Earth Day, Film, and iMovie

For our elementary school's inaugural Earth Day celebration, our music teacher crafted some creative lyrics and choreography to the Miley Cyrus tune "Hoedown Throwdown". Despite what you may think of Miley and her tunes, the kids thoroughly enjoyed the song. With 2 Canon GL-2's, a Sony Digital HD camera, and the assistance of our local electric company (who allowed me to travel up in the cherry picker for overhead shots!), we caught it on film.
After recording the audio track of the performance on Tuesday morning, we caught 2.5 takes on film. Using firewire, I imported all 3 cameras' footage onto my MacBook using iMovie, making a separate event for each camera. From here I went about selecting the first scene of the video. I had some difficulty getting it to match up correctly with the audio once I imported that track from iTunes, but I found that placing a large section of video into the project which lasted longer than the entire audio track made it easier to manipulate the timing of the first scene (and all subsequent scenes for that matter). I simply deleted the superfluous video from the end once the edit was complete.
What I found to be very helpful in iMovie were the precision editing tools. Pulling in clips from each camera feed made it tricky to match the words/motions up with the audio track. The precision editing features made this a bit simpler. While the original audio was captured inside on an earlier day, it didn't feature any live clapping. That was problematic since the kids in the video are clapping along with the song. Each clip imported into the project can have its audio altered to be either raised or lowered. I lowered the volume on each clip enough to still allow clapping to come through, but not much else. The main audio track overtook any extra noise I didn't want.
While other video editors for the Mac may offer more features and a simpler means to edit multiple camera feeds, iMovie (falling quite below the $200 tag of Final Edit Express) got the job done.
Here's the final result:

(google) Earth Day

I'm sure our school is not alone in our celebration of Earth Day for this week. Aside from teaching simplified PowerPoints (emphasis on simplified) with conservation-themed content, and keeping my printer free from paper lest anyone print, we'll be using Google Earth to explore global concerns.
If you're not familiar or have never used this tool, by all means go and download it. In the side bar on the left of the program, you'll find a section called Layers. In the layer tab, look for the section titled "Global Awareness". If you expand the "folder" you'll find over a dozen organizations or subjects which have links all over Google Earth.
I've included an instructional Prezi on how we'll be using this layer in our technology classes this week.

(google) Earth Day on Prezi

iPods, Collaboration, and a hint of Humility

For my inaugural post, I'm quite thrilled. Our learning specialist for ed. tech. just emailed, informing me that we've been offered a set of ipod touches for use 'til the end of the school year! My planning team (consisting of our GT teacher, Media Specialist, and myself) has been researching and dipping our feet into podcasting book reviews from 2nd - 5th graders. As the technology teacher, I've been working this year to engage the students in online activities and the utilization of applications which re-inforce the grade-level standards. For example, students will use Excel to create charts and graphs which they have developed in the classroom. They may not only explore subscription sites like BrainPop or BrainPop Jr. to increase in knowledge of a subject, but play games which adhere and support the standards.
So far, while this has succeeded in engaging the students, it has only mildly touched on areas of creation and collaboration. Strategy, problem-solving, creation, and collaboration are skills which are becoming more an more of a necessity for students, as the world grows smaller and smaller, technologically speaking.
Its easy to be a technological monolith: blogging silently; lurking on user groups and twitter; posting a comment or two on youtube. But to put yourself out there, ask for help, advice, or the opportunity to work with others on accomplishing a common goal requires something more. Its not only inhibition, but a bit of humility as well. What comes with collaboration is not only the assurance that we have something to add, but also that we have something to learn.
The video I've included shows a young boy trying to make a fire using a bowdrill set. Instead of working in isolation, he posted a video, showing what he knew, and asking for help. The video has (as of today) 7, 181 views and 35 comments.
I'm getting there with my own collaboration. I tend to work in isolation, and I like getting the answer on my own. Every time I look at the #edtech twitter feed however, I'm reminded of how much I don't know. I need collaboration. I need help. If I want my students to collaborate, I need to model that first.
How do you collaborate? How are you using technology in your classroom environment? As I get into creating and collaborating with my students I'll post more - especially what we're doing with the iPod touches. I can't wait to see what the kids will show me!