George Orwell, Big Brother & Digital Cameras

Some schools have disabled student laptop cameras in the interest of security and safety. While I understand some of the fears, I think that it is unfortunate.

I worry much more about government and corporate surveillance and the manipulation of citizens through propaganda and advertising. While I'm not blind to the needs for privacy and safety, removing a tool that uses an increasingly dominant mode of communication does not help, in the long run, to educate our children in the appropriate and ethical use of that medium.

Any tool can be used for good or evil. While we spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on text, much of the communication sent our way now is multimedia. It is our responsibility to help kids learn to discern the messages that they are consuming, and to do that, they need to create and think critically about these forms.

Cameras are everywhere now. Places such as YouTube are thriving. Don't schools have an obligation to help model effective and critical uses of video? I fail to see how denying access to cameras in schools will help to create better citizens in the 21st Century.

When I taught 5th grade, if I found that one of my students was using a pencil in an unsafe manner, I might have temporarily taken it away from the student, but it would have seemed absurd for me to have outlawed all pencils in my classroom or school as well. Rather than forbidding them in the educational process, there were consequences for not following the rules. In other words, individual responsibility.

How are student cameras different in that regard? Now granted, digital technology is faster and more powerful and complex, but doesn't that make it even more important that we model appropriate use in and outside the classroom? How can that be done without the tool?

Instead of forbidding them, let's . . .

1. Make movies
2. Learn visual grammar
3. Think critically about movies
4. Investigate privacy issues
5. Learn about propaganda and advertising
6. Become Media Literate
7. Discuss ethics and decorum and responsibility and trust and etiquette in the context of our work.
8. Learn constructive ways of using Photo Booth

George Orwell, Big Brother Is Watching Your House

Jeff Bailey's New Video Wiki

Jeff Bailey of Mountain Valley High School, formerly an English teacher, will be teaching video production and CAD this coming school year. Jeff's new wiki for his video classes is called MVHSvid and is growing quickly in resources. You might also check out Jeff's Wicked Decent Learning blog.

Additional Video Resources at LIMResources

Flippin' Video at Richmond

Using Video in the Classroom

Agenda

Flip Resources

Making Movies in Richmond

Video 1

Video 2

Schools of Richmond, Maine

Video Creation Tradition

An eight year tradition continued last night with the Oxford Hills M'iMovie Film Festival. Complete with donated fancy cars and red carpet, students, parents, and volunteers joined together once again for the culminating activity of a year's worth of video creation.



This is an email we received from a parent this morning:

"Dear Devoted Directors,

It is with much gratitude to you all that I write this letter. As a novice to your tradition, its history, and flair - I was amazed and impressed by how neatly and warmly the event occurred. Everyone seemed so happy to be there, not just the filmmakers and their family or friends, either. Every volunteer we encountered seemed to have some inner joy, some inner glow of pride that she or he carried around with them: the chauffeurs, the interviewers, (yes, the directors, of course!), even the ushers who had the dubious position of keeping the mass of parents out of the auditorium were delightful (and entertaining!)

I sincerely hope that my daughter enjoyed her first foray into the world of film, because I would love to see what she could make for a movie next year - but also because of the powerful experience you created for her and her peers.

Thank you for providing this opportunity for children of the area.

Bravo! I cannot wait to see the encore.

Sincerely,

_______________"












For resources, forms and more information, go here.

And an email this morning from a teacher:

"Just so you know-Most of the Otisfield sixth graders are wearing their medals today and they are still aglow from their fame! I know it is a lot of work but the festival really makes the kids feel special and CREATIVE!"

TelstarToo: Creating and Using Movies

Crescent Park School 3:30 - 7:30, Monday, December 1. All are welcome!

LINK

"It's Time"

Thanks to Barbara Greenstone for twittering this link of student videos. Whether you support the products or not, it's engaging stuff. Original music, great singing, fantastic choreography, and first-class video technique. Click on picture.

"Crossroads" and the Circle of Life

"Imitation is the highest form of flattery."

It is difficult to believe that YouTube started only about three years ago according to the WayBackMachine documentation/history. See here and here. I'm not sure we school people have come to terms with the revolutionary nature of this event. Now there is a proliferation of similar sites and the convergence of television and the internet seems to be very close. Sure there is plenty of distasteful stuff out there, but the power of this democratization of culture through this medium awes me. People who never have had a chance to strut their stuff now have a forum and, increasingly, in my humble opinion, we're seeing the power of it all.

I do understand that many schools block video sites, and I do understand their concern for protecting the young. I'm just not sure we are doing them a favor by failing to model and inculcate in them the ethics/etiquette involved in working in any forum. Are we teaching them about civility and how to think critically by simply ignoring and/or denying this powerful medium which just about anyone can access at home or, I imagine, most public libraries?

My nephew, Josh , a third year engineering student at UMO, posted a "cover" yesterday of a group he was singing and playing with at the Black Mountain Ski Area in Rumford. The song was "Crossroads" which was made popular by Cream and Eric Clapton back in the 60's. At least that is where I knew it from. However, Josh had connected with the tune with someone closer to his generation - John Mayer - who he can't seem to get enough of. And it turns out that it was actually written by Robert Johnson, a hero of Clapton. My point is that YouTube has the power to make all these connections at a gut level. The circle of life.

BTW, I subscribe to Josh's videos, so I instantly know when he has posted a new one. I can then give him feedback and encouragement. He loves it. Yes, the circle of life.

Josh and Band's Rendition:

Mayer and Clapton


Robert Johnson

A Lasting Friendship: Maine and Argentina

Forwarded by Dave Perloff

In 2001 high school students from Auburn, Maine and Avellaneda, Argentina began a correspondence and a friendship that continues today.

Spanish teacher Pam Davis and English teacher Claudia García found each other through epals.com, an online service that matches teachers and classes around the world, and with a grant from the Perloff Family Foundation, the Edward Little High School students began studying Argentine culture and exchanging emails, pictures and mementos with their pen pals in Argentina.

At the end of that first school year, the American teacher traveled to Argentina to meet her new friend and visit the Argentine students and their school. With her she took a new laptop computer, a gift from the students at Edward Little High School. The Argentine students had so many questions, both about American life and about their pen-pals back in Maine. The next September, a new group of students continued to write and share experiences, and with another grant from the Perloff Family Foundation, the Argentine teacher was able to visit Maine and teach at Edward Little High School for two weeks. Claudia was the first Argentine the students had ever met, and a very real connection to their new friends there.

Both teachers have traveled to each other's countries again since, and several of the American "alumni" of this experience have gone on to major in Spanish in college and to travel to Argentina.

This past year, with a new group of students, the correspondence has taken a new step: video tours and letters. (With two cameras supplied by the Perloff Family Foundation and lots of support from the school systems involved, the American and Argentine students can see one another's schools, hear jokes, give the latest news and finally see and hear each other as they communicate.)

Both teachers and all students involved in this correspondence would like to thank the Perloff Family Foundation and especially Dave and Sandy Perloff for their interest and their support of new ideas in public schools!

Digital Video - Getting the Word Out

by Dave Perloff

Thanks for your post, and your encouragement regarding our foundation's work. We've had excellent adoption of by key Maine technology integrators, including David Grant, Laura Richter and Bob Sprankle, but it's been challenging to get the word out more generally. "Learning in Maine" is certainly one avenue for addressing that.

Jay Charette at Madawaska Middle School has been especially active in using our approach to digital video. His work was cited in the article written about Fast Track Grants in the current ACTEM news letter (p. 5, http://www.actem.org/Pages/ACTEM_Newsletter/EE_June08.pdf). Perhaps you could encourage Jay (jaychar@madawaskaschools.org) to contribute a post concerning his "Step Up Day" video project, which is now on-line at www.mediamaine.org/Madawaska/Stepupday .

Recently, I've been focusing on the use of the media player for accessing and archiving audio podcasts. Check out the following link for examples:

http://www.mediamaine.org/Podcasting/

This page provides instant access to more than 250 audio tracks. All of the .mp3 files reside on their own servers. They can be downloaded by clicking on the symbols at the right of the playlist item.

Making Movies is easy...Producing them is harder

by Ed Latham

Way back, almost a decade ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Mac Expo and it was great fun. Of particular interest at the Expo was a very early version of iMovie. They sat us down and showed us how to make a movie by simply clicking and dragging with none of that nasty time stop or frame rate issues other programs at the time may have had. It was so much fun and it seemed young and old alike could be cranking out their own home movies with ease.

I have heard all the banter about how the recent version of iMovie is less user friendly than the version that was on the image last year. Using my MacBook and some 6th grade students I thought I would take it for a ride to find out how easy/hard it could be. It did take us some time as the interface is not as easy as some other programs. In the end we had a decent public service announcement ready to go to the local channel except that the MacBook does not have a DVD burner installed? I frantically searched help files, played with different export settings, and even tried some meditation on top of a freezing hill in the middle of a snow storm ... nothing helped me figure out how to share with the world this production created so simply.

During the production, the students and I ran into frequent compatibility issues with sound and graphic files. iMovie would take jpg files but not gif. It would take some audio files but not others. To finally end the process without the ability to crank out a DVD with the MLTI shipped computers was very frustrating. Why is iDVD on there if you can't use it without subscribing to a service or buying new hardware? Maybe I just need someone more experienced to share with me how I messed up and what I might do differently in the future.

In the meantime, I copied all the pictures and audio files from our project and brought them over to my PC. Within an hour I had the entire production recreated and was even able to use the graphic and sounds we were not able to use in iMovie. I suppose it is always easier to go with what you know, but I ask those more experienced than I...."Given the high school teacher's MLTI Macbooks, how do teachers take a movie made in iMovie, mash it through iDVD somehow to get the movie to the public without having to subscribe to some pay service or buy new hardware?" I am anxious to learn new things so please share what you know. In the meantime, I will go share our finished DVD with the kids.

Oxford Hills MARTI Video Workshop

We'll be investigating the possibilities that online videos have in promoting learning in the adult education field tomorrow. Here is the workshop agenda.

Anything you can add to the offerings?

What are your experiences accessing online video for classroom use?

Insomnia

Tim Ouillette of the Advanced Communications and Multimedia Program at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School reports that his students participated in the Apple 24 Hour Film Festival.

Check out some of the work at:

http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=448
http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=1238

Video Resources

Why I Love Maine

Jeff Swanson has done a series of short videos called Why I love Maine.



Might these work as an introduction to video creation with students?

Video Resources
iMovie Resources

A Day in the Lives . . .

Three things that continue to perplex me:

1. How many people there are who don't know how to copy/paste.

2. How many Maine citizens there are who are totally unaware of MARVEL.

and

3. How many who are still unaware of the powerful learning that is taking place at the Skowhegan Area Middle School using a project-based philosophy.

Recently Apple spent some time doing interviews and documenting the happenings at SAMS in order to create a video for their site. Check out this Skowhegan gem: Our Town Skowhegan Maine And this one: Archives. And don't forget this: Skowhegan Downtown Revitalization Project.

Additional information at MaineLearns

For still more information, email Laura Richter

Related Resources:

Video
Essential Questions
Digital Storytelling
Critical Thinking
Cooperative Learning
Process Skills
Inquiry Learning
Questioning
Constructivism