Media Matters

Little Mac Chromakey Detail

Hall Davidson — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:36:20 +0000

I spent a great day in Flagler County, Florida, with some innovative, eager teachers. Mostly Mac based, they are excited about bringing their students’ content creation skills into curriculum-based videos from DES and the free chromakey tools on the Mac, such as Photobooth and iMovie 9. Both will let students put themselves into videos and stills, to narrate, create, and internalize the content.

One little detail. The new Mac OS tools, like Photo Booth and iMovie, only like QuickTime files encoded with H.264. If they are not encoded that way, the files won’t play nice. This includes much of the QuickTime in the known world, including many files at DiscoveryEducationStreaming. (These same files are in Flash and Windows Media, where there are no problems.) So here is a work-around if you find a movie file that won’t drag into Photo Booth or iMovie.

1) Download the QuickTime file. In DES, make sure QuickTime is selected in Media Settings (under the player window).
2) Open iTunes and in the menu go to File>Add to Library. Find the downloaded QuickTime video and select it (hit Open). This brings it into iTunes.
3) Once it is in the iTunes library, highlight the video. From the top menu select Advanced>Create iPod or iPhone version. The wheel will spin, and you will get a new video with the same name, but a different extension (m4v orMPEG-4 instead of QuickTime). Now you have a video that will work in Photo Booth, iMovie, iPhones, iTouches, and whatever else Apple throws at you. Yes, this means you could move those videos into school iPods for student viewing on buses, at home, during tests (!).

You can find those video files in your hard drive User>Music>iTunes>iTunes Music>Movies. Drag them into Photo Booth, etc. Remember to drag the m4v version.

Some fun! You can drag movies, stills, or original art into Photo Booth. Pictures on this post show me in front of a still of red blood cells, narrating a movie. In Photo Booth, drag in a still to Effects, hit Take a movie clip, and you’ve got it. Also here, a parent walking into his child’s crayon-media artwork. Mr. Wakefield takes an apple from Timmy Wakefield’s crayon world tree. Think the effect on students if parents walked into their math homeowork. Questions? Leave a comment. Lots more on this in my NECC presentation “Eight Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Video (and Two You Did)”. Monday, 6/29, 3:30 - 4:30 PM (EST). Somebody will be feeding it…

Nation’s Oldest Student Media Festival

Hall Davidson — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:38:43 +0000

Saturday, May 30, the nation’s old event celebrating student media and multimedia, the 43rd California Student Media & Multimedia Festival was held in two California locations. As the host for 16 years, it was a renewing pleasure to see the fabulous work students and teachers are capable of. In an era when high stakes tests, not projects, are used as measure, it was gratifying to hear student after student talk about the power and effect of media on their learning. The science winner said “Can you imagine me trying to explain to you the nature of water’s electrons without video?” (He had made an ultraslow motion video of a water balloon popping to show the adhesive and cohesive properties resulting from the charge of the water’s electrons. Wow.). There were projects from primary through high school, in English, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. Many envelopes were pushed. The Festival is sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank and supported by Discovery Education. All winning classrooms earned nice products from Discovery and overall winners got $1,000 from Wells Fargo. Festival coordinator is Janet English, Senior Education Director at partner station KOCE-TV, PBS in Orange County, California. DEN stars Dennis Grice (pictured) and Karen Green were supportive volunteers, along with Sandy Paul. Brad Upshaw was in the audience for a change. See some of the winners at the wiki site set up to get input on the overall winners. The winners‘ speeches were compelling, the video and multimedia projects were moving, and a it was a great time. At the Center for Innovation at Foothill College (north) and the Huntington Beach Cultural Arts and Library (south), all present got an immersion into the power of video for learning. Check out some of the winners, linked from Media Share, like Balloon Project. More pictures are coming, but here are the Secondary Overall Winners from “Space Troopers of the 23rd Century” with teacher Robert DelCampo, whose students last year submitted the great”Who Am I?” While you are checking out winners, check out team Dead Weight’s project from West Branch, Iowa the very first winners of the Siemens We Can Change the World Sustainability Challenge!

Teacher Appreciation Week: Font Thyself

Hall Davidson — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:57:17 +0000

Teacher appreciation week is about to end, but I have a final offer. While at the great NETA conference in Nebraska, I discovered a great class of students who, with their teachers, have set up a real-world business. They bid and won the contract for the street signs in their town. But the most fun part of their company is their labeling of laptop lids. I saw someone speaking at the NETA podium and it was as if they were on CNN–their name floated underneath their face (see example of me below from the Seattle Airport Convention Center). In the TV production booth, the director’s command to the TD (technical director) is “Font them!” when it’s time to show that label underneath the image on the screen. The clever kids at Arnold Public Schools figured out a way to do this live–just label the top of the laptop. See the picture at right to see how that looks. In a big room where they use cameras on the screen, it’s a great idea. In a classroom, it could an effective on a teacher desk to remind kids of a motto (”Never Give Up”, “Always Strive”, “Bears Rule”, etc.). So here’s the deal as a weekend extension of Teacher Appreciation Week. If you have a name, slogan, writing prompt or ID you’d like on your laptop lid, leave a comment with the text and the size of the label you’d like, and The Media Matters Blogsite team will get it to you free as an appreciation of your great work (mailing address, too). Famous Teryl Magee got the first offer, but there are plenty left. You must be a member of the DEN, naturally. If you’re not, or you miss the deadline, their website is here. And, yes, they take purchase orders. They’ll bid on your street signs, too. There’s a vodcast on the site on how to apply the label. Note: My own email address on the Macbook Pro in the picture was 3/4″ high and 11″ wide. My name, which the kids did as a present (full disclosure here) was 1 1/4″ high and 10.5 inches wide. I though it was a little too big for my eyes, but you might disagree if you really want kids to get the message. Try it out first. Images of the kids at work are on the blog. DEADLINE Extension: On Media Matters, Teacher Appreciation runs until midnight Sunday, Linden time (PST). Personally, I will continue to appreciate my colleagues in the classroom every day of the year.
Special thanks to Clay and Julie Mohr, team teachers at the Arnold Public School’s School House Graphic Products class.

To extend teacher appreciation week, simply slow time, as in this video. There’s always room for jell-o cubes: Bonus Video. http://vimeo.com/3830864

Blog for Brad:Old Tricks in New Google Earth

Hall Davidson — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:56:37 +0000

This week Google Earth introduced it’s latest update (version 5 in most operating systems). Some neat things: You can now record tours, say of state capitals, you can fly under the oceans and, for example, see the Davidson Seamount (no relation), explore older images of earth with the Historical Imagery button, and still embed video, from, say, DiscoveryEducationstreaming. More on that at the end of this post. But this blog is for fabulous elementary teacher Brad Upshaw (see pic of him getting to the bottom of his district’s payroll problems). He is a great videomaker, in fact leads workshops on it for the DEN. But his district moved up the deadline for the video festival this year. He wanted to shoot his 4th graders at various spots in the yard. So for Brad, this post. Brad–do it in Google Earth. You can have Placemarks throughout the yard (or the world) with videos of your students giving rules, facts, narratives, etc. When the Placemark is clicked, there they are. It takes minutes. You do it the same way you insert DiscoveryEducationstreaming video clips. Here’s how. 1) Download Jing from Jingproject.com (free) 2) Download the VideoTemplate kmz file here (Windows or Mac version). 3) Create a folder called Converted Video in the Local Disc C drive (PC) or inside the Macintosh HD. It can’t be buried in another folder. Download the new version of GoogleEarth if you’d like, too. Version doesn’t matter. Brad uses a Mac, so he has a camera and mike built in. If you have a PC, get a webcam. I use a Logitech unit. Next A. Open your webcam (or PhotoBooth). B. Launch Jing. Draw a rectangle and record the area shown in the webcam video window (Jing lets you create whatever space you need). C. Record your students. Have them stand in front of the camera. They can be in character, costume, holding props, etc. D. When done, save the Jing recording as mediamatters in the Converted Video folder. It nicely makes a flash video file (swf). Launch Google Earth by clicking on the VideoTemplate kmz file you already downloaded. The VideoTemplate will be in Temporary Files on the left at the bottom. When you click on the VideoTemplate icon, your video will be inside. Almost like magic. Note: I did this live at the Florida technology conference (FETC) and it was so easy people thought it was a setup. It’s not! It is that easy! Do it three times, bumps and all, and you will master it. Next, for more videos, create and rename a bunch of new Video Template kmz files–one for each video or student you want to place on the earth. You can right click (control click Mac) on files in Google Earth to your heart’s content (they’re in the Places column on the left). Just keep changing the name of the video file saved. Then use the same name in the Placemark box. Right click on the file name, get Properties (Get Info on a Mac) and change only the file name (see below in bold). While you’re in there, click on the upper face image and change the icon from my face (you don’t want that). You can use a standard icon, like the push pin, or a Custom Icon of your school mascot, etc. The code you paste into the description box (after right clicking to get Properties) is here as a Word doc, or below if you need it. But it’s already there in the kmz template you downloaded. OK, Brad, try it. Leave me a comment or email me if it doesn’t work. Video on demand! And once you’ve done that, think about using videos from DiscoveryEducationstreaming in that box. Use flash, paste the title, and you’ve got it. Very nifty! More details here.

Code to paste is here in a Word Doc. More in Handouts here. The actual code is below. The file names are in colors. There is a slight difference between Macs and PCs. Remember to create that Converted Video folder just inside your computer (capitals, space between the words Converted and Video.

Before the interminable code below, some cool links featuring the new GoogleEarth, courtesy of Mr. Dembo. First. Second. Third. And a cool kmz file on the inauguration I found.

Code from the VideoTemplate - Paste in Placemark Description box. Replace the title in blue with the name you saved your Jing video
PC

codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0″

width=”637″ height=”421″ id=”game” align=”">

mediamatters.swf“>

mediamatters.swf ” quality=high bgcolor=#FFFFFF width=”637″ height=”421″ align=”"

type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”>

(Mac)

codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0″

width=”637″ height=”421″ id=”game” align=”">

mediamatters.swf“>

mediamatters.swf ” quality=high bgcolor=#FFFFFF width=”637″ height=”421″ align=”"

type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”>

This was a long post. Why don’t I just the dang book, like Liz Kolb did for cellphones..

It Actually Worked…Place-based Video Challenges

Hall Davidson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:28:17 +0000

FETC 2012! Here, now! Not really, but at FETC 2009 I was asked to do the closing keynote with a projection into 2012– fun challenge. (I’ll put that presentation online eventually.) It was the opportunity to try something new. So the way this big show (7,000+ folks) closed was with videos made on the cellphones of attendees. Here how it worked: As you know, FilmOnTheFly is a video challenge that is both time and place based. Educators register online (thank you, Google Docs) by providing a text message address. At an unannounced time, they are sent a text message with a mediamaking prompt. They make the videos on their cells (or other handy media devices) then upload the video to their online account (YouTube, MediaShare), typically also from their cell. We check them out, then show the videos on the big screen. This idea was born out of the California Student Media & Multimedia Festival which I hosted for many years and now is the brainchild of Janet English. On Friday at FETC, the challenge sent out was “White light bathes you from above.Voice: We will destroy Earth unless you show something unique where you are right now. FETCFOTF” FETCFOTF was the tag so we could find the upload.We got some fun ones. By the time the message went out, it was 11:30 PM Eastern time–so we got lots of people in pajamas. Some text messages didn’t go through until 7:00 AM, documented here. Favorites: A woman announcing there must be something wrong with her for participating, then turning off the light. One video came from Second Life. Dennis Grice did a wild 30-second video that involved sock puppets practicing Hamlet (an inside joke), the Mythbusters, cardboard pictures, and a multitude of voices. North Dakota was first in with fuzzy slippers–automatically endearing. Since it worked on Friday, we tried again on Saturday with the prompt” What was the best thing about FETC?”. Some showed mock panic. Two from Savannah blended sci-fi with a recitation of earth’s beauty. Those I found too late. Turns out the tag feature in YouTube takes more than 8 hours–not helpful. The Final video used speech bubbles. Cool. Those inspired videos closed the show. Great moment came when I showed the uploaded video list on YouTube, including an error message on one: Video No Longer Available. A women shot up out of her seat in the large arena, yelled “It’s there!” and, when asked, rushed up to the stage where she logged onto her account and showed the video. It featured her cat as the reason to spare the earth. It summed up exactly the kind of enthusiasm media generates in people–teacher and students alike. When someone runs fearlessly on stage, you know you have tapped into something deep. Remember that, and let those students massage those great editable clips in DiscoveryEducation streaming. It’s the perfect beginning.

Time — Warped!

Hall Davidson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:57:23 +0000

Video, as we all know, offers instant access to student attention. Video takes you across time, across boundaries, include microscopic and macroscopic boundaries. But video can also slow time and bend it to reveal physical phenomenon laying under day to day experiences. To see what I mean, visit the website for Discovery’s program Time Warp. Go here for an amazing interactive gallery. Watch popcorn popcorn pop (see images above)–and control time with your mouse. See a bullwhip break the sound barrier (that’s why they make that snapping sound). Samurai swords, sledge hammers, cornstarch-and-water (”non-Newtonian Fluid”) and more. Remember Mentos and Diet Coke? Time Warp slowed it down 5,000 times. Gush! Challenge the minds in your class: When milk is poured too fast into cereal, does it slosh out of the bowl under the cereal or behind the cereal? Move your mouse slo-oo-wly to reveal the secret. A great thought provoker. And a reminder that time is a factor, usually invisible, in all things (plate tectonics comes to mind.

More resources: PlayingWithTime, actual times from 200 microseconds to 3.2 billion years and time lapse lives out on the community video sites. But it’s not interactive like the Time Warp site!

Here’s a guy that ages 6 years in 5 minutes. Check out the haircuts. And school have been videotaping the yard, and the streets in front of the school, then speeding them up in iMovie, Windows MovieMaker, or Adobe. I love those “Day in the Life Videos”. Think about what you can do!

And if you’re looking for a state-of-the-art classroom, don’t forget to throw your hat in the ring here! Remember, you can enter once a day. And that’s day that can last a lifetime. Below: what a tomato….knew it when it was just off the vine.

The Year in E-View

Hall Davidson — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:00:59 +0000

Year in E-View. For the first post of the new year, I thought I would share some favorite posts from the DEN blogosphere from 2008. I took some informal polls, did some serious review and, wow: Note : Trolling great, old posts is a dangerous thing. The DEN home site is like the Brothers Grimm gingerbread house. Very hard to leave! But have a cup of coffee and enjoy the links below. First, some breaking news! Yesterday, Discovery Educaton and CDW-G proudly announced the 7th “Win a Wireless Lab” challenge. Folks will win a $45k lab! Check it out here. Enter!

Now, the Year in E-View, in no particular order: From Matt Monjan’s blogs, the tips, tricks, and Power of Captioning in his how-to Powerpoint, and its companion; also, the recap of the MovieMaker chromakey trick, the PC movie controls trick, and the older favorite Better Builders. From Master Dembo, the still cool PicsViewer post, the Mogulus post, the insane Wii hack, gushy with geek love, and the GoAnimat e post. From the incredible DEN state blogs, the Michigan bloggers like Pam Shoemaker showed how energetic a blog can be. Check out their report from the National Institute, a series of one, two, and three. Liked this one, too.Neat what you can do! The Illinois blog showed a little old school graphics, which murmured healthy hybrid to me. The Pennsylvania blog is a treasure in its entirety. Just go and start reading. Webmaster Jen Dorman builds her own incomparable gingerbread house. Caffeine required. Joe Brennan showed that blogs can inform, teach, and inspire. The posts for the Young Scientist Challenge did all that, with an informative, wise, tip-rich post. His trip back in time to 1968 made me wonder what digital/3D/holographic format the class of ‘09 will use for their future high school reunions. Joe, like Matt and Steve, offers a blog with consistently quality information. From my own blog, I’ll regurgitate the Magic X-Ray machine and the use of old camcorders as great webcams. The GoogleEarth and iPod fun were really 2007…

Worthy, too was the post on CoolIris, VoiceThread, and Brad Fountain’s original post about inserting media via HTML in Google Earth. Jannita’s David, Steve’s rant on cellphones on Teach42, and finally Letting Students Teach are all worth remembering.

From a great ‘08 to a fine ‘09!

New Year pic modified from Flickr, (thanks, “SallyM”), via Creative Commons saerch engine.

Friends, Romans, and GoogleEarth heads

Hall Davidson — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:11:49 +0000

Take a Roman holiday–a Roman Empire holiday! I got an email from Googler AnnaBishop. She processes the Google Earth Pro requests from educators and wants them to keep on coming! So take advantage of that special offer by emailing GEEC@google.com (educators only! Everybody else pays the $400). She also let me know about the new layer in Google Earth–Ancient Rome in 3D. Any participant in DEN Google Earth workshops knows, we talk lots about layers, the content already created for you, in addition to, of course, talking about building your own content with students. (Discovery has a layer or two.) This is a new one, so take it for a spin. In Google Earth, under Layers in Gallery, select Ancient Rome 3D. Bring a toga. There is also a curriculum competition (”When in Rome, Teach!”) for all grade levels and K-12 subject areas. Prizes include Apple MacBook laptop, Digital classroom projector, Digital camera, 3D Navigation mouse, $500 in gift cards to Target or Office Depot, and an engraved plaque.
Engraved Google “Top Educator” plaque. Deadline, just before the Ides of February. My own suggestion: Make a Placemark with video in the description box–a video of you or your students in Roman garb, reciting Latin, holding olives, etc., poke it right into Ancient Rome, save it as kmz file and send it in. The description box plays Flash files (how to) , so use Jing (free) to make a video of yourself or students with your webcam, save it as flash, and embed it into the box. Note: The kmz file won’t carry the flash file with it, so post it online (TeacherTube, YouTube) and embed the code (how to) or send that file along. More on exactly how to do that in the next post! More.

More info and a trip to Rome:

The Amazing 3×5 Notecard X-Ray Machine (Free!)

Hall Davidson — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:03:09 +0000

This is a fun one. It is the “ChromaKeyYou’veGottaHaveHeart” effect, but think of it as an X-Ray machine. It turns a 3×5 notebook card into an “X-Ray” machine that sees inside the human body– with a few video tricks. Remember the X-Ray Glasses ad from kids’ magazines? It’s that! For this, you need: A) Videos of the inside of the human body–notably editable clips from DiscoveryEducationStreaming B)Editing software (Premiere Elements, Final Cut Express, QuickTimePro) C) A Mac running Leopard D) a colored 3×5 notebook card or PostIts. How To: I edited together clips of the heart and brain in Premiere Elements. I shrank them, then floated them about where they would be in the body. I exported the “HeartBrain” video as a QuickTime movie, then moved them to my Mac on a flash drive. Once you have your edited movie, Open Photo Booth (works in iChat, too), then selected View > Video Effects. On the last effects panel, you can drag QuickTime files into the video background. I dragged the HeartBrain video into the panel. When the program tells you to Please Step Out of Frame, don’t. Instead, hold the colored index card up to fill the screen. The program makes this card the invisible (chromakey) color. Then, when you pull the card back, you are in the frame. When you hold the card over your heart, it shows a beating heart ‘inside’ your chest. Hold the card up to your forehead, and the brain shows through. I included the video below, so you can download it and try it yourself. Two important tips: 1) Turn down the brightness of the screen a lot before you get the ‘Step out of Frame’ command. The brightness throws off the color. After you see “Background Detected”, you can turn the brightness backup. 2) Use View > Reset Effect until you’re satisfied with the color. 3)If you use iChat, the program flips the background in a mirror reflection. If you want the heart on the left side, you have to put on the right side when you make the background video. You can record the movie in Photo Booth. Voila! A magical, medical, video. Try it with other things: The face of a historic figure, or artist, replacing yours. Inner animal faces, etc. Note: You can do this in Premiere Elements on a PC, but not live. This chromakey effect works really well with the curriculum-based image library and video collection in Discovery Education Streaming. ‘Nuff said! Send me your clips! Note on the clip below. I made it for iChat, so the heart is on the wrong side for Photo Booth–but you get the idea.

Download the HeartBrain background QuickTime movi e.

The Exploding Mind

Hall Davidson — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:33:38 +0000

An exploding mind can be a good thing. I was asked to work with the faculty at the School of Education at Johns Hopkins on the topic of educational technology. This was an important group by itself– and representative of an extremely important segment in education: the teacher preparation programs across the country. They monitor, they observe, they implement, they evaluate and assess. That was why it was exciting when they wanted to see the state of the art in K-12 technology. I supplied that–but with a shotgun. Afterwards, I realized I had shared the more than 20 (count ‘em) applications, projects, and Web 2.0 sites posted below. Without giving the participants Red Bull. I apologize. But that is the state of the art–a whirling, mind blowing field of potential for education. Now it’s important for the professors (and the rest of us) to select one, maybe two, from this score+ of apps and projects. Next, I’m hoping we establish a step-by-step set-up of accounts and trainings and watch what happens when a world class group works with it. It may be that the innovations and best practices in the future may come from the schools of education like Hopkins. Think webquests and Bernie Dodge…
The 70 minute list and their links follow. Replicate at own risk.

Google Translator – we translated web sites and phrases
Gcast - example Jen Dorman’s 9th grade producers
YouTube uploads (Teryl’s substitute teachers, etc.)
Flip Cams (easy transfer to PC’s–and waterproof cases)***
Discovery Education media (streaming, assessment) – projects begin with great learning assets
Ustream (free web-based “tv channel”)
Second Life – the DEN house on ISTE island, Ball State, Intelligirl professor Sarah Robbins
Twitter – “just in time” social networking
Horizon Project (Vicki Davis) - also Flat Classroom
Google Earth – Placemarks, image overlays
Blogs – from students, classroom leaders, industry
California Student Media Festival
Plurk - Twitter, but with threads
VoiceThread
Google Advanced Search - we searched for PowerPoints on diversity
Rock Our World - (Carol Anne McGuire)
GoogleLitTrips (Jerome Burg)
Jott – Voice to text. Alternative services (lifehacker’s list, including free alternatives)
Qik - Life video feeds from cellphones
Cellphones (texting, videos)
GPS (e.g., cellphones)
CISCO’s IP webcams

**PS I forgot to note that for inserting PowerPoint in PCs, change the file extension from .avi to .wmv.

Next, the video of DEN teachers landing on the moon. Sort of …