Thursday, April 16, 2009

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Movie projects - personal archives

Here are some of the animations, movies and other experimentations my student, colleagues or I have produced. Some are long term – pre-scripted projects, other completely student developed. No one technique works best for everybody, every class or every teacher. No fancy equipment was required, but Mac imovie is still my favorite for movie editing. New tools such as photostory 3 and Comic Life offer interesting possibilities. Enjoy!




Saturday, February 28, 2009

Expanding our Boundries - weaving across borders

So, in good time and form - it`s 3:25 am - here are a few exerpts from an expansive evening in which:
  • Supper at India Cafe was offered with disarming humility, pride and generosity.
  • Dave Restivo and his trio at the humminly electric REX blew the place out of the water.
  • Met too many regulars to remember including a honey-voiced jazz singer who invited us for chicken curry on Sunday.
  • Teachers all over including the trio's New York based guest drummer Alyssa Taft and a drop dead trucker-talking Catholic 5th grade teacher who just came back from the opera with her class.
  • Finally, full cultural integration with the spill out crowd at the Big Slice (yes, they are really big). See the video of the food samples on the wall.

Trouble with video uploading. Here`s some wake-up jazz. http://www.myspace.com/daverestivo

Friday, November 14, 2008

Workshop notes





Thanks for hanging around the whole afternoon. I thought there was a good chance you might either walk out or thrash me like an angry mob (it being report time and all).




It may all seem overwhelming right now. You will surely run into a few bumps and grinds along the way, but both you and your students will get tremendous satisfaction from the process.



Just to recap:


  • the Multi media cart will be kept in P1 - Marc's


  • to reserve - send message to `trailer park teachers` (to add it to you directory, right click the address in the beam I sent you and select 'add to directory')


  • the RCA Small Wonder cameras can be signed out from P8 - Roger`

I will try to purchase:

  • headset mic`s for all portables - at least

  • more radios and appropriate cables

  • another media cart

We will have to verify if:

  • your student computers are running Windows XP

  • if they can be on the network

Consider:

  • fiddling with audacity to create a simple message for trailerparkkids and attatching the MP3 to an email to all of us

  • teaming up with a Primary class to use their Wooe__ login

  • offering to have your students record texts for the primary teachers/kids

  • downloading audacity to your home computer and having fun with your family

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Resources at Your Fingertips

How to use audacity - a simple sound recording tool on your computer.

Post your recordings on Netcaster - a channel (website) created by the board.

Teachers at A. Lorne Cassidy have been doing this for a while. See their extensive HELP site at Portable PD and their PUBLISHING site at Portable Radio.

You might also consider using video. We have a Mini DV video camera at school now as well as 5 very simple video cameras called Small Wonder. Here is a sample made afer a visit from Scientists in School.

This movie and other goodies can be seen on our class BLOG.

In case you forgot to bookmark it, here is the Discovery Education Streaming site.