Drawn to the Bright Lights

This week I will repost my five favorite Drive-thru items from 2010.  This one appeared in February.  It's a favorite because I am so fond of these collaborations. 

I recently posted "Diary of a Country Priest Movie Review" to YouTube. As I indicated in my last post, I love making these little movie reviews. Sometimes they relate to my film class; other times just for my Film Favorites site. I have written original scripts and created the movies with iMovie. "Three Colors Blue" is a good example.

More often, for purposes of expedience, I use Photo To Movie because it is so darn easy to use (Thanks for the tip, Rick Strobl). And ....I often don't write original scripts. Instead I base them on the likes of great writers like Chris Koehn, Patrick Crogan, James Berardinelli, and David Church. In each case, I have contacted the writer or scholar and requested permission to use his text in my script. The permissions process has been quite gratifying.  The writers are enthusiastic and flattered.

My collaborator for the "Country Priest" is Gary Morris, the editor/publisher of the "Bright Lights Film Journal" -- a terrific film resource. Gary even threw out the possibility that someday in the near future he'll be redesigning his site and might even accommodate little movies like mine! A fun idea and a gratifying collaboration.

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Screen shot of PhotoToMovie "Review- Diary of a Country Priest" project

CBL Research Tool

Since the ADE 2010 Summer Institute in July, my Challenge Based Learning team hascontinued to work on our projects-- building resources for educators who wish to earn more about or try CBL.

I decided to draw on my experiences with CBL last year to create a few short video modules on research and media management. My first endeavor was created using past blog & presentation material, Flickr Creative Commons photos, Voila, GarageBand, and Photo to Movie.

Steven Spielberg, Dropbox and Me

Both of my posts this week conform to the "down in the trenches" theme of this blog. While I am not slogging it out in the classroom this summer, I am trying to develop actual solutions for real classes, using available technologies. No pontificating guru, I.

Recently I added to my collection of resources for my film class. I've described this process before: I write a script or outline and lay down a soundtrack with GarageBand. I then select jpegs and drop them and the soundtrack into PhotoToMovie. It took about five hours to synch the photos with the sound in the following ten minute movie :



This Speilberg movie has two new elements. Most of the Minority Report stills were captured with Voila. And I completed my work across two computers, using Dropbox. Dropbox is free. As described on its home page, this is what it does:

Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they'll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you've installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!). Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox's secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device.

I have already added the link for my Spielberg movie to Moodle. My students will be required to listen to it. I hope you will sample a couple of minutes, voluntarily!

Fear and Loathing in Las Videos

Less than two years ago, I made it a personal goal to bring video into my teaching. While I am not exactly a whiz, I can shoot, edit, and post with simple tools like my Flip Mino and iMovie. I also require student created video in all three of my courses.

For the most part, this is all cool. But sometimes, I feel kind of out there alone, floundering around. Since students are used to Skyping, chatting, or creating quick video messages for Facebook with their computer cameras, they don't necessarily arrive to class with high production values for their assignments. As I posted recently, our school has no universal standards for video, so I sort of make them up on the fly.

Colleagues present a different type of frustration. Thanks to the mandate by our administration, each academic department will make a short presentation about their curriculum to the entire staff. Thus, both of my departments have approached me for technical help, so that we can look hip and with it (There is considerable irony in this, since both groups have been slow to embrace techie stuff). Well, I recently made a suggestion to one department and posted in to our ning:

I propose that we include a 4-5 minute video that features the projects we do. . . . .The video would be composed of 40-50 still photographs and a voice-over narration. Each member would identify a cool project he or she does and collect some digital photographs that capture it.. . . . I am willing to edit the video but would like someone else to quilt the narrative pieces together into a whole script. I can then work on cutting down the photos or narration to fit the project.

I suggested we get started immediately. Well, you can still file this one under Procrastination.

Finally, since so many staff members are unfamiliar with actually creating videos themselves they have an anything-is-wonderful level of discernment for student creations. This semester, I have attended two all-school assemblies where student created videos were projected for the entire student body (at the request of adults, I'm sure). They were awful. In one case the editing was sloppy; in another case the sound was dreadful. The problems were so basic that the productions would never have been approved in other mediums. But since they were videos, it was assumed that something sort of YouTubish would communicate to our student body.

All things tech seem to evolve at a glacial pace in education, including minimal expectations.

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"with fear in my eyes . . ." Flickr Creative Commons photo by ifranz

Procrastination

Having taught at one school for 35 years, I don't have a broad perspective on the subject of procrastination. But I observe that procrastinating has become a deeply embedded part of my school's culture-- students and adults are rather notorious for waiting until the last minute.

Why blog about such a mundane subject at the Drive-thru? Because multimedia and procrastination are a very bad mix.

I'm thinking of a student group that had all sorts of interesting ideas for expressing information about "equality under the law" on a wiki. They started plans for doing interviews with experts and creating a dramatic enactments on video. None of these came to fruition. They severely underestimated the logistics for achieving their best ideas. Appointments were postponed, technical complications were unanticipated.

Now, before you chalk this up to immaturity, consider this. I've had two academic departments at school approach me about the possibility of helping with video presentation. Cool. I'm glad they see that video can be an attention grabber. But I don't think they appreciate the logistics of making something good. Anyone can turn on a camera. But certainly they don't want to ad lib information about their departments. Who's going to story board this? How may takes will they need? I'm willing to edit their best takes, but not the night before the presentation. As I've warned them, editing is time intensive if you care about production standards.

I'm guessing that at least one of these adult groups goes belly-up with the multimedia. Likely cause of death? Procrastination.

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"07072007012" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by petemaskreplica

Drawn to the Bright Lights

I recently posted "Diary of a Country Priest Movie Review" to YouTube. As I indicated in my last post, I love making these little movie reviews. Sometimes they relate to my film class; other times just for my Film Favorites site. I have written original scripts and created the movies with iMovie. "Three Colors Blue" is a good example.

More often, for purposes of expedience, I use Photo To Movie because it is so darn easy to use (Thanks for the tip, Rick Strobl). And ....I often don't write original scripts. Instead I base them on the likes of great writers like Chris Koehn, Patrick Crogan, James Berardinelli, and David Church. In each case, I have contacted the writer or scholar and requested permission to use his text in my script. The permissions process has been quite gratifying. The writers are enthusiastic and flattered.

My collaborator for the "Country Priest" is Gary Morris, the editor/publisher of the "Bright Lights Film Journal" -- a terrific film resource. Gary even threw out the possibility that someday in the near future he'll be redesigning his site and might even accommodate little movies like mine! A fun idea and a gratifying collaboration.

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Screen shot of PhotoToMovie "Review- Diary of a Country Priest" project

Blurring the Lines between Personal and Professional

Over the last two years I have received considerable personal pleasure working on projects related to technology in education.

In one case the boundaries between personal and professional are particularly blurred. Once a month, I make a movie-- often using Photo to Movie -- about film. Sometimes I do it for class, like my short piece on Akira Kurosawa. Sometimes I simply select a great film like Three Colors: Blue, and post it to my Film Favorites web site. Occasionally, a movie I makelike the review of The Passion of Joan of Arc (pictured here) will serve both purposes.

Is this work or a hobby? It doesn't really matter to me. Like a hobby, I've accumulated a nice collection of these pieces which I have housed at my YouTube channel. If I come up with ideas that I might be able to use in the course, all the better.

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Screen capture from my Commentary of the Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Follow Your Passion....Connect Your Dots.

My blog title, "Follow your Passion....Connect Your Dots" comes from some notes from the ADE Institute that I tapped out on my iPod Touch. (I'm not sure who said it, the context, or even if it is exact). The metaphor speaks very strongly to my experience.

Connecting with Others (Input)
I was one of the first people in my professional circle to really "get into" a listserv. Shakesper was a revelation to me. Having online exchanges with the giants of academia like John W. Velz and Stanley Wells was unspeakably exciting for a high school teacher like myself. Now, I do the majority of reading for news, sports, education, and tech based on the blogs and articles that come my way from my RSS Reader and Twitter.


Connecting with Others (Input)
The Opinion Drive-thru was originally a political blog. During the Obama nomination campaign I actually posted blogs simultaneously on my Obama page where it was more frequently read. Sometimes I posted podcasts. Sometimes I posted on educational subjects. (Usually I didn't post at all). But these were my fledgling efforts to connect-- narcissistic to be sure, by fulfilling a need to reach a wider audience. A year ago I got my Flip camera and began to learn iMovie. Now I have a YouTube channel. I make movies with Keynote, PhotoToMovie, and iMovie. For the past four months it has been a great hobby and a nice outlet for my ideas, knowledge, and opinions.

A Reflection
Some of my friends seem to be suffering from the insularity of their school. They are tired of the same old office politics. They strike me as paranoid and deeply anxious, suffering cases of classic "burn out". Connecting with others has spared me this fate. As I started my thirty-fifth year of teaching, I realized that I no longer saw my work as exclusively taking place in a building or classroom. I have the strongest self-image that I have possessed as a professional: I see myself with a unique set of abilities for integrating the Read/Write web with curriculum. I enjoy this sense of uniqueness and like sharing it with an inner circle of colleagues and with fellow educators around the globe.

I wake up most days looking forward to connecting more dots-- not a bad way to meet the day.
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"Connecting the Dots" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Irina Souiki

Apps & Sites Worth Revisiting

I would like to revisit some web sites and applications that I now lean on even more heavily than when I first recommended them:

Magnatune In Transcending Words (and copyright!) I recommended Magnatune as a source of Creative Commons music-- pieces by professional musicians that you are free to use so long as you give attribution. Each day I get a "Free Song of the Day"in my inbox. These have added up to a wonderful collection of music from which to draw for my projects. I now go to this playlist regularly for my movies and slide shows. A majority of freebies are classical and ambient, but I have found some wonderful electronic and blues music too. Excellent stuff.

Garageband I only use one little piece of GarageBand-- its podcasting feature-- but I have lbecome so hooked that I will enthusiastically present a break out session on this feature at MAPSA. It is so elegant, yet so simple. Now I can mix and edit my own mp3 productions with ease. Adding a Logitech USB Desktop Microphone, has even further upgraded my podcasts.

PhototoMovie These days, I often I produce an GarageBand narraton and then drop it right into PhototoMovie. This is the best $50 I spent these summer. Another simple application (Do you see a pattern, here?), PhototoMovie allows the user to add jpegs to narration or music and quickly piece together a movie that can be shared on YouTube. I have now produced several, like the Werner Herzog Filmography (play a few seconds of it in order to listen for the Magnatunes theme music by Lawrence Cresswell).

iTunesU Go to the iTunes store and visit iTunesU with its plethora of free video and audio podcasts from Duke, Stanford, Yale, NY Public Library, Library of Congress, New York Metropolitan Museum, Holocaust Museum etc. Using PhototoMusic I produced this little iTunes Preview to insert into a Keynote presentation I will make in October to Mame36.

Twitter "Enough already about Twitter," you may say. After all, I sang its praises in Why Twitter? But I use it more heavily than FaceBook or any other social media. Since the summer institute, many fellow ADEs have joined. Furthermore, some of the savvier sports journalists in town have jumped in as well. I find myself checking for filtered tweets half a dozen times a day. An addiction? No way. The majority of my professional, sports and political reading now comes from blogs that are linked by Twitter or my Google Reader.

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"Summer Revisited for Hope" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Madmoiselle Lavender

The Old Guy Goes Multimedia

For want of the correct adaptor, I was prevented from showing my Keynote presentation on "Apple Solutions for the 21st Century" at Madonna U. last week. Instead, I improvised, going directly to the Web for a "show & tell" of some online concoctions I've whipped up for my high school courses. I took a more or less chronological approach. It made me realize how I had evolved over the past 18 months. My progression is outlined here:

It all started with podcasts by phone. I made mp3 lectures with Gabcast for my Government class, and I began to require my students to report by podcast as well.

About 14 months ago, I began to integrate hyperlinks into my film study guides, illustrating concepts with photos and YouTube examples.

Exactly a year ago, I began using the Flip Mino I received for my birthday. I turned the camera on myself and started to record video directions for absent students. More significantly, I loaned the camera out to my AP Government students, so that they could vlog opinion pieces. Then their classmates blogged about these vlogs. The blogging feature of iWeb was perfect for this little enterprise.

In November, '08, I began to edit video movies with iMovie. I was very intimidated by this great software, but once again Atomic Learning helped me out.

In February, 2009, I taught my sophomores how to use wikis so that they could host their own multimedia resources. Many groups conducted interesting interviews and created short video pieces. Using iWeb I began creating exhibition pages for my students' multimedia work. I then shared the link with the editor of the school bulletin, The Mercy Memo.

I began podcasting with GarageBand. What an upgrade over Gabcast! ( Thanks for the tip, Andy Mann). And thank you, Rick Strobl for suggesting at Schuste's retirement party that I animate jpegs with PhotoToMovie. This was the best $50 I ever spent on software. Combining GarageBand mp3s with jpegs and turning them into movies has been a fun summer pastime.

Discovering that I could search for Library of Congress public domain photos on Flickr, further enhanced my ability to animate jpegs for instructional purposes.

I finally learned how to use Keynote. I had no idea that what I took to be slide show software could present so many multimedia options. This is my July and August preoccupation-- making moves using GarageBand (for soundtrack) and Keynote.

While I can't prove that my students are learning more after being fed with this stew of media, I know that I have, and I believe that I am modeling communication skills that they will need in their careers.

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"Multimedia Message" (The cover of the May/June Communication Arts Magazine). Flickr Creative Commons photo by mwilke.

Just Ask!

In past blog posts I have argued strongly for steering students to Creative Commons and public domain sites. And as you have may have noticed, the educational materials that I create are similarly licensed.

Nevertheless, their are often times that we really need to, or at least want to, use copyrighted material. Some of this may well be covered by “Fair Use” for educators. But if I really want to lean on a copyright protected source, I’m guided by the principle of “Just ask!”

Photos
Back in January, I reflected on the the pleasure I had communicating with Flickr photographers about my memory book project for my dad. The Creative Commons could not satisfy the scope of my efforts, so I requested permissions. I would guess that 90% of the photographers (including professionals) responded, and all responses were affirmative. Often the permissions were accompanied by notes wishing me well with my book.

I have had 100% success getting permissions for jpeg use in classroom. For that matter, no one has ever refused a request for a photo to use with this blog. Usually, they are flattered, and often they read the blog after I’ve included the jpeg upload.

Teaching Materials
Teachers are rather notorious for poaching from each other. I am willing to share, but I would like attribution. After all, my ability to make such materials is part of my professional “brand.” Feeling strongly about this as I do, I avoid from lifting other teachers’ material. Not long ago, however, I came across some study questions that were just too good to pass up. I was researching Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when I came across some discussion questions authored by Michael Dembert of Portland Community College. When I asked permission to use them, he graciously agreed. Similarly, Professor Troy Ellis Smith of BYU, Hawaii, helped me out with some excellent writing topics on Federalist 51 for my AP Government class. In both cases, I gave well deserved attribution.

Essays & Reviews
This summer I have been making movie resources for my Literature into Film class. Naturally, when I make an eight minute film on a film director, I need to do considerable research. In the case of Akira Kurosawa, I was fortunate to find a couple of terrific essays licensed to Creative Commons. But when I was researching Werner Herzog, I came across the perfect copyrighted essay in an Australian online magazine called Senses of Cinema. After a bit of digging I successfully contacted the author, David Church (currently a PhD student and instructor at Indiana University), and he graciously gave me permission to use his piece as the backbone of my movie narration. Similarly, Professor Patrick Crogan (University of the West of England, Bristol ) and James Berardinelli (Reelviews.net) are allowing me to use their essays for current productions. Patrick expressed the wish to see my finished Seven Samurai movie when I put it on YouTube. James said I was free to use any or all of his review of Citizen Kane on the overview I am preparing on that film.

As I have implied these experiences have left me with a clear conscience and a real sense of collaboration. So, when you run into copyright, don’t steal or don’t run. Just ask!
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"Just Ask! Hat and shirt" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by STANDANDLOU

My New Recipe for Making Slideshow Movies

I found a sweet recipe for whipping up delectable slide show movies for my Film and American Government courses. This is simple and quick. Recently, I cooked up an American Political Party treat for the coming school year. Here's the recipe I used:

1) I recorded an mp3 with GarageBand. (Sometimes I just edit a "leftover") .

2) I searched for jpegs free of copyright restrictions. Some came via Advanced Image Search of Yahoo! in order to dig for Creative Commons photos. But the Library of Congress was a virtual treasure trove. The key to my search in their digital collection was to add the phrase no known restrictions on publication to any search. After a few hours, I had over a hundred public domain photos for my movie.

3) I created my title pages and other text files with Pages. It has wonderful templates for adding "spice" to my presentation, and it is easy to export the finished product as a jpeg.

4) I mixed my concoction together in PhototoMovie (recently praised in Summer Play with jpegs ). The mixing of mp3 and jpegs was simple: I simply dragged them into this easy-to-use application. The title pages and a few other slides were given specific placement, but for this movie I was not particularly concerned about matching the photos with the narration, so I set the presentation "Fit Photos to Title".

5) I exported this mix as a QuickTime movie.

6) I uploaded it to YouTube.

Viola! Sample my recipe and let me know what you think:

American Political Parties

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"Ingredients" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Frenkieb

Summer Play with Jpegs

Jpeg Joy
I've kicked off my summer vacation with a flurry of jpeg activity. Before I begin my show 'n tell, I should remark that I received lots of classroom compliments for the iPhoto calendar I whipped up for S-7. This creation came in the wake of the "Ann Arbor" Images book that I described in My Friend, Flickr. Also I am pleased to report that I have now converted all my Lit into Film guides into hyperlink format (See Hyperlink Heaven).

Recent Developments!

For the past two weeks I have been dropping jpegs into movies. My first effort was a film review of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. I enjoyed dropping the jpegs into iMovie so much I have the notion of adding a "Five Star Review" to my web site each month. When I told fellow Web Warrior, Rick Strobl, what I had been up to, he tipped me off on an application that sent me off on a bender. I've completed my last two jpeg movies with PhototoMovie (Check out the free trial). In an afternoon I completed an eight minute movie for my film class on documentaries. Basically it's a podcast with jpeg illustrations. Obviously, for a film class, this has tremendous advantages. But I also wish to try it with my government classes and will check back in next week after I am done raiding the public domain jpegs at the Library of Congress!