Let's Make a Movie!

My sixth grade students are working on a research project about composers. Each student researched one composer and wrote a brief summary about that composer including items about their life such as education, influences and compositions. They will each dress up as their composer and we are going to video them giving their talk as their composer. The cool thing though is that we are going to "blue screen" it and put images relating to the composer in the background. It has it's challenges but this is a project well worth the time. So I'd like to share some awesome resources that I and my students will be using to create these composer movies. I'll share one when we are finished. We are going to be using Windows Movie Maker 2.6 to edit our movie.

Let's start with some videos that will tell you all you need to know about how to do this.These come from Lamar CISD in Texas and their Interact Cafe. The videos are presented by Chris Nilsson. I first saw Chris present at TCEA. Chris includes on the site the XML files you will need to add to Movie Maker to use the blue screen. This is a great resource. While you are there, you should check out some of the other things on the Interact Cafe site. Some excellent tutorials.

To read their script, the students will be using a site called Cue Prompter It is exactly what it sounds like, easy to use and FREE.



We are using iPads to record. Online-convert (another of my favorites) to convert the videos to wmv so we can import them into Movie Maker.

And btw- my "blue screen" is a plastic party table cloth that I bought from the local party supply store. Works perfectly!

And yes, there are other tools to do what we are doing. And yes, there is an iPad green screen app. BUT, using the tools we have this is what we are doing. Doing it this way though does give the students an experience that they won't find with an iPad. I think knowing that you can make a program like Movie Maker do something it didn't before is valuable knowledge. I also think putting all these pieces together gives you a sense of greater power over a creation. Yes, there are easier ways with different tools but why not this way? And to top it off, I just read this great article on how creating movies involves Higher Order Thinking skills so there you go!

Paper Slide or Pantomine Videos

January 2013? We are more than half way through the month and I think I have been writing 2012 still. Well I hope my dear reader that you are more focused than I am. I am gearing up for 2 conferences, TCEA (Texas Computer Educators) and TMEA (Texas Music Educators). TCEA will be in Austin, Texas and I have the pleasure of presenting 3 sessions with my good friend Carol Mayo. They are all 3 hour hands on sessions and we are very excited. Monday, February 4, we will be presenting Weebly, Tuesday the 5th will be Animoto and then finally on Thursday will be Paper Slide videos. Which brings me to my post today.

I knew I had written about Paper Slide videos once before so I went back to look at the post. Not much to say was there? I was disappointed that the video from our teacher tech camp would not play and I have tried fixing it to no avail. Recently, however, I used PSV (Paper Slide Videos) with one of my music classes. I introduced the concept to an 8th grade class, gave them the song they were going to use and let them at it. The song, by the way, was chosen because I knew they had just finished studying this in their science class. I gave them one class period to complete the pictures and to film.
The next week I had them take the same song and they had to pantomime the words. Lots of fun and they did a great job. They were very willing and I enjoyed watching them come up with their ideas. This link will take you to my classroom page where you can view both the PSV and the pantomime version.

An idea like PSV or pantomime really is quite easy to do with students. I did very little prep with them other than showing them an example of other students' work. I supplied them with paper and markers and their section of the song. I do think that any PSV should be relatively short in length, a few minutes at most.

So I reccommend to you to not be afraid and try it with your kids. There are many examples out on youtube so no matter what subject you teach you should be able to find an example. It does not have to be song like I did but have your students explain a concept they have just learned. Diagram a sentence, do a math problem, create a "how to" video, so many things you can do!

Here is quick (and kind of lame) PSV about PSV!

Paper Slide Video about Paper Slide Videos! from MKuterbach on Vimeo.

2012 to 2013

December is always a crazy month for me. If you have read my profile, you will notice that I am a music teacher so December naturally has a holiday program. It definitely consumes most of my energy! I haven't been totally absent from my tech world so I had to get in one last post before the year ends. This post does not come necessarily from an educational search but it does have classroom applications also.

I was looking for a way to send a video message that my elderly mother could open and see without actually downloading a video. I also wanted it to be private and most of all FREE. I did a little looking around and of course one of my first searches for great web tools is with Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers. I am always forever grateful to people like him who take the time and energy to do extensive research on web tools. I trust the sites he recommends and his thoughts on classroom applications.

My search led me to Kincast. Yeah, his post was over a year ago, but I didn't need something like this a year ago! And yes, like most web 2.0 tools, I believe they have changed since Mr. Byrne first wrote about them. However, Kincast offers a way to upload or record directly videos of any size that you can share privately. For my purposes, which is to share videos with family, this is perfect. The free version gives you unlimited sharing and 30 minutes of cloud storage. There are paid versions, monthly and yearly,  that offer more storage and other options. People that you share with do not need an account or password to view your videos (again I needed EASY for my mother) and only need to click on a link in their email.

File size for uploading is 4GB per video. In the free version, once you hit the 30 min limit, they will ask you if you want to upgrade. If you choose to stay on the free version, they will delete your oldest videos to make room for your new one. You can also delete videos whenever you want. Kincast has a great HELP page with FAQs.

For the classroom, Kincast could be an easy way for teachers to share student videos privately with their parents. Even though the site is private, please note that the site is not intended for use by anyone under age 13 and their privacy policy states that you must be 18 to create an account. This is an important factor for teachers and I remind you to always check the privacy policies of websites if you intend to use them with your students. You should also be aware of your school district's internet policies.

Happy New Year!

WatchKnowLearn and Reading Bear

Avoiding what I should be doing, I was looking through my reader and Larry Ferlazzo's post about phonics caught my eye. He happens to mention a site called Reading Bear.  I went to view the Reading Bear site and was quite impressed. This is a great resource for teaching phonics. Their site says they have over "1200 vocabulary items and 50 presentations". If you read the About Us section of Reading Bear you will find that this site is completely free and funds are provided by a Memphis area donor who wishes to remain anonymous. I am amazed and truly grateful as a teacher that something like this is out there for teachers and free. You do not have to create an account to use the site. If you choose to do so, you will be able to save scores and progress. Teachers can also make accounts for their students. Excellent site. Do, do, do take a look!

And to top it off.....as I scrolled to the bottom of the page to find out more I saw that it comes from WatchKnowLearn.org. Another WOW for my day! WatchKnowLearn is free educational videos in a very nicely organized way. Music alone has 889 videos. Over 7,000 in the History category. You may have found many of the videos they have listed but to have everything organized all in one place is pretty cool. The videos come from all different sources but are considered kid safe for ages 1 - 18.

Again, this site is done by some very generous people. Generous with time and money and the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to learn. Thank you to these folks and others like them that have made educating others their mission in life. And thank you Larry Ferlazzo who leads me to so many wonderful sites.

Animoto and the Internet wait

I sit in a local Whataburger, using their free wifi, because the internet is down at my house and apparently no one knows why. So frustrating. So I am on the work order list for Friday, the earliest they could do, between 12 and 4. Grrrrr. Not exactly the best place to be sitting but I really needed to get online. Grrrrr.

So Animoto- well I have written about Animoto before. Awesome web tool. Free upgrade for educators. Quick learning curve. Makes very professional looking videos so you look like you are even more talented than you think you are. I love it!

I helped out today at one of our diocesan tech workshops and we were doing Animoto. Some things we learned last week and this week while teaching the teachers.
1- there are requirements on images and videos that you can use in Animoto. Kind of important. Especially the video part. We discovered, yes you can put in videos, but they will be in 10 second clips. So if you are using video, understand that if you video is more than 10 secs Animoto will trim your video to 10 sec. Advice: film in short 10 sec bursts. It does work and you can still use the fabulous Animoto look for your polished final video.
2- One of our teachers does not remember what her promotional code is so we are trying to retrieve that. She sent an email to the folks at Animoto and we are waiting to see what response she gets. I'll let you know.
3- Student created videos cannot be accessed. There really is no way to view a video unless you have the link, embed code or download the video yourself. A nice feature.

All the teachers loved Animoto and are excited about bringing it to their students. Thank you Animoto for creating a classroom friendly tool.

Here is a great site from our professional development director: Hold the Mayo There are some good links and resources for the workshops we have done.

Teacher Tech Camp and Paper Slide Videos

This week we began our teacher tech camp or as we call it STAR Camp. STAR stands for "Stellar Teachers Aquiring Resources. We came up with this name the first year we offered the camp in the Dallas Diocese. Our original intent was to do a virtual field trip with NASA but it didn't pan out. We kept the name anyways. This year we are offering two camps. One now and then one in August. The camp this week is a digital camp. Days one and two are using digital images and days three and four will be focused on video. The first two days went quite well. Wednesday we begin video and we are introducing paper slide videos.

I was introduced to paper slide videos at a Discover Education pre-con event at TCEA. However I actually have seen this type of process before in a video done by INXS:



Lodge McCammon though was where I heard about the process for use in the classroom. Paper slide videos are often used for the "flipped classroom", which is a whole other discussion. There are many links out there that you can search and see examples of how that works. Here are two:
Jerry Overmyer - Vodcasting and the Flipped Classroom
Flipped Learning
and a link to a great info graphic too large for me to embed but check it out:
Flipped Classroom Info graphic

As I write this, we finished Day 3. Our "students" completed 2 videos using a Flip camera. The did a paper slide video and then did a video where they act out the lyrics to an educational song. We took the songs from Discovery Education. If your school has a subscription to DE, it is a fabulous resource for songs for the classroom. Their finished products were awesome! Below is one example of a paper slide video some teachers made to explain classroom rules:

There are so many uses for a paper slide video. My personal favorite would be to have a collection of these types of videos to be used for tutorials. It would take some time, (a summer project perhaps) but you could create an entire library of these videos and use them throughout the school year. It would make it easy for students when studying for a test to refer back to a video that explains the concept. Not exactly a web tool but certainly a great tool for the classroom.

Animoto

Animoto is a web based video slideshow creator. I remember first experiencing Animoto when I was getting my master's degree in instructional technology. At that point we were evaluating websites for the use in the classroom. Animoto does what MovieMaker and PhotoStory can't do and that's create a very professional looking video in a very short time. With features already built in like slide transitions and even music to use, you can't go wrong with Animoto.

Recently at the TCEA conference, I attended a session on using Animoto to create book trailers. It was a great session and even though I had some experience with Animoto, taking the extra time to play with the site was time well spent. Animoto videos could be used for many things such as introducing yourself to your class, highlighting events throughout a school day, month or year, sharing a students work, the list is only limited by your imagination.

This is not to say that MovieMaker, PhotoStory or iMovie are not as useful or any better or worse. These are all great programs to use. But give Animoto a look. You can create an educator account which gives you a longer length for your videos plus added features. You will also be able to give your students a code so they too can have access to the longer length and added features.

My compadre, Carol Mayo, and I will be sharing a session on Animoto at the Region X Technology Planning Conference on May 8th.

Here is the book trailer I created at TCEA.

Differentiation giggle

I was looking at my Google Reader this morning (if you don't use Google Reader I highly recommend it!) and saw Larry Ferlazzo's post. He mentions adding a new video to his Collection of the Best Laugh while you Cry Videos. This one was on testing but I decided to go to the list of videos and saw the following on differentiation. Differentiation is certainly one of the newest buzz words in education but good teachers have been doing this in their classrooms for many years. So this video caused me to chuckle and smile thinking of my colleagues' reactions which would have included heads nodding and shaking in agreement. I feel many of you would react the same. Enjoy:





Here is my education link for the day:
Grammar Girl as described on her page "Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing". Her posts as podcasts can also be read. This site would be helpful for students and teachers alike.