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

Cool Stuff over at Stories for Change

Help Us Celebrate Youth Voices!:
"In honor of International Youth Day, we are excited to announce our online campaign to feature digital stories made by youth from around the world that are working to make the world a better place. Starting August 12th through September 2nd, we will be displaying a rotating assortment of stories on the homepage as well as encouraging dialogue on strategies for doing digital storytelling projects with youth.

We also encourage youth members and those working with youth to consider uploading their own stories (visit: http://storiesforchange.net/node/add/story) on this theme and including the “youth” tag so they can be added to our growing collection.

This celebration is a part of Stories for Change’s initiative of sharing stories on particular themes, to coincide with various international days and celebrations. The goal of this initiative is to highlight both the diversity of voices on the site and the common social justice threads going on in the world of digital storytelling today.

Through the initiative, are working to connect with other organization's doing work on specific social justice issues and encourage them to become involved in the Stories for Change community. For more information, please email: laura@storycenter.org.

All the best,

The Stories for Change Team"

Cool Photo Contest (Film, not Digital)

Brian Auer is running a very cool contest over at the Epic Edits Weblog that could be of interest to both Teachers and Students.

The $50 Film Camera: "My main objective for the project as a whole is to show other photographers that film photography can be very inexpensive and exciting. For whatever reason, there’s a popular belief that film photography is expensive and tedious. But through your participation in this project, we can disprove that point and show everybody just how great film can be."
1. Buy a Camera
2. Shoot & Develop Your Film
3. Write a Review of Your Camera
4. Publish a Photo of Your Camera
5. Publish an Entire Roll of Photos
6. Submit Your Link on the Form
...and, if you're lucky, WIN!!!

The Deadline is September 12, 2008

Final Cut Studio: Best practices when naming projects and assets

You ever know you KNOW something, but have no idea HOW you know it? This causes problems for me when I'm talking to other filmmakers or educators because I can't cite a source. Well, thankfully, I found a source for this one!

I've been telling people for years that they shouldn't name files with a period or slash in them. (For example, I've seen people insert dates like this: Project.718.fcp or Draft/718.doc) Here's more info from apple.com/support about characters you can and cannot use.

Final Cut Studio: Best practices when naming projects and assets: "This document discusses general guidelines for naming Final Cut Studio projects and related media assets. It's important to be aware that certain characters can be interpreted as functions, wildcards or path designators, and their use should be avoided when naming drives, folders, assets or projects."

Also, it's mentioned here in reference to iMovie and Quicktime files on Mobileme.

This Is Why I Love MacLife Magazine

"iTunes K-12 has the potential to be as varied and as iTunes U proper. Like the students themselves, iTunes K-12 just needs a bit of time and effort to mature.
Here’s a look at some student-friendly K-12 podcasts that are also interesting to adults..."
iTunes K-12 Section Has Some Growing Up to Do

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."

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

Thanks to The Workbook Project for pointing out that the Center for Social Media at American University has published an updated Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

"This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances."

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...

Fun Idea for P2P Learning

This is a nice little lesson plan that has 6th Graders making a project for 2nd Graders. I do wish there was a link to some student samples...

Techlearning :Making Flip Books to Improve Reading : "Each sixth grade child will take a basic picture book and turn it into a digital picture book using GarageBand, iTunes, scanners, and iMovie."