Short Film Making

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Late last fall, I was asked if I would be interested in coming to Taos, NM, to lead a short film project with some schools there. Lists of equipment were made, travel plans finalized, and near the end of January, 2013, I flew to Taos to work with 4th and 5th graders in two elementary schools.

The plan I developed was to work for three weeks, 1 1/2 hours a day with each group. I spent three hours split between two classes in one school, and then another three hours split between two classes in the second.

My boss helped schedule the process and worked with me the first and third weeks. During all the time with students, the Taos computer technician helped out with getting the equipment to the right place, seeing the batteries were charged, and helping out with one of the filming groups. And the teachers worked with one or two groups. We were all tag-teaming each other so all the bases were covered.

With the teacher’s input, the classes were divided into production “companies.” Each company chose a topic and then went to work developing their pre-production story boards.

The pre-production planning took most of the first week. But during that time, we learned how to use the cameras, what different shots could be used, how to edit in iMovie, and how to use GarageBand to create some theme music for their movies.

We found that we were always revisiting pre-production planning and re-planning a shot, then re-filming it, and a re-edit. Just because we went through the process in “order” didn’t mean that we couldn’t re-do some part of it.

The most difficult part of this process was in the conversations with students during the pre-planning stage. Because these students had never done a project like this, and because there were not really used to “thinking outside the box,” the challenge was to get them to envision something they had never really experienced. How does one get a student to create with iMovie when the possibilities aren’t known?

I used two exemplars from a school in central Maine where I developed a “Short-Short Film Contest.” We then spent a lot of time on sharpening the focus of the project. Next, we created the story boards.

One 5th grade group really didn’t get it. Their initial shots, and I really should say “shot,” was 1:24 minutes. We spent several sessions fine tuning that into separate clips of 5 to 10 seconds each using different camera angles. They eventually figured it out, but it took a lot of focused discussion to get them to understand that clips of any length more than 15 seconds just won’t yield a good project in a short film construct.

The “Premier” showing of all films is tomorrow at one school. There, we’ll have to hang a sheet between two tether ball stands and use the speaker system and projector from the classroom. These small elementary schools on the mesa don’t have lots of resources, but they are very creative to make up for what they lack in that department.

I’m making the DVD, grabbing the iMovie files exported to quicktime to my USB stick, and then bringing them into iDVD on my laptop. I’ll burn the DVD’s and those will be shown at the “Premiers” at two schools using either a laptop or a DVD player. Parents and media have been invited, and a radio interview was broadcast on the local station.

Technology with Blinders

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Many of you may know what “blinders” are. I should say “were,” as these were primarily used to keep horses’ eyes on the straight and narrow. With blinders, horses wouldn’t be distracted by things not in their direct path. Wagon drivers could then be better assured that the horses would follow the trail and not veer off to check out that cute filly in the next pasture.

Horses aren’t the only critters that have binders: we do, too. And it’s technology agendas that can place them there.

In one school I work with, the technology integrationist is everything Google, and pushes the staff to have their students log into their google accounts just as soon as they log into their laptops. It doesn’t matter if the students won’t be needing anything Google while working on Scratch, for example. Writing can be done in Word or Pages or TextEdit and not just Google Docs. Files can be saved in the local drive or uploaded to the school’s server, not just Google Drive. And Web pages can be made with iWeb and stored locally (until iWeb goes away), not just Google Sites.

I worry about this narrow-mindedness when it comes to this type of technology use. Using Google this way (“Log in to your Google account as soon as you start your MacBook Air!”) is limiting students to explore other opportunities, and it gives them the impression that Google Drive is the best and the only solution to file sharing and getting anything technology-related done.

Don’t get me wrong here; Google is a powerful sharing tool. It’s just that there are other options out there.

Thankfully, the teachers know the score, and they are looking at their students’ technology experiences as ones that will not limit but broaden horizons and thought processes.

Epub Collaborative Writing

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A few weeks ago, two middle school teachers approached me to discuss ideas for their combined science/LA classes to collaborate on a Field Study project. Students were going to be in teams, and the teachers wanted them to share their work using the iPads they have been using this year.

Recently, the 5th-8th grades had been using Creative Book Builder, a great app to making a book for the iBooks App on the iPad. CBB allows the user to push up to DropBox or Google Docs the epub file generated on the iPad. It also allows users to access the same account to pull down any book placed there.

Students had some parameters for CBB. Each one had a chapter. They added their voice, their photos, their text about the subject of the field study at Center Pond.

The LA teacher scanned in all their drawings. So this project included their own art work, too!

The results were great, and the process worked very well. Some iPads had the older version of CBB, and named the files in number sequence, but the teachers helped me out with identifying the authors and I simply renamed the files in Drop Box.

It was easy to pull all the chapters together into one ePub book, and then push that compilation up to DropBox. Then, all students had to do was to go to DropBox with Creative Book Builder, create a new book and download the compilation. They could then see each others work in ONE book.

This is a good example of collaborative work in the digital age. What drove this to success was not just the app’s design but mostly the planning the teachers did before embarking on the project. The teachers knew what they wanted to see as an end product having had some experience with CBB products from earlier this spring.

The technology was pretty easy for the students. I fielded questions about page breaks, formatting text, but mostly students had the app all figured out.

iPads and Keyboarding ?!?

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What I would like to know from all of you is how do iPads enter into this with no manual keyboards? What to do now regarding keyboarding?
I’m thinking about schools (not necessarily in Vermont just yet) with no mechanical keyboards: just iPads K-12, and a “typing tutor” app. Especially when the keyboard can be easily split in half for those fast thumbs, I’m stuck with the contrasting image of my sitting in 9th grade typing class in front of a Smith Corona manual machine that took lots of physical force to make a few copies when CC meant carbon copy (paper, that is).
Ok, I may be giving away my age here, but I wish you could have seen the 8th grader I talked with last week who was holding her paper in one hand and typing on her iPad with her index finger of the other hand much faster than I could with all of mine on the keyboard I’m using now.

In the all iPad scenario, how does keyboarding enter into the curriculum and at what age?

Pull out or Pull in? Technology PD in the classrooms

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I’ve always felt that technology should be a “pull-in” rather than a “pull-out” especially in the K-8 area. As technologists, we are always helping teachers  ”use” technology within their curriculum. It is in the classrooms that technology integrationists should be working….not without the classroom teacher in a lab setting (when they can have a planning period), with or without laptops. While in the classroom, the technologist has the added advantage of teaching the teacher. It’s a good model if on a regular basis and more efficient than afternoon professional development sessions: teachers “come with” the classroom of students and can be either a student themselves or an assistant to the integrationist resolving minor technical issues, or the voice in the room themselves. That’s why a mobile cart of laptops is a good model for effective integration.

Here’s an excerpt from  http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=MLTINews&id=125827&v=Details
A study in 2007 by the University of Southern Maine’s Education Policy Research Institute showed that only 29 percent of eighth-graders scored “proficient” in Maine Education Assessment writing tests back in 2000. 2005, three years after the laptops appeared, that number had surged to 49 percent.
We know the MLTI program is working. Here’s a link to all the research posted on the MLTI web page:

http://maine.gov/mlti/resources/research.shtml

And now the new Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has asked his educational policy advisor to write a report about Online Learning. You can read it here:

http://www.mainepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/Online-learning-report.pdf

Lists, Lists, Lists

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Have you seen “top 25 iPad Apps,” “top 100 Web 2.0 sites” and wondered who made these and how those decisions to include the sites/apps were made? I’ve been perusing some of these, and am still looking for “dynamic” lists of apps, web 2.0 sites, that are constantly updated. If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

What Drives Device Choices?

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Just yesterday I was talking with a local elementary school principal who asked me what I would recommend if I had to make a choice: 10 extra iPads or a cart of 15 MacBook Airs. This isn’t equitable in terms of $, but it was the choice she was facing. The school has 20 iPads for students, 10 for teachers, and two carts of netbooks.

How could I make a recommendation on just the devices themselves? It’s like saying, “Look, you need transportation, so how about a VW or a Ford?” We’ve all been there, too many times.

Then she gave me some additional details: Two of her four teachers (it’s a very small school of 60), were frustrated with Flash embedded web sites not being accessible on iPads, and that spreadsheets were a bear on iPads.

Neither was a problem on the older Acers in the cart and neither would be a problem on the Air’s.

I couldn’t make the decision like that. So I asked her, “What curricular needs do your students and teachers have, and what device can fill those needs the best? Does one device do A, B but not C, and the other does all three?”

Having so many favorite resources being Flash based (and Smart Notebooks are coming to the iPads in late summer, and the Notebook software can have Flash embedded) with no guarantee of when these sites will cut over to HTML 5 (PHET.colorado.edu is one example), it was an easy choice. I’m not so sure about the spreadsheet piece, but Flash alone causes enough access limitations to give her teachers a headache. Need to find a way around this, and soon.

When we looked at the decision before us in that light, the choice was a simple one: MacBook Airs and not iPads.

Dynamic Landscapes May 10, 2012

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Last Thursday, I spent 3 hours with teachers, librarians, high school principals and technologists showing them how to use Creative Book Building as they created content for their students. That’s what was in the write-up. But when I started my session, I pointed out that their students should be able to use this same technology, this same APP as they “Show what I know” about whatever subject the student was working on.

This has become my new mantra, by the way. “Show Me what you know” through digital story telling applications, web page creation software, mind maps, and apps like Creative Book Builder is empowering students to tell the world what they know about a particular subject.

I don’t think the audience last Thursday night was thinking the same thing that I was. They had come to the three hour session to go through the app as if THEY were creating for their students, and that’s fine. But what I hope was an eye opener was allowing their students to create for them.