DV for Teachers

Posting from the Apple Store in Lenox Square Mall on the day after Thanksgiving. Just because I can.

Thanks to Ellen, for indulging me. (She insisted on a good Italian meal if we went out, so it’s a total win-win!)——-

Daniel Berlinger wrote Archipelago, the weblog editor I use most of the time to edit this site. Daniel is a developer for Frontier and a musician who often writes about his gigs in and out of the studio. We swapped email this morning about Archipelago, and I ranted a bit about how I’ll be too busy for the next few weeks to test some of the new features he’s building into it; part of the busy-ness is a new ProTools audio workstation we’re getting at the ITC. I know about non-linear video editors, but I’ve never use ProTools and I told him so.

Daniel wrote back, offering support and advice if I needed it, on Thanksgiving morning, unasked. I realized that weblogs made this unique relationship possible. I discovered his site, also called Archipelago (good name and nice graphic), over a year ago when someone somewhere linked to a piece he posted about an alcohol hiker’s stove made from Pepsi cans. (I can’t find his original post, but here’s the directions for making the stove.) I hike a little, and followed the link, and it worked out this way: I have a very nice weblog editor I helped beta-test, a thoughtful site to read, and a friendship with a guy who lives in upstate New York, willing to spend his time making my web site and my audio recordings better.

Big deal? Yes and no. No, because it’s not that uncommon for people with shared interests to hook up over the web. Yes, because weblogs made it happen. This is a kind of exchange that I’ve never read about it in any of the “news coverage” blogs have received in “mainstream” media. Thanks again, Daniel, and thanks to Dave Winer and the other folks who had the vision to make this possible. It’s a big experiment, a grand one, and it’s a privilege to be a part of it.

Thanks to those who serve in the military (and thanks to Eric Alterman for the link).

Thanks to the people who create sell the tools – computers and software, cameras and accessories, CD & DVD burners and web distribution systems – that allow students, teachers, and independents to share their visions with the world without depending on an increasingly insular industry that is not very interested in their work.

Thanks to my family for redefining my life.

Thanks to Ann, who is retiring from Georgia State after 20 years, and who trusted me and gave me one opportunity after another.

Thanks for the web, which has helped me find new friends, new skills, new ideas, new colleagues, and makes it more possible for anyone to change the world.

Thanks for America, with its stupefying selfishness and astonishing generosity, its ham-fisted blunders and its graceful leadership, its tremendous opportunities and shameful limitations. It’s worth praising its excellence while working hard to make it better.

Thank you for reading.——-

Here’s a Tuesday update for Cameron Seay – who has never seen a weblog before. More and more educators are using weblogs as tools for teaching writing skills, for topic-centered discussions, for recording their experiences. It’s a natural.

Here’s a test blog on our Frontier test server: OS X Hints, where James Poulakos seeks to help other GSU OS X users with the move to the new OS.

Saint Leo University is giving wireless-network-equipped laptops (with built-in video editing capability) to every residential student and faculty member.

Ken Stone posts Philip Hodgetts’ Great Titles with the DV Codec to help us all make titles that look good on TV, not just on our monitors. “If it looks good on the computer, it is probably not within broadcast legal.”——-

Doc Searls, one of the true wise men of the web, posted his thoughts on how to give presentations some four years ago. Great advice for anyone who gives presentations, like. . . teachers.

The promised DARPA update will come this weekend, Murphy willing.

Steven Schleicher at DMN’s Digital Video Editing has a new Final Cut Pro tip: good good advice on archiving finished projects in a way that makes them easy to reassemble and alter if the client/student (or in my case, the Dean) want to update the video. He also posts links to the previous 10 tips at the bottom of this page. Great tips, well written, go get ‘em.

My last late Friday night DV post: Dan Brockett: we are not worthy. Dan posted this complete (actually it’s compleat, look that one up) piece on Ken Stone’s site: Location Sound: The Basics and Beyond. It’s got pictures and graphs and illustrations; it’s got frame grabs and specific product recommendations and exact procedures; it’s got opinions and evaluations and tips and shortcuts; it’s got real-world experience and empathy for committed beginners who need help getting started. It’s an amazing bit of web publishing: it’s on a site that’s not supported by ads or pop-ups, just the dedication of some folks who love the craft, art, and tools of making quality video, and who love to share what they learn. Pieces like Dan’s article make Ken’s entire FCP site an example of the grass-roots web at its best.——-

I had a very busy day, first one back at the ITC after the Phoenix trip. Met with some of the other folks who do multimedia development and learned a bit about Flash, and a colleague sent me to the Sydney Opera House Virtual Tour, which is as good an example of pretty good Flash design as I’ve seen. I may have to do stuff like this soon! be wishing me the luck, please.

I kept yesterday’s title, about your rights and mine. Please go back and read that, follow the links, and do something. This is politics in real-time; work to protect your rights now or you really may not have a chance later.

A really political post tomorrow on a part of the recently passed Homeland Security Act. Think “DARPA.”——-

At today’s PlaybackTime Charles Wiltgen links to TidBITS and Adam Engst’s The Evil That Is the DMCA.

Why is it evil? What if you couldn’t show your video or your students’ videos on any system other than the computer they were created with? If it’s not part of a “trusted system” that uses legally authorized hardware, software, and file formats, that freedom may be a thing of the past. Out of fear of what they call “piracy” and we educators often call fair use, the largest distributors of movies, TV, and recorded music are trying – and largely succeeding – to limit the legitimate uses of these tools. Adam’s article goes into well-supported detail to explain the threat to our rights as teachers, producers, consumers, and most importantly, as citizens. Please speak out now, to your senators and congressional representatives, about this.

For still more, go to my link at the left of the home page: SQUASH THE CDBTPA for my earlier thoughts on a related bill with the same consequences: more rights for big producers and fewer for the rest of us. The problem is real, and there’s no big organized lobby except you. Here’s a chance to do something that matters. No kidding.——-

A quick update from Phoenix – I got the dialup to work. Broadband has spoiled me; I will make notes on how to configure the good old modem, and props to all who do it on a regular basis.

One of the main things I’ve learned from this trip is that I’ll need to learn, in the short term, how to do Flash, and in the long term, more about instructional design.

Back tomorrow.——-

MacNN reports that Atomic Learning is giving away Storyboard Pro, for planning video projects. Looks like a nice tool, and there are versions for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows. I love how the web makes these things possible. I linked to Atomic Learning last month regarding their now-expired free access to their entire library of QuickTime-based tutorials.

Teachers and schools strapped for cash (duh) can find excellent deals on PCs, Macs, peripherals, and just plain gadgets at dealnews and at dealmac, the Macintosh-centric portion of the site. They do a great job of tracking price reductions, rebates, coupon savings, and the like, and they have special sections for disposables: ink cartridges for printers, memory, and just last week they opened a page devoted to low prices on digital cameras. They’ve joined my permanent links on the right of the home page.

The LAFCPUG site – always a good source of tips, training, and empathy for an editor’s woes – has added notes about their October meeting. Its valuable information this month includes tips on compositing layers, a cool jittery text look for titles, and another for improving problematic titles which can jitter when you don’t want them to.——-