Puppet Shows: Downloading, Editing, Uploading, Streaming

puppets show 2011
On Thursday, we filmed all of our puppet shows (except for one, which is being done by two sisters in two different classes). The snow days and ice delays meant that we will not be performing the plays lives in front of an audience this year. That was a difficult decision I had to make, but we are far behind in our curriculum and I need to be done with puppetry and script writing and collaborative work around puppets.

Our snow day yesterday gave me a chance to take the raw videos and get them ready for posting to our Puppet Website. It takes a long time to deal with video, which is something I already knew but … phew. When you are dealing with more than 20 puppet shows, each of which has to be formatted for the web as its own video — it’s time-consuming.

First, I had to stream the raw footage off the video camera. From past experiences, I find it easier to do each show individually (as opposed to downloading the entire class). This allows me to do some initial labeling and organizing (organization is the key to this project).

I used my PC but I would like to shift to my Mac. The problem is that the Mac I have for the classroom does not have a Firewire jack (what is up with that? I thought that was pretty much standard these days) and the last thing I need is another hurdle of technology. So, I turned to my PC laptop and used Moviemaker for the streaming to my computer. Since the initial video is downloaded as high quality, it takes up a lot of space. I use a portable hard drive for this work, since my PC is sort of old and has space limitation.

This means that I have to keep a watchful eye on the streaming, stopping after each play. My 6 year old son had a good time, watching the plays on the little video screen, laughing at the puppets and the antics.

Second, I used MovieMaker to add a title and do some adjusting of the volume — trying to give a boost here and there to the plays where kids did not quite perform as loud as they should have, even though we talked and talked about the use of voice for performance. The problem is that our puppet theater — hand carved by students about 10 years ago — is wood and their voices bounced back to them, giving the impression of loudness.

Third, I had to make each show into a video with Moviemaker. I use a relatively low quality output, so that they are web-ready for online viewing. (I set it at the Video for Local Playback/2.1 Mbps). I would go lower but I worry about the quality. This takes some time because each video needs to get created individually and you can only run at a time. I’d go off to do other things, and see how things were faring from time to time.

Finally, once all the videos are made, I shift to Vimeo, where I host all of my videos and begin the process of uploading. I used the desktop Vimeo uploader but it crashed on me towards the start of the process and I could not get it working right. So, I did it manually at the Vimeo site, which takes more time. Once the videos were up, I sorted them into folders according to my four ELA classes, adjusted the sharing embedding code, and chose thumbnails for each video.

I’m not done yet! Now, I need to replace all of last year’s puppet shows at our website with this year’s puppet shows, and the other day, a friend pointed out that Vimeo is not playing so nice with WordPress (or vice versa), and the videos are spilling out over the sides of the WordPress post space. My next step is to figure that out, and if it doesn’t work, create another web space for the puppet shows.

Early next week, I will share out some of the puppet play videos. I need to do some grading on the projects, too. At this point, though, I have seen all of the plays enough times, in enough formats, to know them pretty well.

Oh, and in between all of that video work, I went sledding, helped to shovel the driveway, read books and more books to my son, got myself and my sons a haircut, and more. I was not glued to my screen on a winter day, but it did capture a fair share of my attention from time to time. I do it because I know my students and their families will appreciate it.

Peace (in the puppets),
Kevin

We’re All Experts in the Instructional Age


The other day, my 10 year old son said he wanted to learn how to make an Origami crane. He was thinking of his cousin, who recently had surgery and is having a painful recuperation. He wanted to give her a Christmas present of a paper crane. (He had also just read The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, so he was inspired a bit).

He didn’t bother to ask me if I knew how to make a crane. His first impulse was to ask if he could use the computer to find a video tutorial on how to make the crane. (And then later, it was to ask if I could run out and get him some Origami paper).

In a matter of minutes, he was watching someone’s  hands folding paper into a crane, step by step. He was then cutting up paper and trying his hand at it. Later, he needed the help of his uncle, who knows how to do Origami, but the video tutorial led him on his way.


Which had me thinking of the session that I was part of in Orlando with the National Writing Project and Make Magazine, and how we talked about the ways in which the Internet is spreading knowledge so quickly, and how regular users are now becoming the experts in any number of ideas, no matter how small, strange or arcane. My son knew where to turn. He knew where the experts were, and it was on the Internet.

In the most recent edition of Wired Magazine, TED Curator Chris Anderson poses the argument that we are now in the era of Crowd Accelerated Innovation, spurred on in part by the ease of video production and publishing. Those small pockets of unknown experts are suddenly visible and available, and inspiring others to become experts, too. Anderson uses the example of a six year old child who learned to dance like a star by watching moves on YouTube, and then he got noticed by (his parents, I assume) posting his own dance moves on YouTube.

Anderson notes that the world is awash in instructional videos these days, and he’s right (I wrote a few weeks ago about the use of a video that helped me with my designing of a video game). He notes that a community of learners needs some key players in order to bring the video or idea into the public consciousness:

  • The Trend Spotter, who notices an innovation early on;
  • The Evangelist, who makes the case for that innovation;
  • The Superspreader, who broadcasts the innovation widely;
  • The Skeptic, who keeps the conversation honest;
  • The General Public, who become the participants.

This list has me wondering how it might translate into the classroom. But it is more likely these kids are already there; they are just working under our radar screen. It reminds me of when I introduce a new technology, and how discovery by one student gets fed to the whole room — usually by the second person to learn about it. The discoverer is not often the one who broadcasts it to everyone. It’s usually their friend, who realizes the social cache of sharing something cool.

So who is most often the skeptic? You got it. The teacher.

Peace (in the instructions),
Kevin

Considering ‘The Folding Story’

foldingstoryThe other day, I came across a link to a collaborative story writing site called The Folding Story. It’s a clever  online variation of the activity in which one person starts a story, folding the paper just so the next person only sees one or two lines of what has been written. The second person continues the story, folds the paper and passes it on to the third person. Repeat. In essence, the writer never sees the entire story, so they are inspired by only a small part. The result is a very odd, and usually funny, story that goes off in all sorts of directions.

The Folding Story website is like that, too, only now the audience is potentially vast and even odder than the people in the room with you. Trust me. Thanks to a bunch of friends on Twitter, we’ve been experimenting a bit with the site. I have started three different stories, which are still open for collaboration. Not one of them even remotely has gone in a planned trajectory.

This is one of those sites that has value for me as a writer, but I would not bring my students there, given the language and content of the writing added by the various users. Stories can instantly veer into inappropriate directions, and even the creator of the story has no way to edit or change what someone else has added to your story. You write something and hope for the best. I can live with that, but not as a teacher. (The Folding Story folks say that they are developing private rooms for stories that might have applications for the classroom. We’ll see.)

The basics of the site are:

  • Each story needs to have ten entries before it is “done.”
  • Each user can only add one entry per story (so once you start a story, you can’t add to it anymore).
  • Each entry has a limited character count (180 characters) and a time limit (four minutes).
  • When a story is done, the entire fold then gets published on the site, where folks “vote” on individual strands of the story. This apparently gives the story a total score, which then ranks the story for its prominence in publishing at the site (I don’t have a good handle on this).

Care to join in? Here are links to my three stories, which still need a few folds to be complete. I am including the first line of the story I created, which you won’t see because you will be working beneath the fold.

Peace (in the writing),
Kevin

Tech with Intention: a graph

This is useful. I stumbled on it at the Billings Beta site, which won first place in the class blog category at the Edublog Awards. The chart is a nice way of showing the “why” of using technology for learning, I think. And the whole thrust of “intention” is crucial, I think.

Technology with intentionTechnology with intention

Creative Commons License
Technology with intention by Jac de Haan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Peace (in the intersections),
Kevin

Whither my Bookmarks?

Ultimate Guide to Delicious Social Bookmarking

Thanks to a leak inside of Yahoo, news spread quickly yesterday that the struggling technology firm might be shutting down various elements of its services as a way to stay afloat. Someone inside the company apparently leaked a slide from an upcoming presentation that showed some of the Yahoo services in “sunset” mode. I don’t think Yahoo has made it public or outright confirmed the plan, so who knows what it means.

The one service that might be shuttered that caught my eye was Delicious, which is the bookmarking platform that I use almost daily, and I have been using it for years now with great success. I have a nice little Delicious tool bar in my browser and when I see something of interest or something to save for later, click a button and it is saved. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I even used the bookmarking function within the browser itself. That doesn’t make sense for me, working as I do on at least three computers each day (home, school).

I have more than 4,400 bookmarks on Delicious, I just realized. And, I have my delicious network set up for an RSS feed, so that when my friends add resources to their Delicious account, I get to see that in my RSS reader. I’ve stumbled across many cool tools, and had a strange inside glimpse into the thinking and planning of my online friends that way (which is sort of strange, too.)

So, if Delicious is going to be gone (and that is still up in the air, but there seems to be a gust in the wind), then what do I do?

Well, I have used Diigo before and I think that will be my first step forward. Last night, I exported my delicious bookmarks and then imported them into Diigo. (see this website about how and where to import bookmarks) I know there are a lot of them, but they still hadn’t shown up this morning, so I am trying again.

Diigo does a lot — almost too much for me. I liked the simplicity of Delicious. But I know I can use Diigo in simple terms, particularly now that I found its diigolet button, which you can drag into your browser for saving bookmarks. (One thing I did not like about Diigo in the past is that I installed its add-on for Firefox and it was just too much — too many choices, too much room in my browser — the diigolet is small and useful).

And this reminds me, once again, that we need to be ready for change and be ready to adapt (remember the end of free Ning?) and not get stuck to doing things one way. I may eventually realize the true power of Diigo and never wonder about Delicious.

I wondered about other alternatives to Delicious and Diigo, and came across this lengthy list. Go explore!

Peace (in the bookmarks),
Kevin

The Edublog Winners

Last night, the winners of the Edublog Awards for 2010 were announced. Once again, the competition seems less important than the uncovering new resources and people in our ever-expanding network (ie: I didn’t win anything but was excited to have been nominated).

🙂

Here is a quick recap of categories I was following (you can see that Richard over at Free Tech for Teachers received multiple kudos for his daily sharing of so many interesting ideas and tools. Pop him into your RSS):

Congrats to all of the winners! I’ll be exploring many of the sites and the runners-ups, too, in the coming days. You should, too.

Peace (in the limelight),
Kevin


This Super Book is Super Valuable

A whole bunch of folks added to this free ebook resource, The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators, which maps out various technology tools across grade levels, and provides a valuable narrative to the rationale for using the tool. Thanks to all the folks who added their knowledge to this book, which is available for download or for embedding/sharing. And thanks to Richard Byrne, of Free Technology for Teachers, for organizing the effort.

The contributors to The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators:
George CourosPatrick LarkinKelly TenkelyAdam BellowSilvia Tolisano,Steven AndersonCory PloughBeth StillLarry FerlazzoLee Kolbert, and Richard Byrne.

Peace (in the book),
Kevin

How We Might Use Our iPod Touches

Itouch 8

Finally, it appears, our classroom set of iPod Touches may be ready for action. We received a small bit of grant money for the set of Touches, but then, we had to wait for a sync/charging station, and now, as far as I can tell, the devices are just about ready to roll.

In some ways, we had bad timing in the purchase of the Touches, because if we had waited a month, we could have gotten the upgraded versions with cameras and (I think) microphones embedded right into the units. Instead, we have the older versions. I would have loved the video, audio and image element.

Still, our push is to use the Touch devices in Science (the heart of the grant) but I am sure I am going to steal them from time to time for work in my Language Arts class. I am perusing the ideas here with Tom Barrett’s Ways to use the iPod Touch, which is a great resource.

I like the ideas of:

  • Collaborative flashcards
  • Collaborative stories
  • Google surveys
  • Type Drawing for visual stories (new one to me)
  • Martian App allows you to create an alien (and then your partner has to draw a replica based on descriptive language)
  • Story Kit for writing and publishing a book
  • Using iPadio for interviews and sharing at our blog (hmmm — I will need a little iPod microphone, though)

Peace (in the touch),
Kevin

At LEARN NC: Online Reading Comprehension

I wrote a piece that just got published in LEARN NC (which also ran in Instructify, its companion site where I write regularly about tools for learning) in which I sought to provide a framework for considering reading skills when students are online.

I was inspired to write the piece after working this past summer with folks in the New Literacies Collaborative, including Don Leu (whom I will see next week as we are co-presenting a bit around New Literacies to Massachusetts superintendents, curriculum coordinators and such). Their presentations around this topic had me thinking and wondering, and processing what happens to my students when they go online to read.

You can read the piece  — Strategies for Online Reading Comprehension — here.

The chart in the piece that compares traditional reading with online reading was actually created in Google Docs as a cloud-sourcing experiment. I put a call out on Twitter and more than a dozen people went in and added ideas to the chart (which was later edited down a bit).

This is the fourth long article I have written for LEARN NC, but you can still access the other ones, which are on topics of online postering sites (such as Glogster), how teachers can collaborate as writers on the web, and an overview of blended learning. I am now working on another piece about gaming in the classroom.

Peace (on the web),
Kevin

NYTimes: Growing up Digital


In case you did not see the Sunday New York Times article, here is the link to Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction and here is video that looks at the attention of teenagers. It is a look at the “massive shift taking place at the intersection of education and technology,” according to writer Matt Ritchell, of NYT. Schools are looking to balance “the thrill of immediate gratification with the rigor and discipline of regular education …”

Ritchell looks at the topic from the science of the brain, and what being online and connected does to our thinking processes. I have to re-read the article again (and maybe again) but it is worth your time.

Peace (in the wired world),
Kevin