It's Baaaaaack...

About a year and a half ago, I pitched a project that would have youth creating their own original content for digital media distribution. Doesn't sound so innovative at first - after all, most youth media programs have youtube channels.

But what I was hoping to do was to help bridge the digital divide with a completely different technology - a little internet box that families can purchase for under $200. Eventually I dropped the idea because it looked like the iPod touch might be taking over.

But Chumby, the little internet box that could, is back with a new model and an even lower price. Take a look - might be a nice way for your program to combine user interface/design concepts with digital storytelling and 21st century distribution models.

Movies for Young Urban Filmmakers

The first step to becoming a filmmaker is to watch great works then analyze and critique them. I have found these films to be especially effective when teaching storytelling, composition, and editing. Some of these films are Oscar winners, some are not. Many of them are urban cult classics. You can even ask your students to let you know which music videos have been influenced by these works.

Blood In, Blood Out - Three brothers, their choices, the consequences. (also called Bound by Blood)
City of God - Gangs in Brazil. The documentary about Favelas that's on the US dvd is also very educational. A nice contrast is to show this film with Black Orpheus.
The Conversation - A sound tech regrets the job he's done. Coppola directs.
Cooley High/Boyz in the Hood - An African-American High School story. Cooley High is set in Chicago in the 1970's and written by the same guy who co-created Good Times. Boyz in the Hood is essentially a remake/modernized version set in LA in the 80's.
Made in America: Crips & Bloods - This documentary by Stacey Peralta presents valuable perspective and also shows some great CG (After Effects, Motion, etc.) technique.
Do the Right Thing - Great example of issue filmmaking and also had a huge influence on music videos. Shows a wide range of camera angles and moves.
Klute - 1972 Oscar winner about prostitution. Deep. Shows how the camera can be used effectively when NOT moving.
Mi Familia - LA's Chicano history told in a classic Hollywood structure.
Requiem for a Dream/Trainspotting/Gridlock'd - Movies about drug addicts. Three very different takes. A good question to ask is which one is the most realiztic and why?
Scarface - If you have to ask, you'll never know.
To Be and To Have - A beautiful documentary about a group of schoolchildren and their teacher in rural France. In filmmaking, many times simple is better.
Visions of Light - Documentary about the job of the Cinematographer/Director of Photography. Dials in detail that students didn't realize was there.
The Warriors - Cult classic. Everything old is new again.

Be sure to screen all of these films in advance, many of them contain adult language or themes that may not be appropriate to your school/program. However, you can also show a less offensive scene or portion of the film for discussion.

Video Geotagging

I've been doing research for an idea/project I'm putting together and thought I'd share a couple of links. This project won't happen until the fall, so the technology is sure to change somewhat between now and then. This makes for interesting research. Usually I'm looking for the current/future trends, but this time I'm trying to look at what's been done in 'recent' history.

The topic is basically mapping - how are people using mapping to present photos and video? (The deeper question becomes, of course, why would you? I should have more answers once my research is done.) There are some fascinating mashups, some helpful technologies and also some things that have not happened yet, but should. Here's just a few links:
A nice list of geotagging definitions and some lesson plans and other resources to get you started is here.
Flickr shows up on google maps, but Panoramio is another company doing more landscape and beauty shots.
I love this project, which sought funding at donorschoose.org last year. It won't be completed until May.
I went to a presentation earlier this week by FoundSF.org which is using MediaWiki to collect resources and design it's site. Should be even more and more exciting stuff over the next few months. It also looks like an excellent site for a class/after school program to use for research and then add their own contributions. And MediaWiki is an EXCELLENT tool with lots of potential for those willing to do their open source homework.
Actually, I've been quite surprised to see all that Google* is doing and others (like Wikipedia, sadly) are not. A lot of the information I'm finding is from 2008 all the way back to 2006. I wonder why these technologies aren't more widely used? Maybe it's just too much time and research!

* Google geotagged YouTube in 2007, Flickr added video geotagging in 2008, for example.

Replace Cameras and Laptops with Smartphones?

Industry Pitching Cellphones as a Teaching Tool:
"On Tuesday, Digital Millennial will release findings from its study of four North Carolina schools in low-income neighborhoods, where ninth- and 10th-grade math students were given high-end cellphones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software and special programs meant to help them with their algebra studies.

The students used the phones for a variety of tasks, including recording themselves solving problems and posting the videos to a private social networking site, where classmates could watch. The study found that students with the phones performed 25 percent better on the end-of-the-year algebra exam than did students without the devices in similar classes."

This article is mainly about the (potential) benefits of smartphones. However, self-evaluation through VIDEO has long been proven effective. This component could certainly be executed with many different phones - and would not require Windows Mobile.

Classroom 2.0

Classroom 2.0: "Welcome to Classroom20.com, the social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.

We especially hope that those who are 'beginners' will find this a supportive community and a comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog.

If you are new here, please consider introducing yourself by going to the introductory forum message. You should also feel free to explore! Here are some starting tips and a 'Tour of Web 2.0' webcast video, or you can ask help of a 'host' below."

--- Seems to me that this site (and Ning) are popping up everywhere the last little while. Next big thing? ---

Keeping up with the trends...

10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2009 - ReadWriteWeb: "'Social media' was the term du jour in 2008. Consumers, companies, and marketers were all talking about it. We have social media gurus, social media startups, social media books, and social media firms. It is now common practice among corporations to hire social media strategists, assign community managers, and launch social media campaigns, all designed to tap into the power of social media.

But social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie."

It's Not Just About the Software

Adobe has an excellent suite of resources for iTeachers. Not only is there a wonderful gallery of work, but white papers, curriculum, and direct links to an employee volunteer program and software donation and training for educators and non-profits. Phew! Definitely worth checnking out.

Adobe - Adobe Youth Voices Gallery - Resources: "Adobe and its founding Adobe Youth Voices partners — Educational Video Center, Listen Up!, What Kids Can Do, Arts Engine, and iEARN — offer a variety of free and low-cost resources to help you integrate youth media into your classroom or out-of-classroom programs."

Why Shoot? Why Capture? Why Edit

Nice post from the always articulate David Pogue about Why We Shoot Home Videos on NYTimes.com: "Two weeks ago, writing about Apple’s new flagship laptop, the MacBook, I noted with dismay that Apple appears intent on eliminating the FireWire jack. FireWire is a connector, originally developed and promoted by Apple itself, that lets you import video from a tape camcorder for easy editing. It was a cornerstone of Apple’s “anyone can edit video” revolution."

A lot of what he writes about would apply to the average A/V club - video yearbook - after school program too. It's a risk we're happy to take: if we make it, someone will watch it.

Cool Software - Mac Only

Create Polaroid™-like pictures over at the Poladroid Project.
Samples are here

When You Have Some Time...

I know it's hard to make time as a teacher to do more than just plan and teach. But if you have a chance, sneak on over to this very helpful site. Here's what Techlearning has to say about it:
Storytelling 2.0 "It turns out a very busy person named Alan Levine created an online resource for a series of workshops that lists (at the time of this writing) 57 different Web 2.0 tools that can be used for digital storytelling. That in itself isn't unusual, of course, but what he did that was different was he took the time to retell the same story with each tool!

The site is at http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools, and is wonderfully comprehensive. In addition to his own oft-retold story, almost all of the titles also include examples of stories told by others. He also has a shorter list at the end of tools that he's tried that weren't successful for one reason or another, so you can see what sites to avoid (at least for now). Be sure to budget a lot of time for exploring!"

Download YouTube Videos

In the ongoing saga that is trying to get Youtube vids onto your desktop/into iMovie/into FCP...here's the newest update courtesy of Lifehacker. And I quote, from Tip #1 "If you want to stash a YouTube clip away for editing or watching without the net, you've definitely got options. Internet Explorer users might appreciate YouTube File Hack, which grabs FLV files for you. The Better YouTube Firefox extension, crafted by our own site editor, adds a simple 'Download this video' link to any YouTube page, and the All-In-One Video Bookmarklet is a nice cross-browser conversion tool. If you're away from your own setup, Vixy.net and Viddownloader are your go-to sites for downloading clips. As for watching FLV files, we like and use the cross-platform VLC player."
Click here for Lifehackers: Top 10 YouTube Hacks

Just One Way Folks are Bridging the Digital

Installfest is a volunteer run effor that took place at this year's LinuxWorld Conference

"The idea of Installfest is to take advantage of the low overhead of open-source tools and operating systems, such as the Linux-based Ubuntu, so that computers that would otherwise have been discarded can be put to use for educational institutions and other groups, including low-income individuals and non-profits. Organizers and volunteers installed open-source solutions, such as Firefox, Open Office, and Ubuntu, on recycled computers donated by the ACCRC, which will then be given out to participating schools." Read More Here

People Ask Me All the Time - How Do I Save My YouTube Favs?

The Best Web Video Download Tools � NewTeeVee: "Streaming web video is great and all, but every once in a while you find something that you just want to save and cherish for always. If your home Internet connection is as unreliable as mine you’ll understand what I mean. There are a bunch of web sites and little apps to help you save hard copies of web videos, but perhaps due to their teetering on the edge of violating video hosts’ TOS, they are less than user-friendly. So yesterday I decided to go through them all and figure out which ones are the best."

Share Video over the Internet?

I'm continually amazed by how international local issues have gotten. Here's an article from an Indian newspaper explaining some of the perspectives and issues important to FCC's recent decision on Comcast.

Techtree.com : Back Off the Internet -- FCC to Comcast

Net neutrality and bandwidth are ESSENTIAL to any discussion about digital divide. If you don't know, now you know...

Everyone's Talking About...

This week I spotted this technology in an article on Wired, but I've also found articles on Techlearning and, of course, Cnet. So, I did what any modern girl would do and searched Flickr Photos and found one Flickr Group - called the ChumbyChums.

The object of my infatuation is a Chumby. It's been available for less than a year. Once I saw the company site, I remembered that I'd heard about it about 6 months ago, went on the site and didn't see anything to get excited about. But I was only seeing it then as an out-of-the-box tech toy.

Turns out it's customizable in many ways...which means it could very well be a great tool for teaching. (It connects to your wi-fi network, has a touch screen and runs widgets from all the major sites. Some blogs are also saying it has an accelerometer inside and maybe even a built in GPS? But you can also take the electronics out of the casing and hotwire your Chumby to things like a small engine or embed it inside a teddy bear.)

Anyone want to hack together a Chumby, a Tonka Truck, and a Camera and have some fun geomapping the neighborhood? What other ways would you, could you use it in your digital classroom?

(By the way, my guess is Melissa's been getting a lot of hits lately.)

How News is Handling the Video Revolution

Putting Candidates Under the Videoscope:
"Mr. Conroy, whose job title is “off-air reporter,” (because he does not normally appear on television) is one of many young journalists hired by the networks to follow the candidates across the country, filing video and blog posts as they go. Originally hired to cut expenses — their cost is a fraction of a full television crew’s — these reporters, also called “embeds,” have produced a staggering amount of content, especially video. And in this election cycle, for the first time, they are able to edit and transmit video on the fly.
As a result, the embeds have changed the dynamic of this year’s election, making every unplugged and unscripted moment on the campaign trail available for all to see."

Shake It Like a Polaroid Picture

If you use polaroids in your classes, better stock up on film - the company just announced they'll stop making it in 2009.

If not, then enjoy this stroll down memory lane - an homage to polaroid through youtube commercial clips: PC World's Techlog A Heartfelt, YouTube-Based Wake for Polaroid Instant Photography

Oh, and here's what Flickr has to say about it.

Happy Anniversary Black Maria

Today is the 100 anniversary of the opening of the first American motion picture studio - Thomas Edison's "Black Maria."

Lights! Kinetograph! Action!

Social Networking and Education - The Debate Rages On

Currently my advanced students are working on a controversial documentary. As part of their work on story, I had them cut a trailer just before the winter break. We decided to post the video on youtube, because that's what everyone does nowadays. I also thought it would be fun for the filmmakers to be able to show their work to their friends and family over the break.

This small act has had a huge impact. In two weeks, over 500 people watched the video. Youth in the neighborhood embedded it in their myspace pages. And young people who were nervous about the project before Christmas, are now begging us to be in the movie.

This is just one example of some benefits of social networking in an educational setting. But there are downsides too. As we all know, once you publish something on the web, you really don't know and can't control what could happen with it.

The Economist magazine has been hosting a series of debates on various topics. Their latest debate is about Social Networking specifically. "Social Networking: does it bring positive change to education?"

Ewan McIntosh is the 'Pro' speaker. Here's what he has to say about the debates on his blog, edublogs: "The Economist debates have stirred a great amount of intelligent debate, both on the Economist site and on others' blogs. While the groundswell continues to show over two thirds of the general public (or Economist readers, at least) believe that social networking can have a positive effect on educational methods, it's the comments from within the blogosphere that pour both healthy and unhealthy water on the embers."

What do you think?

Is Text Only Enough for Today's Students?

An interesting Blog from Techlearning
with some great examples of how images, video, phototagging, and other medium can tell the story better than text alone.