Educating the Dragon

Today was the day for two training sessions.

Firstly, I ran ‘Digital Storytelling" workshop, sharing the online platforms of Voicethread, Teachertube, and Slideshare.

I always enjoy running these session because I find teachers bring just as much to a session as I do. We began a voicethread… My first really proper one and it is oh so basic but I am hoping that others whole attended the session will be adding there thoughts about it. The cough at the beginning of my talk is not me but an attendee who shall remain nameless.

Cliotech was good enough to allow me to share some of the input from her slideshare .

Second up was Stop motion animation. Some folk from this morning stayed into the afternoon. We played around with webcams for a while and discussed the usefulness of animation creation to support not only the literacy programme but also it solidfy learning in other areas, for example creating an animation to illustrate life-cycles in science. We even had one uploaded to www.teachertube.com by the end of the session. It’s entitled "Mr Mouse" Enjoy!

ps. It was also great to know about a couple of sound wikispaces today. One of the attendees has been struggling with establishing her class wiki on wikispaces. I would have loved to sit down with her and assist in creating her class wiki, but that would be another 3 hour session so I pointed her in the direction on Wonderfulworldof.wikispaces.com and encouraged her to look through the material there before she gave up. Often I find its better to have the pointers than to be able to ‘Fix it’ then and there. Thanks Chrissy

pps. Thanks Derek for sharing this . What a powerful illustration of Storytelling in the 21st Century

Well here it is, my revamped School 1.0 v School 2.0 video. After much discussing on my blog last week about copyright and quality of photographs, plus a comment on my teachertube that the words were difficult to read, I have completly redone the video:
Download: Posted by Dragon09 at TeacherTube.com.

Mark, I know the images are still too static for your liking but I think you’ll agree that the quality of them is much improved.

I also want to thank Graham Wegner for pointing me in the direction of FlickrCC- The images are great and are under a creative commons licence.

I recieved this email today, quite out of the blue, so to speak, have a read:

Hi Simon,

I have just checked out the video clip Why Teach Technology on your site
and wonder if i can make a couple of comments?

1: The quality of the images you have used is sub standard…throughout
the the entire clip thereare images of ok resoltuion and
others that have pixelated so badly that they are not worth
using…….if using imahes from the web and u have found them using
google image
set your image size to large…any other size gives you the result u
have in your clip.

2. The clip is to stactic. it is a video not a slide show…therefor
your text and images should have movement. Moving the text and the image
will allow you to draw focus / attention to the image and words. I dont
know what you create the clip in but adding motion will greatly increase
the  imapct of the clip.

3. Also you have used images of  varying shape and sizes which doesnt
increase the imapct of the clip but rather distracts from it. Really
you need to use clips that will fill your screen…either 4:3 or 16:9
ratio…so you may need to zoom images in to fill the screen……tv
screens and data projector screens are rectangular in shape so to
effectivly use the space only use landscape nased images…if an image
is portrait based then zoom in or find another image.

4.  I note that some of the images you have used were created and signed
by others…ir u dont own the image. Be careful about using other
peoples images. If you are wanting to promote technology then u need to
ensure that you dont cross the ethical boundries by using images
you have created or captured yourself. Just because an image is online
doesnt mean that you can use it. check out each images copyright uses
and restrictions
before downlaoding. Images automatically some with international
copyright protection…..

5. The same thing applies to the audio track….in order to use clips, u
need to gain permission from the proper people….in some cases they are
free in others, u may need to pay tens of thousands of dollars. be
careful with what u use esoically if u post on line.

6. The fonts you have used didnt add to the clip…again they were
static and placed centrally….yawn!   use a thicker font.

7. When putting together clips keep in mind the person viewing the
show…..if someone came in part way through the clip
playing and began to view it, would they understand what you are trying
to tell them? more often than not they wont.

hope the above is of some use to you……..

any questions just ask.
Download: Posted by Dragon09 at TeacherTube.com.
It got me thinking about several things to do with Teachertube:

•  
  • What is the purpose of posting material to Teachertube?
  • Who is to benefit from the posting?
  • What quality of video/audio is permissable on such a format, and at what point does the quality impact on whether material is valuable or not?
  • Remembering that we are all teachers/ administrators etc, should be expect one another to produce a ‘Spielberg’ quality piece or are we all just out to support, encourage and inspire each other?
  • The Youtube: Disney copyright video I found on Sheryl’s blog defines ‘fair use’ but my question really is: Is that in the US only or is it some International standard/ expectation?
  • Are ALL available (Googled) images open to being used in the way that I have?
  • What about copyright for audio tracks that are being used as background to many Teachertube videos?

These are questions worth asking.