| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

This is creative video making

I was pointed to this stop-motion animation by @joecar. It is an amazing piece of work, and as Joe said on his blog "Expect to see advert made like this in next six months"

The creator of the video explained how he made it;

At first I photographed stop motion animation. And I displayed the photographs in my room and photographed it again. I used 1,300 printed pictures...Some musicians add music on my video and reupload it. Thank you very much.

Time to learn some Flash

I wish I could remember all the work I did on Flash a few years back in my digital teacher project days. I have had a great idea for a teachers whiteboard resource, but I cannot realise the idea until I can remember some of the stuff I've forgotten!

It's so frustrating to know WHAT I want to do, but not be able to do it because I can't remember HOW!

Now, where did I put the Flash actionscript book?

UK Schools Video

If you are creating video with pupils in schools - and let's face it with the ease of creating digital video nowadays who isn't - I've been investigating Vimeo as a host for video files since the demise of Google Video as an option to upload video to the web.

I'm impressed so far - it's free (there is a paid for "plus" version) and they host videos quickly and easily. Videos can be embedded onto your websites (or learning platforms) and, in our LA (Nottinghamshire), are not filtered or blocked unlike youtube or googlevideo.

I've also set up the "UK Schools Video" group within Vimeo - obviously designed as a place to showcase your video work to other schools. To join it, just click here and then follow the instructions.

Hopefully some of you who have created video previously, or are doing so now, will join it. I look forward to seeing your videos soon.

Animoto and iPhone

My big annoyance with the iPhone is that lack of Flash support. This means that all the great animoto videos we create for school cannot be seen on an iPhone. Until now that is. I think I've found a way around it.

I accidently clicked on an animoto "your video is ready" email whilst using the iPhone, and as a result the animoto iphone app opened. This asked me whether I wanted to download and play the full length movie - naturally I agreed and I was watching a three and half minute creation on my iPhone.

Up until now I have only been able to watch the short self made "on iphone" movies of 16 images. This opens up a whole new prospect of all the school animations being viewable by iPhone users. I have added a small graphic below where the flash movie displays - that should appear on iphones - and I am testing this further to see whether it really does work.

Spot on

I have to post this link to a blog posting from a fellow twitterer (@ollibray) as what he says hits the nail on the head with regards to Local Authorities and their blanket filtering policies for many great resources on the web for education.

I'll say no more other than read his article. It will make you think long and hard

It's all going a bit mental

I seem to be run off my feet at the moment, and finding that the time I should be spending sleeping is slowly being taken up with other things to do.

I'm currently preparing a presentation that I will be giving at a neighbouring authority next month on the use of blogging in schools, and using web2.0 applications. I'm now at the stage of starting to build the blog posts that I will be using as my cues throughout the presentation.

As well as that I've just completed an article about why I like visualisers so much - ready to send off to an ICT consultant who has been talking about them recently.

Last night I wrote- and sent off - a hastily prepared (only had 3 days to try) evaluation of some software I have been using, and ended writing a case study of how the pupils had [so far] taken to it.

And on top of that I have my marking, assessing, planning and preparation to continue with. Who needs sleep?!!!

The update; an update

Well,  following my rant on Twitter about the non-existence of an upgrade to the new Typepad platform (as had been promised before the end of the year), I was tweeted by Six Apart and then emailed with a date of (this coming) Tuesday for migration.

Typepad also sent a link to a help page of advice to check the coding within the blog templates that would mean as soon as the blogs are transferred I could access the new features.

Well Digital-Teacher was checked first and no problems, three others were checked and had a few minor changes to make (no problems again), but then I came to Bectan Sands and this required major surgery on the coding. In fact, I might have stitched it back together incorrectly, although I have no idea now until Tuesday. 

So, Tuesday here we come...

Visual Literacy - Pt2

At the moment these videos are freezing after 1 second. I'm looking into why. I might to reload them onto to the web to sort it out. Fixed.

Update on the stop motion software I mentioned in the last post. I "accidently" discovered a setting tucked away in Moviemaker that allows the frame duration to be cut drastically - and that means that it can be used for stop motion photos. Here's a quick test of it using a lego horse in the classroom;

 

And another piece of FREE software that I am going to mention will be Moviestorm. Select characters, settings, point and click on what they should do (move / walk / look at / etc). It also allows you to record audio and use it as a conversation within the movie you create. Here's the example I'll use with the staff (note there is no audio on it yet - got to record a child speaking!);

 

Visual Literacy

I'm leading a staff meeting soon on ways to improve literacy without producing pages and pages of writing. I'm going to be looking at two - possibly three - ways of achieving this.

(1) Comic Life - once upon a time  available only for the mac - is a simple way to take photos and add graphic comments / speech. For the boys this is something that they'll take to. Here's a short comic about a literacy task on writing instructions...

(2) Moviemaker story telling using photos / audio / transitions and titles. Using the "add title on the selected clip" and selecting a "video inset with news banner title" a short sentence can be added to each image that appears. Increasing the time an image stays on screen means two/three sentences can be shown. Take a look at the example I quickly made below;

(3) There is also stop motion animation - although I'm struggling to find a simple looking program. If worst comes to it, I'll have to use QuickTime Pro to show a sequence of photos made using lego (that favourite for stop motion movies!!)

Hectors Helpful Hints

At the moment in our school, the lower school children are learning about keeping safe when online. We've been using the Sherston Broadband detectives E.A.S.Y. system to help us.

Today I came across the ThinkUKnow websites new section for  5 - 7 year olds. It's got a lot of simple text - all of which can be spoken to you if you cannot yet read it, and also some cartoons that get the message about being safe online across effectively.

Of couse, the ThinkUKnow website also has sections for 8 - 10, 11 - 16, parents and teachers too. All together, a good collection of resources for e-safety.