DV for Teachers

This morning I am acting as emcee for WolrdQuest, a social-studies quiz competition for high schoolers. Winner of the Atlanta competition hosted here at GSU wins tickets on AirTran to the national finals in April.

I just love how much free hype Apple’s gotten on this. Business majors and MBA candidates, rev up your graduate theses to analyze how they generate so much press mania (which most of you poor mutts will have to write in MSWord on a Windows machine). In the meantime, here’s a nicely done (and fairly plausible) wish-list for today’s announcement from Alchemist Muffin (because all the other good blog names were taken). Via Slashdot, via popurls.

Which news feed will you follow? I’m going to try several, but Fake Steve writes that he will live-blog the keynote Going to be a fun day.

I think jose. I do. I met him – only briefly – when he recorded an interview Ellen and I did last weekend at the National Storytelling Festival. The organizers of the festival were collecting peoples’ stories from their own experience in Jonesborough and at the festival over the years. The first time I went, 11 years ago, I had a memorable time and was part of a great onstage story. I’ll tell that tale here another time, but I want here to point to Jose’s site, which documents his many interests, achievements, and areas of expertise.

If you’re i his area, check him out, and if you’re not, check his site – there’s lots he knows about and can help you with.

Think Jose!

I saw some very engaging student projects while judging at the Festival—previous post here. There were 160 judges there, working into the afternoon judging several categories, all hosted in the facilities of Georgia Public Broadcasting.

I worked with an instructional technologist from Muscogee County and a library media specialist from Fulton County. We looked at several student-created web sites, most on CD and some online. Lots of good creative work, some were rather cookie-cutter, and one or two a bit misguided or unfortunately marred by broken links or missing images. I particularly liked the emphasis on citing sources as part of the projects. One nice resource I discovered is Weebly, a free website host for several of the projects. The sites I have seen had few ads, and not to distractingly placed. A nice find.

Encourage your students to participate in the festival in your school!

I am looking forward to working as a judge a the Georgia Student Media Festival on May 1st. They’ve posted several samples from last year’s Georgia festival. The International Student Media Festival is the goal of the Georgia competitors, and they have posted work from past winners. There are even more posted on SchoolTube
I signed up yesterday, and there’s lots of information on the site:

The purpose of the festival is to stimiulate student interest and involvement in all types of media production. This is accomplished by providing an opportunity for students to show their work to an interested audience, to have their work critiqued by a panel of expert judges, and to be stimulated by the work of other students.

The students worked really hard on the samples I’ve viewed, and I’ll watch more before the Festival. I’ll try to blog a bit from the competition, but more for sure on this the week after!

This post is more than comments and links that I hope you find useful; this post is a marker for me. I had to put something up here, not just in my journal or calendar, about what I’ve learned and seen at this conference and the impact this experience has had on me. The sessions, workshops, and conversations here have inspired me to a new sense of purpose personally and professionally: to find more ways to teach and talk about the power of media and storytelling to hook students into learning, making the process something they can own, can see the point in. The list after the jump is a catalog of the most significant things of the last few days. (more…)

Thay asked me to be a judge… I go to start watching entries to the Georgia State Campus MovieFest in about 15 minutes.

It’s America’s Independence Day, which many celebrate as the 4th of July. Well, you could celebrate every day (“Happy October 6th!!”), but it’s the day we celebrate our Declaration of Independence, when the founders openly stated we weren’t going to be a colony any more.

It’s also the date of my wedding anniversary, and this year makes the sixth. Good years, and we’re hoping for many more. So as you eat your food from the grill, wave the flag at the parade, and watch the fireworks, we’ll be celebrating our interdependence while we all celebrate our independence.——-

The fall semester starts today. The lab PCs are fully reconfigured, the carpets have been cleaned, and we’ll be doing lots of orientations this week. Welcome to new folks, and welcome back to old friends.——-

“The DLexpo is a unique education and awareness program involving the latest tools and solutions in digital technology. It specifically targets the areas of digital video, photography, music, the Internet, wireless communications and home entertainment.”

I am very interested in this; there’s an Atlanta date in November; Long Beach and New York first. If this comes to your area, consider it. Many high-profile multimedia gurus will be presenting (at least in Long Beach; no details yet for Atl dates), and the prices for educators are cheap. More info on the Atlanta expo when I get them.——-