I guess I better start reflecting on all of the days for the 31 Day Comment Challenge–May is almost over.  I’ve actually done most of the activities, but have not had three seconds to reflect.

I like the new layout for Edublogs dashboard.  The only glitch I see so far is that the blog tabs at the top of the page have ALL of my students (whose blogs I set up) and so I can’t add another blog and actually see it.  Even though it was a pain to scroll down, at least I could eventually get to all of the students’ blogs–now I can’t get to all of my blogs.

I was just about to add another blog, but I wouldn’t be able to get to it because of the critical mass of student blogs already attached.  I’ll have to ask Bill if there is a way to get rid of some of the blogs on MY account without deactivating them.

The last day of school was yesterday and as usual I have trouble winding down. I’m not sure how I’m always the last to leave the building, but I was for about the 15th year running. I’ve never made it to Jim and Julie’s end of the year party. Alas.

The screening was fun. The kids were very excited to have visitors (whom they almost stampeded when I told them there were doughnuts in the back of the room). Brandon’s mom and Jaquelyn’s grandmother came, along with Kathy and Becky who had been blog readers. Andy, Cindy and Cori also came–that’s a pretty good turnout!

I was really pleased with the finals. The students had to review the film as a whole and discuss whether or not it served the purpose that they had established early on

1. to inform
2. to persuade
3. to effect change

And then tell what worked and what didn’t in the film. They were very insightful and were not delusional about what worked and what didn’t. They caught the sound problems and the choppy editing and the way it didn’t exactly flow together segment to segment. But they also recognized that they did a good job editing the interviews down to the essential and that their visual metaphors made the film more interesting. I was so proud! And if that weren’t enough–their last blog entries talked about what they learned. I couldn’t have hoped for more understanding of what they were supposed to have learned from this project.

I did exit interviews of the kids and filmed it–it’s fun to hear them talk in their own words about their experience. I will be putting the whole thing together–my own meta-documentary.

The other part of the kids’ final was to comment on a blog from VCS–Ms. Cassenelli’s computer class–most of them did. It was a good match for them because the students were focusing on social change–it looked like they were creating their own multi-media information blog about a topic about which they wanted to effect change. Love it when things serendipitously fit together.

The only thing that wasn’t ideal is that cocomment does not work on their blog–it looks like perhaps it is a closed blog? Not sure. But cocomment now works on mine now, so I’m happy.

My students have been getting comments from a computer class in Oregon. I’m not sure if anyone has commented back yet–this will need to be addressed tomorrow.

Unfortunately tomorrow is our last day of school and I’m not sure how many of my darlings will continue to blog over the summer. I will make it part of their final to comment on a blog at the Beaverton school. The cool thing is that many of them have blogs about issues they care about. It might be a nice circle back to the conversations that we had about what we care most deeply about and how we can inform, persuade, and effect change by communicating with others. Perhaps there will be some empathy with people who are trying to effect change in their own small way.

The other thing that was great for me to see on the Beaverton students’ blogs was the way they had incorporated multi-modal forms of communication (video, images, surveys, posters) All were cited, I was glad to see :-). I’m not sure if edublogs supports surveys or not, but I’m going to investigate. That could be a great resource next year. It looked like the Beaverton school used Google to do the survey. I’ll have to play around.

The DVD is burning as I write.  I knew it would take a long time to burn the first one, but I didn’t know how long.  I finally finished putting the whole thing together last night at 7:00–the last student left just before 6:00 and so then I decided that I just needed to put them all together before I left for my son’s baseball game.

It was pretty easy to export–I say that now after 35 e-mails, skype chats and harried voice mails to Bill, our friendly technology integration specialist.  I was using the export button instead of the export menu under File (file that away for next year) and when that was finally clear, I could easily save as an .avi file.  So I exported each project separately and then combined them into one big Premiere file.

Anyway, I let it render itself overnight (so it was nice and tender?) and then was going to burn it this morning before taking it over to Alex in Library Media to duplicate for the kids in class.  But the encoding and burning of one 25 minute video took over 2 hours.  I’m not sure how long it actually took because I left to go buy more blank DVDs, but it was a long time.  I need to remember to do the burning overnight.

Some problems:

• sound was very different in the different files–some were VERY loud and some were quiet–I played with the yellow bar that makes audio input levels, but even so, it’s still something I need to work on
• proof-reading–one of the titles had the wrong use of affect/effect–we’ll have to make sure they triple check spelling before burning–I know I shouldn’t have, but I changed it.
• Remembering to title the DVD menu–I listed all of the scenes, but forgot to put a title, so I had to stop the burning and go back and fix it.  Also, next year I will make the scene markers on places that have a picture instead of the transition–that way the little picture will be more meaningful.  I wonder if there is a way to keep the marker on the transition, but put in a meaningful image in the thumbnail.  Hmmm.

Also, I think Bill and I figured out a workaround for how the kids could share edited clips–do a “save-as” and then delete the rest of the clips and then export and then import.  It would be more lovely to just be able to share .prel files, but alas.

I think we will have 7 or 8 guests tomorrow.  I’m excited for the kids to see their work.

We reviewed the segments today.  How watching 5 five-minute clips could take all 90 minutes of class astounds.  But time, again, has lost logic when it comes to deadlines.

All five  groups did have a somewhat completed segment.  That’s good. The reviews were helpful–just wish we had done them last week.  Problems that were most common included:

• sound variations (need to modulate)
• clips not all the way clipped (sound or visual blips)
• some parts belonging more effectively in other sections
• lack of research incorporated
• difficulty in reading fonts–sans serif works better than serif
• short clips–keeping the pacing even throughout the whole movie (that’s probably not  going to change, but good to remember next year)
• narration not used enough

They were very frustrated that after the critiques there wouldn’t be much time to work on fixing them.  That is not ideal, to say the least.  About 8 kids stayed after to try to make their changes.

Andrew finished the introduction and conclusion.  The class decided on a title–Global Warming:  Cold Facts for a Hot Issue.  Not too shabby

Overall, the kids did a great job.  I’m very impressed with what I saw today and I hope the editing time tonight and tomorrow morning will give them enough time to fix the less successful parts.  This is a great class–they’ve really worked hard.

Now my job is to put the pieces together and make citation slides.  I told them I’d transfer their works cited  pages to the film.  It should be ready to go Thursday for our showing.  It seems like we are going to have quite a few people to watch!  Authentic audiences galore!

For almost 3 hours after school, on a beautiful spring Friday (and might I add that it was the first sun we’ve seen in weeks), there were ten 10th graders up in my room working on last minute edits for their documentary film segments.  And no one complained.

The discussions were about how to pare down the 30 minutes of film down to 5 and how to find music that wasn’t copyright protected.  One group used my old Mac (I’m never giving it up) and used GarageBand to create their own music.  It actually sounds pretty good!

Jill’s group had a discussion about the ethics of cutting out the phrase “if global warming is real” for part of their  segment.  After about 15 minutes of going back and forth, they decided that it would be misrepresenting their interviewee if they edited that part out, so they left it in.  I was proud of them for their conclusion, and of  myself for letting them reach it by themselves.

Jenny’s group had 2 expert interviews and really had to work to cut everything down.  They kept announcing “We’re down to 17 minutes” then “Oh no!  We forgot about Kent–now we’re back up to 37!” and then finally “Five  minutes!” They’ve really had to decide what is important and essential to their argument in order to keep the segment at 5 minutes.  It will be interesting if I can see if any of these skills transfers to their writing.  But who knows. . . it’s so difficult to account for what influences what.

Kelsey’s group finished early–they were doing their narration, so I didn’t see much of them.   They had to find a quiet place downstairs–in my room it was a bit raucous with all of the editing and composing and discussion going on.

The other two groups had put time in earlier in the week.  I assume they are ready to go.

Our preview screening will take place on Monday–and then after that, it’s opening night (or at least opening morning).  Jill made an invitation.  The kids are supposed to post the information so that their local blog readers might attend if they wish.  We already have one  RSVP!  I guess I better clean for company

Feeling pleased with my new theme, I started responding to people who had commented and realized that I couldn’t tag my comments.  I checked around and I still had the little box on other themes, but not on this one.

I wonder if there is some way to make it appear magically (or some other way) so that people who are tracking the comments through the 31 Day Challenge are able to do so.

On Monday we are going to screen the segments and the class will critique each one. We have one more late night tomorrow–I’m not sure how many kids will stay. Today when I was walking around, I could see that the segments were coming together.

Some of my favorite quotes from the day:

• Do we really have to cut it down to 5 minutes–our segment could be 20 minutes, easy.
• Oh, I guess we should include our research.
• You have a great voice for the narration.
• Do I really sound like that?
• I hate my voice.
• Are you going to make us a DVD of this when we finish?
• You mean I get to take this home!
• Mr. Craddick’s interview has soooooo much information–he’s so smart.
• I can’t find any good music on these sites–do you have any more ideas?
• Can I just create my own music?

After receiving feedback from Christine Martell about the visual noisiness of my blog, I spent 9o minutes testing and re-testing every theme on the edublogs site. I wish I knew how to design a skin and I could submit it to edublogs.So I am trying this new one and will see if anyone mentions or notices or cares that it is new.

The picture of the eagle is one I took with my boys and Deb and her kids over Presidents Day Weekend. We went to Alton, IL where many eagles winter on the ice flows of the Mississippi River.

I finally figured it out! I knew you could split those tracks and that you could put something over the video track, but I couldn’t figure out how. After calls to my friends Bill and Brian , I finally figured it out all by myself. I feel quite proud .

Here is a screencast showing how to make a cutaway shot using overlays and also how to split audio and video tracks in order to edit them separately.