stevedesantis's blog

Video in the classroom- Island Movie Contest in Hawaii

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The state of Hawaii runs a contest each year called the Island Movie Contest.  The contest is open to any public school student in the state of Hawaii, between the grades 3-12.  The students compete in three divisions based on grade level 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12.  The videos must use one of the selected story themes: Teach me something, Tell me a story  or Environmental Concerns or Social Issues.   The students are expected to select their topic,  write their script as well as appearing in and filming their production.  I am sure they receive necessary technical help from their teachers, but the bulk of the work is theirs.  Here is a link to last year's winning entries. 

They are also required to state the standards that are addressed by their presentation.

VoiceThread for web quest

I created this VoiceThread for use in out Web Quest project.  Unfortunately, iweb does not support embedding widgets like our blog pages.  Sooooo, I downloaded a free trial of Camtasia, a video screen capture application.  With this I was able to create an .avi movie file.  I had a lot of trouble recording the audio with Camtasia.  I finally gave up and used the microphone recording option to record the sound from my speakers. (I know, I know, not the ideal solution.) I then went to Zamzar, the conversion site, and had them convert it to an mp4 format.  All of this took me a couple of hours... for 27 seconds of video(and audio!).  But at least I know how to use this application.  Hopefully I will have another use for it before the 30 day trial period expires.  I guess I just had to prove it could be done.

Smile! You Might be on Candid Camera

I just finished reading an interesting article in Teacher Magazine about students taking photos or recording video of their teachers and posting them on the web.  The most controversial of these postings are videos of teachers yelling or doing something silly and posted on our old friend YouTube.  

Many schools ban the use of cell phones in class.  The First Amendment protects the student's right to free speech.  In many states, it is illegal to record someone without their knowledge and permission.  Taking something out of context and editing a video to make the teacher look bad could be libelous.  What is the answer to this ?

Now even your "snail-mail" is available online!

Earthclass.logo.standard

This company's service is to scan your mail and have it available to you on the web.  You have your mail sent to them, just like you were having it sent to a PO box, they scan it, and make it available to you on line.  You have similar abilities to read, skip or recycle (shred) your mail as you would with email.  They even give you the ability to block junk mail, by opting out of mailing lists. this would be useful if you are going to be out of town, especially for an extended period of time, and needed to access important "snail-mail".

I saw a report on CNBC about this company, and if you want, you can read their article here.  For more information, you can visit Earth Class Mail.

My first effort using VoiceThread

Below is my first try at using VoiceThread.  Yeah I know that it is pretty basic, but it seems to be pretty easy to use.  When you are finished editing you merely click on the to go button and it provides you with the widget code needed to embed into your blog, etc.  Initially I had no microphone set up, so I just used the text function.  Once I set up my microphone it was very easy to add a voice component too.  Of course you need to make sure that you make your VoiceThread public so that others can view them. 

I found an example of a VoiceThread being used in a classroom blog in New Zealand. In addition to the VoiceThread, they are creating podcasts.  The students made a presentation explaining NZ currency.  Click here to view.
 

My first effort on VoiceThread

VoiceThread

This is a demo of a site called VoiceThread:  I saw this on teaching sagittarian's  blog.  She is the teacher in New Zealand that got me interested in using Mapskip for my wiki page project and in the classroom.  I have just scratched the surface on this site, but it looks like a cool way to add audio commentary of text notes to a picture for use in an online setting.  They make it very easy to embed your work as a widget. 

I will report about this more later when I have a greater understanding of the capabilities of the site.

voice thread demo

A New Network Just for Us? -- Teachers TV

In this day and age of 1000 channels available, you might believe the above statement to be true, or at least possible.  When the NCAA's Big Ten conference, the NFL, the NBA, and soap operas have their own network, why the heck wouldn't it make sense to have one catering to teachers?  The answer is, of course, money.  We do have the internet, though. 

This is all we need to access the Teachers TV network's videos and video podcasts.  I found out about this collection of content while reading Stacey Hollenbeck's article: Teachers TV  on the teachersmagazine.org site.  As Hollenbeck states in her article, Teachers TV is based in the United Kingdom, and not all of the content is pertinent to an American classroom.  I do like the model though, an informational spot for teachers to post their cool content as well as the issues they are dealing with.  This article makes me wonder if such an easy to use site exists in the good old US of A. 

The first video I watched was a demonstration for teachers to learn how to perform science experiments safely. I was able to download the following video from their site (after registering) and you can view it there.  It is 15 minutes long, so it is too long to upload to YouTube.

Up date on My Wiki page

At this point I am waiting to hear back from Molly of demogirl.com, the owner of the screencast I would like to post as a video widget on my wiki page.  Chris helped me make a copy of the video at the end of class tonight. Thank you, Chris for your help.  I decided that since I would like to have this video available on my page, I would ask her for permission before I post it on YouTube.  I have never had any problem convincing anyone to grant me permission if I give proper credit, and I will probably want to use the wiki page in my portfolio. 

Airing our schools' dirty laundry on YouTube

Norwood Middle School Fight Now on You Tube

I first heard about this on a KYW- 1060 AM news report.  This initial report on the radio stated that a fight between two girls was filmed and then posted on YouTube.  It is bad enough that we have students fighting in school, but to have the  victim of an alleged assault subjected to the shame of the whole world viewing this assault that night on YouTube is appalling.  According to The Enquirer of Cincinnati OH, the initial response of YouTube was that only the user that posted the video can remove it, unless it infringes copyrights or violates their site's terms of use.  While the graphic violence and the illegal nature of the filmed activity were in violation of the terms of use policy of YouTube,  this video evidently still had to go through the standard flagging process that can take 24- 48 hours.  This is small consolation to the victim. 

While I am the last person to advocate censorship in any form, the degradation of a 13 year old assault victim by class bullies, forces me to encourage YouTube to reexamine their policy.  I would recommend adding an "illegal act" choice in the flagging pull down menu that would receive high priority in the review process.  By ignoring this advice they leave their company open to victims' rights lawsuits.

While the original video has been taken down at the time of this post, there are 23 videos that come up when "girl fight" is entered in their search function. Some of these are posted as over-18 videos, with nearly half a million viewings and 600 comments.  The above video is a news report about the incident containing a portion of the original video.

ipod nano is hot!

Here is another reason to not allow i pods in the classroom.  They may be the hottest thing on the market, but when they get too hot to handle...Poof!  As the linked article states, Apple has not commented on this incident, so there is no telling how common this might be.  The assumption of the news reporter is that the Lithium-ion battery is to blame for this mishap.  I guess you might be able to tell who had their ipod in their pocket in your class.  Of course, I have had similar Lithium-ion batteries in my watches for years.  I just thought this article might amuse the i pod users in our group.