My Final Movie - BOE Presentation

My movie is currently being published on my laptop right now, so I thought I'd start the final blog and get things going. For my final Movie project, I created a presentation for our local Board of Education. I serve on our district science committee and we have been working for years on revamping the way we do Science. Next year is (finally) the implementation and I had to present to the BOE since I was one of the teachers who had the privilege of piloting some of our new kits. These kits are a departure from how we have been teaching science for a long time. Our decision was to go more in depth with fewer subjects (4-5 per grade level) rather than teach a little bit of 12-16 topics. National studies have shown that by reaching deeper into key areas, students are retaining what they are learning, as opposed to memorizing for a test or objective.

The bottom line with this new series is that students are having FUN with Science. And, as with anything ANY of us have fun with - they are remembering what they learned more than before. I spoke with former students from 3 years ago recently about these kits when they piloted them in my class. They all shared wonderfully detailed memories of their Science Lessons.

Since I have been piloting, my students have been fortunate enough to.... learn about what types of fingerprint patterns they have, compare their fingerprint patterns to their siblings and parents, Study Crayfish up close, Study Bess Beetles up close (behaviors and structures), go on a seed hunt, construct a Hydroponic Garden, maintain their own seed sprouter, build working telegraph systems and send coded messages to classmates, create simple and complex serial and parallel circuits, draw schematic diagrams of electrical circuits, explore rubbings and objects that would make for good rubbings, discover venation patterns in leaves, build a model satellite system, a model solar system, and a model sun, create constellation charts and construct constellation models from pen lights, experiment with chromatography, write and exchange hidden messages with their own invisible ink, discover all sorts of curiousities with mirrors and reflections, and work on Science Teams more than they ever have before. You can probably tell that I am pretty passionate about what we are doing and I am extremely excited for debut, district wide, of the new series next year.

For The BOE meeting (it was Dec 5th) I used most of this footage, but I used Photostory to Create everything, I narrated it, and used different music. IT was a big hit and I received several letters, cards, eMails, and phone calls praising the job our group did on our presentation.

Final Podcast FEED

Here is the link to my RSS Feed for my Final Podcast:

Mr. Sims Math Movie Minute

Final Podcast: Math Movie Minute

For my final podcast, I created the first of a series of "Math Minutes" that will feature demonstrations on how to perform various Mathematics operations. These demos will be embedded on my classroom website and are design for students who are absent, struggling, or sleeping (:) in my class.

I had fun making this and I imagine, as time goes on, this idea will continue to evolve. For some editions, I might have my students film and construct the podcast. I also might have it consist of more video than photos.

I used a trick I learned from Ann a couple of week ago. She had shown me had to save Power Point slides (and slideshows) as JPEG images. It was a nice shortcut in making this. I had originally thought of taking up close photos up the problems written on the marker board in my class, however this seemed to be a better, clearer way to do it.

Now, on to my movie

GMS

My Two Minute Movie

Well, As I am waiting for this to upload to Teachertube... my thoughts.... I could have kept working on this two minute movie for weeks and it probably was never going to be as good as I wanted it to be. I kept tweaking little things, moving clips around, and, at some points, thinking that maybe I should do something completely different. However, I also realized that when making a movie, you have to have courage to move forward with your idea and realize that not everybody may like it (I am applying this to movie making in general and not just our projects). For my first experience doing this, however, I really enjoyed it.

Doing this project got me thinking about my first time ever making a movie for school. I was in seventh grade and we didn't have any computer programs to use to help us edit. We didn't even have any editing equipment. I remember we had to shoot the scenes, one at a time, in the order they were going to appear in the movie. The only editing we could do was to reshoot a scene immediately after if was done if we didn't like it. But once we moved on the the next scene, all scenes before it had to stay in place. Our film was about a drug deal gone bad and about how drugs are bad for you. Very edgy stuff!

Has anyone had any experience with any other video editing software, like Adobe Premiere Elements? I also wonder if there is any good Open Source Video Editing Software out there.

Also, my 2 cents on uploading the video.... I have found it seems to be MUCH faster to upload video/media clips to TeacherTube (I created a free account for myself) and then embed the clip here on Blogger rather than upload to Blogger. Just an Observation.

Do U Stumble?

Has anyone heard of Stumble Upon? Great site - one of the fastest growing on the web - it is a new way to search. The way it works is you create a free account and then run through a quick checklist of things you are interested in (like Movies, Education, Science, Technology, Humor, etc.). When you are finished, it puts a little Stumble Upon button on your Internet Browser. When you click it, it takes you to various sites within your selected interested, based on the "Stumbling Patterns" of other users with similar interests. On each site you go to, there is a Thumbs Up & a Thumbs Down next to the Stumble Button... you click one or the other to say if you like the site. Then, based on your continued stumblings, it continues to take you to new sites based on the updated data you continue to submit via the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down. I have found Countless education, math, science, and technology sites from using SU. The website is www.stumbleupon.com and I HIGHLY recommend giving it a try.

The Case For Students Who Can Problem Solve

As I am typing this, I am watching my laptop computer compile bits and pieces of a movie I have made that I have really struggled with. I am pretty tech-savvy, and I had/am having a very hard time with this MM program.

However, as I keep troubleshooting and trying different approaches to see what exactly was wrong, I started to think that maybe we should really, really start immersing our students with technology and have them work through all of the struggles and problems that arise for no apparent reason. Have them reverse engineer the situation and see what might have led to each problem. Have them assist teachers with the tech support on a building level. Have them research blogs, msg boards, archived newsgroups, and the general Web to see if other users have encountered this problem and, if so, what solutions they have come up with.

All of these tools will be INVALUABLE to each student as they grow up in this century. I teach 4th grade and I really think we need to start looking nationally at how much time we spend on the 3 R's compared to tech. Are the 3 R's still valid... still viable? Yes! However, in some schools 1/2 of the day is devoted to reading. I'm all for having good, strong readers, but there is more in life and I know quite a few adults who aren't the best readers, but they make a lot of money as higher end tech support for Fortune 500 companies.

Just Thinking Out Loud......

Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy & a TWIT

Well, as much as I use technology, I have never viewed an official podcast. When I take a class like this, I am always of the opinion that if I can walk away learning a new thing or two, I will be happy. Having said that, in the short time I have been in this course, I've have been exposed to many different technologies that will change the way I teach and that I learn.

Back to podcasts..... I guess I always thought, with no real reason why, that podcasts were more like music videos, tv show clips, and movie previews. I had no idea the depth of content that was in there. Way back when I first got digital TV, there was a channel I watched all of the time called Tech TV. The entire channel disappeared 4-5 years ago and I have always missed it. However, one of their main 'stars', Leo Laporte, has his own podcast. Leo was well known for shows such as "The Screen Savers" and "Call For Help". On both of these shows, he would help people figure out how to use current technology, but he would also review new products and give the viewer his opinion on them. So, needless to say, I'm pretty happy to see that I can catch him again. He also hosts another podcast called TWIT (This Week in Technology) that he hosts with a couple other folks.

Thanks, Ann!