So Much to Learn...So Little Time

Asterpix - Interactive video

Learned about this new video hosting web site last night from Vicki Davis' blog.
This is Asterpix and you can create interactive hotspots within the video, so interested parties can find out more about what is contained in the film. It sounded exciting so I just had to have a go.
At the moment you have to upload from another video hosting site such as YouTube (can't use blip.tv at the moment but I'm sure it will be added at some point). From there it is really easy to add notes and url's to a hotspot.
Check out my first shot: A slimmed down trip around Huntly purveyors of fine food and drink.

Nell Nelson - The Woman who ate Huntly. Huntly Food Trail.

Due to my enforced absence from work (back is still in agony) I have been able to catch up on some film editing.
Here's what happened when Nell Nelson came to eat her way around some of Huntly purveyor's of fine food and drink. Thanks to:
Sinclair's of Rhynie (Bakers)
Forbes Raeburn (Butchers)
Rizzas Ice Cream
Dean's of Huntly (Shortbread)
Duncan Taylor & Co. (Whisky)

PBwiki Tutorial - 2

Welwitschia Tutorial 2 - Editing an Existing Page

Pbwiki tutorials

For some time now I've been meaning to teach myself how to make a screen cast.
Due to my current situation (displaced lumbar disk) I have found myself with time to spare. So to kill 2 birds with one stone I thought I'd put together a series of short tutorials to help our Connecting Classroom partners access and use the wiki I have started to publicise and share our partnership's activities.

Had a few problems to resolve first though:

• I wanted to use Jing because the image quality seems to be excellent, but it kept cutting out after 2 mins, and I found out there is a 200mb limit which isn't all that large.
• Ended up using iShowU which is mac specific and although image quality isn't what I would really like it serves its purpose...(I've now sussed how to improve the picture quality so the video below is a new version)

I also finally got to use mousepose which is a funky presentation tool for macs.
I then imported the film to garageband and added some background music.

Then uploaded to blip.tv and copied the embed code.

Easy peasy really...once you know how.

Huntly Hairst - Farmers Market

TGStv - the first show

There's a new vodcast in the blogosphere.

Click TGStv and add it to your reader. Here's the first show.

The student involvement in all stages of the process is not quite ther but I am hoping that with time, I will have to do less and less and will operate as a quality control. Good job all the same I think.

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Click To Play

First foray into stop motion animation

Due to rubbish weather I decided to try out I Can Animate today mainly for something to do with my kids.
..that was until I couldn't find the registration key. My daughter had been mucking around with the disc case and did something with the reg. certificate.
So to the web.
I downloaded Frame Thief which seems alright but for some reason it wouldn't recognise the panasonic dv camcorder, luckily I had my own jvc one which worked fine. It seems ok, just not that sexy to look at, and this is what I produced...kids had got brassed of with me trying to sort everything out and were busy mucking around in the garden by now...a much healthier pursuit.

Tomorrow I am going to try out Boinx's iStopmotion (5 day free trial)

A Curriculum for Excellence Encapsulated

A film of an event which perfectly (in my mind any way) encapsulates the ideals of ACfE.

As part of our connecting classrooms visit the pupils of TGS, Gordon Primary and Rhynie Primary put on an evening of Scottish entertainment for our guests from Namibia and Ethiopia. The result was a fantastic evening highlighting not only our students' talents but their willingness and confidence to go onstage and show off their own culture.

• successful learners - each one had to learn something and perform it under the most stressful of circumstances
• confident individuals - each student strode onto stage as if they were seasoned performers (which many actually are)
• responsible citizens - students were asked to take part in their own time for the benefit of their schools and the partnership
• effective contributors - how much more effective could they have been, not only in their performance but also in the delivery of various aspects of their own cultural heritage.

This event was also a very physical representation of multi-establishment co-operation between two of our feeder primaries and ourselves and it showed the encouragement of leadership coming from the students.

Forget "Stop Making Sense", Sign O' The Times, or "Elvis : That's The Way It Is" this is the best concert film of all time. Courtesy of schooltube.

Sorry, had to take the film off line as permission to film didn't specifically mention posting to internet.

School Tube

SchoolTube now online.

Thanks to Jane Knight bringing to my (and everone who reads her) attention the existence of SchoolTube. It puports to be a safe environment for students and educators to upload videos. On initial inspection there are more appropriate categories for your videos than on TeacherTube. I am quite looking forward to using it.

An Experiment in Action Learning

The posts linked below on RateMyMates  are the result of a wee experiment with my students in 1F. Instead of using the usual direct teaching methods to cover the topic of school I asked the students to work in groups to produce either a film or a radio show.
The aim of the production was to introduce German-speaking visitors to The Gordon Schools; to give an idea about its history, the subjects studied, give some opinions, some interviews etc. The only real guideline I gave them was to use the vocabulary from their vocab guides to ensure reasonable quality German. You can see/hear the results for yourselves but here is my own analysis of how the experiment went.

1. I allowed it to go on for too long, although much of the time was down to various disruptions
2. some level of direct teaching is involved beforehand to ensure some familiarity with the labguage to be used
3. I'm not sure how much of the language they have learned
4. there are some fantastic ideas in there which with a little tweaking could produce really high quality work, both language-wise and creatively
5. once again just when you are getting brassed off and you think they are taking the mick the students come up with the goods...in general.
6. the script is king, queen, emperor and general dictator all rolled into one
7. on the whole THEY HAD A BALL..look at the bloopers at the end of the films

Will I do it again? YES, but with the above in mind.

Please leave 2 stars and a wish-type comments on their work!!!

Der_BJKKM_Shau

Die_Gordon_Schule

Ein_Tag_in_der_Gordon_Schule