DV for Teachers

I was asked some months ago to do a Photoshop workshop for rhetoric students assigned to make a “Visual Argument.” The idea was to produce a composite image that made an argument, but ideally without text. The assumption was that the students would know little or nothing about Photoshop. Taking bits from different images with the Clone Stamp Tool and layering them would introduce not only that tool but working with Brushes, including the Eraser tool, Layers, some blending modes, as well as learning to navigate the notorious Photoshop interface(s). Digging through an older folder to clean out some cruft I came across this demo file, and realized it’s too good not to share.

We’re talking about video editing, trying to get students to work on storyboards and other pre-production, what teachers are already doing with their students (zombie movies!), and more. We have high school teachers and elementary ed teachers here. Flip cameras are popular; cheap and good enough.

One suggestion: use Legos instead of storyboarding, or do stop action with them.

Photostory is good: for making stories, and for assessment purposes. Example: folder of butterfly images on shared drive. Student puts them in the right order, and they write the narration, record it, export as WMV, and it can be posted for parents to see.

A library media specialist explained how no project is ever finished; ask them, as the final part of the project, what they would have done to make it better. If they’re a 4th grader, they conceivably come back the next year to improve it.

Use professional film/video for comparison in class, and then evaluate their own work.

Book trailers: make movie-style trailers for books. Works from high school all the way down to kindergarten; little kids can draw their own version of a picture book, knowing what part of the story to withhold to build interest; scan them in or use a digital camera, and then iMovie or Photostory, even PPT, record narration, and create the movie. The best ones can be posted online.

What about releases, for school and system liability? An issue with no certain resolution in the near term. Too many policy makers, administrators, and parents have too little trust in the schools, teachers, and their students. The kids are more visually, technologically, and culturally literate in this regard than these adults. We may have to wait for them to age themselves out of the situation.

A public awards ceremony can be a great motivator and reward – and one educator also explained how the program for his school’s award ceremony includes the educational standards met by the students’ films. The students have to explain how their work meets the standards. Great idea.

Final points about tools and sites: iSkySoft iMedia converter; Handbrake.fr; GPB.org’s Digital Education site, with access to thousands of hours of educational video, a lot of which is available not just for streaming, but download and even editing for projects.

If you need an account there, send email to education@GPB.org

What the Hashtag allows direct following of a given hashtag, along with statistics, graphs, and more. The group is now discussing bits of the history of Twitter, the value of asking questions of your network of followers, and how hashtags allow you to get direct answers.

Other ways to do this: in third party apps like TweetDeck, or on the Twitter site itself. What the Hashtag makes it easy to show others what a Twitter conversation is like.
Now a high school teacher is asking about how to use it – yes, students will need a Twitter account, and they’ll need to know about the hashtag.

This is useful for students to tweet links to each other and to the class, for reporters/editors to follow stories, for parents and teachers to communicate. Students are going to use this technology – it’s damaging to make them outlaws just by banning their phones.

Bring the technology into the classroom and show them how to use it for positive ends! It requires trust and high expectations and patience, and a thick skin sometimes.

[This is all exciting!]

I just got to give a blurb for buying your name as a domain, and for WordPress, too.

[Moved to this session in the middle.]

They’re talking about a Social Media strategy for public stations. Should a producer do it? What about an audience member? – Yes, if it’s “curated” but not controlled.

What about sponsorship, product placement? It can work.

A church leader describes how Facebook and Google searches brought more new visitors than anything else. (Wow.)

Lots of anecdotes about how a good web presence, and announcements on Facebook, really make a difference now.

“What are you selling?” vs. “What are you saying?” is an important distinction, and another indication of the importance of a well-thought out web/social media strategy. That requires attention a careful response to what others say about you on the social network. If you don’t respond carefully, and model good “service” to your audience/listeners/customers, then it can be a net loss for you.

Schools – if students know they’re going to be in media – television, on the web – they’re interest picks up. And many of them use social media as well, so put it there.

Came in a bit late – session members are discussing broadcasting weather forecasts, and how to make sure they provide accurate information that the audience understands.

Michael – he proposed this session – explains what he means by digital core values. He referred us to the Local News Initiative for some details.

Query: have ethics changed because of the technology? Is there more pressure to follow sensational stories, to be reactive? It’s an old pressure, but is there more pressure now?

Thinking in terms of what audience wants, the GPB.org web guy told us they put the NPR feed on the GPB home page, and got an unprecedented number of hits when Gary Coleman died….

[I left that session to join another on the future of social media.]

Working on a definition of what it is, and comparing it to citizen journalism. Aggregating reports of milk prices by WNYC, gas prices around Atlanta, Talking Points Memo publishing PDFs from the Justice Department of the U.S. Attorney firings, are all examples. But what about credibility? How to trust the source, to know it’s a reliable report?

WNYC has a Crowdsourcing Fieldguide. Nice.

Many classrooms are using it – students across a district, county, state, or around the world can gather and aggregate all kinds of information.

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk offers a kind of crowdsourcing – posting one’s project there can get many good sources/responses.

One guy described how crowdsourcing reports on Southern California wildfires kept him apprised of the condition of his house there while he was in Georgia.

Crowdsourcing relies on an existing network of attentive followers, whether it’s blog commenters, or twitter followers, or facebook friends, or LinkedIn connections.

Tanya Ott described the Get an Edit Facebook group to help freelancers get feedback and editing for their radio scripts.

TBD.com – new Washington DC website – is based on a sort of crowdsourcing model.

Search for #PubCampGA on flickr to find’em. I’ve already met several people in public broadcasting from Georgia and Alabama, educators from around Georgia, and some students. I look forward to meeting more people from different backgrounds.

Crossposted at TimMerritt.net

That’s where I’ll be all day tomorrow! Much more to come, including much more regular stuff here on this very blog. No, really.

I gave a talk three weeks ago (omg time has flown) to the Atlanta chapter of MCA-I about social networking, and use of the web for building and maintaining connections with colleagues, peers, and clients. Below the jump are many many links to the sites we visited during the lively discussion.

Before I get to the mechanics of everything in this post, I want to say a bit about why to do all this, and it’s much more than “branding” yourself. I had not long before found a post on 3 Quarks Daily, a group blog on current affairs, about thinking and working in this new economy and this new century. It was a link to an interview and podcast with Seth Godin, an unconventional marketing consultant and author. In this service economy, most of us have to provide something unique—there are videographers and editors all over. To be successful, Godin asserts that we have do our work as an artist would, to add ourselves in essential ways to what we do. After listening to this podcast a few times, and starting to read his blog, I’ve tried to consciously bring more of that attitude to what I do, and I encourage you to do that as well, and tell the story of it through social media. Now, to the links:

I’m working on resources for a Social Networking Workshop this weekend for Georgia State’s College of Education Alumni Club. I came across a great blog post that covers a lot of detail about LinkedIn, the focus of my talk. Kalinago English is Karenne Sylvester’s blog about teaching English around the world – she’s from the Caribbean and is now based in Stuttgart. Her post about LinkedIn for EFL teachers covers the ground so well for teachers, I’m going to base my talk on it with her permission. In addition, here’s her very good LinkedIn profile, too. Think of her profile and her blog as excellent examples of what social networking is for: an open and generous demonstration of expertise. It’s an invitation to you as well. If you invite the world, they might actually come—and then the sky’s the limit.

Thanks, Karenne!

Other great resources after the jump.