I am in cadre that was given MacBook Pros to do podcasting and vodcasting this Summer and upcoming school year. Not too shabby, I downloaded Handbrake already in order to convert video from one format into another.  This was made essential because my Flip video camera only records in .AVI format, something the mac hates.  Downloaded Handbrake, change the .m4v extension to .mp4 and I am all set.

But today I am scanning blogs on Reader, and I discover this video on on one of the blogs.

Do me a favor though. Before you watch it, turn the volume DOWN to zero.  Don’t listen to it, just watch it. It is 6:02 minutes long.

Then watch it again but turn up the music and listen to the music along with the visuals.

Do you hate the music as much as I do?

Someone has spent enormous amounts of time getting the facts, the visuals, and then the orange / black/ white color scheme just right. It is an amazing video that is ruined by the cheap GarageBand audio tacked onto the video.

I think Dan said it best.   Don’t Let Your Students Use Music In Their Video Projects. Really.  Don’t do it. This video is every reason why not to allow music.

If the authors had spent one quarter of the time on audio as they did on the video, they would have an amazing video. Instead, they get something significantly less than they wanted.

When we were doing our training on Garageband, I spoke up and asked why we were being encouraged to spend 4 hours on a video and 5 minutes on slapping a cheap sounding soundtrack to our podcast.   The answer from the Mac trainer was dismissive and pointless. “The kids really get into finding something they like.”

Big deal.

The authors of the video above “really got into finding something they liked” and because they did that instead of finding something that fit with the story, the visuals, and the emotional impact of the pictures, they weakened their video.

Don’t do it. Don’t let yourself or your learners use music in their, or your, videos.

This post from Free Technology for Teachers made me think about the videos I use in my classroom.  In it, they go through over 30 different ways to get video for the classroom.  Some are better than others, but they annotate the sources to the quality and content.

From these sources, I use TED and YouTube and Vimeo the most.  Neither TED or Vimeo is blocked by my school district, so they are easy to use, but YouTube requires some … er … massaging to get the videos.  To get the videos from YouTube I have been using KeepVid. It works well for me, allowing me to save the videos in MP4 format and drop them into iTunes and play them on my iPod I have connected to my projector.

It has worked well, allowing me to have around 70 videos by the end of the year ready to go. This summer I am working on identifying another 70 or so and building my collection to use.

This is one of them. The Sixth Sense project. If you haven’t seen it. Do so. Now.  Don’t wait. It is short, and worth every second.

Free Technology for Teachers has a lot of links that I never knew about, so it will be fun to explore them and find more good math videos to use.

Here is one that will make your math class groan. I love it!

A couple of topics in this posting.

First off, here is a link to a site that has collected 100 videos for use in the classroom.  Not all of these are for learners, some are for teachers, but still, there are some really great videos here.

Secondly, in the comments to Dan’s post on videos (found here) there are some comments from other teachers like Jackie, Dina and Todd that we need some repository for all these lists.  We need a way to collectively work together and share the video love.

This is really hard to do.  We are all busy, we are all trying to keep up with our learners who are pushing us every day to do better.

Scott Mcleod at Dangerously Irrelevant, however, already has a wiki called Moving Forward set up and running that has a lot of this kind of content.  More importantly, he put out a call for MORE content.

Wow, kind of serendipitous that within 2 weeks all these things came together.  I posted over at Dangerously Irrelevant the links to Jackie’s, Todd’s, and my list of videos.  I think it is really up to Scott to respond on his blog and let us know if he wishes his wiki to act as such a consolidator.   I just posted my list to his “Videos and Handouts” page though.

So, Scott.  What say you?

Okay, Dan issued a challenge, and since I have spent some time this summer working on just this topic, I thought I would contribute.  I have several different categories.  Statistics, “Gateway”, Physics, Algebra, and DYAV & Personal Development.  Some of these fall under more than one category, but I will only list them in one here. 

I have most of these videos downloaded to iTunes and on my iPod.  On my iPod they are sorted via playlists so I can find them easily.  Connect the iPod component AV cable to my pod, and push play and my class is watching the video over my projector.

I am always looking for new videos, so this is not a complete list.  It is current only through today.

It is a long list, so click for the whole thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, I finished my last post, and realized that I was talking, but showing nothing.  So, start to finish, including the time to upload to Vimeo AND for vimeo to convert the video and Photo Story to render the video and me to type this second post. 

Meaning this is all inclusive time, here.  I am not pulling punches or shaving time off just to make it seem like this was not a big deal.  I started taking pictures at 6:20 p.m., and Vimeo is showing me the video in the window right now at 6:40.  20 freaking minutes!

And here is the link, just in case as well.  http://www.vimeo.com/1312528

20 minutes, start to finish.  This is absolutely possible to do in the classroom.

Well, some of us are not as good as Dan is when it comes to video. Heck, I bet 99% of us couldn’t do the things he does with video.  But why let that stop us from using video, and more importantly, coming up with ways to have our learners constructively use video in the classroom.

So, before we begin, we will need some software.  First, download Photo Story 3 from Microsoft.  You can find it here.  Say what you want about Microsoft, but this piece of software is darn good, it does exactly what it says it does, and it does it fantastically.

Next, you will need some way to get voice into the story (if you want the learners to narrate).  If you don’t want the learners to narrate, but instead you want music, then skip the next couple of paragraphs.  Photo Story 3 has built in music that will solve your problem.  You are ready to go!

Okay, I am doing math, so I need some way to narrate. …. Hmmm, I have an iPod, so I could use the iTalk.  Griffin Technology makes it, it would set us back $49.99.  But I am a teacher and cheap, so I hoof it on over to eBay and find that it will cost less than $20.00 including shipping from many sellers.  Decision made.

But if I am uber-cheap, I want to do it for free.  My laptop has a microphone built in, so isn’t there some software that would record and more?  Yes there is, and it is open source and it is called Audacity.  If you want to do sound, then you want Audacity.  I even used it in a Trig class to demonstrate sound waves, beats, constructive and destructive interference.  Audacity will do all your sound needs.  Cost = $0.

But, I don’t have my laptop with me today.  Yea, I suck.  But WAIT!  Hey, there are two other different ways to do this for free.

  and

Gabcast and Gcast both allow a person to call in using a phone (or perhaps a cell phone!  what high school learner doesn’t have one of those these days!!!) and make an mp3 recording of their voice!  This is called a podcast.  For free.  From a cell phone.  From anywhere  (I see possibilities for storytelling here).

Okay, so we have software that will take our photographs, or any jpeg files and will combine those jpegs into a video.  Along with that video, we can insert music, or, in the case of math, perhaps a learner’s slow explanation of how they did the problem. 

You see, I took my digital camera to school (not really, this is a plan for something I am going to do later) and took pictures, one after the other, of the learners doing a problem.  I just took a picture of the page using my old 2 megapixel camera, which is plenty of resolution for this, and then using Photo Story 3, chained the pictures together.  Next, I recorded a narration, and saved it.  Imported the mp3 file into Photo Story, and now I have my voice, narrating me doing a problem.

More importantly

Imagine having teams of 4 – 5 working on the problem.  In a class of 32, that is 6 to 8 teams, each trying to explain how to do a different problem.    They come up with a video explaining how to do it, post the video to YouTube, or Vimeo, and now we have 8 -  4 minute presentations on how to do the problems for a test.

I did nothing but facilitate the learning.  (hopefully).  Cost = $0.00.  Time = about an hour or less.    Isn’t this what learning should be?

For one of my classes (two sections) I was given an 89 Gig Ipod Video.  This class is (badly) called the Gateway class, and it is a quarter of Post Alg 2 mathematics in Finance, a quarter of Mathematics in Art, a quarter of Mathematics in Technology / Computers, and a quarter of Mathematics in Medicine/ the Human body.

It is a very different kind of math class, where only seniors can take it.  It will be mathematically rigorous, but 100% focused on the mathematics in each of these areas.

So, back to the ipod.  Part of the issue with this is I need, I mean really NEED to use it.  After all, my district just paid $400 for me and five other teachers to each have these ipods.  If we don’t use them in class, we are in some deep doo doo trouble.

So I have made a goal for myself of finding, in advance, two to three videos that are relevant to the course each day.  I have watched a lot of YouTube crap, let me tell you.  Of course there is also DNATube, TeacherTube, Teachers.tv, and Vimeo where you can find some good stuff.  There is also TED.

I have been using these sites to find good video.  Today I watched this one, and it blew me away.  Who know fractals and Africa had such a rich history, and that that exact history influenced Western culture to such a high degree.  I did not.

If the player doesn’t work (I had it work and not work) here is the link: Ted Talk – Ron Eglash