Lori's+Locker

Posted two sets of notes from ISTE workshops on making quality digital video projects as presented by Rushton Hurley. His website is [|www.nextvista.org] and I'm using the model lesson as a starting point for my new afternoon class called Digital Media Lab. #1 The Power (and Ease) of Digital Video for Any Class [] ISTE 2010 Monday, June 28, 2010 – 12:30-1:30 [BYOL] Rushton Hurley, Next Vista for Learning (speaker at Rotary International Canada last week) Examples of videos: Shorewood’s lip dub “You Make My Dreams Come True” filmed in one take, in reverse. [YouTube] · How Shorewood HS made video, included every segment of school’s students [YouTube] Commercial: “airportapplause.wmv” military walking through airport—Anheuser Busch 60 seconds. · Use at start of class (minus beer tag) to raise questions: war in Iraq/Afghanistan? · How is the music used to set the mood of the piece? Why does the ad focus on the girl’s face? “Nines” by Jose Ruiz, student who said he was “no good at school” – [|www.nextvista.org] · Shows how to multiply by 9 using fingers. Now around the world with this simple video. · Mother called in and given evidence of what he was able to create in class. “bsa.mov” student project about Boy Scouts as Freshbrain.org challenge, not school assignment. · Hands-on, creative, original, about boy’s passion.

What if that talented kid was in my class and I didn’t know it because of traditional projects? Video projects celebrate each other’s work—How many kids never hear “awesome” in their lives?

Equipment: Audacity (free download); Podsafe audio.com (free audio, copyright-free); $20 USB mike; $5 PC jack; “borrow” headset with mike from Foreign Language dept in HS.

Audacity Process: 1) mute music—2) record self – 3) timeshift tool – 4) envelope audio – 5) spend time revising to make it good! –6) “project” needs to be exported to complete, as MP3 for example.

Mac people have Garageband; PC people have “Mac envy” but can download Moviemaker to Windows 7, on XP & Vista. Process: 1) Collections = images dragged from photos – 2) add to timeline, video effects and transitions.

YouTube free help: “movie maker tutorial” or “audacity tutorial” Storyboard less control; Timeline better: 1) capture video – 2) edit movie, add voice over using Audacity – 3) finish movie –4) save movie file.

Opportunity to learn with kids: be interested and have kids teach the teacher, allow for moments of learning and sharing. Kids lack confidence to learn – videos provide different explanation to “get it”.

Created nonprofit [|www.NextVista.org] to showcase student videos in 3 categories: 1. Lightbulb = academic concepts, careers interviewed with 4 questions format. 2. Global views = learn about other parts of the world 3. Seeing service = (from Rotary experience) serving others: what it means to be alive. Requirements: 5 minutes or less; made for and by kids; factually accurate and cited appropriately; not freak out a 3rd grader! Possible projects: · Shakespeare’s Sonnets = for anniversary, kids found and recorded sonnets with coaching from Drama teacher to gain confidence and practice wording. · Introduce community = what’s special about your school or neighborhood; take pride in where we come from.

Implementation: Teachers must watch what the students give you so set 45 second time limits that can be negotiated. No martial arts, violence, or death. Podcasts and slideshows are easy; work with others to avoid issue of homes without computers; give alternative of “make a poster” if can’t do video. In 10 years, no posters turned in—not cool!

Cool matters. Give cool assignments, use cool tools. See rockourworld.org video “See what we can do” blind kids.

For help: Rushton Hurley by email rh @nextvista.org or [|www.nextvista.org]. Email for nonprofit newsletter at xrl.us/NVnews. #2 Focus on Quality Before Multimedia Projects Begin [] ISTE 2010 Wednesday, June 30, 2010 – 12:00-1:00 [Model lesson] Rushton Hurley, Next Vista for Learning [|www.nextvista.org] with Jim Sill Rushton: Krause Center for Innovation, HS Japanese language teacher in Santa Clara, Google-certified. Jim: video production classes for MS, Google-certified. All sessions on xrl link.

Realize class length might differ but today’s model lesson will be the important part of the class period. Traditionally, kids understand instruction but might not do—the process changes from passive to active when kids create. Start with working knowledge to complete project more successfully.

Model lesson: 1) Framing question—“Choose video from NextVista site on a career that you’re interested in. Choose quickly because videos are 2-3 minutes each and you have 4 minutes to complete viewing with headsets on.” Instead of giving students a list of dos & donts, show samples of videos and see what they observe. Critical thinking skills about media literacy: identify audio problems, lighting issues, verbalize what they like or don’t like. Wait to include terminology later.  2) “Did you notice something about the video?”—background noise; soundtrack good; good editing; used humor to engage audience, etc. 3) “What are ways to improve the videos?” – close up of speaker to connect with speaker; doing computer service and his desk was messy/distracting; photographer’s artwork was not good and visuals were poor; etc. Tell students to “de-screen” or “de-headphone” when you want their attention for group discussions.  4) Choose second video to watch. On xlr, click on this form to complete worksheet of strengths and weaknesses. Google Forms = free under Google Docs, like Survey Monkey. Easy to create in minutes and allows for paragraph responses, rank scale, etc. and can quickly graph information for easy-to-understand visuals. YouTube has videos to learn how. Teacher creates the first form then shows students how to make their own questionnaire to ask about their own video. Students internalize results and capitalize what they like; peer evaluation is powerful, greater than teacher feedback, huge impact. Critique work not the person. Good to start with unknown students on web. Ask: Would you give the same critique if the person were here? What is the value of getting suggestions? 5) Discussion: What other critique do you have after seeing two videos? – importance of story board; must have taken longer to do good video; need plan to work out camera angles; problem downloading file if too big: good high quality that takes forever to download vs. lower resolution fast stream; watching person talking is really boring: they should’ve thought about the audience; what are extra visuals?; sushi bar video is good; intro & end were really good but middle was not exciting; small fonts made it hard to read credits; important to list online resources and acknowledge who is interviewed; puppet talking the whole time=still not interesting; labor & delivery nurse spoke in front of boring yellow wall—no baby until the end; could’ve been powerpoint.

What’s next? Multimedia projects, career profile projects (never saw female scientist before video). Video interesting, multimedia ropes them in, gets kids to listen, teach kids to appreciate world around them, making connections…

3 levels: Basic (camera), Intermediate (TV), Advanced (film). Shakespeare’s Sonnets: 1) collectively find a sonnet on internet or in book à2) teach each other how to interpretà 3) find images to illustrate à 4) shoot & edit à 5) publish on internet or website. Inspire with end goal of internet posting before you start: motivates students to do best job. Give permission to like poetry: “No Fear Shakespeare”; help from Drama teacher; Google Docs to post poem; practice and record. Gave permission to be figurative, not literal in interpretation and opened door to creativity. Kids can do great stuff if given opportunity with these assignments.

On xlr—Resources + NextVista rules, tools, projects, copyright info and how to contact Rushton. Sign up for newsletter. ? Flip camera converted with “Quick Media Converter” free cocoon software. Here are the notes from the workshops I attended at Denver's ISTE Conference. I'll post one every few days to try to separate the text.

If you are interested in learning more about any of these, the URLs are at the top and ISTE is posting notes for many of the workshops.

What fascinated me about this lecture by Alan November was the power and responsibility that we as teachers have to change the world view of our students. Their world is so different from what we experienced as children and technology is changing what and how they learn exponentially. By focusing on global curriculum and having our students communicate with children in other parts of the world now, as they grow older, they will be better able to make decisions with empathy for people of other cultures.

A simple reminder for teachers would be to find lessons that involve another culture and get on the internet to find a school for our kids to connect with. To find articles and links from another country on Google, keyword "site:___"__ (country code--found at Root Zone Database). This will produce articles in English from that country about a book you're using or lesson you're planning and you can track the teacher and classroom to set up a videoconference or GoogleDoc discussion. See me for more details!

ISTE 2010 Tuesday, June 29, 2010 – 11:00-12:00 Empathy: The 21st Century Skill [Spotlight] Alan November [|www.novemberlearning.com/blog]

Internet and people-to-people connection: Asian countries have a sense of urgency as their economies are booming and their students are excelling. Worried about US where our only way out of debt is to sell our products around the world to countries that can make their own.

We should be totally focused on globalizing curriculum. Example: principal asked each teacher in her elementary school to name a dozen countries that connect to year’s curriculum. She then generated a list of contacts for each teacher to connect with another classroom in another part of the world. ISTE is the Tech Conference—our goal should be for every single teacher to meet this challenge. Audacious goals needed to think globally and make connections.

Work ethic in Asia finds kids working harder—How do we get our kids to use technology and work harder than teachers?

HSBC world’s largest bank based in London is moving its headquarters to China. Anthropologist Michael Wesch (?) gets millions of hits on YouTube to help us understand US. West Point cadets trained to “win peace” instead of “win wars”.

In global economy, test scores as mission are insufficient. If other countries adopted NCLB, their economies would fail.

Example: European History professor told to include Islam in his course and chose a quote about pope. Someone translated it and posted on internet resulted in huge blow up in Turkey. Google in America pulls up media coverage of event, not academic analysis. Know how to find international information “site:tr” to find articles from Turkey showing their perspective on the same topic. Teach basic skill set: “Root Zone Database” for all country codes.

Empathy= you see from another point-of-view. How you search leads you down a certain path of “truth”.

Example: British tourists visit Lexington and ask different questions: Where’s Buckman Tavern? (Shows Google Map with tavern highlighted). Americans missed shot because drunk from visiting tavern. Access essays that British kids write about the same event. “site:sch.uk” will pull up all school sites in Great Britain.

Don’t need to worry about plagiarism if give assignments that can’t be copied and pasted. Design assignments to do things that have never been done before. Find email of teacher responsible for assignment. Send class analysis with Google Doc of our class work. Bound to get one response that could set up a video conference with an English school.

Example: YouTube video on //Number the Stars// shown to Copenhagen. Image was not culturally sensitive to Denmark audience. View “site:dk” to see their perspective. Automatically, each teacher should have students go to the country where the story takes place to see the perspective of the children who live there. Use Google Docs to discuss without worrying about time difference to respond.

Example: girl moved from India leaving grandmother behind. Kindergarten teacher arranged skype on LCD projector for new girl to talk to grandmother. Another little girl: “Is my grandma in that box too?” started communication with 10 grandmas reading stories and talking to children in class. Teacher sent book for Irish grandma to read to them, taped and sent book with tape home for kids to practice reading: students started speaking with Irish accent! Preschoolers can think and learn globally, more than content and skill.

Most powerful social tool and schools block access. Interview with 20+-year-old Canadian Obama campaign manager. In Thomas Jefferson’s time, needed to read and write to vote; in Obama’s time, new tools used to win presidency blocked in schools. We need to be more prepared, more motivated to develop love of history and to teach students to love learning using tools available today.