Category Archives: Video

Working Together

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Last week our Elementary School had it’s annual International Day celebration.  It’s a fabulous day where we come together and celebrate our differences and similarities.  This year’s theme was One Day One World.  Our clever Art Specialists, Paz Molina & Trish Neubrand came up with a mural idea that would ensure that ALL the ES students could contribute too.

Over a week or so, the mural slowly came together.  Using the iPad app iMotionHD (free version is good but the paid version allows you to export) we set the iPad2 up each day to capture the putting together of the mural.

Since we created this stop-motion movie over a number of days, it was very important to:

  • mark out (using masking tape) the placement of the iPad (on the table)
  • mark out the placement of the table the iPad sat on, and
  • mark out the placement of the Mural

this ensured that each time we captured an art session, the differences in capture were minimal.

Using iMovie, all the exported iMotionHD captures were imported in, some still images were added, along with some catchy Creative Commons music called Spring the Swing by Papa_Zulu (found on dig.ccmixter.org) and this is what we ended up with on International Day!

A Message to Japan

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It was all hands on deck in the Elementary School this afternoon as we tried to make 1000 paper cranes as a symbol of peace, health and happiness for the people of Japan.  Over the past week and a half, the ES, MS & HS have been running various fundraisers to raise money for those living in the devastated by earthquake and tsunami parts of Northern Japan. Here’s one Grade 3′s class effort, folding as many paper cranes as we could in an hour.

Wonky Donkey Comes to Thailand

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Amazon.com: The Wonky Donkey (9780545261241): Craig Smith, Katz Cowley: Books

Best purchase after three glorious weeks back in my home country – this book (and it’s accompanying CD)!

If you loved Pete the Cat, then you will just love this gorgeous book by this clever New Zealand guy: Chris Smith!

You can listen to Craig sing his way through the story here:

I only bought one copy and I’m wishing I’d bought one more for my fabulous colleague, Miss Tara – our Learning Hub Librarian Extraordinaire! Thank goodness it’s available through Amazon!!

She’s just spend all morning reading it to the Kinders and Grade 1! It was great when I walked into the Hub later in the morning and two little Kinders rushed up and said that they LOVED the Wonky Donkey book I’d bought – especially the part where he farts!”  Made my day – hope the Wonky Donkey makes yours!

Record, Reflect & Share: VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio

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In case you missed it, my presentation for the Kicking it up a Notch strand of the K-12 Online Conference 2010, went “live” tonight.  You can watch it here, or head on over the K-12 Online Conference Ning & watch it there. There’s a discussion forum available too, where you can leave comments, thoughts and questions if you want.  The resources mentioned in the presentation can be found at the Learning Highway wiki.

It was fun making the presentation, and I learnt a lot more about iMovie 09 than I ever thought I could. I didn’t like iMovie 09 much when it was first released, but now I’m feeling a lot more comfortable with it and I like it’s features. I especially enjoyed getting the hang of the “picture inside a picture” feature!

The Alchemy of Great Work

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A big shout out to my friend Steve, who, this morning, sent me the link to the video below. I’ve been grappling with being so busy doing good work, being re-active as a technology and learning coach but not very pro-active in my new position.

Like my good friend Melanie Holtsman, I too, have been struggling to blog regularly this year.  I’ve got lots of draft posts sitting in the backend of my blog, but nothing is happening with them.

And when I do have an idea for a post, it never seems to get written. Other things bog me down, or it seems that I let them. And I’m always feeling guilty that I’m not a better role model for those I coach.

I’m feeling exactly the same way! I need to do something about that! Here’s what I’m planning to do.

I’ve taken up Melanie’s challenge (that’s my focus taken from the Alchemy of Great Work) and I’m encouraging you to do it too.  Find out more about the challenge here. And watch out, for an upsurge in posting from me!

What’s your focus for great work?

Fireworks Animoto Style

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I’ve written about Animoto before. It’s very intuitive, quick and easy as well as free to use when you want to create a 30 second video. For just US$3 per video or US$30 per year, you can make longer videos.
Some ways to use Animoto in the classroom:

  1. Teaser (introducing students to a new topic)
  2. Assessment (students put together the most important images about their learning)
  3. Highlights (highlight the best parts of learning)
  4. Discussion Starter (poignant images that would spark a discussion on a topic)

It took about 5 minutes to upload chosen photos, type some text, add music and render the video.  This video is the highlights of the fireworks set off at midnight on January 1st 2010, on Marine Parade, Napier, New Zealand.  The photos were taken from my balcony using the 55mm – 200mm lens.