Teach42

New seeions. Interestingly enough, it’s being held in Zanies, the comedy club that shares space with the conference center. The session is supposed to be about how to use digital productions to enhance instruction. That’s the key reason I’m hear, to see how to improve the education we provide to students.

The primary presenter is Darlene Andre’ from Northbrook, Illinois. She started off asking how many people have made a movie. I’d say no more than 10% of the people raised their hand. Interesting, but not too surprising. I know that it’s fun, I know the end product is impressive, but does the educational results really justify the time investment?

She’s definitely honest about how long these things take. Definitely not glossing over that issue, which is refreshing. So many people make their workshop subject out to be so much simpler than it really is.

“It will take at least five minutes to film each minute of video.” Astute remark. Other tipes include using a tripod and using a microphone. Nothing worse than taking an hour of video and realizing that the camera didn’t pick up the sound at all. She also suggests having a firewire drive to put your video on so you can bounce from computer to computer. I can definitely vouch for how important this one is. It keeps the video off the server (which causes tech people no end of grief) and it keeps you from being tied to one computer. She mentioned a website called Freeplaymusic.com which is appearantly all Open Source music. File this one under Podcaster Resources as well! Free music makes podcasters happy people. Another tip, keep your media resources organized. Keep in mind where you’re saving your video, your project file, your music, your backgrounds, etc. Also, if you’re exporting your imvoie to a video tape, add about 10 seconds of black to the beginning and end so you don’t lose video to the leader on the tape.

She also reccomends looking into local cable channels because they’re often willing to broadcast student projects. Students would definitely be way into being able to see their projects on TV.

Resources are available at www.greenbriar28.net/digital/index.htm

So far, lots of tips and tricks, but not a lot of how we bring it back to the classroom. Hopefully that was the introduction and we’ll be getting to that. Unfortunately, right now we seem to be getting mired in details like “How do you erase a tape” and stuff like that. I understand that there’s an ebb and flow to a workshop, but I really prefer when people save those sorts of questions for after the session is over or for email. Yeah, now we’re on camcorder reccomendations. Yes, it’s good enformation to have, but we have limited time here and we still haven’t gotten to how to use this stuff to enhance instruction.

Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. She’s showing a rubric that uses for movie projects. She has specific cretieria for each movie project htat she does. Definitely would help students stay organized and provide them with some input regarding how important each piece is. I like the way she organized it. Bet she has a few samples on the resources site.

Now she’s showing a project where someone used for differnet pictures to make an animation. Very simple, but a very cool idea. Something simple to do with voiceovers. Another project showed a classic painting, and then substituted the students in for the subjects and had them talking through a report about the artist. Definitely cute and a very cool way to present the information. They did the same thing with another painting where they blew up the painting and used it as the backdrop for filming. Looks fantastic.

She’s done quite a bit with digital storytelling. Static pictures with a student doing a voiceover. I think that’s a much more effective use of class time even though the end result isn’t quite as compelling as doing a full video.

Fun project on the screen right now. She has her class in a circle on the class with the camera in the middle of the circle on a tripod. She’s basically spinning hte camera in a slow circle and the students around the edge are acting out a story about a catepillar becoming a butterfly. Each student was acting, and the camera just circled and took it all in. Then they put some music behind it and had a student do a voiceover telling the story.

Once again, fantastic looking project, but I still wonder how it enhances instruction or improves learning. I know students really get jazzed up about projects like this and love making them, but is it really a more effective use of time?

The projects were incredible, and extremely creative. Definitely got a few ideas that I want to try out when I get back to school. I was just hoping there was going to be more of a direct tie in to how this can actually improve learning and I’m not sure we got to it. We circled the idea, but never quite addressed it. Definitely some good ideas though. She seems like she’d be fantastic to work with.

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