DV for Teachers

Here’s a series of iMovie HD 6 video tutorials and Apple’s Getting Started PDF that you’ll find helpful.

iMovie HD Tutorials

Getting Started with iMovie HD

It’s geeky, but if you’re looking for options for slideshows for a web site, there are many suggestions from knowledgeable web jockeys at this TextDrive/Joyent Community Forum thread, Simple, browser friendly slide show.

I just finished taping five brief interviews with graduate students in the ELT program here at Georgia State. They came with some prepared notes, but in conversation they quickly moved into the power and passion of their profession: helping people learn not just to function, but to understand and be understood, to know and be known. Several spoke of the moment when a student, adult or child really got it – one of a Somali mom so happy to know the difference between capital letters and small, so she could keep pace with her six children; another of a child who visited the Georgia Aquarium, frustrated to have no words to describe the fantastical animal he’d just seen… but not giving up, trying and trying to tell his teacher of the marvelous creature, until finally, over lunch, he presented his sandwich, carefully pulled at, bit by bit, until it looked like the sawfish that had so taken his imagination.

Creating an environment where people can learn requires a relationship, a kind of intimacy, a recognition of the commonality between teacher and student. This is the best part of my job – helping others tell their stories. When it works best, the technology falls away and it’s human beings sharing with each other. That’s what teachers do. They tell stories, and the good ones help their students know their own stories so they can tell them too.

Derrick Story on making cool slideshows on DVD:iPhoto 08 to iDVD – My Favorite Method.

Derrick contributes to the MacDevCenter at O’Reilly and blogs and podcasts about photography at The Digital Story.

I just watched this video tutorial about creating animated paint effects in Motion from Creative Cow, and the effect is really good. I like specific goal-oriented tutorials like this because they can show how to use parts of the interface without trying to show the whole thing. This is how I learn software, usually: work on a narrowly defined project as a starting point, and work upward and outward from there, playing with different settings and watching the effects, working toward a more conceptual understanding of the application. Check it out.

An engaging and important series about managing security on your Mac. Very timely, with Leopard arriving in 10 days.

The special has five separate pieces covering how to make your Mac more secure. Read them, know them love them; be aware of the threats to your computer and be proactive in preventing them.

Could you be the biggest threat to your Mac’s safety?

Take our Mac security pledge.

I will keep my Mac safe from other users
I know that anyone can access my computer whenever I’m not looking, so I’ll try to prevent others from getting at my private data.

I will use good passwords
I will make life difficult for anyone trying to break into my Mac or my online accounts by choosing excellent passwords and protecting them properly.

I will be careful when using a wireless network
Wireless networks are easily hacked, and public networks are the least secure. I won’t take any chances; I’ll always encrypt my wireless connection.

I will behave cautiously online
I can’t always know when I can trust a Web site to guard my private data. So I will take steps to keep personal information personal.

I will be smarter about how I handle e-mail
Safer e-mailing requires not just spam filtering but greater care in sending, reading, and responding to messages.

Walking the walk
It’s one thing to recommend safe computing habits. It’s entirely another to implement those recommendations. We asked Senior Editor Rob Griffiths to spend a couple of days implementing some of the suggestions in our Lock It Up series.

A quick post to a discussion of methods for backing up video data on Ric Ford’s indispensable Macintouch.

Miguel Guhlin is an über education blogger – a very very thoughtful and prolific writer. Sometimes I skip his feed in the morning because he makes me think about his posts and my work here languishes a bit. It’s a problem, but we could all do worse than have too many good writers to read.

The post I link to here, Hacking DVD Region Codes covers methods for both Mac and PC for circumventing the restrictions on DVDs from around the world. Do yourself a favor and read Miguel, or listen to his podcasts. He’s well worth your time.

Britta Gustafson of Jeweled Platypus provides a comprehensive list, nicely and neatly categorized, of menubar apps for Mac OS X. I have not tested many, but depending on your needs, you’ll find something of use here. (For you Windows folks, it’s not unlike adding items to the system tray.)

Via the del.icio.us feed on PopUrls.

Ars Technica gives a thorough and useful review of the newest iWork suite. I haven’t been a user of these apps, but the review gave me a good sense of what to expect. We’ve got an iWork license for the new Macs I’ll be configuring, so this is good timing.