First of all, I would like to say how amazed I am at the revamp of Discovery Education. If you are in Memphis City Schools, you have access to this wealth of resources. I suppose I should do a more in depth blog post about this, but right now that would take a lot of time and I have none of that. Here I sit at work on Saturday night after 6 PM. School starts on Monday. I am waiting for some video to get converted so I stopped to share the solution to a problem I just discovered I had.
I was thrilled with the idea that teachers can download the videos that are marked “edit” at DiscoveryEducation.com and cut and fiddle with them as we like. The possibilities for fun and meaningful projects with the kids are endless. My idea, however, was to incorporate a few of these editable segments into a video I am making about our lab computers, and lab rules and procedures as an introduction the first week of school. I discovered after a bit of frustration, and checking on DiscoveryEd’s help pages, that you cannot drop their .mov video segments into iMovie and get to fiddling unless you have QuickTime Pro. Now, this is pretty cheap as far as software goes, but I am not dropping $29.99 right now after my trip to FedEx Kinkos earlier this week which broke the bank. So, I found what seems to be a good work around.
Download open source HyperEngine-AV. In fact, you could stop there. The DiscoveryEd video segments dropped nicely into there and it is enticingly easier than iMovie. Very clean, simple, and to the point. This would seem a lot less daunting to techn0-phobic teachers, as well as providing a more simplistic means to allowing kids to do narration over the video. I’m taking it a step further. I want to use iMovie, gosh darn it. So guess what? The DV file drops nicely into iMovie.
If you want to convert the DV file to another format, use a free converter like Handbrake.
Do you have a better way to do this? Let me know. For now this seems to work. And I might go home at a decent time tonight. Wait…it’s WAY too late for that. I’m at school on a Saturday…
We have not really had a moment to breathe this year–it’s been a whirlwind operation from the get-go. Technology training? No time! Since several teachers had approached me wondering if we could meet up at school during the summer so I could “show” them a few things to enhance technology use in the classroom, I decided to devote two weeks this summer to in-house casual professional development. But I’ll extend the invite to any Downtown parents and any Memphis area teachers that might accidentally stumble upon my little bitty corner of cyberspace.
Here’s the deal:
JUNE: Week of 6/15-6/19
JULY: Week of 7/13-7/17
All dates will start at 10 AM and though it might not go until 3PM, I’ll stay till then in case you want to practice or play with stuff.
Mondays will be digital photography and iPhoto (bring a digital cam with an SD card, if possible).
Tuesdays will be video importing and editing in iMovie.
Wednesdays will be eBeam and Kerpoof for the classroom.
Thursdays and Fridays will be play dates. This means I’ll just be here from 10 to 3 and at your service. You can come in to practice any of the things we’ve done M-W or ask for specific help on anything you’ve wanted to learn or brush up on.
Of course, the July dates will be after I return from NECC, so I might be chock full of even more good ideas. *smile*
If you need to get in touch, just send me an email: SmithTeacher@gmail.com
I really look forward to working with iMovie in the lab this year. It is definitely going to be something the students will enjoy. I know several other teachers at the school use iMovie in their classrooms, and some even get their students using iMovie for projects.
What I really foresee as being beneficial to the school is making sure that teachers who use iMovie effectively in their classrooms can help those who do not feel comfortable with it. It all comes down to realizing the impact it can have on shaking up things in class and getting the kids excited. I am considering doing a voluntary training session or two with teachers in the lab this year.
Here’s an article called iMovies in Education, which really shows the whole scope of possibilties.
Why am I thinking about iMovie?
