’s entry and reply]. I didn’t realize quite what I was doing when I said ‘yes’ to making it the home page… learning about Manila and the weblogging software, yes we are.

Well now. I have fixed it; I will endeavor not to make discussion group messages into home pages from now on.——-

Updates will resume next week. Our family takes off this afternoon for the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Maybe I’ll see you there!——-

Just got the word from David Leishman, Brennan Young’s editor, to post the clarifying information:

They put in http://www.maccentral.com/columns/briggs.shtml

Another app you should check out is videoscript. Very similar to applescript, and with some applescript hooks for easy integration.
Excellent if you want to automate the capture process.

http://www.videoscript.com

Applescript and QuickTime Followup

I hope to post an update and clarification to Monday’s link to workingmac.com. I had some questions, and Brennan Young wrote with some answers, but he wants his editor to approve posting them here.

In the meantime, check the Little QuickTime Page for their usual Tuesday update, including news about Apple’s update of iMovie to v. 2.1.1, and a link to an OS X screensaver that will play QuickTime movies.——-

Applescript and QuickTime

It’s another Mac-centric entry for today. I recently found good site about the Mac: workingmac.com, “The Toolbox for Mac Professionals,” which seems to have very good sense as well as good links and articles.

Today, learn more about making QuickTime do more for you and your students with a series of “Rich Media” articles from Brennan Young:

Scripting the QuickTime Player, which introduces the AppleScript language for automating lots of processes with QuickTime; here one example we learn is how to set movies so they’ll play back in the middle of the user’s screen with a black background on the rest of the monitor.

Time, time scale and time code offers pretty technical advice on working with QuickTime’s unique method of handling timecode. [Not all the explanations make sense to me yet, and I’ve written to the author for clarification. Isn’t the web great?]

Exporting media files in QuickTime offers the most usability for new Scripters, like me: methods for automating the QuickTime player for processing files – great for applying the same settings to a series of files for posting on the web: class demos, how-tos, clips of field trips, faculty or principal announcements, school news items, and on and on.——-