Thoughtful discussion of disk fragmentation and maintenance found at TidBITS, the deservedly venerated Mac support site. Worth reading for any computer user (as TidBITS is generally free of platform cant and full of thoughtful savvy posts), but especially for those of us using today’s big drives for huge video and media files. Sixty gigabytes ain’t what it used to be.——-
How did I miss this, how did I miss this? Really good tips – with cogent explanations – on improving your digital video. Inexpensive gadgets and solid techniques that can help students and teachers make much better-looking video. Derrick Story is a really good tipster, too. In his Top Ten Digital Photography Tips, I got the idea from him for using inexpensive polarized clip-on sunglasses as a polarizing filter to improve my outdoor digital still shots.——-
“In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create an interactive QuickTime movie with multiple rollover buttons and videos. The only software you need to complete this tutorial is Adobe GoLive 6 and we’ll provide all the necessary sample files.” Certainly sounds good to me. This is a rather complex tutorial, but the instructions are clear, and you get a QuickTime movie that provides great interactivity and will play on any machine that has QuickTime. Adobe’s GoLive, though not inexpensive, is reasonable for educators – I found it for $79.95 academic online – and offers more control for working with QuickTime than other big name HTML editors.——-
Back from my family’s long vacation down the west coast after attending the NECC conference in Seattle.
The indispensable O’Reilly folks post an excerpt from Jennifer Niederst, clearly explaining how to post movies, giving line-by-line examples of the necessary HTML for things to work properly.
Print this one and post it next to every computer in your school’s library, and make sure you have enough space on your server!
[Update: a closer reading finds the basic instructions to be valid, but the excerpt provides one outdated link: “Media Cleaner Pro” is now called “Cleaner” and is made by discreet, who bought Terran Interactive well over a year ago.]
——-Jennifer Arns posts about “Digital Tools for Digital Kids,” a workshop about using iMovie in the classroom. I missed it (and couldn’t find which workshop it was in the online program)... so again a blog connected me with a good idea. I love that the workshop leader learned about iMovie from a high school student, and then taught a handful of her students, who taught others, and so there was lots of involvement and interaction rather than the standard one-to-many, teacher as “fount of wisdom” pouring forth for the students’ thirsty brains. A cool teaching method.
Linda Morris of the Tukwila, Washington school district saw my “I’m blogging this” T-shirt, and this post is a demonstration of how easy it is to post. She’s a library media specialist, so I’ll show her the Kingsley LMC site Ellen made.——-
Tim Lauer, Will Richardson, and Kathy Schlick Noe are presenting now to in a small but packed room. Anne Davis is here in the audience, and we’re both wearing our new T-shirts from last night’s meeting that say, “I’m blogging this.”
Kathy – whom I met briefly last night – is speaking about the use of easily-updated sites (blogs) as a method or writing and discussing books. Writing about books before discussing them – it helps them think through what they want to talk about. Students understand the books better when they’ve reflected on them before the discussion.
When writing after discussion, they can synthesize the ideas that otherwise might evaporate, and provides multiple interpretations for them to ponder over time.
Writing as discussion – a reluctant student has an equal voice, which might never find a place in a class discussion; more chances again for reflection.
Build “community norms” for blogging, as you could for setting ground rules for class discussions – disagreeing without flaming, for example, so students can disagree without shutting each other down.
She’s continuing to make points about the Literature Circles. Follow the link.
Marion Holland is talking about her experiences – I lost some of the thread trying to find her site on the spotty wifi in the room. She’s talking about copyright and privacy concerns, asynchronous collaboration via blogs with authors, and other projects; I’ll provide the link when the network lets me find it.
Edublogging is getting a foothold as a concept – we’re reaching new folks with this, and I see teachers nodding as they listen.
How about an add-on for iMovie that [from the MovieEdit3D site] “allows you to create a single digital video (DV) file showing one or more imported DV files moving through 3D space. For example, one DV movie can be drifting across the screen, with another zooming in from a distance, while another is rotating. Plugins allow fancy 3D warping or grid effects to be applied to all or part of a movie.
iMovie-imported DV files can be used and the final DV file imported back into your iMovie project for a cool movie introduction, segment or finale.”
Nice effects, if they work as advertised! (NB: untested by me, but for $7, I’ll give it a try after the vacation).