DV for Teachers

Anne and I met today to discuss weblogs with Jim Flowers and two of his colleagues at GCATT, Kelly Clark and Lisa Griffin. Jim works with the Board of Regents on information technology, and Kelly and Lisa work to find ways to help find grant funding for effective technology integration projects.

One current project: they’re going to take a group of educators – pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and higher education faculty – to the NECC conference next month. The attendees will attend numerous sessions there, learning about technology integration from the great sessions there, and – bing! - post their notes and responses to a blog!

We’re proud to be hosting their project blog, and we’ll be working more on learning what blogs can do for every level of education.

I’m showing Dr. Atkinson’s class some stuff with Dreamweaver and showing off my blog.

David Pogue practically swoons over the JVC GR-HD1: ”...JVC has created a fabulous machine that may, in its way, help goose the progress of the nation’s transition to high-definition TV.” This is comparable in price to the first MiniDV camera, the venerable DCR-VX1000 from Sony, introduced six or so years ago. You can now get MiniDV cameras for less than $500. You may well use an HD camera with your students before you know it. Other GR-HD1 reviews here.——-

I went to the screening tonight of some entries to the Atlanta edition of the 48 Hour Film Project. Former ITC assistant Matt Lewis and current assistant Philip Dido had an entry, 48, and a tasty morsel it was, too. Clever parody, timely references, good visuals.

Last Friday at 7 p.m., teams picked a genre from a hat (they got mystery) and were given the required line of dialogue (“All my hopes and dreams are coming true”) and a required prop (a snow globe). The finished (or kind of finished) films must be returned 48 hours later. Some really were weak, but Matt and Philip and their friends and crew did very good work. A couple of them, especially the “mockumentary” Revelation and the Atomic Wedgie, the “romance” Snowblind, and the “fantasy” 8.5×11 were quite good.

This is a great way for students and young filmmakers to get immersed in the medium. I hope it comes to your town.

Of the 12 or so short films I saw tonight, only Matt worked in a Citizen Kane reference with the snow globe. Go boy.

The fine folks at Ken Stone’s Final Cut Pro site have a good white paper explaining the differences in Macintosh and PC gamma, how these differences can affect your editing project, and provide clear compensation strategies.——-

I’ve been compressing some aging VHS video of Carl Jung into MPEG for a counseling professor, and I used Cleaner 5 on OS 9 for some of it, and Cleaner 6 on OS X for the rest. I had forgotten that 5 can slow to a crawl when rendering a batch of more than a few items – one clip, only about five minutes long, took overnight to process. I switched to 6 on OS X and oh-my-gosh did it speed up. All this on the same Dual 1 GHZ processor Macintosh G4.——-

It’s the middle of the night and I’m taking a break from editing a video full of animations and titles. I recorded the voiceover and I’m timing the animations to it as they fly in and out over some stock animation loops. I’ll post some screenshots tomorrow (or Friday if I don’t wake up tomorrow).——-

Anil Dash links to bestkungfu’s “Advice to audio|video bloggers.” He raises good points about the logistics and aesthetics of working with audio and video that any newbie in those ventures – whether in radio, broadcast television, or online – must consider. He points out that making your material of interest to your audience is vital. Just because it’s interesting to you often is not enough.——-

Matthew Thomas weighs in. He talks about viability of your data – your blog – well into the future. What good is it if you can’t read it in two years? Five years? Ten? It isn’t all ephemeral, and as educators invest more time and training in “ePortfolios” it becomes vital to keep files in forms that students, teachers, parents, colleagues, administrators, and others can access easily. I don’t know enough about some of the technical issues he raises, but there will always be things to learn about.——-

Sonja Schenk at Creativepro.com: “Getting the professional-looking images that will please your boss, your client, and yourself isn’t impossible, it just takes a little information and forethought. Follow these simple shooting guidelines to ease the transition from your camcorder to the Web.” Solid how-to, with good explanations and graphics to explain the underlying concepts.——-