CICFF

Congrats to my class from last year- their video "Hope for Technology" was the runner up in the Shortie Awards International Student News and Film Festival in June. After our success in that competition, we were invited to submit our film for the Chicago International Children's Film Festival.

"The CICFF is North America's largest and most celebrated film
festival devoted to films for and by kids, and it's the only
Academy®-qualifying children's film festival in the world! (That means our
winners in the short film category can go on to compete for the
Oscars®! In 2008, the Festival featured 250 of the best films and
videos for kids from 40 countries. The Festival welcomes over 26,000 Chicago
area children, adults, and educators to hundreds of screenings. More than 100 filmmakers, media professionals & celebrities attend the Festival to lead interactive workshops with kids." CICFF

I am amazed at how much this little class project has achieved! It will be shown as part of a collection of short films by kids. Click here to see the list, or look at the screen cap below. There are a lot of different countries represented! I am SO proud of their hard work.

Our First Vegas Project!

Hooray! I was able to get a simpler version of Sony Vegas Video installed on a student station. Doug and I use the full version of Vegas on our projects. You can do lots of neat effects with Vegas. This is probably my favorite video special effects wise:

Even using the stripped down version, my kids will eventually be able to green screen and scan and pan. (We will see about the pan and scan- I still have trouble with that task!) I started the kids off easy with a simple project- putting pictures with sound clips and adding transitions and music. They made the pictures and recorded the words with their first grade book buddies. I tried to explain that using a different transition for each picture is like using a different font for every word in your story. At eight years old, they think using a different font for every word in their story is very cool as opposed to distracting and looked completely dejected when I suggested they pick only one transition to use. Not wanting to stifle creativity on the first project, I let them use different ones. What can I say- I too love all the different transitions. :)


I was really impressed with how well they cropped the pictures, timed the transitions and were able to find the correct sound file and match it to the pictures. I did go back in and adjust the volume levels on some of the sound clips, add the titles (which they could have done if time permitted) and made the timings a bit sharper. This is most certainly still their work though. They even typed up the e-mail we wrote together as a class to send out to everyone.. They learned how to insert a hyperlink and the function of the caps lock button.

(Click to view picture full size)

They then wrote about how they did it all on our wiki. Check the project out and if you know any firefighters or police officers, please forward it on to them. We are keeping track of our page hits. So far in one day we are up to 16 views on each page. As as side note I should also point out that when they updated the wiki, they managed to delete every single thing on the front page and somehow lose the scroll bar. It was a fun evening activity to try and go back and make it like it was. The scroll bar is still missing in fact. Their update looks great though! Two steps froward, one step back!

21st Century Learning Skills

We hear the word Digital native used a lot. We all recognize we are teaching digital natives. The question is are we teaching them the 21st Century Learning Skills?

Digital Native: Simply someone who has grown up in a world where technology has always been around- they have never lived in a world without computers, Internet, and cell phones. It was a term created by Marc Prensky, who has written extensively on the education of digital natives. He used it in a well known article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, which is a short read if you are interested.



21 Century Learning Skills: You could read for hours about it. This is a good short article from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Or even easier, here are two quotes from the article:

"Twenty-first century skills combining technology literacy, critical thinking, creativity and mastery of core subject matter are the lifeblood of a productive workforce in today's global, knowledge-based economy," Susan D. Patrick, director of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education.

"Successful businesses are looking for employees who can adapt to changing needs, juggle multiple responsibilities and routinely make decisions on their own. We must infuse 21st century skills into K-12 education in order to better prepare students for the realities of work and life in the 21st century."- Karen Bruett- Dell

Now, I am a person who sometimes over simplifies things, but when I put these two things together, I come to the following conclusion:

Bloom's is more important than ever. Only now, kids need to be working collaboratively on projects that incorporate technology and fall in the upper levels of Bloom's.

It's easy to forget that it's not just about using computers. It's about being able to make decisions, handle responsibilities, working together, and creating things.

It's about making sure our Digital Natives are both engaged AND working on 21st Century Learning Skills.

I guess this also means that when my kids are working on a million different things, getting their fingerprints all over the computer screens, and having to start their whole project over because they didn't save it in the right folder, they are just becoming prepared for the future. :)

First Claymations...

While making a good high quality and competition worthy claymation very intricate, time consuming, and difficult, making a simple claymation that demonstrates a basic concept is surprisingly easy and something the students absolutely adore. Here is a simple claymation that one group made last week to demonstrate expanded form.

Materials You Will Need:

1. Cheap Modeling Clay (It never dries out. The kids figures from last year are still perfectly mailable. We did learn something the hard way though. Don't store them on the windowsill. They won't dry out, but they can melt!) I buy my clay at US Toy- 24 sticks for $1.99. I put 12 sticks on a table and that is all they can use- It is a great lesson. They have to work together and compromise for the colors they all want. It has somehow always worked out without much trouble.
2. Digital Still Camera
3. Tripod (You need to be able to keep the camera still- tripod is best, but setting it on a book or table will also work.)
4. It is good to put up some sort of background, in this case they used two file folders. My husband says it is too cheap. I say it is really EASY.
5. Screen Capture Program
6. Microphone (they can use the one on your laptop)
   

We took 15 minutes before lunch one day to create their characters. They will use these same characters for several claymations. I made one claymation with a few volunteers as the class watched, then they were on their own after that.

The most important rule to stress it to NEVER pick up the figures, only move them slightly. They will break this rule often, and when they see how it totally messes up their scene, they usually stop. No matter how much they think they are putting the character back down in the same place, they aren't.

The project above was one of their math centers for the week. They complete the center in groups of 4-5 students and had 25 minutes to decide on a number and take all the pictures. The next day I took 15 minutes and taught each group how to turn the pictures into a movie.

It's pretty simple.

1. Open the picture folders and make sure you delete any mistake pictures. (Like ones with hands in them)

2. Select view as slide show and hit the pause button.

3. Open Camtasia and select the area you want to capture. (If you don't have Camtasia, JING is a great free alternative that has received very positive reviews.)

4. Hit record and Camtasia will capture your screen and your voice as you click the mouse or the right arrow button to flip through the pictures. (It's the digital version of a flip book)

5. If you have Camtasia, you can then add titles and transitions.

Here is another example of the finished project:

They will get faster and faster at the process. This week a couple of groups made another claymation showing how to order numbers. They were able to take the pictures and almost finish editing it in the 25 minutes. By the third time, my goal is to have the students be able to shoot and complete editing in the 25 minutes. Once they start to understand the basics of claymation through these academic tasks, they can move on to using it as a storytelling task, with characters, plot, and more advanced movement. These take much more time, but use the basic skills they learned in the short versions. Here is a sample of one from the end of last year....

You can also use Power Point to create a slide show of the images, but it requires inserting each picture into a slide. Using JING or Camtasia to capture the "view as slide show" function is much faster, and you can very easily add their voices.

This isn't always a smooth process. It requires a lot of collaboration, problem solving, and patience with each other. Don't give up when the first time you try it they are fighting over who gets to take the picture and a clay figure gets stuck to the bottom of another kid's shoe (Or your shoe-I'll never forget the look on the little girl's face when we found Lewis attached to the bottom of my Nikes). Even when they are proficient at the process, they will still have struggles to over come. Give them some room to work it out, and if they can't handle it, shut it down temporarily and allow them to try again another time. One group will be able to do it, and when the class sees their finished project, they will be eager to try and work together to get theirs done too. If it is just one person causing the trouble, simply remove them and give them an alternative assignment for that day. Chances are very high they will do better the next day- or the day after. This activity is as much about learning planning, problem solving, and cooperation skills as it is about demonstrating the academic concepts they are working on.